Chapter 121: Fifteen Years +18

Chapter 121: Chapter 121: Fifteen Years +18

Park Jae-won slept for most of the next day in a quiet room on the sixtieth floor of the Taeyang tower, with two of the Guild’s own physicians beside him and Kang sitting in a chair by the door.

The physicians said his heart was weak and his body was very tired, but that he wasn’t dying, at least not yet. Fifteen years of the ring had worn him down, and it would take months for him to find out how much of himself was left. When he woke in the late afternoon, he asked for tea, and then he asked for Seo-yeon, and then he held her hand for an hour without saying anything at all.

Donald stayed out of the room. He spent the day in Seo-yeon’s office two floors below, with Aris on the tablet, working out what to do about the hole he had made in the Guild’s treasury.

"Forty-one million three hundred thousand," Aris said. "Gone overnight, from the reserves of the richest Guild in the Commonwealth. When the markets open in Hanseong tomorrow morning and the news gets out, Taeyang’s shares will collapse."

"It was Paimon’s money," Donald said. "Fifteen years of the city paying him for safety."

"I know that, and you know that, but the banks won’t care." Aris sighed. "Taeyang has three hundred Awakeners on its payroll and contracts with half the cities in the Commonwealth. If it goes under, those people go under with it."

"Then it won’t go under." Donald sat back in Seo-yeon’s chair. "TIG buys ten percent of Taeyang at tomorrow’s opening price, after the fall. That puts money back into the Guild before anyone panics, and it gives us a seat on their board."

Aris was quiet for a moment. "You’re going to rob a Guild and then invest in it."

"I took back a debt," Donald said. "Now I’m making an investment. They’re different things."

He heard her laugh, very softly, for the first time in days.

[Investment Order Placed: 10% of Taeyang Guild, at market open.]

[Estimated Cost: 6,800,000 Credits.]

[Current Balance: 9,460,000 System Credits.]

---

Seo-yeon came to find him a little after nine that night.

She didn’t come to the office. She sent Kang instead, with a folded note in her neat black handwriting, and the note had an address on it in the old city and two lines underneath.

My father-in-law says I’ve spent fifteen years taking care of other people’s houses, and it’s time I went home to my own. I’d like you to see it.

The house was on a narrow street near the old palace wall, small and very old, with a tiled roof and a little garden in front that had gone wild. Seo-yeon was waiting for him at the gate. She had changed out of the torn blue silk into a simple white robe of soft cotton, tied loosely at the waist, and her black hair was down for the first time since he had met her, falling straight and heavy to the middle of her back.

"I bought this house the year before I married Joon," she said, as she let him in. "I lived here for two years. Then I moved into the tower, and after he died I couldn’t come back." She looked around the small front room, at the dust on the low table and the cushions stacked against the wall. "I had someone clean it today. It still smells closed up."

"It smells fine," Donald said.

She smiled at that, a little, and went to the window and opened it, so that the cool night air came in from the garden.

"My father-in-law told me something this afternoon," she said, without turning around. "He said he remembered almost nothing of the last fifteen years, but he remembered me. Every night at that table, he said, a small part of him was watching me pour the tea and wishing I would run." She was quiet for a moment. "He told me to stop waiting for Joon to come home, because Joon would have hated what I’d turned into while I waited. Then he told me to go and live."

She turned to face him.

"I don’t know how to do that," she said simply. "I’ve forgotten. But I know that when you knelt in front of me in that room last night, and held out that tablet, it was the first time in fifteen years that anyone asked me what I wanted."

"What do you want?" Donald asked.

Seo-yeon crossed the room and stopped in front of him. For a while she only looked at him, her dark eyes very steady, as if she was making sure of something.

"I want to be touched by someone who isn’t afraid of me," she said, "and who I’m not afraid of. Just once. To remember what it’s like."

"Only once?"

"Let’s start with once," she said, and kissed him.

---

She kissed him slowly and carefully at first, the way she did everything, as if she was relearning how. Then her hands came up to his face and held it, and she kissed him harder, her mouth opening under his, and he felt her whole body lean into his.

Donald untied the white robe and let it fall open.

Underneath it she was bare. Her body was soft and full and mature, very different from Sylvia’s lean, hard frame, and in the lamplight her pale skin looked smooth and warm. Her breasts were large and heavy, with dark nipples already tight in the cool air from the window. Her waist curved in, narrow and soft, and below it her hips spread wide and round, down into full thighs. Fifteen years of standing straight at the Chairman’s side had kept her back strong, and the long line of her spine curved in deeply above the generous swell of her bottom.

