Cigarette Smoke in the Waiting Room and the Ace Girls
In front of the administrative office of the university hospital as dawn broke, Dohee sat on a cold chair, tightly clutching an envelope holding the 1.2 million won in cash she had endured sticky male hands all night to earn.
It was the second day since her mother had collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage, and the morning of the deadline for the first installment of hospital fees the hospital had notified them about. The total billed amount, combining intensive care unit treatment and emergency surgery costs, came to 12.5 million won. Fortunately, considering the guardian's circumstances, the hospital administration had arranged for her to pay 20 percent of the total—2.5 million won—up front, with the rest in five installments.
But even that 2.5 million won, which would have taken months of all-night convenience store shifts to scrape together, had to be settled today, or she would be told tomorrow morning that maintaining the ICU bed was no longer possible.
"...Patient's guardian? Normally the full 2.5 million won must be paid by noon today. As you know, there are many patients waiting, so regulations leave us no choice."
At the administrative clerk's mechanical, icy voice, Dohee's heart plummeted. The mask she had worn all night laughing at men's jokes in the room vanished without a trace. Reduced once more to twenty-year-old Yoon Dohee, the frail college girl, she finally let tears fall as she clasped her hands together beyond the glass window of the administrative office.
"Sir, please, I'm begging you... This is all I have right now. Please process this 1.2 million won as a deposit first, and the remaining 1.3 million... I'll somehow find it tonight, I swear, and send it before the shift change tomorrow morning. Please, just look out for my mom this once, okay?"
Her voice, roughened from swallowing harsh liquor all night, pleaded with raw desperation. The clerk tapped at his monitor with a troubled expression for a long while before letting out a sigh.
"...Understood. You must deposit the full remaining amount into the virtual account before the administrative office shift change at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Otherwise we begin room reassignment first thing in the morning."
"Thank you, thank you so much..."
She had barely cleared the hurdle, but her head felt ready to explode. The remaining amount was 1.3 million won. Tonight she would have to settle with Manager Han the same way as yesterday and pull in designation tips just to cover it. As she left the hospital, Dohee bit her lip until it bled. More than fear or shame, the terror that her mother's oxygen mask might be removed if she failed to make the money tonight swallowed her soul whole.
Just today... if I can just get through tonight, I'll clear the first hurdle. So hold on a little longer.
After spending that hellish daytime hours in anxiety, she arrived for her second night at the Cheongdam-dong establishment.
With her eyes lined a little darker and sharper than yesterday, Dohee donned the mask of the night doll "Sea" and opened the waiting-room door. The moment she stepped into the "female staff lounge," however, she instinctively froze at the strangely cold, chilling air that filled the space.
Through the thick, acrid cigarette smoke being exhaled without mercy, the gazes of the women lounging on sofas or touching up their makeup all locked onto Dohee at once. These were not the simple assessing looks she had received on her first day. These were snake-eyed stares thick with open hostility and razor-edged jealousy.
"Oh my, so Manager Han was bragging all over the neighborhood that you had the size to make it big, and here you are crawling back out again today? College-girl rookie unnie."
In the center of the waiting room, the woman occupying the widest, plushiest seat of honor ground out her cigarette in the ashtray with deliberate roughness and sneered. She had thick shoulder-length hair and wore a daring red dress that left her chest line dangerously exposed. She was the immovable ace of this shop who never surrendered the top settlement ranking each month—Chae-ri. She was the kind of fixture of this world whom Manager Han had cultivated the longest and who had brought in the most money for him.
"I heard you made quite the spectacle when you went into Executive Director Choi of Samjeong's room yesterday? The madams are singing your praises—said you pulled outright fox moves right there in the room and cleaned out the executive director's wallet. A college-girl bitch waltzes in and starts wagging her tail with no industry etiquette?"
Chae-ri rose slowly from her seat and walked toward Dohee. Every time her dizzyingly high stiletto heels struck the marble floor, an unpleasant cracking sound rang out. Two or three hard-faced unnies fell in behind her, arms crossed, closing in as if to surround Dohee. Miran, who had spoken so kindly the day before, was in the corner pretending not to notice, staring rigidly at her phone. This was a world ruled by pure survival of the fittest and silence.
"I... I don't really understand what you mean. I just poured drinks the way I was told."
