***

“We’ve got a guest.”

“…”

“From Mia Market.”

“A guest from Mia Market?”

The boss’s tone hadn’t changed at all.

But that was how purges always began.

For no apparent reason, he would test his subordinates. If they failed to answer properly, he would cut off their fingers one by one.

That was how he maintained control.

More than a few men had been driven out in this way.

With his back to me, I couldn’t see his face.

I stepped closer, lightly pressing my fingertips against the hidden knife inside my suit.

It was still broad daylight.

From the rooftop, the alleys below spread out like an anthill, and every corner was in plain sight.

Vendors shouted over one another and delivery men pushed their way through the narrow paths.

Through the wide-open window of the loan office, I could see the underlings smoking and laughing as usual.

Suddenly, one of them waved, calling out to the café girls they had summoned.

Useless bastards.

Their lack of vigilance told me everything.

The boss wasn’t onto me.

He wasn’t trying to take me down.

“If it’s a guest…”

He turned.

“Why haven’t you cleaned up those rats snooping around under the excuse of an investigation?”

By “guests from Mia,” he meant the police who had planted themselves there.

At first glance, the Mia Market appeared to be nothing more than a rundown inn where women were sold.

In truth, however, it was a money laundering operation, handling cash from gambling dens and loan sharks.

Now that the police had entered a place the boss had guarded so carefully, he was understandably on edge.

“With one of their informants dead, they can’t just sit still either. Whether it’s lies or not, they’ll need to get their stories straight. How long should we give them?”

The pimp had been a traitor.

He was a police informant.

I made him that way.

He died as a traitor to the organization — was that a disgrace?

Or did dying as an informant count as some kind of honor?

Either way, it was a meaningless question.

“Are you holding up? About the warrant.”

I killed him.

Here, k*lling and being killed meant nothing.

As long as you could justify it, anything was permitted — even worse crimes than m*rder.

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t become your concern.”

I wasn’t fine at all.

But I bowed my head and pretended that I was.

Then I met his steady, calm gaze again.

His sharp, probing eyes studied me before he gave me a faint smile.

He pressed his heavy hand down on my shoulder.

“Once things settle down… how about you take over Mia Market from here on out?”

A promotion?

“Me…?”

He was telling me to take over Mia Market—to become the pimp who ran it. The place the man I used to call Second Brother had managed… the same place no one trusted to just anyone.

It meant I was the new second.

“We need to clean things up fast. We got rid of the rat, didn’t we? Then why are the underlings still making noise? Don’t talk to me about misunderstandings. Someone as solid as you wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.”

“I’m sorry. I should have handled it quietly.”

“Who told you to deal with a traitor quietly? This is exactly when you step in and take control. And I hear even some of the girls ran off in the middle of all this? Whatever—just get it sorted. Fast.”

That runaway girl, I knew her better than anyone.

“Thank you for trusting me with it.”

The thugs still didn’t know anything.

They kept talking about the ‘rat’, but they had no idea that it was me.

I was hiding the only witness to the pimp’s death.

As the boss had ordered, I went to Mia Market in person.

The underlings had already left with the women.

For now, the place was operating as a lodging house.

Of course, there were no customers.

They called it an inn, but anyone could see at a glance that it was a brothel. The fact that it hadn’t been shut down yet was laughable.

It wasn’t just any crime scene.

A local thug had been murdered there, so a few patrol officers had been stationed around the area.

Keeping my distance, I circled the building, slowly scanning everything as I went.

Then I saw it: The storage room at the back, sealed shut with an aluminium door.

That was where Poet had been hiding.

In this world, she might be the only person desperate enough to return to the h*ll she had escaped.

It had been three days since she ended up in my house.

I hadn’t untied her hands or feet, nor had I removed the cloth from her mouth.

If I did, she would cause chaos the moment she got the chance, so I left her bound as she was.

Given her temper, I half expected her to smash her head against the wall or bite off her own tongue.

So, every morning and night, I went in just to check that she was still breathing.

After being worn down this much, she wouldn’t have the strength to fight anyway.

That’s how people break.

You beat them, starve them, and lock them away, and eventually they give in.

I knew that better than anyone.

When I first joined the gang, they accused me of pocketing money while collecting debts.

They beat me mercilessly in the sweltering summer heat, then locked me in a basement.

Every time I started to drift off, they would come in, douse me in water and beat me again.

By the fifth day, I was one day away from confessing to being a police officer.

But I endured.

After that, they finally allowed me to collect debts on my own.

It was only later that I realized the money had never gone missing in the first place.

What they did to me was just the usual initiation to break in new recruits.

My head throbbed with exhaustion.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept properly.

Ever since I locked Poet in my house, I haven’t been able to sleep.

Whenever I managed to drift off, she would suddenly wake up and shout in the dark.

She was a strange one.

It would probably be the same tonight.

I opened the door.

Dark.

But quiet.

She was lying on her side, her head on the floor.

I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or unconscious.

I stepped closer.

Her breathing was steady.

She was asleep.

“Looks like you’ve got it easy.”

The owner of this house couldn’t sleep at all, and she didn’t realize how fortunate she was.

It wasn’t as if I had beaten her.

Or prevented her from sleeping.

All I had done was make her a little hungry, just enough to wear her down.

She had been crawling through the house on her own, feeling her way along every wall and corner.

But today, she was quiet.

Yes. Even I barely lasted five days back then.

At this point, it was only natural for her to collapse.

I leaned back against the cold wall and lit a cigarette.

Halfway through, she stirred.

Her hand, braced against the floor, gave way like a crumbling sandcastle and her body fell heavily back down.

She didn’t even try to get up again.

That wasn’t like her.

So I pulled the sack off her head.

I removed the cloth from her mouth.

Her eyes stayed shut, tight like a corpse’s.

I could see her lips moving faintly beneath her tangled hair.

“…Why…”

That ghost-like girl finally opened her eyes.

“Why did you bring me here?”

Even now, she didn’t stop asking.