Chapter 1: Expelled

I am Baek Mu-jin. Nineteen years of age and the third son of the Baek Clan. At present I find myself on the wrong side of Hangju, in front of an inn that is as crooked as it is old and reeks of yesterday’s dumplings and the cheapest rice wine they could pour.

There is a reason for it. Some four hours back my father put me out of the clan after I had the misfortune to sleep with the wife of one of the Gu elders.

It was all very straightforward. Elder Gu was in our main hall, face still purple with it, while I was on my knees in the clothes I’d worn the day before. My father has no need to raise his voice. He simply regarded me as though I were something he wanted off his floor and told me in so many words: "You are no son of the Baek Clan until I say you are."

Two of his servants saw me to the gate and my bundle followed. The whole affair was over in less time than it takes to boil an egg. If I am being frank, I expected as much.

The thing is, I am not really Baek Mu-jin. Not the one who was here to begin with. Three months prior I was a nobody in Seoul, died at my desk with my pants down and alone. My last memory was of never having so much as touched a woman. Then I opened my eyes in this body and there was a voice in my head telling me the Ultimate MILF System was active. It even detected and accepted my final wish.

Since then it has been a blessing and a curse. Here is what I have made of it. A milf comes within range and I get a ping. [Target Detected.] Let her have a look in, let her feel the faintest spark of interest and the system will take that and fan the flames. [Desire +10.] [Desire +20.] Put it this way: the higher the number, the more she wants it and the less sense she makes of her decisions.

I tried it on the cook’s wife. She hated me and the system can’t change that. But a woman who is lonely or curious? It turns her into a wildfire. And I cannot switch it off. Nor does the system have any regard for what follows.

Take Madam Seol Hwa-ryeon. Hot, late thirties, a tight figure and wild in the eyes. She knew what she wanted. Wife of that stiff old bastard Elder Gu across the wall, and she had been giving me looks for weeks. The system did its work. By yesterday afternoon her desire was running so high she hauled me into her room in the middle of the day with her husband’s guards not ten feet from the window. We were well into round three when he slid the door open.

No warning. Just the two of us and the rather indisputable evidence of what the system can make a woman do.

He stood there. We had eye contact. Then I was running. Over the wall with my shirt gone and a shoe missing and everything else in the breeze. I couldn’t have put up a fight. Elder Gu is First-rate; on my best day I am Third-rate. This body may be ripped but it is nothing against an old man who can put qi through a sword. He would have folded me like a shirt. So I left my pride where it belonged.

And my father can hardly be faulted. For three months every milf on the street has known when I was in. They would drift by the gate with some flimsy story about needing help with a jar or an opinion on some silk, always with a look that said there was more to it. The system doesn’t just make them want you, it makes them desperate enough to not care who is watching.

Now I am at the Blue Willow Inn. A friend put me on to the place. It is home to drifter swordsmen and runaways and the like. With my allowance cut and a purse to match I can’t be choosy. I have a jade hairpin my mother put in my bundle when my father wasn’t looking, which is worth more than anything else I have.

Time to put things right.

I went through the gate and put my shoulder into someone. An abacus went to the ground with a clatter and paper went everywhere.

"Do you have any idea how long it took to put those in order?" she asked, quite composed.

I looked up and lost my tongue.

[Target Detected.]

She was in her early thirties, dark silk robe cinched at the waist and the collar loose enough to be trouble. Long black hair held by a single piece of jade. There was a slit in her skirt that was testing my concentration.

"Sorry, I’ll –" I crouched to pick up her pages.

She did the same. Face to face from that vantage point... well, her robe and my eyes were not my doing.

She made no move to cover up. Just righted her abacus and gave me the once over like I was a sum to be tallied.

"Baek crest on your pack. Good boots, common bag. No servant. Red in the eye." Clack. "Third son. Thrown out this morning."

"How did you –"

"Gossip in Hangju is quicker than bookwork." Clack, clack. "Allowance cut, I should think. You can put down three silver a week for a room here. You’ll be short before the month is out if you start drinking to ease the sting."

She got to her feet and brushed her skirt. Then she looked at me. And then lower. To the very obvious state of my trousers.

Not a blush in sight. There was no gasp from her. She merely brought the abacus to her bottom lip and gave it a slow tap, as though she had come across an entry requiring a very particular sort of audit.

[Desire +15.]

"Hm," she made a sound of it. "An asset of a different order."

With that she took her ledger and was gone without so much as a backward glance. I was left standing with one of her pages in hand, wondering what the hell had just transpired.

I made my way up the stairs to the top floor of the east wing and put the key to my door.

A blade found my throat before I could turn the lock. Cold, curved and sharp enough to make you think twice.

"Thief?" The voice came with an accent like thick honey.

I turned, taking my time about it.

[Target Detected.]

She was tall with an hourglass figure in some thin foreign dress that clung to her and would have fallen off if it wanted to. No bra, nothing at all under it, I could tell. And in her hand was a curved sword, steady as stone on my neck. Her hair was a pale gold, not dyed but the real thing, the sort of shade you see on traders from the Western Regions.

God, it only made things worse.

"No. New tenant. This is my room."

She let her eyes run me over, up and down, not in any hurry. The sword did not budge.

"The last fellow in here he stole my wine."

