"Girls, ATTENTION! The show officially starts in five minutes." A shout comes from nowhere, amplified by a condenser mic, and continues with a few more whistles.
The talk and giggles come to an abrupt halt, and the girls sit around the circular stage, silenced, a fire burning inside their hearts. At exactly eleven o'clock at night, Redux is about to celebrate the moment of the day.
"Hazel, listen, "Kate Wong approaches Hazel Chou with a mysterious face, "since today you're coming with me, you definitely won't regret it."
Hazel winks at Kate wryly. She was transferred from the marketing department to the R&D department three months ago, and Kate is her colleague in the new office.
The two girls are both slow to warm up, but they communicate every day because of work. As people talk to each other more, they naturally and literally become familiar. The chat extended from business to personal matters, and the topic expanded from work to life. Later, Hazel found that she and Kate were quite similar in terms of social beliefs, hobbies, personal style and ...
Types of men.
In East Asia, there is not so much difference between what real life prefers and what online books promote in terms of guys, who are either warm and gentle, evil and rugged, or detached and freezing.
What they like, however, is a man with a broad back and chest; a man who is athletic, sturdy and powerful like a mountain; a man who seems to have just picked up heavy objects and put them down, and then done that again a million times.
Upon learning that Kate frequents Redux, the RENOWNED male strip club, and extended a warm invitation to her, Hazel took off like a turnip in the sand.
Seriously, striptease of hot guys?
She isn't stupid.
And she isn't any Taoist nun.
The two of them are sitting on a velvet couch facing the stage, a seat Kate said has a prime view and one couldn't get a ticket without a reservation. The ticket price is a bit expensive, but it doesn't bother Hazel at all. Two years of work, she has saved a fortune, and her parents still add to her bank account from time to time. Hazel has dipped her toe in the marketing department for a little over a year, suffocating herself with a day job that didn't fit her personality. Right now, there is this relaxation that money could buy, so why not use it?
Swish... the lights of the entire room abruptly go out.
A beam of white light disperses down from the top, and the circular stage that has been hidden is knocked out of its original form, sprinkling the floor with gold leaf confetti. The top light changes without warning: red, yellow, green, purple, and the women consciously and familiarly begin to beat to the rhythm of the color change.
Good-looking guys targeting women consumers, a spectacular feast is about to take place.
...
The soft overhead light disappears and is replaced by five powerful spotlights illuminating five overhead poles.
"Ah! Ah! Ah!" The girl with a scarlet top and skintight shorts next to her starts screaming, bringing up the vibe of the room.
"It's coming." Kate grabs Hazel's arm in excitement.
In moments, five powerfully built men slide down the pole. They hook one arm around the pipe, their biceps and triceps showing the most perfect curvature and shape as they squeeze against it, and wave at the women with the other hand.
Like making them shout louder.
The five men are uniformly dressed with camouflage pants, and black gripper boots, all wearing close-fitting undershirts on their upper bodies, exploding with muscle, ready to break free of the thin layer of restraints. Sure enough, immediately after they hit the ground firmly, they rip off their tank tops with one hand, pulling them upward from the neck. What remains are pecs bulging like fists and eight-pack abs neatly below.
Kate joins the screaming queue. Hazel, however, stays overwhelmed.
The five of them begin to show off their sexiness in a neat and tidy manner. Crotch; squat; one hand on the ground; hand changes in the air; waist strength bouncing. Pose after pose, muscles and veins work together to titillate.
The women can't wait to get on stage and touch it. The scene of a man groveling to a woman is full of strong innuendo that Hazel has only seen on the screen. But in the past two years, this East Asian country has become increasingly open, with male stripping clubs opening up on its doorstep.
And when a real body stands before her, she realizes that the most immediate hormone impact will only, and can only, ever happen in the real world.
The men are steady on the beat of the drums, each movement strong and powerful. In an occasion like Redux, the reason for the gathering is unspoken by both performers and watchers. Hazel, however, feels that their dance steps are well choreographed, creative, revealing the beauty of power, with a core that is above pure eroticism. Ideas drift for a while, and she always manages to conjure up and scatter a series of ideas in an untimely fashion on various occasions.
The one who pulls her back from her thoughts is the hunk standing right in the center. When she notices that the man looks remarkably like her high school classmate, Ethan Chou, the efficacy of her five senses comes to a complete halt.
Memories and reality rumble into a crustal movement, pulling a severed cliff as Hazel stares into the guy's face and stays still for a moment.