Seo-a was standing there awkwardly when someone knocked on the door again.
Knock, knock, knock.
Her heart, startled once, reacted sensitively to even the smallest things. For some inexplicable reason, Seo-a had a hunch that the person outside the door was not the innkeeper. She wondered if she should pretend she wasn't in the room, but felt she shouldn't.
"...Who are you?"
There was no answer.
She absolutely couldn't stand there, so she walked hesitantly toward the door. Then, catching her breath, she asked as calmly as possible.
"What is the matter?"
She wondered if there would be no answer this time either, but fortunately, she heard a voice from beyond the door.
"I'd like to talk face-to-face for a moment. Could you open the door?"
"..."
The voice coming from beyond the door was lower than anyone she had ever heard. It was so low that it felt like her heart was sinking.
"...If you have something to say, I think you may say it like this."
"Well, it’s something we need to discuss face-to-face."
"What is the purpose of seeing your face?"
She had mustered up all the courage to speak, but she heard a small laugh from outside the door.
"You're right."
Her fingertips trembled.
"However..."
The presence outside the door dragged out the end of their sentence. In that moment when a second felt like an eternity, a terribly low voice monotonously cut through the crack in the door.
"Do you even know where you came here?"
Seo-a held her breath without realizing it. It felt as if the food she had just eaten was stuck in her solar plexus.
"What do you mean? This is an inn..."
“Is that so?”
"..."
"It is a bit different from what I know."
"... Yes?"
"I suppose it’s a bit much to be asked to open the door out of the blue at a night like this."
"..."
"Then how about this? If you look above the doorknob, there will be a bolt. If you open the door with the bolt locked, it opens just enough to show your face. If you feel insecure, open it like that."
"..."
What should I do?
It felt like her heart was going wild.
The man outside the door fanned the fire of her unquenched suspicion, and anxiety grew in size, threatening to burn her entire body. After a moment of helplessness, she felt the man who had pushed her into the fire of anxiety take a step back.
"Right. It can't be helped. But still, make sure to find out what this place is for."
And then, without any lingering regrets, he moved away.
His presence was loud and heavy. The weight of his presence, so heavy that one wondered how he could not have sensed it, faded away without a moment's hesitation.
This is not an inn?
Then where on earth is it?
Seo-a checked that the bolt was locked, then unlocked the doorknob. She opened the door before he completely disappeared.
"Excuse me...."
As the trembling voice seeped into the darkness beyond the door, she felt the receding footsteps come to a sudden halt.
"Wait a minute."
Air that felt like cold rushed in through a narrow gap no bigger than one administrative block.
Darkness, coldness, and a bleakness where not an inch could be seen surged in as if they possessed a tangible quality. And amidst that black emptiness, someone moved.
He turned around and walked steadily toward her.
He had a wide stride.
Before she could even count a few steps, the thick, distant curtain of darkness was torn apart. There wasn't even time to hide behind the door.
The small gap where darkness and cold had been rushing in was completely filled by a man who suddenly appeared.
Seo-a looked up at him blankly.
He was a man in a white shirt. A man so tall that one had to look up for quite a while. Beneath the black hair draped over his forehead, his deep blue eyes that met her were vivid.
A man astonishingly beautiful and just as dangerous. Acrid smoke swirled around him. He looked as if he had been molded from darkness itself.
It felt as if all the blood in her body was flowing out to her feet.
It is white and small. And peculiar.
It was Oscar's impression upon facing Seo-a.
She was a woman who seemed as though her entire body could be seen through a gap no wider than a hand's span. The moment Oscar met her wide, blank brown eyes head-on, he felt somehow dejected.
Is it true that this woman has the real key?
How did the key I once searched for so frantically end up in the hands of a woman like this?
It felt as if the woman's fear, hovering in the air, was tickling his skin. The woman, whose eyes had met his for even a brief moment, lowered her head as if wanting to hide immediately, and seemed at a loss as to what to do, unable to disappear beyond the door. As if she considered a mere door to be the only means of protecting her.
