Blood Flowing Through My Body
I felt my breath catch hard against my throat. My body was so exhausted, so utterly spent, that every joint seemed to scream. A sweet, metallic taste of spent breath filled my mouth, and sweat had soaked me through until my mart uniform clung wet as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over me.
I really thought I was going to die. And yet, knowing full well what state I was in, Jeong-ah still barked at me in that infuriating tone.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing, Auntie? The cooking oil shelf is empty! Aren't you going to restock it already?"
"Huh? I just filled it a little while ago."
"What is wrong with you? You don't check carefully? Look—it's missing stock."
Without even a moment to catch my ragged breath, I sighed and had to haul myself off to the warehouse to carry those heavy boxes again. And that was when it hit me for real. I had been completely defeated.
"From now on, don't just wander into the office whenever you feel like it. You take your work orders from me."
"Th-that's… what do you mean…"
"The manager said so too. If you don't like it, quit."
At Kang-ho's words I looked toward the office, but the door there stayed firmly shut. Everything had changed because of what happened that day. A petty resistance. A meaningless struggle. Everyone else had known it was futile from the start—I was the only one who hadn't.
That the real king of this store was Kang-ho, and the manager was nothing but a figurehead… I alone hadn't known. So I had tried to stage a rebellion by propping up that coward with neither will nor ability. The price of that foolishness was miserable defeat, then free fall into the abyss.
"Ugh… Hyomin-ssi, what were you thinking, doing something like that…"
Some of the male employees, as if they had already anticipated a situation like this, looked at me with pitying eyes. But that didn't mean any of them offered help. Crossing the dictator who had seized control of this place would only bring disaster down on their own heads. So no one approached the stupid traitor.
Not even that bastard of a manager.
That filthy, worthless piece of shit. Was that why he had come to meet me? And it hadn't even been the first time—it had been habitual, and that was how Kang-ho had gotten dirt on him? My teeth ground together at the crushing betrayal from a man I had pinned the thinnest thread of hope on.
But what truly enraged me was that he hadn't only forced a kiss on me and nearly assaulted me in an alley—he had dumped every last scrap of the blame on me. Word of his cowardice spread through the store with astonishing speed.
"Whoa… so that's the bitch who tried to seduce the manager to sabotage hardworking Kang-ho and got caught red-handed?"
"I knew she was a weirdo before, but I never thought she'd try playing the honey trap with a face like that."
"She looks like a scrawny tomboy—why would she even want to? Disgusting bitch."
I hadn't known. Once women decide to tear someone down, they can be cruel in ways men can't even imagine. They weren't saying these things from far away, either—they said them right beside me as they walked past. In their mouths I became the cheapest, most hopeless creature under heaven.
Hahaha. Honestly, it was so absurd I almost laughed. Disgusting bitch? Why should I have to listen to that kind of nonsense? I was already furious enough at how that crazy bastard had treated me—why did I have to hear this garbage from the women too?
I almost scoffed at the sheer absurdity of it, then felt tears welling up from how hurt I was. I… was a man. A father who had lived his whole life without doing anything wrong, without ever harming anyone, who had worked diligently. So why did I have to suffer humiliation like this here?
But there was no one to listen. I had simply fallen to the lowest caste in the store, a criminal, and had no choice but to obey even the orders of someone like Jeong-ah. And that girl worked me like she had been waiting for exactly this chance.
"A full week of overtime in a row? Why does the schedule look like this?"
"Oh, what do you want me to do, Auntie? Everyone else says they have family plans. When that happens, the ones without family are supposed to pick up the slack. You don't have family, right?"
The way she said it—mocking me—made my blood boil at the words no family.
"What? You want me to stack all of this? It's too heavy…"
"Ha! What are you talking about? The female staff do this all the time. You just never knew because you kept flirting with the guys to get them to do it for you. Try working properly for once."
I never imagined the goodwill of the male staff would come back to hurt me like this.
"Um… I'm not the person in charge here, so I can't just decide on a refund on my own…"
"You sell me this garbage and then it's not your problem just because it's not your department? I don't care—refund me right now, even if it's out of your own pocket!"
"Hehehe. Oof, that bitch really got herself tangled up with a nightmare customer."
They watched me get harassed by a difficult customer and made no move to help—just snickered from a distance.
After that day, before even a few weeks had passed, I had fallen all the way to the bottom. I was… a slave. A slave any employee in this store could treat however they liked. A slave who had dared raise a hand against the king of this place and been cast down into the ranks of the untouchables.
Every day was hell. Thanks to the workloads the female staff dumped on me at a level I couldn't even put into words, my clothes were soaked through with sweat every single day. Dragging my completely spent body home after work, I would arrive in the middle of the night; without even the energy to wash, I would collapse and close my eyes for a moment—only for the morning alarm to go off again.
So I went days without changing my underwear, and my uniform was already so steeped in the reek of sweat, dust, and stale body odor that even I found the stench repulsive. And the situation didn't improve—it only got worse.
"W-what? You want me to handle the waste disposal too?"
"Got a problem with that? Kang-ho oppa said so."
"But… even the male staff struggle with that…"
"The old guy who used to do it is quitting starting next week. Nobody else is free, so you just do it, Auntie."
A cold shock settled over me. The moment I stepped into the waste disposal area, nausea surged up my throat. A crude back-end space you'd never guess existed from the always-clean store floor. The stench from the expired and rotting refuse collected there defied imagination.
"Ugh. What the hell is this… Do they never clean the floor?"
