I was born in the dead of winter, in a pile of garbage. And I lived there for twenty years.

Our home was a cramped shanty, crawling with trash, where the stench of vomit never quite faded.

Every day, unfamiliar men came and went. The air was always thick with cigarette smoke. Those who passed through carried with them the smell of something burnt, something rancid. Sometimes, there was the sharp stink of urine—though I only learned much later that it was the scent of aphrodisiacs.

Inside those foul, suffocating rooms, all kinds of things took place. In spaces barely large enough for a single person to lie down, men and women tangled together, letting out strange, distorted sounds. In slightly larger rooms, groups of men sat packed together, playing cards, waiting for their turn to enter the smaller rooms.

Not a single person who passed through that place was sane.

The most unhinged of them all — the one who made a living from that madness — was my mother.

At the far end of the alley, she had set up a makeshift stall with a makeshift roof. From there, she sold cigarettes, cheap aphrodisiacs, and photographs of n*ked women.

She claimed to rent out rooms to women, but that was only in name. In truth, she slept with them, too. Everyone in the neighborhood knew what went on in the narrow rooms next to her stall, where the women received their customers.

Of course they knew.

That was why this place existed.

While she went about her business, my mother would lock me in one of those rooms and secure the door with a padlock.

That’s how I turned nine.

One winter, when coal gas leaked and everyone fled in a panic, half-dressed and desperate to survive, I was left behind, locked inside alone.

Maybe it had been intentional.

I wasn’t even registered in the family registry. If I died, that would be the end of it.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to just abandon me at Seoul Station than drag me there?

After surviving that winter and breathing in lungfuls of poisonous gas, I started running errands, desperate to escape those suffocating rooms.

“Hey! Bring me a pack of Milky Way, will you?”

A woman from the cheapest room at the far end of the corridor beckoned me over.

Her bright red nails were chipped and peeling at the edges.

I stared at her nails, but didn’t move closer.

When I didn’t respond, she spoke more sharply.

“Not answering again? Acting like a brainless idiot?”

“Not answering again, acting like a complete idiot? I’ll give you one boiled egg. Hurry up and go!”

“Three.”

“What?”

Just because I never went to elementary school didn’t mean I was stupid. I had learned to speak and read faster than most, and I was quick to catch on. At the very least, I was smarter than the women in our house.

“The auntie across the hall gives me three.”

“You crazy little b*tch.”

The woman only burst into laughter. Even though I was far too cunning for a nine-year-old girl, the women in the shantytown were fond of me.

“Two packs of cigarettes from Mom. For Auntie in Room Four.”

I ran with a backpack in each hand. I hid one under the eaves at the back of the building, then delivered the other to the woman in Room Four. She paid me three boiled eggs for doing the errand.

Both packs were recorded in the ledger, so my mother made a little extra money. I kept one pack for myself and sold the cigarettes individually whenever I needed to. My usual customers were the men who spent their days gambling in the shantytown.

Those miserable bastards haggled over everything, even cigarettes. Yet most of them couldn’t afford a full pack, which cost 200 won. They only wanted single cigarettes, and each time I sold one, I made sure to pocket 15 won. I ate one egg and sold the other two for 10 won each. To men who skipped meals just to gamble, they were worth more than they should have been.

I never spent the money I saved. I just had a feeling that I would need it someday.

Watching my father beat my mother and ransack the shop for money made me realize that money was the most important thing.

“You’ve seen your father, haven’t you? He’s pretty decent-looking.”

“Decent-looking, my as$. Just because he knocked you up, that makes him my father? Does he even know my name?”

“You little brat, nothing but a sharp tongue! Still, life’s easier under a man’s shadow than living like this.”

“Did getting beaten scramble your brain or something? Ah! Why are you hitting me?!”

I was applying ointment to her split lip when she hit me on the head.

She couldn’t have been in her right mind. Even after being beaten and having her money stolen, she pointed him out and called him my father.

