#Prologue
Tap tap tap.
Hee-young, who was walking down a dark and narrow alley, stopped and looked back. Then, the shadow following behind her stopped walking. Hee-young, who had been looking back for a moment, started walking again, and then the sound of footsteps continued behind her.
‘Fuck.’
Hee-young, who was becoming increasingly irritated, stopped walking again and turned her head quickly. Then, as expected, the man who had been following her from behind stopped walking and pretended to look at the wall of the alley.
Anyone could tell just by looking at him that he was following her.
Just a little further, and there’s my home. I don’t know if I can call it home, but anyway, it’s less than 50 meters to where I live now. But I don’t want to go there with that annoying tail following behind me.
“Oh, I left my phone.”
Hee-young, who had said this as if she was telling him to listen, went back the way she had come.
She passed by the man who was with his hood turned over standing against the alley wall and she started walking towards the entrance of the alley when she felt the man turn around and follow her again.
The sound of his footsteps was not coming from the other side of the alley, but from behind her again.
‘This guy really… … .’
At this point, she thought that he must be a crazy guy who doesn’t even think about hiding the fact that he’s following her.
Hee-young took out a brick from the bag she was carrying. Hee-young always had a habit of carrying a brick in her bag. Why? It’s for times like this.
“Hey.”
Hee-young turned around without leaving much space from the entrance.
“Yes?”
Then, the man with the hood who had been following right behind her suddenly stopped walking and was visibly flustered. Hee-young’s gaze turned to the man’s hand. The man, who had been reaching into his pants, was holding something out of his opened zipper.
‘Crazy…….’
This guy is a real pervert. Perverts like this often appear in this alley.
“hehe…….”
The man, who was initially embarrassed, soon looked at Hee-young and smiled. Hee-young, who was looking at the man who kept moving his hands while smiling, hit the man on the head with the brick she was holding.
puck-!
“Eww!”
As the man fell to the side while screaming, Hee-young looked at him with disgust.
“You fucking punk! If I catch you one more time, I’ll crush your dick instead of your head and shove it in your mouth. Do you understand?”
Hee-young spat on the man who was groaning while holding his head while lying on the ground and continued to walk on her way.
She heard him swearing from behind her, but didn’t pay any attention to it. In this alley, such guys appear all the time. When one disappears, another one appears.
The broken streetlight flickering on and off is even more annoying. And right below that flickering streetlight is the green iron gate that is Hee-young’s [house]. No, it’s where she lives.
Squeak.
When I opened the rusty iron gate, I hear a jarring sound. It is so rusty that I hear this sound every time I open the gate. When I opened the gate and got in, the first thing I saw was a wide yard. There is a water tap on one side of the yard, and clotheslines were hanging in a mess.
And on both sides of the yard, small rooms were lined up close together. Some rooms have opened doors, some have closed doors.
Outside the open rooms, women were sitting there fanning themselves while waiting for guests, and in the closed rooms, there were always guests inside.
On the outside, it has an old sign that says “Guesthouse,” but people call this house with the green iron gate “Daemon House” or “Saeksi House.”
Yes. This is a place where women sell their bodies.
There are people at the very bottom of the food chain who live in the areas called red-light districts, and who live in small two room house where they receive customers, sleep, and live.
And it is safe to say that the customers who come to see the prostitutes in these places are living a life of extreme poverty. Ten thousand won for 30 minutes, twenty thousand won for an hour. There are absolutely no customers who sleeps over for that. Most of them pay ten thousand won and just pour out their excrement and leave.
The oldest woman here says she gets paid two thousand won an hour, but she still rarely gets any customers, so she curses and complains about it every day.
Hee-young lives in a place like this. She doesn’t remember how long she’s been living here, but she was already living here when she became an adult.
Originally, she lived with her mother. Her mother did the laundry, cleaning, and cooked for the women here, and she lived off of the small amount of money she earned. She was given a small room for free on the condition that she would do chores, and she raised Hee-young by taking care of all the dirty work for the women living here.
When I was a child who knew nothing, I liked receiving the 100 won or 500 won allowance that the women threw at me for eating the snacks they gave me. However, as I got older and learned what this place was and what the women did, I started to hate this place.
This place is dirty and messy. Drunk people come and go, and from night to dawn, you have to listen to the groans that can be heard even if you cover your ears.
The rough breathing of men, the fake moans of women. I hate hearing those sounds, so I put on earphones and turn up the volume, but there is a limit to that.
Hee-young graduated from high school this spring. And she got a job as an accountant in a small office, earning 700,000 won a month.
