What Are You Doing Here (1)
Some anonymous informant, whose identity I couldn't for the life of me figure out, had apparently been spreading the rumor that I had a child. The diligent soul had even gone around early in the morning, whispering the news person to person, which was nothing short of dedicated service.
The problem was that it hadn't produced any effect whatsoever.
If anything, it had only sent my popularity soaring.
And ever since the rumor spread, every man who called me over to sit with him said the same damn thing.
Every last one of them: they'd make me happy, so why not bring the child and marry them?
It made my skin crawl, but my earnings had grown considerably, so I couldn't really complain.
What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger.
"Yulia! Where are you going?"
"Upstairs."
"Who said you could walk off halfway through cleaning?"
"Can't you hear the baby crying right now? If her poop soaks through the diaper and seeps into the motel room floor, are you going to take responsibility for that, unnie?"
"Ugh... Fine, go quickly."
Once Tia's existence had been discovered, there was no longer any need to leave her at a house far away while I went to work.
Having her in the motel room upstairs meant I now had a perfect excuse to go up and check on her whenever I pleased.
Every time I went up and came back down, her wailing would start up again about ten minutes later, but even that much earned her enough goodwill that the others would usually let me head up mid-shift.
I never could have imagined there'd come a day when I'd be grateful for Tia crying at every possible opportunity.
"Crying over literally nothing again. You stop the second you see Mommy's face, you little faker."
"Mo-mma..."
Upstairs, I'd barely confirmed her diaper was clean before a snort of laughter escaped me.
The little schemer had figured out that crying brought me running, so she cried first and asked questions later.
Humans really are crafty creatures.
The crying I'd once found so unbearable now sounded almost welcome when I heard it.
I always came home late at night and only ever saw her by dim candlelight, so under the bright lights now, I was struck anew by how adorable Tia was.
It felt like only yesterday that she'd been an ugly little thing, all wrinkled and scowling, but at some point her cheeks and belly had filled out so plumply that just looking at her made laughter bubble up for no reason.
Thankfully, she'd inherited nothing from her father but the horns—everything else was all me.
That woman owed me her gratitude for the rest of her life.
Or wait—was giving birth to her at all the sin I'd committed against her?
"But aren't you growing a little too fast?"
"Mo-mma?"
I slipped my hands under her armpits and hoisted her up into the air.
Heavy.
Way, way too heavy.
She hadn't been like this just last week.
Compared to the day she was born, she had to be twice—no, four times heavier by now.
Given how unnatural she was from birth, rapid growth wasn't exactly surprising, but this felt like too much even so.
"Momma."
"What?"
I froze solid on the spot.
Startled by my sudden stillness, Tia blinked up at me blankly and tilted her head.
No—had she tilted it, or was her head just too heavy for her to hold up?
Either way, unless I'd badly misheard, she had definitely just said mommy.
"Say it again."
"Me?"
"Say it. What you just said. Come on, quick!"
"Mmmmehhh..."
No matter how much I grabbed her and shook her, the word mommy refused to make a second appearance.
Had it just been a fluke? A random babble?
Come to think of it, though—where would she even have learned the word in the first place?
"Oh."
Only then did it dawn on me.
I'd been calling myself "Mommy" in front of Tia this entire time, hadn't I?
Endlessly, without even thinking—mommy's dying of exhaustion, mommy's so tired...
A long sigh escaped me.
I'd lost my mind, that was it.
Barely a month in this place, and I was already adapting to a woman's body.
I'm a man.
"......Ha."
In an instant, a chill swept through me and my whole body trembled.
What if I could never go back? What if I lost myself entirely? The fear I'd been desperately trying to bury all this time came crashing down over me once more.
"Ah. Ahh. Aaah..."
My legs gave out and I collapsed.
Not again. Not this again.
That sickening sensation of being torn open and savaged from the inside flickered back to life, and my lower body refused to move an inch.
The look of disgust in the eyes of the man who'd thrown stones at me, and the sight of it twisting into a grotesque smile, flashed through my mind.
"Haah... haahk..."
My breath went ragged in an instant.
Helplessness coiled around my throat.
But as the image overlapped with that black lizard rearing back and fleeing from my roar, the helplessness began to curdle into hatred.
And there was never any question of who that hatred was meant for.
"Mmmm?! Uuuuugh!"
"Oh."
Tia's pained whimpering and the frantic kicking of her little feet against my face snapped me back to my senses, and I forced my hands to go slack.
Apparently I'd been gripping her without even realizing it.
Tears were welling up in Tia's eyes.
"No. I'm sorry..."
Startled, I scooped her up into my arms.
I am not garbage.
I am not the kind of garbage who takes their frustrations out on an innocent baby who knows nothing.
I repeated the words to myself over and over, yet deep in my chest I could feel an unsuppressable seed of hatred scratching at me from within.
It frightened me.
What if someday it swallowed me whole?
What if I stopped being... me?
"It's so hard. It's so hard..."
I missed my mom and dad.
I missed my friends.
I even found myself missing the tutoring unnie I'd had to completely block—phone number and all—after I told her we were done and she'd clung on with exhausting stubbornness.
"Yulia! How long does it take to change one diaper? Get down here already!"
"Comiiing..."
Break time was over.
I set Tia down on the bed and took a few deep breaths.
In the mirror, a girl gazed back at me with a soft smile and sharp, alluring eyes.
A would-be courtesan, selling her smile to scrape by another day.
"Let's do our best today, too."
Two more weeks of this and I'd get paid—enough to buy some clothes.
Winter was coming, after all.
Maybe I could even eat out once in a while.
Before unnie could start shouting again, I hurried down the stairs.
* * *
"Ah, shit."
"Yulia. Watch it. Your true nature's showing."