I wouldn’t take a man like that, not even if he were handed to me for free.

‘A man’s shadow’? What was that supposed to mean? Every man who passed through this place was trash. What was there to trust?

There was so much I wanted to say.

Did living in a place like this and earning money in this way mean that you lost the ability to think like a normal person?

Or was that kind of madness what people called love?

I didn’t want to know what was normal. I didn’t want to know what love was either.

But if I wanted to avoid becoming like my mother and ending up just as broken, I needed money. Somehow, I had to get some.

I was right.

Money was cruelly and unforgivingly important.

By the age of nine, I had learned one of life’s harshest truths.

“You’ve got a decent face, so strip and stand out front.”

The moment I turned twenty-one, I was sold to settle a debt and taken to a place even worse than the one I had grown up in.

It was an inn where women greeted customers wearing nothing but their underwear.

It was located just two alleys and less than twenty steps away from my old home.

“If I stand out front, do I cost more?”

“Hey. No matter what, you’re not worth much. Sh*t or piss—it’s all the same.”

This body of mine wasn’t even worth the urine that had been splattered across the alley.

I had been wrong.

Money wasn’t just important; it was more valuable than people.

Despite having watched my mother, who bought and sold people for money, die because of debt, I still hadn’t understood.

She was sold into slavery to repay my father’s gambling debts. They forced her to sell one of her kidneys.

When the remaining kidney failed, she died.

Even then, I still didn’t understand.

No matter what she had done, I had never believed that she was worth less than money.

It was only when I was sold that I finally realized this.

To ensure that I could repay the debt, the thugs even registered my birth.

I finally came into existence at twenty-one.

Money — so absolute, so all-powerful.

Before it, I was nothing.

“You’re not escaping from here. Understand that well.”

But I kept running.

Sometimes I would ask to step out to buy alcohol or cigarettes and then run off.

At other times, I would beg the customers to take me somewhere else.

If that didn’t work, I’d open the window on the third floor and jump.

If they still insisted that I serve customers, I would slam my face against the wall.

Ten days passed like that.

Even as my body broke down, the guards kept coming after me. In the end, I was dragged back and beaten.

“Stop thinking about running! Don’t you get it? Even if we sold all your organs, it wouldn’t cover your debt!”

“Idiot. Can’t even do the math? If it’s a debt that can’t be repaid even after selling everything, then what’s the point of taking me?”

It was just a nuisance.

I bared my bloodstained teeth and laughed like the women back in the shantytown, just like them.

My mother had made me feel like a burden all my life.

Who would ever want to keep me around?

I let the words spill out of my mouth without restraint.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being beaten? You stubborn b*tch.”

“If you’re so curious, try it yourself. See if getting beaten ever gets old.”

“Guess you haven’t had enough. Still got a mouth on you.”

I was beaten again and again.

After being kicked around for so long, I stopped feeling the cold as much. In weather cold enough to freeze my skin solid, dressed only in thin underwear, that was at least one small mercy.

The inside of my mouth was torn to shreds, and blood kept slipping down my throat in thick gulps. I hadn’t had a drop of water all day, so the blood eased my thirst. That, too, was a positive thing.

‘D*mn… I’m ridiculously optimistic.’

I lay sprawled in the alleyway, lost in thought.

As I looked towards the pile of coal briquettes in the corner, the thug struck a pose and lit a cigarette.

Avoiding his gaze, I crawled along the ground and scooped up a handful of ash.

It was still hot. No — it was more than just hot. It burned, searing into my skin.

It didn’t matter.

It had to hurt this much for him to feel anything at all.

“Hey!”

With a scream, I lunged at him.
With my hands bound, the only way to shove the ash into his eyes was to throw my entire body forward. I leapt with everything I had—and the moment I landed, I ran.

‘D*mn it. I should’ve seen his eyes ruined.’

This thought flashed through my mind as I ran towards the temple: Mia Temple.

