Standing awkwardly, she heard the knock again.
Knock.Knock.Knock.
Her heart, already startled, reacted to even the smallest sound. It jumped. It thudded. It would not settle. Seo-ah had a premonition—without reason—that the presence outside the door was not the innkeeper.
She considered pretending she was not in the room. But that felt wrong. Dangerous, even.
“…Who is it?”
No answer came.
Unable to keep standing still, she walked toward the door. Slowly. Carefully. One step, then another. Then she drew a breath and asked again, trying to keep her voice calm.
“What is it?”
She expected silence again. But this time, a voice seeped through the door.
“I’d like to see your face for a moment and talk. Could you open the door?”
“……”
The voice was low. Lower than any she had heard before. So low it made her stomach sink, her heart follow.
“…If you have business, you can state it like this.”
“Well. It’s business that requires seeing your face.”
“What kind of business requires seeing my face?”
She had spoken with all the courage she could gather. Still, a small laugh drifted from outside. Her fingertips trembled. Trembled again.
“However….”
The presence outside drew out the word. In the stretched moment that followed, a monotonous voice slid through the narrow crack.
“Do you even know where you are?”
Seo-ah held her breath. The food she had just eaten felt lodged in her chest.
“What do you mean? This is an inn…”
“Is that so?”
“……”
“It’s a little different from what I know.”
“…What?”
“Well, asking someone to open the door without warning on a night like this is…”
“……”
“Then let’s do this. Look above the doorknob. You’ll see a bolt. Lock the bolt and open the door. It will open just enough to show your face. Open it like that if you’re uneasy.”
“……”
What should I do?
Her heart raced. It raced again. Faster. Harder.
The man outside fanned the flames of her suspicion. Anxiety spread through her body, rising, tightening, threatening to swallow her whole.
Then, after a pause in which she could neither move nor retreat, she felt him step back.
“Alright. I can’t help it. Still, I must understand what kind of place this is. At least once.”
He moved away without hesitation.
His presence was large. Heavy. So heavy she wondered how she had not sensed it before. And yet he receded, decisively, without looking back.
This place isn’t an inn?
Then what is it?
Seo-ah confirmed the bolt was locked. Then she unlocked the doorknob. Before his presence vanished completely, she opened the door.
“Excuse me…”
Her trembling voice slipped into the darkness beyond.
The receding footsteps halted.
“Just a moment.”
A sliver of air pushed through the narrow opening, cold as a draft, about a hand’s span wide. Darkness gathered in that gap, thick, bleak, tangible. And within it, someone moved.
He turned.
He walked toward her.
Step.Step.Step.
His strides were wide.
Before she could count more than a few, the hazy curtain of darkness tore open. There was no time to hide behind the door.
The gap, through which darkness and cold air had been pushing, was suddenly completely filled by the man who had appeared.
Seo-ah stared up, blankly.
A man in a white shirt. A man so tall she had to lift her head, then lift it again. Beneath black hair falling over his forehead, piercing blue eyes met hers.
A man astonishingly beautiful.And just as much, dangerous.
The acrid scent of smoke curled around him. He looked as though he had been carved from darkness itself.
It felt as if all the blood in her body drained to her feet.
White.Small.Strange.
That was Oscar’s first impression of Seo-ah.
A woman entirely visible through a gap no wider than a hand. The moment her wide brown eyes met his, Oscar felt a faint sense of futility.
Was this woman truly holding the key?
How could the key he had searched for across the world, through years and ruin, rest in the hands of someone like this?
Fear floated around her, thin and delicate, brushing her skin. The woman who had met his gaze lowered her head at once, fidgeting, unable to retreat beyond the door. As though the door itself were the only thing protecting her body.
It was at that moment—when all of Oscar’s senses were fixed on the woman beyond the door—
“Guest? Guest?”
A voice so loud it made the entire landing echo burst upward from below, followed by hurried footsteps climbing the stairs.
Oscar’s eyes darkened.
“Wait a moment.”
Though only the voice was heard, it carried a stench. An odor of the place itself.
Oscar flicked away the cigarette. White ash clung to it as it fell. He crushed it beneath his boot. Then he took out another and placed it between his lips. Smoke filled him. There was no other way to endure a place like this.
—
Meanwhile, the owner of the Ocheon brothel could not slow her steps, even as she gasped for breath.
She had rushed out the moment she heard an unidentified VIP had arrived. Her mood had been bright then. No matter how many times she considered it, the woman who had dropped into her hands so suddenly was a raw gem.
But the instant she heard that the unidentified VIP was now standing in front of the room of a woman who did not even know she had been sold yet, her animal instincts screamed.
Crisis.
“Sir?”
She reached him, forcing a sweet smile between breaths.
“What is it? Perhaps you require a room to sleep in…?”
But her words dissolved. Her smile dissolved.
Only the man’s blue eyes remained clear, sweeping hair back into the white smoke. One hand in his pocket. A cigarette glowing red at its tip.
Those eyes, towering like a mountain range, looked down at her blankly. The silence around him was the stillness before a storm.
He had come to a brothel.
But he was not ruled by lust.
Her throat tightened. She could not speak.
“Uh, madam.”
A voice behind her pulled her back to herself. She turned away from the man as if fleeing him and saw, through the door gap, the pretty face inside.
My word.
She had been pretty even in the worn coat, with sweat-damp hair. Pretty enough to make one suspect madness. But now, with her face washed clean, she was beautiful enough to name any price.
Her eyes sparkled, like someone who had found gold in a sandpit.
Opal earrings would suit her. Flowing silk gowns. Five thousand Kerte recouped in a single day. A goose that laid golden eggs.
She had lived long in this mire. She had been sold. She had sold others. She knew exactly how filthy that road was.
But one truth remained.
Wounds of body and heart fade.Money remains.
What mattered now was how the man behind her had found this woman before she could claim her fully.
She needed caution.
“Miss. Do you know this gentleman?”
The woman’s eyes flickered toward the man. Then fell to the floor.
She did not know him.
Good. One hurdle cleared.
As relief loosened her chest, the woman, still staring down, asked softly,
“Is this… an inn?”
“Of course.”
The answer came without hesitation.
A scoff sounded behind her.
As the pretty woman’s gaze shifted uneasily, the owner added quickly,
“We rent out rooms and charge for them. So it is an inn, isn’t it?”
Even if the price included both the roomand the human offering within.
Oscar, who had tolerated the human trafficker’s nonsense long enough, chuckled and touched the bridge of his nose.
Simon, behind him, had the sudden urge to fill sand into the mouth of the woman digging her own grave. He could feel his master’s patience thinning.
As expected, Oscar saw no reason to wait further.
He stepped past the brothel owner.
And asked the woman directly.
“Will you stay as you are?”
Their eyes met.
He smiled — charming, soft, lethal.
And dropped the words like a blade.
“This is a brothel.”
—