Chapter 9
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 9
A rattled heart is sensitive to the slightest disturbance. For some reason, Seo-ah had a gut feeling that the person outside her door was not the innkeeper. She considered pretending she wasn’t there, but an instinct told her that would be a mistake.
“…Who is it?”
There was no answer.
Unable to simply wait, she shuffled hesitantly toward the door. Taking a steadying breath, she asked again, as calmly as she could.
“What can I do for you?”
She expected more silence, but this time, a voice answered from the other side.
“I’d like to see your face while we talk. Will you open the door?”
“……”
The voice was lower than any she had ever heard. So deep, it felt as if it were pulling her own heart down into her stomach.
“…If you have something to say, you can say it through the door.”
“That won’t do. This needs to be a face-to-face conversation.”
“What kind of business requires you to see my face?”
She had mustered all her courage to ask, but from the other side of the door, she heard only a soft chuckle, followed by, “You have a point.” The tips of her fingers trembled.
“But…”
The man drew out the word. In a moment that stretched into an eternity, the deep, monotonous voice seeped through the crack of the door.
“Do you even know what kind of place this is?”
Seo-ah held her breath. The food she had just eaten felt like a heavy stone in her chest.
“What do you mean? This is an inn…”
“Is it?”
“……”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“…Pardon?”
“Then again, I suppose it’s a bit much to ask someone to just open their door in the middle of the night,” he conceded.
“……”
“How about this? Look above the doorknob. There should be a chain lock. If you open the door with the chain on, it’ll only open a crack—just enough to see a face. If you’re nervous, open it that way.”
“……”
What should I do?
Her heart felt like it was about to burst.
The man outside had fanned the embers of her suspicion into a blaze of anxiety that threatened to consume her. For a moment, she was paralyzed, unable to move. Then she sensed him—the man who had pushed her into this fire—take a step back.
“Fine. Have it your way. But you should really find out what this place is.”
With that, he began to walk away without a hint of regret.
His presence was immense, heavy. So heavy, in fact, that she wondered how she could have failed to notice it before. And now, that presence was receding without a moment’s hesitation.
This isn’t an inn?
Then what in the world is it?
After checking that the chain was securely latched, Seo-ah unlocked the doorknob. She pulled the door open just before he disappeared from view.
“Excuse me…”
As her trembling voice seeped into the darkness, his receding footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
“Just a moment.”
A cold draft pushed through the narrow, handspan-wide gap.
The darkness and the cold pressed in with a physical weight, a suffocating helplessness that blinded her to what lay ahead. And from within that blackness, someone moved.
He turned and strode back toward her.
His strides were long.
Before she could count more than a few steps, the hazy curtain of darkness was torn asunder. There was no time to hide.
The handspan-wide gap, which had been an entryway for darkness and cold, was suddenly filled by the man.
Seo-ah stared up at him, dumbfounded.
He wore a simple white shirt, but he was so tall she had to crane her neck just to see his face. Beneath the black hair that fell across his forehead, his piercing blue eyes met hers.
He was a man of astonishing beauty, yet he radiated an equal measure of danger. Acrid smoke swirled around him. He looked as if he were sculpted from darkness itself.
All the blood in her body seemed to drain down to her feet.
Pale and small. And strange.
That was Oscar’s first impression of Seo-ah.
She was a woman so slender it seemed her entire frame was visible through the narrow crack in the door. The moment his eyes met her wide, dazed brown ones, Oscar felt a strange sense of futility.
Is this woman really the one with the Key?
How did the Key I searched for so frantically end up in the hands of someone like this?
He could practically feel her fear in the air, a static charge against his skin. After their eyes met for a fleeting moment, the woman bowed her head, desperate to hide. She seemed at a loss for how to disappear behind the flimsy door, as if that barrier were the only thing that could protect her.
Just as all of Oscar’s senses were focused on her, a voice rang out from below.
“Sir? Sir!”
The loud call echoed up from the landing, followed by the clamor of someone rushing up the stairs.
Oscar’s eyes darkened.
“Just a moment!”
The voice alone seemed to carry a sordid stench.
Oscar dropped the cigarette, now a stick of white ash, and crushed it under his heel. He immediately pulled out another and placed it between his lips. He felt like he was being pickled in smoke, but it was the only way to endure the smell of a place like this.
Meanwhile, the brothel owner who had bought Seo-ah for five thousand gold couldn’t stop herself from rushing toward Oscar, gasping for breath.