As Dohee clutched her bag strap so hard it might snap and tried to step back, a large-built unnie who seemed to be Chae-ri's lieutenant roughly shoved Dohee's slender shoulder. Dohee's body lurched backward.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, widening those eyes and talking back, you bitch? The girls who were in the room yesterday all saw you digging into Executive Director Choi's thigh and working that little brain of yours. A green rookie who doesn't even know the rules of this game walks in and decides she's going to monopolize the clients?"
"The executive director was the one who touched me first, and I just stayed still because I couldn't refuse! I never did anything that crossed the line myself!"
At Dohee's protest, Chae-ri let out a scoffing laugh as if she couldn't believe it. Then her face twisted into something ugly in an instant as she shoved it right up to Dohee's nose. Along with the reek of expensive perfume, filthy curses poured out like daggers.
"Hey, you fucking bitch. Who are you to act all pure and high-and-mighty, running that mouth? The second you grabbed Executive Director Choi's waistband yesterday and went 'oppa, oppa' with those little nasal moans, you became the same kind of bitch as the rest of us. A college-girl bitch crawls in here pretending to earn tuition money and plays the innocent, but you're just another money-crazed whore from the demimonde who came to throw herself into men's arms. Am I wrong? Who the hell do you think you are, trying to draw lines like you're doing something special? It's disgusting."
"What did you just say...?"
The raw, humiliating words she was hearing for the first time in her life crushed the deepest part of Dohee's heart with surgical precision. Her pale face flushed crimson with rage and shame. Tears threatened to burst free, but terrified that collapsing now would mean admitting she was exactly what they said, Dohee bit her lower lip until it bled and locked eyes with Chae-ri.
"I'm different from you people. I only came here because I have no choice—there's remaining hospital money for my mom that has to be paid today—and the second I fill that amount I'm quitting and going straight back to school! So don't you dare talk about me however you want."
Dohee's lofty, arrogant cry shattered the silence of the waiting room. In that instant every woman inside erupted into cold, merciless laughter. Chae-ri let out a disbelieving chuckle and slowly stroked Dohee's cheek with the long, sharp tip of her nail art. The pricking sensation sent an unpleasant shiver down her spine.
"Ahaha! Did you hear that, girls? She says she's different from bitches like us. Says she has a school to go back to. Hey, you empty-headed bitch. Does it feel amazing for such a superior college student to sell her soul for a few hundred and take weekly pay while letting old men put their hands on her? Girls like you are the first to break. Let's see what happens to that fancy pride of yours after a few rooms tonight when the oppas have groped every inch under your skirt. Line up. If this bitch gets put in a room tonight, I'll be watching carefully and checking the heat level myself."
Chae-ri spat at Dohee's feet and turned away coldly. Dohee trembled from head to toe as she barely managed to sink into a corner of the sofa. Her heart hammered, but she could not back down now. The real-world terror of her mother's hospital room, only hours away, was a hundred times more frightening than Chae-ri's venom.
After finishing the lineup in a state of raw nerves, Dohee opened the door to tonight's first room—and the second room she had entered since setting foot in the demimonde. Chae-ri's poison still sat in her chest like a bruise, making every step heavy.
"Hey, are you the college-girl rookie Executive Director Choi couldn't stop praising yesterday? Come here and sit right next to me."
Under the oppressively dark purple lighting, the seat beside a bald man who claimed to run a private-lending business in Gangnam had been designated for Dohee. The moment she perched tensely on the very edge of the sofa, the man stretched out a thick arm as if he had been waiting and yanked her slender waist into him. Under that heavy force, Dohee's delicate body was buried deep into his broad embrace.
"Your face is so white and clean. Hey, oppa's in a good mood tonight so I'll take real good care of the tip. In exchange, let's have a nice thick round of dating tonight."
His rough palm rode up the side of her halter-neck dress and began kneading the exposed line of her back and the nape of her neck. The pressure was far closer and more aggressive than Executive Director Choi's the day before; Dohee's breath caught in her throat. When his fingertips started sliding toward the hem of her skirt, fear spiked through her and she urgently seized his thick wrist with both hands.
"O-Oppa... just a second...!"
Her voice trembled finely between the murmuring accompaniment music. Seeing Dohee's pure eyes shake so hard, the man grinned with interest.