700 thousand won.
It may not be a lot of money, but it is a small amount of money, that is precious to Hee-young. It is the money that will allow Hee-young to escape from this dirty place. Hee-young’s dream is to escape from this dirty green iron gate house. That is her only hope.
My mother passed away last year. She suddenly collapsed and was taken to the emergency room by ambulance, but she was already dead. The exact cause of death is unknown, but the doctor said it was probably some heart disease. Hee-young gave up on all postmortem examinations because it costs money to find out the cause of her death.
They didn’t hold a funeral, but rather moved the ashes straight from the mortuary to the crematorium, cremated them, and secretly buried them in the mountains.
She couldn’t even afford to buy a columbarium, so she had no choice but to do it, even though she knew it was illegal.
Even after her mother died, Hee-young continued to live here. The only difference was that her mother lived for free, but Hee-young had to pay 150,000 won a month for the room. The 150,000 won included electricity and water bills, so it wasn’t that expensive, but it was a burden for Hee-young.
So, Hee-young chose to get a job right after graduating from her high school. Her high school homeroom teacher recommended that she go to college, but Hee-young couldn’t afford to go to college. Just paying for the tuition didn’t solve everything. With no one to solve the most basic things like where to live and how to eat, college was just a dream for Hee-young.
Hee-young works as an accountant in a small office all day, and when she gets home, she runs errands for the women living here and earns some pocket money. She saves all of her monthly salary of 700,000 won. She doesn’t spend a single penny from her salary. And she uses the money she earns from running errands to cover her rent and living expenses.
She walks to save on bus fare, eats a lot of lunch provided by the office, and often skips breakfast and dinner. That’s how Hee-young hopes to get out of here as quickly as possible. If she can get out of this miserable life at the bottom, she’ll never look at this place again.
Hee-young’s goal is to collect 10 million won. If she can save 10 million won, it will be enough for her to pay for a deposit on a small semi-basement monthly rental. She has already saved 4 million won from March to June, so now she has to save 6 million won.
‘I just need to collect a little more.’
Now there was a glimmer of hope.
“Hey, Heeyoung. Go buy a pack of cigarettes quickly.”
A woman with permed hair sitting in front of an open door gestured to Hee-young. In her hand she held several crumpled thousand-won bills.
“Buy a pack of cigarettes for my customer and you can keep the change.”
“Yes.”
Hee-young took the bills from the woman’s hand, threw her bag in front of the door of her room, and headed back towards the iron door she had opened a moment ago.
“Ah! Brother! Brother!”
A groan of disarray was heard through the closed door. Hee-young chuckles at the word “oppa.”
‘I like you, oppa.’
I wonder if there are any men who come here are capable of being called oppa. Still, since we have already received guests, we are off to a good start. I feel annoyed for no reason when I see other women in rooms with open doors looking at the closed rooms with envious eyes.
‘I’m different. I don’t live like that.’
Hee-young despises the prostitutes here. Those women who sell their bodies to live each day are no different from insects. They are not human. If they had a proper mind, they would think about earning money and getting out of here, but those women don’t have that. The word “abandoned life” is the most appropriate word for those women.
Squeak.
Before Hee-young could touch it, the iron door opened first. The one who opened the iron door and came in was a man she had never seen before.
‘How tall are you?’
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the man was his height. He was so tall that I had to raise my head so that my neck hurt to see his face. The man entered through the iron gate. The tattoo that was visible above the white shirt he was wearing covered his entire neck.
Fierce eyes, lips with torn scars.
‘Are you here to get money?’
Sometimes, loan sharks come here to collect money they lent to women. This man might be a loan shark. But it doesn’t matter to Hee-young what kind of man he is. Hee-young just wanted to buy cigarettes quickly and then stretch out her legs and go to sleep. Today’s day was too hard.
“I’ll pass by first then, thank you.”
As she spoke in a low voice to the man blocking the iron gate, the man stepped aside and glanced at Hee-young. Feeling his gaze scanning her body up and down, Hee-young swallowed a curse inwardly.
‘What a bad luck, why are you looking at other people’s bodies like that?’
Hee-young quickly went out the iron gate and walked down the alley without looking back. The hooded man I had hit with the brick was nowhere to be seen, and only a man who reeked of alcohol, staggered towards me. He was probably coming to buy a woman.
Hee-young clutched on the money tightly as she passed the drunken man who stumbled and came here often. The 1,500 won left over from buying cigarettes was more important to Hee-young than anything else right now.
