Chapter 1

　　I like it lukewarm.

　　Offering myself to her was a gamble, pure and simple, staked on a whisper of a rumor.

　　I was betting my own body. If I played this card and lost, I’d lose everything. She would never forgive the insolent child who dared crawl to her throne.

　　This woman reigned as the undisputed queen of a place the locals called Pagye-dong, a lawless slum. People called her Madam Big. Whispers of her father’s deep ties to the Chinese Triad formed the bedrock of her power. In Pagye-dong, a district the authorities had long since abandoned, she held the loan-sharking and nightlife industries in her fist, presiding over a long and glamorous reign. Everyone here knew of her, yet no one truly knew her. She was a figure shrouded in mystery.

　　By comparison, I was the lowest of the low. My name, Hanwoo, was a bitter prayer from my mother that I might one day afford the premium Korean beef I was named for. Pagye-dong was the end of the line for every kind of beggar and criminal, a terminal for lives that had hit rock bottom. My mother and I had been the dregs clinging to the last car of that final train.

　　Still, the will to live persists in everyone. My mother had one flimsy connection: a distant relation to the great Madam Big. On the strength of that single thread, we had managed to survive, just barely scraping by.

　　"Well, well, if it isn’t the expensive Hanwoo."

　　That was how Madam Big always greeted me. When she said ‘expensive Hanwoo,’ her voice was laced with a playful cruelty. I found her tone, her voice, and the faint smile that graced her lips when she pronounced my name to be exquisite. I had thought so since I was a child.

　　But my world was Pagye-dong, a lawless zone where you could open your door to the sight of a corpse sprawled on the street and no one would bat an eye. Here, money and power trumped human rights and morality. No matter how playfully she spoke, if I crossed her, I would end up dead. Buried alive or otherwise, the outcome was the same.

　　So, what was this rumor that gave me the courage to offer myself up? It was the whisper that Madam Big, the queen of Pagye-dong, enjoyed the company of women.

　　Truthfully, I knew it was more than just a rumor. I had often seen naked women coming and going from her quarters. But the true extent of her libido, its depth and intensity, remained a mystery. Rumors are always an unreliable cocktail of truth and lies. So to charge in, calculating that she would accept me, was a gamble in the truest sense.

　　"Well, well, if it isn’t my expensive Hanwoo."

　　Even on the day I went to sell myself, she greeted me with those same words. She took a long, slow drag from her cigarette, her cheeks hollowing, that faint, bewitching smile playing on her lips.

　　Madam Big dismissed the burly men waiting in her office. Whether out of some lingering affection from watching me grow up, or because she knew I posed no threat, she granted me a private audience.

　　"What brings you here?" she asked, her smile never wavering. "You should know this is no place for a young girl."

　　I didn’t answer. Instead, I knelt before her, or more precisely, before the table where she sat. With both hands, I held up my university acceptance letter for her to see.

　　"I can’t see it very well from here."

　　She tapped her cigarette, ash dusting the floor. I crawled forward on my knees, stopping just short of the ash she’d flicked away. I raised the paper again.

　　A soft hum escaped her lips. I couldn’t tell if it was a good sign or a bad one.

　　"I despise reading. Didn’t your mother ever tell you?"

　　"…It’s a letter of acceptance to a university."

　　She laughed, a full-throated sound that echoed in the room. Her cigarette, stained with her lipstick, fell to the floor and was crushed under the heel of her shoe. If she would just pay my tuition, I would have picked up that mangled butt and swallowed it whole.

　　"I would be grateful if you would just hear me out, Ma’am."

　　"Alright, go on."

　　Her next words were a command.

　　"Lift your head."

　　I obeyed instantly. My mother had always drilled it into me: Whatever Madam Big says, you do it, and you do it fast. Her time is money, and if you waste it, you’ll end up dead or broken.

　　"I would like to borrow tuition money from you, Ma’am," I said, getting straight to the point.

　　Who was I to beat around the bush with her? She had already granted me the immense favor of a private audience.

　　I saw her face twist into a strange, almost comical grimace. My heart plummeted, but I forced my expression to remain neutral. My life was a wreck, my studies the only salvageable part. I might as well spit it all out and face the consequences, be they death or disfigurement. For a child in Pagye-dong to even dream of an education was a monumental struggle.

　　Most people here never even finished high school. To aim for a university, funded by a loan shark, was pure insanity.

　　"Hanwoo, baby," she whispered, snatching the acceptance letter from my grasp.

　　It was a sweet, cloying sound. She crumpled the paper without a second glance and tossed it onto the table, where it lay like a used tissue.

　　"Didn’t your mother teach you what it means to borrow money from me?"

　　"I know very well what it means, Ma’am."

　　My head snapped sideways with a force that registered before the pain did. A searing agony bloomed across my cheek only after the motion was complete. She was panting slightly, her anger palpable as she struck me again, and then again. The assault stopped only when I crumpled to the floor.

　　"If you know, then get the fuck out."

　　I heard the sharp click of a lighter, followed by the scent of smoke. She took another long drag, her eyes half-lidded as she stared down at me. I pushed myself up, returning to my knees before her.

　　A sharp scoff cut through the air.

　　"Don’t make me repeat myself," she growled.

　　But if a little pain was enough to scare me off, I never would have come.

　　"I haven’t finished what I came to say."

　　"I’m going easy on you for your dead mother’s sake, Hanwoo."

　　"Yes, I know. But I’m really not finished, Ma’am."

　　"Insolent bitch."

　　She slapped me again.

　　"Did I not tell you to rid yourself of that stubbornness when you were a child?"

　　With the cigarette clamped between her lips, she reached out and seized a fistful of my hair, twisting my long, unbound strands around her fingers. Her grip was astonishingly strong for her slender frame. Of course, I thought dazedly. You’d need this kind of strength to rule this place.

　　She brought the glowing tip of the cigarette close to my face, so close I could feel the heat radiating from it, threatening to sear my eyeball.

　　Don’t be scared. You can’t show weakness, a voice screamed inside my head.

　　I forced my eyes to stay open, refusing to flinch as the smoke curled over my pupils, stinging them.

　　"If it’s all the same to you, could I finish speaking before you burn me with that?"

　　"Didn’t so much as fucking flinch. What’s with the goddamn audacity?"

　　The queen did not hold back. But she showed her own brand of mercy. Instead of my eye, she pressed the cigarette into my cheek. It was my punishment for defying her. I bit down hard on my lip, refusing to make a sound, accepting her judgment in silence.