56. The Whore
A cramped container stacked with palettes and boxes.
I shone the aluminum lantern—about nine hundred grams of decently heavy metal—on Ri Su-jin.
“Fuck, shit.” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
Ri Su-jin stared at me blankly, her shabby figure pitiful.
I had been tailing her too, but the journey she had taken here had been quite treacherous.
Dawn five o’clock—herded out of her residence with the kage-musha prostitutes.
On foot to a shabby minivan, then to Seoul Station.
From there, a taxi circling around Hwaseong city to stir up traffic.
At the outskirts of Songtan motel parking lot, a small SUV to Pyeongtaek Port vicinity…
At that time I had nearly lost her for real. The 999 had been hidden in the trunk.
“And at the warehouse you met the forward-side broker?”
“….” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
“At the time, I honestly thought I was caught.”
“…”
While glaring at me with a disgusted look, Ri Su-jin began to grin…
I wasn’t supposed to be thrown into a panic yet. Luckily, it had only been a brief smile.
The 999 had scanned me.
As soon as she saw that whore, she would have known. That I was just as shabby as Ri Su-jin herself. That it wasn’t a chance encounter at all.
I had thought conversation would be possible, but it wasn’t working.
“Don’t you fucking speak Chinese? You know what cursing is.”
“I don’t know Chinese. I know it’s vulgar language, though.”
“Lǎo niáng shǎ shǒu qiān guǒ nǐ?”
“I don’t know.”
“Gǒurǒ nǐ!!” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
Since she was taking a ferry to China, Ri Su-jin was lobbing Chinese at me. The content wasn’t anything special. What had I done wrong to her, you fucking bastard…
“Don’t you fucking lie to me? I won’t fall for it!”
“What’s the point of saying that when I’ve come this far?”
“Do you understand? You fucking dog.”
Through the open buttons of Ri Su-jin’s wrinkled shirt, a bra appeared.
Skin-tone, basic full-cup bra.
Because she was a cheap whore, it wasn’t cheap. Double-Tomas, that one. Roughly two hundred thousand won.
But it was an underwear far removed from sex.
‘She’s quite interesting.’
Excluding the numbers floating above her head, the 999 still had a decent figure.
Back then, the rural bachelors who had come to beg me to spare Ri Su-jin probably felt the same way. Without the accent (ha↗yeso), she didn’t feel particularly Zhongguo at all. Education from Yanbian University, and on top of that, a handsome beauty with money.
But Ri Su-jin…
She was wearing underwear that a mid-forties married woman who had lived sexless for about six years would wear.
Why was I analyzing Ri Su-jin’s underwear?
‘Sex has to be excluded.’
I was choosing a means of retaliation against her.
Ri Su-jin was, of course, nothing like Han Chae-kyung.
Unlike the sponsor girl Han Chae-kyung, who felt shame even when sucking my dick, Ri Su-jin had no intention of denying that she was a whore. When she was a whore, she had to sell her body, so she did. After retirement, there was no need to sell it anymore, so she stopped.
Stimulating the 999’s happy circuits as if she was going to save her by turning her into 1,000…
It was meaningless. Honestly, I didn’t want to bet at all.
While I was hesitating, Ri Su-jin, who had been babbling in Chinese, suddenly closed her mouth.
“Joo Sung-hyun.” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
She dropped the teacher’s tone. Still, she was determined to maintain the honorific.
“Yes, President Ri Su-jin.”
“What did I do wrong to you?”
“I sent goons to your house…”
“Just go with the flow. Why be so cowardly? You know those fucking bread bastards are dirty, but you? You’re not like that. You’re just a crazy bastard!”
Because the multicultural leading company Cospro had ended, she had become just another Yanbian woman.
“Answer, kuaí shuō!!” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
Shouting with a cracked voice, then twisting a plastic water bottle to open it as if her throat was burning…
She tilted her head back and gulped down the water in one go.
Because she had poured it in too hastily, less than half was swallowed by her throat. The rest spilled down, soaking the wrinkled shirt.
On the wet cloth, the bra line emerged… it didn’t seem like she was trying to appeal with it at all. She just didn’t want to take her eyes off me.
Even while tilting her head, Ri Su-jin stared at me.
And at the contractor standing awkwardly behind me, like she was poking him with a stick.
Now I could see that the 999 was no longer just lashing out.
‘What is she preparing?’
Even coming this far, the girl wouldn’t give up. Her spirit was different.
This wasn’t bad at all.
Perhaps it was better than the method I had thought of (lifting and dropping with just words).
It was a slightly dangerous situation.
But since I had come all the way here to see Ri Su-jin’s face once, I couldn’t back out now. So I decided to play along.
While I scratched her to the point of making her truly try.
“President. You should have recruited me instead.”
“Bullshit. Would you have accepted?”
“…If the conditions were good, I might have. Think about it. I carried out President Kim Ho-chang’s unofficial request. I like money.”
“…….”
“Why didn’t you even try?”
Ri Su-jin closed her mouth.
Actually, it wasn’t wrong that the 999’s judgment at the time (conversation doesn’t work) was off. It was just that she couldn’t firmly trample me, but she probably had no counterargument.
Instead of sweet-talking me with tempting conditions, she had immediately framed me with false accusations.
I sighed and took a step closer to Ri Su-jin.
“President Ri Su-jin? We might have been good partners.”
“Who do you think you are talking about joining forces with me?”
“We might have gotten along well.”
“Bullshit!”
