Royal Ace Lounge

①Magic

 
Jeon Jungkook viewed the petite man sitting across from him with null interest. He rested languorously on the chair, holding his hands together as they laid on his well-shaped abs.

The petite man, Mike, hurled at him the most cliché lines he had ever heard, but Jungkook had already heard an array of them, anyway. There was nothing he could say to seduce him, or even graze his interest.

Mike didn’t even bother using the props in front of him. There was a bottle of whiskey with two glasses, a card deck, and a dice on the circular table. He had met with nineteen men until now — nineteen extraordinarily gorgeous men — and only two of them had offered to pour him a drink.

Finding shrewd, intriguing hosts for his business was proved to be a lot harder than he thought.

Jungkook’s heavy lids didn’t flicker at the next revoltingly flirty quip Mike jerked out before breaking into his signature squeaky laugh. “Thank you. Wait outside.”

Mike’s face blanked at the abrupt termination of his... interview? He wasn’t sure what this was, since Jungkook hadn’t said a word to him except now and when he had entered the commodious section of the Royal Ace Lounge where the casino was.

Jungkook reached for a glass and flipped it over as Mike left the room with hunched shoulders. He poured himself a shot of whiskey and drowned it in one swift gulp. He turned over the glass again and set it at the center, then reclined in his seat.

His right hand, Hoseok, emerged from the back, arrayed in a black suit and holding a clipboard. “This is going awful.”

Jungkook’s gaze, heavy with boredom and an inkling of censure, rolled over to his right where Hoseok stood. “You picked them. No, you winnowed these twenty men out of two hundred. If these are the best men you could find, I really don’t want to even think how the other one hundred and eighty were.”

“They did fine when they chatted with me, okay?” Hoseok answered huffily. “You’re just too frigid. You’re making them nervous. Their minds go all blank and stuff because of you.”

Jungkook’s chest shook with the snort he expelled, eyes swinging within their sockets before they wore their previous tedium. “They’re not artful enough.”

“Nice way of calling them dumb,” Hoseok sneered, then he skimmed through the list of names surrounded by his sloppy notes. “Come on, you really didn’t like any of them? What about Mark?”

“I don’t even remember who that is.”

Hoseok tsked and turned the clipboard to him, pointing at his small picture.

Jungkook maintained his disengaged veneer. “Too sappy.”

“What about John?”

“Boring. And I don’t get why they chose English names as their nicknames. It should be something that represents them or they shouldn’t pick one at all.”

“Well, Jimin was definitely good. And it’s his real name.”

Jungkook peeked at Jimin’s photo to ascertain he remembered his face correctly. “Yeah, he was good. He had a notion of interest, which I’m sure our clients will appreciate. And he offered me a damn drink, unlike the other guys.”

“Seon offered you a drink, too.”

“Only because he wanted to drink his anxiety away. He was a mess.”

Hoseok’s lips flattened, corking up a scathing remark. “Well, sir, I kept the best for the end. I hope he’ll cheer you up.”

Jungkook held his silence as he slipped into a brief contemplation. “Does your list have an order? From worst to best? Because it seemed pretty messy to me.”