Chapter 2
Chapter 2: When I Was Young
After my mother passed away, I don’t know if I should call it luck, but someone took pity on me.
The brothel manager took me into his home, saving me from either starving to death on the streets or ending up in an orphanage.
For a while, at least.
Looking back now, I wonder if going to an orphanage wouldn’t have been better.
Anyway, during my time at his house, I was fed, taught to read, and learned about this strange world I didn’t understand.
How to handle thugs up to a certain point.
What kind of lives normal people outside the slums lived.
How he ended up in this stinking slum, dealing with scum who came to buy the services of prostitutes.
How revolting and wretched this neighborhood really was.
Having spent my early years in my mother’s embrace within the brothel, I guess I’d only seen the brighter side of life in the slums.
Now, even a glance out the window revealed things I never noticed before.
A thug and a prostitute having intercourse on the street.
A skinny young man licking the floor to recover the drugs he’d dropped by mistake.
A woman slapping her child so hard they fainted, then tossing them aside.
A thug beating a prostitute like a dog because he thought her price was too high.
A mugger stabbing a passerby out of frustration when their wallet turned out to be empty.
This trash heap, where all of life’s failures gathered, was far filthier than I’d imagined.
If the manager hadn’t taken me in, I’d have grown up in the brothel, starting a life of spreading my legs far too young.
If I’d been lucky enough to end up in an orphanage, it might’ve been a few years later, but the result would’ve been the same.
There was no doubt I’d have suffered, regardless.
Most of the children here were living such lives.
Looking back, the children at the brothel always stared at me with a mixture of envy and resentment, even when they were bullying me.
The reason I didn’t suffer the same fate was simple.
Upsetting my mother would’ve dampened the mood of the high-profile clients frequenting the brothel, so they figured it was best to leave me alone.
And maybe my cute face, inherited from my mother—or perhaps even my father—helped.
But the thought that I might’ve been sold off to someone who found me “cute” made me feel sick.
The manager reassured me that nothing like that would happen while he was taking care of me.
And, indeed, it didn’t.
At least not yet.
The human heart is fickle, so I couldn’t completely let my guard down.
Unlike my mother, who was bound to me by blood, the man raising me had no such ties.
The meals weren’t as good as the ones I had with my mother at the brothel, but they were still decent.
I often pulled random books from his shelves and read them to pass the time.
Once, I accidentally scratched the cover of a book I dropped, but he didn’t get angry.
“It doesn’t affect the contents,” he said calmly.
He even started teaching me more formally.
Not the half-baked answers and explanations I’d gotten at the brothel, but real lessons with a small blackboard he’d brought in.
The best part was that he never hit me.
He never cursed at me, either.
“Children shouldn’t be raised like that,” he often said.
Contrary to my initial pessimism, life with him was peaceful.
Sometimes, it was a bit awkward when he told me to call him “Dad” since he was raising me, but I never took it seriously.
What kind of dad tells you to call him that without even being married?
One day, curiosity got the better of me, and I asked why he took me in.
No matter how I thought about it, there was no reason for him to treat me so well when we weren’t related by blood.
As my life grew more comfortable and our relationship gradually felt like a real parent-child bond, the question nagged at me more and more.
After some hesitation, he answered, as if it was hard to say.
He said he liked my mother.
It didn’t seem like something you’d tell a child, but he admitted they’d been intimate once.
And since she passed away without a word, he thought he might be doing this out of lingering regret.
I didn’t push him away or get upset.
He wasn’t projecting my mother onto me or treating me like a replacement; he simply let me live freely in his house, like a pet he’d adopted.
He answered any question I had, and if I said I wanted something to eat, he’d cook it himself whenever possible.
He was a learned man, skilled in many things.
He performed what looked like impressive magic, and his mind was filled with knowledge that most ordinary people wouldn’t even understand.
It was as if he had been a teacher somewhere, answering all my questions when I encountered confusing things in books.
So one day, I asked out of the blue:
“You don’t seem like someone who belongs here. Why are you working as the brothel manager?”
His answer was simple.
“For the money. And because I do belong here. I may be smart, but only moderately so.”
I tilted my head, not fully understanding.
He chuckled and explained.
“If I had a special lineage or extraordinary talent, I could’ve been taken in and put to good use somewhere.
But I’m just mediocre. I’m not smart enough to outshine scholars or researchers from places like magic towers or laboratories.”
He seemed to feel a bit bitter, lighting a cigarette and puffing smoke into the room without opening a window.
The white wallpaper had turned yellow over time.
He continued, saying he ended up here because it was an easy job that let him make money while studying on his own.
But if anything went wrong, he’d be the one thrown in jail, possibly killed.
It’s a common story here—thieves broke into the house one day, stabbed him, and stole everything they could find.
It was a tragic, yet typical event in this place.
Watching him die was the hardest part.
Afterward, I knelt beside his cold, lifeless body, quietly sobbing into my knees.
He’d often joked about me calling him “Dad.”
I’d always dodged it with an awkward smile, but now I regretted not calling him that a thousand times over.
Even though he couldn’t respond, choking on his own blood, I whispered it into his ear one last time.
“Dad.”
I added, “Don’t die,” but it was futile.
He managed a faint smile, turning his gaze to me before his eyes began to dim and his pupils lost focus.
The ground was damp.
Slightly moist, warm, and sticky.
It was disgusting.
He stopped breathing, and blood trickled from the hole in his stomach like a stream, making a soft, unsettling sound.
I wondered where he went after death.
Hell? Heaven? Or maybe someplace else, like I had been.
Given the life he’d led, hell seemed likely.
Or perhaps he’d earned some credit for taking me in and ended up in a middling place, just like his life always was.
Thinking back, maybe going to an orphanage would’ve been better after all.
At least it wouldn’t have been so sad.
Life and death are too close.
Whether that’s the nature of this world or just the neighborhood I lived in, I didn’t know.
It was the kind of day that made me long for a strong cigarette and a cup of coffee.
Unfortunately, my body didn’t allow for such indulgences.
Looking up, two moons hung in the sky, mocking me with their cold, distant light.