It stood there, silent and unmoving, in the heart of the city’s red-light district.

When I was in trouble as a child, I would sneak in and sleep somewhere inside it.

If I hid there, my mother could never find me.

Then again, maybe she never even tried, knowing that I would come back once I was hungry enough.

At least back then, I had somewhere to return to.

Now, half-n*ked, with my hands bound, looking broken and suspicious, I had nowhere left to go.

Even though this place didn’t welcome me, I had no choice but to climb over the wall, crawl through the bushes, and hide inside.

Somehow, I made it into the Mia Temple.

It would have been warmer beneath the heated floor, but I would have been spotted the moment a monk emerged to tend the briquettes. I couldn’t risk that.

Instead, I pulled my knees tight to my chest, wrapping my arms around them with whatever strength I had left. Rough sand and dead leaves clung to my skin.

Blood ran thickly from my nose, only to freeze solid moments later.

The blood at the corners of my split lips had hardened, making it difficult to move my mouth at all.

‘What now…? What should I do?’

Ultimately, there was nothing I could do.

Run. Get caught. Run again.

If I managed to stay free for even half a day, that would count as a success.

‘I just need to survive tonight…
I have to go somewhere… anywhere…
But where can I go like this…?’

The thoughts came one after another, but they never amounted to a plan.

Even now, sleep kept dragging me under.

If I fell asleep, I would freeze to death in this cold.

And yet, it felt like that might be OK.

Dying like this wouldn’t be so bad.

My vision went dark as my eyes slowly closed. My whole body stiffened.

“…D*mn it.”

But when I opened my eyes again, I felt a hollow disappointment that I hadn’t died. More than that—it felt unfair.

I was wrapped in a large padded coat.

Like a newborn baby.

The coat, reeking of cigarette smoke, was so big it completely swallowed my body. It was old, worn—but soft, and warm.

“Which b*stard thought this was a good idea?”

They gave me something like this without even asking!

My teeth ground together.

I tore the coat off and stomped on it repeatedly until it rolled across the ground and gathered dust. But this did nothing to ease the anger boiling inside me. I spat on it.

A faint warmth rose from the spit.

My breath came out in white puffs as I seethed.

My whole body trembled uncontrollably. Now that I was fully awake, the cold was unbearable. The only warmth I had was the breath leaving my mouth — I almost wanted to pull it back in.

But even that didn’t last.

The cold was too fast. Before it could fully escape, my breath froze. It felt as though the air I had exhaled was stabbing its way back into my throat.

After throwing the coat aside, I bent down and bit into the rope binding my wrists, gnawing at it with my front teeth. I clenched down as hard as I could — so hard that I thought my teeth might shatter — and, after a long struggle, the rope finally snapped.

My teeth throbbed. My jaw ached as if it might come loose.

I shook my wrists free and lifted my head.

Through my blurred vision, the world slowly came into focus, revealing a cold shade of blue.

Dawn was breaking.

When the sun rises, Mia’s red lights go out.

People left for the city.

I had to leave before then.

Once it was fully up, I wouldn’t be able to walk around like this.

People in the city didn’t dress like this.

They might pinch every coin when paying for a woman, but when it came to earning that money, they made sure to look the part.

In the dim light before sunrise, I picked up the coat again, threw it over my bare body, and ran through the filthy, stinking alleyway.

I survived, so I would live.

After nearly dying, all I could think about was survival.

That damned coat had saved me, so I had no choice but to keep going.

The familiar stench of the shantytown filled my lungs, mingling with the reek of vomit and burnt cigarette butts.

Someone once said that it was the smell of people rotting while still alive.

To me, it was simply my own scent.

That wretched shantytown.

And me, born from it.

I had lived there.

I was worth even less than that place.

Holding my breath and clenching my teeth, I ran barefoot as far as I could.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I was running deeper into h*ll.

My despair never needed a reason.

I had been born carrying it in my arms.