It was at that moment that all of Oscar's nerves reached for the woman beyond the door.
“Guest? Guest?”
A voice loud enough to lift the entire stairwell was heard from below, followed by the noisy sound of people hurriedly running up the stairs.
Oscar's eyes turned dark.
"Wait a minute!"
Even just turning his voice, it felt like he could smell something shabby.
Oscar tossed the cigarette, covered in white ash, onto the ground and stomped on it with his shoe. Then he took out another one and put it in his mouth. It felt like he was being soaked in smoke, but he had no choice, as this was the only way to endure the smell of a place like this.
Meanwhile, the owner of the brothel who bought Seo-a for 5,000 could not stop walking toward Oscar, even while gasping for breath.
She had just set out to find him herself upon hearing the news that an unidentified VIP had arrived. She felt good as she set out to find him. No matter how many times she thought about it, the woman who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere was a tremendous gem.
However, the moment she heard that an unidentified VIP was in front of the room of a woman who did not yet know that she had been sold to a brothel, her animal instinct screamed that this was a crisis.
"Guest?"
Approaching breathlessly, she struggled to smile sweetly.
"What can I do for you? Do you perhaps need a room to sleep...?"
However, the gentle laughter and words could not be finished and vanished like smoke.
Only the man's blue eyes were vivid: his hand loosely stuffed into one pocket, the cigarette burning red at the tip, and the smoke fading away in white.
Those eyes, standing there like a spirit and staring down at her, seemed to pierce right through her heart, and the silence surrounding him was chilling, like the calm before a storm.
He was a man who had come to a brothel, but he did not appear to be consumed by lust.
It was a moment when not a word came out, as if her throat had been drained.
“That, lady."
She snapped back to reality at the voice coming from behind her. As she turned her head away as if fleeing from the man, she saw that same pretty face through the crack in the door.
Oh my god.
She was pretty even with the worn-out coat and sweat-soaked hair that made her suspect she might be insane, but her clean, washed face was so beautiful that she was convinced she would be worth whatever she asked for if she put her to work starting tomorrow.
Her eyes sparkled like someone who had found a gold nugget in the sand.
This woman would suit mysterious-looking opal earrings. If she were dressed in a flowing dress on top of that... the 5,000 investment would be recouped on the very first day of the client's arrival and then some; she would undoubtedly become a literal goose that lays golden eggs.
She was a woman who had rolled in the mud and endured all manner of hardships. She had been sold, and she had sold herself. There was no need to even explain how filthy that path had been.
If there is one thing she learned on that dirty path, it is just one thing: physical wounds and emotions fade, but money remains.
What matters now is how the man behind her knew about the woman in front of her and found her. She should have been cautious.
"Miss, do you know this gentleman?"
At that, the woman's eyes briefly drifted toward the man before falling to the floor.
She doesn't know. The woman in front of her doesn't know the man behind her. At least one big obstacle has been overcome. Just as she felt a moment of relief, the woman, who had been looking at the floor, cautiously asked.
"Is this an inn?"
"Sure."
The moment she answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she heard a mocking laugh from behind her. As the pretty woman's gaze turned toward her back, she hurriedly added.
"Since you rent out rooms and receive payment for them, it is indeed an inn."
Although that price includes both the public resource of a room and the special human resource of a prostitute.
Oscar, who had been brushing off the human trafficker's bullshit, stroked the bridge of his nose and laughed, while Simon wanted to shove sand into the mouth of the woman who was digging her own grave with her own hands. He felt that his master's patience had completely run out.
Sure enough, Oscar skipped over the brothel owner as if he had no reason to wait any longer and asked the woman.
“Do you want to stay like that?”
The moment their eyes met as they slightly rolled up, he smiled handsomely and casually tossed out a remark.
"Is this a brothel?"
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