"What was that, huh?"
"Eek..."
I was extra tired today, and the words kept slipping out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Thanks to that, I got pulled off the floor three separate times mid-shift.
Ah, this is going to be a total waste of a day—but even as that thought nagged at me, the sheer comfort of sitting idle stirred up the urge to just rest all day and be done with it.
No. I needed to save up money, find a proper place to live, and get out of this filthy racket.
For a woman whose identity and origins were both murky in this world, the list of legitimate work available was pitifully short.
If I'd been an exceptional mage, I might have gone the sorceress route, but that was a pipe dream for me—at best, I could open some little illegal food stall and call it a career.
Of course, that would require startup capital, plus money to hire a housekeeper for Tia.
That future looked so impossibly distant that my breath caught in my throat.
"Yulia! You've got a call!"
"Yes, coming~"
"Do better this time. I know they say playing hard to get is your charm, but push it too far and you'll just piss the customers off..."
"I really don't understand how that's supposed to be charming."
"Neither do I. If you're that curious, go ask the customers yourself."
"......"
Hard pass.
I had zero desire to understand the thought processes of those revolting men.
As the boss passed by, he pressed a key into my hand.
Ah. A private room this time.
Men got especially handsy in enclosed spaces.
I considered just walking out right then, but if I bailed on this too, I had a feeling my meal ticket would be severed for good.
"Agh."
My foot slipped at just that moment, and my ankle twisted clean over.
I still hadn't gotten used to the godforsaken height of these heels.
"Ah, you son of a—"
The curse burst out the moment I looked down at my foot.
It was a compound fracture—the bone jutting clean through the skin.
It hurt, but bawling my eyes out and summoning a crowd wasn't an option here.
Gritting my teeth, I twisted the ankle back into place, and watched the torn skin knit itself shut and heal over.
I wiped the blood away with a wad of tissue and limped toward the private room.
The pain faded to background noise within moments, and my gait returned to normal.
"Sorry to keep you waiting! I'm Yulia—your pick for tonight!"
I called it out brightly, wearing my sunniest smile.
However much my current face worked better than a stimulant for erectile dysfunction, looks alone couldn't keep you alive in this business.
Though I did occasionally smack down the bastards who crossed the line, I was, on the whole, actually decent at playing hostess.
It was easy work.
So long as you could chatter and giggle, you were already halfway there. Easy.
"Whoa. She's gorgeous?"
"Heh heh. Didn't I tell you? The pickings here are good."
Two men, then.
In that case, wasn't it basic courtesy to call in another girl so each of them had one companion each?
I barely managed to suppress the twist at the corner of my eye and went to sit in the spot the anchovy and the pig had left open between them.
The seat was pleasantly warm, and the moment I sat, the heat came with it, washing a wave of disgust over me.
"Hey. Got anything else to see around here?"
"Like what?"
"Shouldn't we head somewhere for round two? There's a motel upstairs, right?"
"There is, but she—"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't do after-hours."
"That was yesterday's policy. Hearts can always change, can't they?"
"Even so, I—"
"Oh, come on, nobody's asking you to decide right this second. Let's just have a slow drink and think it over. Give us time to get to know each other a little. What do you say?"
"......"
"I—I'll go to another table, then?"
The pig slunk out of the room, leaving me alone with the anchovy.
I decided to kill some time nursing the drink he poured, playing along just enough. Give off the vibe that round two was absolutely off the table, and he'd give up and wander off on his own.
"You're a lot more refined than you look, Yulia."
"Than I look? And what exactly do I look like?"
"Hmm. First impression? Some naive little country girl who didn't know a thing. But now that we've actually talked, that's clearly not it. You don't seem all that worldly, but there's a certain... elegance to the way you speak. Honestly, you don't seem like someone who'd be working in a place like this."
Elegance, he says.
I wanted nothing more than to spit out a word or two of genuinely elegant vocabulary right into his face, but I swallowed it down.
"Hmm. Shall I guess, then? A fallen nobleman's daughter, aren't you?"
"......Wrong."
"Doesn't it seem right, though? And I hear you have a daughter, too. Your husband must be dead, I take it? In that war a while back?"
"All wrong. Let's talk about something el—"
"And you're carrying trauma. Am I right?"
"......"
"Look me in the eye. Mmm. Your first time must have been terribly rough. And that trauma's still haunting you to this day."
You son of a bitch.
Throwing out wild guesses and landing one lucky hit.
My fist clenched tight.
"I'm not—"
"Yulia. Want to go up to the second floor? I can show you it doesn't have to hurt that much. Honestly, just sitting here making small talk comes with a big cut for the house, so the pay's lousy, right? You should be moving on to work that actually makes money."
"......"
The anchovy took my hand gently in his, wheedling away.
Not a chance in hell.
Fallen as far as I had, I would not sell my body.
Plenty of women in this town had sworn they'd quit after saving up just this one amount, then blown it all on designer bags and necklaces and come right back.
People never forget the taste of easy money. Never.
That's why a courtesan once is a courtesan forever.
"Uh..."
And yet—maybe it was because I was so unusually tired today.
My resolve was starting to waver.
Most women go off to marry a man and live off him, so how, fundamentally, was that any different from being a dedicated courtesan? The question gnawed at me—the kind you'd get beaten for saying out loud anywhere in this world.
Maybe I should just give up on everything and take the easy way.
Just as my trembling lips parted to speak—
"What's that? A baby?"
"Mommaaa!"
"......?!"
A sound seeping through the gap in the room's door made my whole body jolt.
Tia's voice?
No. Crying?
"Excuse me, just one moment!"
"Whoa—hey! What's the big idea?!"
I shot out of my seat in a flash.
Only then did I remember Tia's horns.
The horns that must never, ever be seen.