She had set out to find the mysterious VIP herself the moment she heard the news. At first, she had been in high spirits; the woman who had fallen into her lap was clearly a diamond in the rough. But the moment she heard this VIP was standing in front of the room of a woman who didn’t even know she’d been sold, an animalistic instinct screamed that she was facing a crisis.
“Sir?”
Panting as she approached, she forced a sweet smile onto her face.
“Is there something I can help you with? Looking for a room for the night, perhaps…?”
But her saccharine smile and fawning words trailed off, dissipating like smoke.
One of the man’s hands was thrust casually into a pocket. A cigarette glowed red at his lips. As the white smoke cleared, his blue eyes were starkly visible as he swept his hair back. Those eyes, looking down from a man who stood like a mountain, seemed to see right through her. The silence surrounding him was as eerie as the calm before a storm.
He was a man in a brothel, but he didn’t carry the air of someone consumed by lust.
For a moment, she was speechless, as if a hand were tightening around her throat.
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
The voice from the doorway snapped her back to her senses. Turning her head as if to flee the man’s oppressive gaze, she saw that pretty face in the crack of the door.
My goodness.
She had been pretty even in that worn-out coat, with sweat-matted hair that made the owner suspect she was mentally unstable. But now, with her face washed clean, she was so beautiful that the owner was certain she could start working tomorrow and command any price.
The owner’s eyes glittered like someone who had found a gold nugget in a sandpit.
A pair of mystical opal earrings would suit this woman. If she were put in a light, fluttering dress… the five-thousand-gold investment would be recouped on the very first night. She would be a goose that lays golden eggs.
The owner had been through it all, rolling through mud and enduring every kind of depravity. She had been sold, and she had sold others. There was no need to explain how filthy that path had been. If there was one thing she had learned on that path, it was this: physical wounds and emotions fade, but money remains.
What mattered now was how the man behind her knew this woman. She had to be careful.
“Young Lady. Do you know this gentleman?”
At that, the woman’s eyes flickered to the man for a moment before dropping to the floor.
She doesn’t know him. The owner had cleared the first major hurdle. As she breathed a small sigh of relief, the woman, still looking at the floor, asked cautiously, “Is this place really an inn?”
“Of course it is.”
The moment she answered, a scoff came from behind her. As the pretty woman’s gaze shifted past her, the owner quickly added, “We rent out rooms and take payment for them, so of course it’s an inn.”
Even if that payment covered both the room and the services of a prostitute.
Ignoring the trafficker’s nonsense, Oscar touched the bridge of his nose and chuckled. The woman was diligently digging her own grave, and he could feel his patience wearing thin.
Sure enough, as if he had no more reason to wait, Oscar bypassed the brothel owner and asked the woman directly.
“Are you going to stay here?”
The moment his eyes met hers as she glanced up, he gave a handsome smile and dropped the bomb.
“This is a brothel, you know.”
However, the woman he expected to fall apart at his words merely blinked her large eyes. It was the madam who flinched.
“Sir, what are you saying?”
She didn’t know why he was doing this, but it seemed the man was trying to take the woman away. Yet, judging by the way he was urging her to leave, they didn’t know each other.
They’re not acquainted, and it’s not a master-servant relationship.
Then I can’t let her be taken.
Still, she didn’t dare confront the man directly. With a determined expression, she turned back to Seo-ah.
“Do you want to leave?”
“……”
“Fine. I only took your money for one night anyway. Tomorrow, I wouldn’t want you to stay even if you begged. But if you insist on leaving tonight, I have no reason to stop you.”
“……”
“If you’re going to leave, then leave. But on a night like this, all by yourself… where will you go? How will you get there? You’re a complete stranger to me, but I must admit, I’m concerned.”
Oscar burst out laughing.
Well, well, if it isn’t the great philanthropist.
The quiet ridicule in his laughter felt like a slap to the face, but the brothel owner stood her ground, her knees locked.
After laughing for a good while at the most amusing thing he had heard all day, Oscar put the cigarette to his lips and asked Seo-ah, “What’s it going to be?”
Her watery brown eyes trembled faintly.
On one side was a middle-aged woman with a benevolent air. On the other, a mysterious man, lounging against the doorframe with a cigarette between his lips. What’s more, the woman was dressed in a modest dress, while the man’s shirt was carelessly unbuttoned, looking utterly dissolute.