"What's wrong, rookie? You acting like some college freshman virgin who's never even been kissed? If you came to make money, you've gotta make oppa happy."
She had to protect her final fortress: no direct sexual acts, no blatant physical invasion. Her mind went blank; instead of tossing out fox-like lines the way the unnies of this world did, Dohee clutched the man's shirt collar in terror and barely managed to part her lips.
"Th-That's not it, oppa. I-I'm really new to places like this... I'm just shaking so bad... Touching is embarrassing, so instead... can I close my eyes and you just kiss me on the lips...?"
With her pure white face lowered and her voice quivering, the pure proposal Dohee barely managed to offer left the man momentarily speechless. It was a level of genuine, unspoiled college-girl innocence utterly different from the slick hosting of the establishment unnies, and it ignited his vicious desire to conquer.
"Huh, look at this one? What a cute little bitch..."
The man roughly tilted Dohee's small chin up with his fingers. Dohee squeezed her trembling eyelids shut in pure fear. Then his damp, cigarette-reeking lips crashed down onto her soft ones without mercy.
"Eup...! Mmnh..."
As if he had been waiting, the man swallowed her lips and shoved his tongue in roughly. Disgust and shame so intense they made her stomach turn made tears prick Dohee's eyes, yet she clung to his broad shoulder with her fragile hands and took the rough assault with her whole body in order to protect what was between her legs. Her clumsy, breathless surrender as she simply yielded her lips to his lead drove the man completely wild. The hand cradling the back of her head tightened with force, and every nerve in his body locked onto devouring her sweet, unskilled mouth.
After sucking her lips so deeply and thoroughly that he drained her of strength, the man finally pulled away with a satisfied sigh. Dohee exhaled raggedly through reddened lips, tilting her head slightly so he wouldn't see the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Her pure reaction seemed to please him beyond reason; he hugged her waist tightly and laughed heartily.
"Hahaha! You really are a pure college-girl rookie, no doubt about it! Damn, your lips are like jelly. All right—tonight oppa won't touch anywhere else and will just treat you nice, so you stick right next to me."
"...Yes. Thank you, oppa."
Dohee forced an awkward smile and refilled the man's glass with liquor. His hands kept roaming the lines of her waist and hips, but she answered every sensation with only her lips and soft eye-smiles, perfectly defending the most private place between her legs to the very end.
At five-thirty in the morning, her whole body bruised with the rough handprints of men and steeped in the stench of alcohol, Dohee stepped out into the hellish corridor. She ran to the bathroom, rinsed her mouth over and over, and scrubbed the men's saliva from her neck with tissue until the skin turned red and swollen—yet the revulsion would not fade.
When she approached the counter, Manager Han came over as if he had been waiting and pressed a thick wad of crisp cash and several checks into Dohee's hand.
"Sea-ya, you broke real hard today, huh? The madams say the way you defend yourself while still bewitching the clients is something else. Here—today's settlement and tips all together, exactly 1.5 million won."
The moment she felt the heavy thickness of the checks and bills filling her wallet, Dohee exhaled in relief and immediately unlocked her smartphone. A little past six in the morning, she successfully transferred the remaining 1.3 million won to the hospital's virtual account. A short while later, a text arrived.
It's done... I really paid it all. I saved Mom.
Yesterday's 1.2 million and today's 1.5 million. Of the total 2.7 million, she had safely paid 2.5 million to the hospital and had only 200,000 left in her hands—but she had fully protected her mother's place in the ICU. The crushing shame and self-loathing were instantly replaced by relief in the face of that concrete salvation: the payment-completed text message.
Clutching her bag tightly as she stepped out of the establishment, she found the dawn streets of Cheongdam-dong growing cold and bluish with light. Dohee pressed her wallet to her chest and offered herself a fragile smile.
See? I'm different from those unnies. I cleared the biggest hurdle, the first hospital payment is settled, so I can walk out clean whenever I want. This is just a temporary hardship, like a little accident.
Yet as she walked to catch the first train, Dohee's steps felt strangely heavy, and the thick cigarette smell of men that clung under her fingernails would not vanish no matter how hard she rubbed. The Yoon Dohee in the mirror was already beginning to crack, little by little, but twenty-year-old Dohee was still sinking deep into the dangerous illusion that she could perfectly control this night world and escape it whenever she chose.