***

“On a night when even the stars beyond the window sing in loneliness, I’d like to share a gentle conversation with you… Lee Moon-se’s ‘Starry Night.’”

I was wrong.

I thought giving her a radio would silence her, but she talked even more than Lee Moon-se.

He was the one who was getting paid to talk, so why was she so enthusiastic and making so much noise?

“Just listen quietly, will you?”

“Can’t I even use my own mouth to talk?”

Needless to say, she never wavered, not for a moment.

She practically held a conversation with Lee Moon-se.

Anyone watching would have thought she was on the phone rather than listening to the radio.

“Shut up for a second.”

“Then you leave. If it’s so noisy.”

No good deed goes unpunished.

“Hey. Bride.”

She grabbed the antenna and glared at me.

“How do you even end up this shameless?”

“Oh, what—are you some noble young master from a prestigious family?”

She scoffed, sneering under her breath. Even when I stood up and glared down at her, she didn’t flinch anymore.

“Every d*mn sentence out of your mouth—seriously.”

“Seriously, what? I can curse better than you. Ever been cursed out by a pr*stitute?”

I was sick of it.

Why the h*ll did I have to argue like this—with her of all people?

“Do you even know what a pr*stitute is?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I am one.”

“You? Don’t make me laugh.”

She was the biggest headache in the Mia Market — the worst of them all.

Despite being sold off, she was so stubborn that she drove people insane.

She had a real talent for it.

She smashed her head against walls because she refused to sell her body, even trying to jump to her death. And now she calls herself a pr*stitute?

“If becoming a pr*stitute gets you a gold medal and a certificate, then sure. Idiot. Even when you try to act tough, you still sound stupid.”

“Hey. I’m smarter than a thug like you, you know?”

Then why don’t you understand?

Even I, someone who never attended elementary school, knows this much.

“You can’t just become a pr*stitute. Do you think anyone can do that? Do you think you can just raise your hand and be allowed to do it? Standing half-n*ked outside a brothel doesn’t make you a pr*stitute. A pr*stitute is someone who is consumed by money and obsessed with men — someone who would abandon their own child just to chase what lies between a man’s legs.”

Learn what it really means before you speak. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.

“Hey!”

I pushed her aside and turned away, but then I heard her scream thunderously behind me. She was shouting and throwing whatever she could get her hands on.

Something hit my back and clattered to the floor.

It was the radio.

With the plug ripped out, even the static died away, leaving only silence.

“Pick it up and put it back where it belongs.”

The antenna hung limp, like a broken bone. Even if she set it back, I doubted it would still work.

“Have you ever been sold because of debt?”

“So now that you’ve got your limbs free and food to eat, you think you’ve got it good, huh?”

“Have you ever stood n*ked in front of a motel after being sold?! Have you ever been beaten by thugs because you refused to sell your body?!”

She screamed, her body shaking so violently that she could hardly stand.

Lee Chun-hee was fragile.

Her face, her hands, her feet… everything.

She looked as though she would break if you held her too tightly. Yet she showed no fear, and her pride was stubbornly fierce.

But no…

Could you even call it pride when she shouted at the top of her lungs that she was a pr*stitute?

I couldn’t understand her.

I didn’t know her.

“Have you ever been called a pr*stitute? You?”

“My mother has. Not me.”

At the word mother, Lee Chun-hee had no choice but to fall silent.

“She sold her body, gave birth to me… and then abandoned me so she could keep selling it.”

My mother was a s*x worker, which is why I was born.

It was just bad luck.

The man who was her customer — my father — was a thug who never considered taking responsibility for his family.

To them both, a newborn baby was nothing but a burden.

They passed me back and forth like a ticking time bomb, and ultimately he was left with me.

Apparently, she made some kind of deal — she said that she needed to continue working as a s*x worker to earn money to raise me, and that if he took me in, she would regularly send him money.

Of course, she never sent a penny.

It was the daughter of the woman he had deceived — the older girl who had once tried to kill me — who told me all this.

She mocked both the pr*stitute and the thug.

Those three took turns to abandon me.

The moment I was sold off to pay a debt that was never repaid…

That was the most useful time of my life.

‘Useful.’

The word suddenly seemed ridiculous.

I wasn’t born because I wanted to be, so why did I have to be useful at all?

However, since I had been dragged this far by debt, perhaps I could at least claim that it had been worth it.

If lives sold into debt are the same for both of us, how did you end up here, Lee Chun-hee?

Lee Chun-hee, what did you go through to end up in my life?

I don’t know you.

And you don’t know me.

But still—

“That’s what a pr*stitute is. Not you.”

To compare you to the woman I called my mother would be an insult.

You really weren’t like that.

Chun-hee, who had been screaming with rage, said nothing more.