She saw him looking at her and didn’t cover herself. Instead she let the robe slide off her shoulders all the way and drop to the floor. Her cheeks were flushed, but her eyes stayed on his.

"I’m forty-one," she said quietly. "I’m not what I was at twenty-five."

"I didn’t know you at twenty-five," Donald said. He reached out and cupped one of her breasts, feeling the soft weight of it fill his hand, thumb brushing over the tight nipple. "I like this one."

Her breath caught. A faint shiver ran through her. Then she took his hand and led him to the low bed in the back room, under the open window, where the light from the street came through the branches of the garden tree.

She undressed him herself, slowly, with steady fingers, pausing over the bruises across his ribs from the night before. When she pressed her palm flat over the worst of them, he felt a faint coolness spread out from her hand and the ache ease a little.

"A small seal," she said. "To hold it still while it heals."

Then she lay back on the bed and drew him down with her.

For a long time they only touched. Her hands moved over his back and shoulders as if she wanted to learn every part of him, palms sliding down to grip his ass and pull him closer. He took his time with her, kissing her neck, then lower, taking the weight of one breast into his mouth and sucking until she made a soft sound and arched. He kissed the curve of her belly, then the soft skin of her inner thigh, and when he finally stroked between her legs she was already wet and warm. He circled her clit with two fingers, slow and careful, and she opened her legs wider for him, breathing ragged, fingers tangled in his hair.

When at last he moved over her, she reached down and guided him to her entrance. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him in, taking him slowly, a low, broken sound escaping against his shoulder as he sank into her tight heat. She was soft and slick around him, her body yielding and gripping at once.

"Don’t stop," she whispered, eyes wet, but her mouth curved in a small smile.

He didn’t. He moved with her slowly at first, deep and steady, letting her feel every inch. She held him close with her arms and legs, rocking up to meet him, her heavy breasts pressing against his chest. After a while her breathing grew sharper and she moved harder, heels digging into his lower back, urging him deeper. The soft sounds she made filled the quiet room. He braced himself and thrust into her more firmly, and she gasped, clinging to him, her cunt fluttering around his cock.

When she finished, she pressed her face into his neck and shook all over, holding on to him with her arms and legs as if she was afraid he would leave. Her whole body tightened and pulsed around him in long, rolling waves, and faint lines of blue light ran over her skin and faded, all over her body at once. Every lock and latch in the little house clicked open by itself—the window frames and the front door and the gate out in the garden.

A moment later, Donald followed her. He buried himself deep and came with a low groan, spilling inside her in hot pulses while she was still trembling and holding him tight.

---

Afterward they lay tangled together under the open window, and Seo-yeon laughed softly into his chest.

"Every door in the house," she said. "I haven’t done that since I was a girl."

The System window opened in front of Donald’s eyes.

[Asset Bond Formed: Han Seo-yeon.]

[Bond Stage: 1.]

[Dividend Paid to Asset: Han Seo-yeon.]

[Level: 78 → 81.]

[Class Evolution Progress: Sealkeeper (A-Rank) → Warden of Seals (S-Rank): 60%.]

[Dividend Paid to Investor.]

[New Skill Acquired: Escrow Seal (A-Rank).]

[Description: Seal one owned asset. While sealed, it cannot be contested, stolen, or bought out by any outside party. Upkeep: 10,000 Credits per day per asset.]

[Dual-Cultivation Synergy: now linked to 3 Assets (Evelyn, Sylvia, Seo-yeon).]

[Rest Detected. Processing Tier Advancement...]

[Investor Tier: Silver → Gold.]

[Passive Dividend: 150,000 → 450,000 Credits per day.]

[New Feature Unlocked: Portfolio View. Track all held assets across nations.]

Donald read every line twice. Then he opened [Escrow Seal] and spent his first thirty thousand credits of the day without hesitating.

[Escrow Seal applied: Hanseong Anchor Lock.]

[Escrow Seal applied: Council Ward, First Lock (Aldmere).]

[Escrow Seal applied: Council Ward, Seventh Lock (Aldmere).]

[Upkeep: 30,000 Credits per day.]

Paimon had told him he’d learn what it cost to keep a city. Thirty thousand a day was a price Donald could pay.

Seo-yeon lifted her head and looked at him with sleepy curiosity.

"You’re smiling," she said.

"I just got a raise," Donald said.

She didn’t understand, and she didn’t ask. She put her head back down on his chest, closed her eyes, and was asleep within a minute, for what Donald suspected was the first full night in fifteen years.