Ki-bun (noun): feeling, mood. Also means a larger sense of dignity, social standing, and well-being. Maintaining good kibun is of profound importance to Koreans and their sense of personal and cultural balance

TWO HALLOWEENS AGO - JENNIFER

Jennifer Lee floated from table to table while middle-aged Asian women drew, discarded, and exchanged bamboo mahjong tiles. They’d been going for hours.

Lithe and slender, a dancer’s figure, she poured glasses of soju with graceful hands. With a warm smile and a soft glow on her round, angelic face, she charmed a table of aunties in big, fluffy, bulky Korean gowns. When she laughed at a housewife’s joke, her long wavy hair, dyed a chestnut brown, flowed over the shoulder of her slender red and gold dress.

Another table of salon girls wore costumes. Two colorful anime sailors, a geisha, and a pirate queen requested lemon soju in broken, Americanized Korean that warmed Jennifer’s heart. She’d been teaching them some basic words, and was proud to pour them drinks and compliment them on their skill with language.

Everyone’s kibun was good.

The games raged in the main room of what would be the Red Lantern nightclub, tiles clacking on the tables and against each other. In just two more weeks, once the last inspections were complete and the last licenses received, she would share her dream with the world.

In the meantime, these weekly high stakes mahjong games had been keeping Jennifer afloat. She’d sunk the last of her money into this place. The last of her pageant money, plus every penny she had saved through college, along with every dollar she could suck out of an investor’s flaccid old penis.

“Clang!” went the metal front door, the one Jennifer had been meaning to replace with something less ugly.

“Crash!” went what was, until that second, the ugly glass window pane of the metal door.

The clacking tiles stopped. The voices lowered to a hum. Jennifer rushed into the lobby to find out what had happened.

A cool autumn breeze swept in from outside and brushed her bare shoulders. Shivers raced down her spine.

A short, stocky man with a shiny bald head came through her front door. His shoes crunched on small triangles and squares of broken glass. His lip curled into a lusty sneer as his gaze swept over Jennifer’s body.

Two more men followed him in. One sported a black handlebar moustache and twirled a long scruff of black hair on his chin. Behind him stepped a large man wearing a brown tracksuit. The color did not suit his scowling green eyes.

“Everybody OUT!” the large tracksuit man roared.

Most of the women leapt to their feet, put on their shoes, and hurried towards the door, eyes downcast. The men let them pass. The ladies who had experienced such things before, the salon girls, stood up and looked to Jennifer even though she was the youngest in the room.

“You should listen to them,” she said to the women, then turned on the men as the last of the aunties, salon girls, and housewives filed out without a word, their eyes downcast.

Once the Red Lantern was empty except for Jennifer and the three men, she crossed her arms. “What’s the meaning of this?”

The shortest man stepped towards Jennifer until he was nose to nose with her. “The meaning of this is that Bellow Street is our territory, and there’s no gambling in our territory unless we get our cut ... our tribute. When we heard about a high-stakes mahjong night being run by a former Miss Koreatown beauty pageant winner, you can imagine how that piqued our fucking interest.”

Halloween. The perfect night for a shakedown. This crew’s not stupid.

“Piqued our interest, it did,” the man with the moustache said in an English accent that she couldn’t place. He wore a grin that suggested that he might not be the brains of the operation.

“Everybody ... out,” the largest man said, shaking a meaty finger at Jennifer.

“Not her, Viklas,” the short man said, giving the largest man an irritated look. He turned his attention back to Jennifer. “I saw maybe twenty people leaving here. The way I figure, you owe us ... let’s just call it two thousand dollars for the night.”

“This place isn’t even open yet. There’s no money. The mahjong game was just a favor to some friends who wanted to play. It’s Halloween, their husbands are all out at the salons.”

“Well, now we want to play our game. And our game ends up with you giving us two thousand dollars.”

“There’s no money. I told you, this was getting a little goodwill with some of the local women who just want to play mahjong.”

“Well, then,” the short man said. “You’re going to have to learn how things work in this neighborhood. You wanna know how it goes? Everyone pays tribute to us. Everyone who does business here.”

The man ran one sweaty finger across Jennifer’s cheek. She didn’t like it, but was too proud to flinch or pull away. He smiled at her challenge.

Their kibun was bad. Very bad. Menace hung from them like ivy. Men with bad kibun were unpredictable and disharmonious. If she didn’t do something, there’s no telling how unpleasant this could get.

“How would the three of you like a drink while we talk about this?” Jennifer asked, stalling for time, fighting to keep her voice calm. “Now that everyone’s gone, I’ve got a lot left over.”

She spun on her heels and walked back into the main room where the mahjong tables stood abandoned. Snatching a pitcher of clear liquid from a table and pouring four small shot glasses, she held them up and drew the three men deeper into her club.

The men took the glasses from her hands. Jennifer raised her glass and drank it down.

Viklas upended his shot and made a pained face. “What is this? It tastes like window cleaner.”

The leader scowled. “What are you trying to pull on us?”

“Nothing,” Jennifer said. “This is soju. Korean vodka. When my country was poor, the poorest in the world, we had to adapt. Not everyone can handle drinking with Koreans.”

The leader’s scowl remained, but he drank, his eyes never leaving Jennifer. He tried not to let the bad taste show on his face, although a twitch in his eyebrow said that this was his first experience with soju.

The man with the English accent sniffed his, then shrugged and drank it. His face twisted into a momentary look of agony.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” Jennifer said, taking the glasses from the three men and setting them down on the table.

There’s one surefire way to make a man’s kibun better.

“How about you let me suck all three of your dicks as tribute this time?”

“That,” the leader said, loosening his belt buckle. “Will do nicely.”

Jennifer pulled the bottom of her dress up to her thighs, revealing her soft slender legs. She sank to her knees on the floor of her almost nightclub and brushed her hair back, letting them see her swan-like neck and slender, fragile shoulders.

“You sure, Church?” The man with the English accent and moustache asked the leader.

“We’ll welcome this chink to the neighborhood. Come on, Devin,” Church said to Devin, who rubbed his moustache with two fingers. Church’s eyes hungrily returned to Jennifer.

Jennifer winced at the slur, but it was nothing she hadn’t heard a thousand times before. The word didn’t feel like it had malice behind it. Church seemed like he was trying to establish his own dominance within the group. She would have to keep that in mind.

“I heard that white guys are ... you know ... bigger,” Jennifer said, undoing Church’s belt with almost ceremonial deliberateness. She’d been with white guys before, many times. She knew what they wanted to hear.

Viklas grinned and looked down at the growing bulge in his own pants. Devin, more suspicious, scowled in disbelief.

Jennifer finished undoing Church’s trousers and pulled them down to his thighs. “Your shoes are in the way.”

Church kicked his black, shiny shoes off. When she worked his trousers down as far as his ankles, he lifted one foot and then the other so that she could slip them off.

Jennifer grabbed the bottom of his boxer shorts and slid them down to his hairy, wide thighs. Church’s semi-erect cock sprung free.

She gasped. “Oh, my! I knew they were big, but I didn’t expect a tree trunk. Are they all this big?”