It looked like a crime scene. Fat and grease had caked onto the floor, making a sticky sound with every step. The filth heaped in the giant waste bins gave off a reek that might as well have been rotting corpses. There wasn't even air conditioning, so the heat inside was stifling.
I hurried to put on a mask, but it only made me feel more choked, and the stench didn't go away. Still, I had no choice but to force myself through the work. My clumsy hands made small mistakes over and over, and by the time I finished that first day… I was basically covered in food waste.
"Ah… it really reeks."
Plain sweat was nothing by comparison. With the rank, rotting garbage smell soaked into every inch of my body, I could barely even think clearly anymore. I was filthy. In the most literal sense, even to my own eyes, I was a dirty bitch.
When I got home that first day I was ready to collapse, but I forced myself with every last scrap of strength to shower and scrub away the smell that had clung to me. But…
"Sniff… it won't come off. Hahaha. Hahahahaha!"
I laughed again. My situation was so ridiculous, and the filthy smell that wouldn't wash away no matter how hard I scrubbed, that all I could do was laugh. I even wondered if I was going insane. No. This isn't right. I'm not someone who should be treated like this. Why do I have to go through this?
"My wife, my wife's boss, Jeong-ah, the manager…"
I curled up on the floor and muttered the names of the people I hated for putting me here. Then I ground my teeth as I thought of the most decisive one of all.
"And Father. Ha… are you satisfied now? Now that I've proven myself to be the worthless failure you always said I was—does that make you feel better?"
In my heart I cursed that dog of a father who had handed down the genes that turned me into this unwanted body, the root of everything that had put me here, and I sneered at myself. That was… the best resistance I could manage in this situation. And after that… a bottomless depression came rolling back in.
But I couldn't stay like that forever. Forcing myself to look away from the depression crushing me down, I muttered under my breath.
"Hoo… calm down. Settle your heart. Think of my son—our son—and steel yourself. Right. It's nothing. It's just a job. It's hard, but nothing a man couldn't handle. And… this is rock bottom, isn't it? There can't be anywhere lower to fall. So let's look on the bright side. From now on, only good things will happen. Yeah… let's have hope."
Unfortunately, that thought of mine was completely shattered the very next day.
I had steeled my resolve, but I had to go back to work without having slept properly for even an hour. So the fatigue never lifted. I had run the previous day's uniform through the wash, but it still wasn't fully dry and the smell hadn't gone, so I had to put it back on in an even more clammy state.
My body truly felt like it was going to die. My condition was so bad I felt like I might topple over at the slightest touch. But whether I was ready or not, the moment I clocked in the work piled on. Before I even went to do waste disposal, I still had to stack the heavy product boxes assigned to me on the floor.
On a normal day it would have been hard but somehow manageable—today, for some reason, I had even less strength. And my body just felt wrong. So I crouched for a moment to catch my breath, leaning against a pillar. From my still-damp clothes, the reek of garbage seemed to seep out little by little. That was when it happened.
"Hey, Auntie. Why are you slacking off here?"
"Ah… I was just standing for a second."
Jeong-ah appeared and glared at me, driving me into a corner. I scrambled to make excuses and get back to work—but as if she were bored and had lucked into the perfect target, she came over and prodded me with her finger as she spoke.
"Ugh, all you ever think about is cutting corners. Did you come here to hang out?"
In that moment I noticed Jeong-ah's clothes were rumpled, and beneath the stench of my own body, faint but familiar, I caught a scent I knew. Ah… she just came from doing it. With Kang-ho. Must be nice… Huh? Some strange thought was rising when Jeong-ah, angry that I was zoning out, shoved me in the chest and said,
"Can't you even listen when someone's talking to you? Why are you spacing out in the middle of a conversation?"
"No, it's not that…"
"And what is this godawful stench? Haa. Don't you ever wash, Auntie? You did garbage duty one day and you're walking around reeking like this? Rotting food and fishy fish smell… it's disgusting."
I could only lower my head and take Jeong-ah's abuse. My situation was what it was, and my condition left me no energy for anything else. My head was spinning, the world was swimming, and my body hurt. What's wrong with me? Did I really overdo it? Should I have taken the day off? Then Jeong-ah said,
"And what is this smell? This… this weirdly metallic blood smell… Huh? Auntie. Right now, on your pants…"
With a look of pure horror, Jeong-ah pointed a finger at my crotch. At that gesture I looked down in confusion. And then I froze in shock. My pants were stained bright red. And what was seeping out was dripping, drop by drop, onto the white store floor.
At first I had no idea what it was. Then, a moment later, I understood. Th-this is… a period? Am I menstruating right now? Faced with a situation so horrific I couldn't believe my own eyes, I collapsed onto the floor in a daze. Jeong-ah kicked me in the shoulder and screamed.
"Are you insane? Sitting there smearing that filthy blood all over the floor? Ugh, this bitch is seriously crazy. Can't you even manage that properly? Walking around dripping it everywhere? Disgusting. Hey! Where do you think you're going!"
I ran. I had no choice. Unable to believe the state of my own body, I fled as if turning my back on the bloodstains left behind. My blood droplets had probably traced a dotted line along every step of the path I took. This was the worst. I had thought I was at the bottom—but there was a deeper hell still waiting underneath.
Just how long… do I have to keep going like this? Why does misfortune keep crashing down on me and me alone? Is becoming a woman… this kind of nightmare? In the end I broke and ran, tears I had been holding back pouring down my face.
"Huh? Auntie, where are you going? Hey?"
Somewhere along the way I thought I heard Kang-ho call out to me, but I ignored him and kept running. That was the only thing I could still do.