“I’m skilled at background investigations. For example… I know that President Ri Su-jin worked at least three or more opbang places from 2013 to 2014. Probably around Siheung, Annam, Hwaseong, Suwon. The number of customers was close to a thousand.”
“…….” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
Even now, Ri Su-jin was calm. She was just waiting for the timing.
“I also know that you’ve been celibate for over ten years.”
“Eh…?”
“You really only focused on business.”
Couldn’t this be overlooked?
For the first time, bewilderment appeared on Ri Su-jin’s face, which had been full of poison.
The fact that that whore, the 999, had gone ten years without sex… from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties… was truly exceptional.
Zhongguo people originally did short-term flings and sex-plus-economic alliance as the norm. In Korea, the tendency to tacitly approve experience working in the entertainment industry was deep.
But Ri Su-jin was different.
She had sealed her own eyes and sold other people’s eyes. A lot of eyes, at that.
Even though she had built up such success…
“You ruined it all, didn’t you?” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
“I know.”
“In the hometown, they’re the kind who scrape by day to day. If not for me, they would have starved to death. Subu, right? I brought them here, made them earn money… and made them pay off their debts. Just a few years of sweet talk to those sha bu lai bastards.”
“In the end, it was prostitution brokering. Those prostitutes were probably paying off their debts to President Ri Su-jin. Was it fun to get the prostitutes to tear you apart?”
“How would you know anything!”
Was the commotion increasing?
The contractor who had been watching from outside the container peeked inside through the door gap.
“Jang Yeo-hwa! She came in owing 500 thousand won in debt. In four years, she paid off the full parent home loan and opened a nail salon in Yanji. And last year, she even bought a wedding dress!”
“It went well. Are there other good prostitutes?”
“Choi Seo-hee… she worked for three years, bought a 25-pyeong apartment in Shenyang! And now she’s running a language school as a principal in Korea. Is this what ruined her? Huh?”
While fidgeting, Ri Su-jin listed the prostitutes she had brokered.
Actually, there were many who had done well.
Ri-ina, who worked at a rest hotel then opened a cafe in Ho Chi Minh City.
Som-cha-i, who runs a guest house in Bangkok with her family.
Ma-li, who went hungry because there was no rice in her hometown, now running a mobile phone shop in Phnom Penh.
Tuk-da, running a clothing shop in Angkor.
Up to here, Ri Su-jin was a savior of the prostitutes. The king of prostitutes.
‘Of course, there were many more who ruined their lives.’
People who just wanted to taste money, then got caught in raids-forced deportation crises, matched with vicious bosses and exploited…
Or, without doing anything wrong, after working a few years and returning home, only 300 dollars left in their pockets.
Of course I didn’t mention that. On the contrary.
“You worked hard. I acknowledge it.”
“……?” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
“After all, it’s someone’s body being sold… if President Ri Su-jin manages it systematically, the risk might be a little lower. The toll you charge is pretty high, but you take good care of them accordingly.”
I cleanly acknowledged Ri Su-jin’s achievements.
The achievement of safely bringing in and brokering foreign prostitutes for ten years.
Ri Su-jin’s face, which had been stiffening, turned to me with a distorted expression.
Her emotions were readable.
Why the hell is this guy doing this? What’s his intention? What time is it now? She still has a little time before she can escape detention. What if the police come before then?
While watching the 999’s face covered in doubt, I suddenly blurted out.
“But you abandoned all those prostitutes, didn’t you?”
“…….” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
“How many girls will you ruin if you get caught? …Not just the bosses or the fake husbands used for visa fraud. Let’s only count the girls. Since the president was a prostitute, you probably empathize well with the prostitutes. Two hundred? Or three hundred?”
I scratched until then, then stopped.
Because of the object that had popped out of Ri Su-jin’s pouch.
A folding knife.
A 6-centimeter blade, thumb-push to unfold.
It looked like a toy, but a knife was a knife.
The reason Ri Su-jin had pulled out the knife at this exact timing was too obvious. It was something she couldn’t stand.
Just like I couldn’t stand Ri Su-jin’s provocation.
“Beast.”
With a hollow face, Ri Su-jin cursed me as ‘devil.’
Her gaze turned toward the contractor (who had now entered the container).
“Jang Cheol-woo, that bastard, is a NIS subordinate.” (999 / 2,071 / 10 years, 3 months)
“Eh? Really?” (17 / 114/ 15 hours ago)
“Don’t just stand there staring. Grab this guy.”
Ri Su-jin flicked her knife-wielding hand. The contractor who had been receiving money from illegal immigrants hesitated, probably worried.
Then Ri Su-jin gave him clearer instructions.
“Get rid of this guy, replace the seal, and hide me in the staff room.”
“H… shit. What kind of situation is this, anyway.”
“If you do it, ten billion. If you can’t catch this guy anyway, you’ll be in prison too.”
Ten billion. The contractor’s eyes changed with Ri Su-jin’s proposal.
Kill me, restore the container seal, and Ri Su-jin hides in the staff room.
It was a risky but bold move.
It was also the only path for Ri Su-jin, with her slim chance, to reach China.
She hadn’t given up yet.
“Throw that body into the sea.”
“That’s what I’m saying, shit.”
In front was the 999, and behind was the mercenary bought by the 999.
The container would soon be closed.
But the plan wasn’t only theirs.
“Thank you.”
I bowed to Ri Su-jin, then turned off the aluminum lantern.
In an instant, the container darkened—
From now on, what I held in my hand wasn’t the lantern, but a blunt weapon.