"Don’t drink. Much."

For a long moment she studied me. Then a smile came to her face, lazy and dangerous, and the blade was back in its sheath. I didn’t even catch the movement.

"Ayla. Your neighbor. You are quite red for a new tenant."

"You were putting a sword to my throat."

"Mm. Not for the sword." Her gaze went to my crotch and stayed there, no pretense about it. "Where I am from, when a man looks at a woman in this manner, the woman puts food in front of him. Come have lunch with me when you are settled."

[Desire +20.]

It wasn’t really a question. She was already making for her room, hips swaying, the dress offering no cover.

"S-sure," I told the closed door.

My room was a shoebox. A bed, a stool with three legs that worked, a window and walls so paper-thin I could hear snoring from two doors down. In the corner sat a large clay water jar with a crack in the side and half its contents on the floor.

Great.

I threw the window open and put my head out to call down to my best friend. Gong Tae-man was where I’d left him at the noodle stall opposite, on his second bowl, as one would expect.

"Tae-man!" I hissed. "What is this place? Are every milf in it just waiting to be used?"

He nearly inhaled a noodle with laughter. "I told you! Why do you think they call it the Lonely Wives’ Inn? It’s paradise for a bastard like you who chases them."

"I was going to curse your ancestors for this shithole... but now?" I gestured at the leaking jar and the cracked plaster. "You’re the best damn friend I have. The rooms are garbage but the milfs... bro, I can hardly get soft."

"From now on we drink at your place," he said, pointing his chopsticks my way. "We will put to bed every last one of them in this inn. And the academy girls too, for variety." He slurped and squinted up at me. "How much are you sitting on?"

"Eleven silver and my mother’s hairpin."

"Room runs you three a week." He did the math on his fingers. "Less than a month, then you are with the dock rats under the bridge. Real comforting, isn’t it?"

"Keep the pin or your mom will cry. Figure it out, you’re the smart one," he said, turning back to his bowl.

The old Mu-jin might have been the smart one. Me? I had eleven silver and a system with a libido.

"Fuck it. Tomorrow’s problem," I said. "That blonde next door has invited me to lunch. Be honest, the only thing on her menu is me."

"Go on then. Make it a meal she won’t forget."

I shut the window and washed with the dregs in the jar, put on a plain robe with a single tie and was locking up when a hand came from behind and took my wrist. Not hard. Just two fingers. She had her fingers pressed to the inside of my wrist.

"Hold still," the woman told me. "I am counting."

I made to turn.

[Target Detected.]

Short and lean, with a physique that was all toned muscle. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, perhaps in her late twenties. The thin sleeveless wrap and the skimpy skirt she wore were hardly an outfit for modesty. She wasn’t as well endowed on top as some of the others, but one look at her backside and you could tell where it came from: a lifetime of horse stance. God, it was sculpted. A jar of herbal balm dangled from her wrist and she had a bamboo mat tucked under her other arm.

And here she was, taking my pulse as though it were the most natural greeting in the world.

"Uh—"

"Shh." I could see her lips moving with the count before she lifted her eyes and gave me a frown. "You just put twenty beats into your pulse."

"It has a way of doing that."

"In the company of women in their bathing things?"

"Seems so."

She released my wrist and let out a laugh, loud and unguarded.

[Desire +10.]

"Dam Yeon-hee is what they call me. I’m the physician. I put in time with the residents too, settle their squabbles and find out who is pinching whose laundry. We check every new one. Last winter some fool introduced the coughing sickness and half the second floor was hacking for a month." Her manner was professional as she appraised me, then not quite so much. "You appear... healthy."

"Baek Mu-jin. And you? Where are you off to in that getup?"

"The hot spring."

"You’re kidding. There’s a hot spring?"

She blinked. "No one put you wise to it?"

"No. I was under the impression this was a dump, but the advantages are piling up."

"Up the hill, past the inn. You’ll need your resident’s jade token to see the gate guard." She gestured to the stairs. "My office is down. Let me register you."

She put some distance between us and I will admit her ass swayed in a way that was positively hypnotic.

We were on the back staircase when we ran into trouble. It is a narrow affair with no windows and a single wretched lantern.

"Make way!"

A merchant in his stiff travelling clothes came barrelling down after us with a porter and a chest of iron bands. They were in a hurry to make the caravan. When they shouldered past, Yeon-hee and I were driven into the corner of the landing.

"Sorry," she said in a low voice. "These stairs are awful."

"Don’t mind me."

My cock would have had something to say about it.

With her backside right up against me, I tried to reposition myself. No good. I was making contact.

She went rigid for a moment, then threw a glance over her shoulder. Calm, clinical. As if she were putting a diagnosis on me.

[Desire +15.]

Two of the laundry girls came up behind us on the next level with a basket and she was forced back harder, until her back was flush to my chest and her ass was right in my crotch. She made no move to put any space between us.

Instead she turned her head, her mouth coming to rest near my jaw.

"Still racing, Baek Mu-jin," she murmured. "I can feel it."

"Is that so?"

"Mm." She leaned back into me, slow and deliberate. "In my capacity as your physician I ought to do something for that."

I wasn’t prepared for what she was implying.

At the same time I was very much ready for it.

This was only the start of it.