TIN 5

Clang! The liquor glass that fell to the floor shattered with a loud noise. The neatly arranged food was strewn all over the place, and the tableware and other items came tumbling down. I struggled to sit up, but the effort only caused the back of my head to slam into the table.

“Ugh…!”

Just as a scream was about to escape my lips, a large hand quickly covered my mouth. As I struggled to breathe, the man used brute strength to pin me down. “Stay still for a moment…” he muttered in a voice rough from exhaustion, tinged with irritation.

“Just let me have a taste, okay?”

“Mmph, mm…!”

How did it come to this?

Right, I had been summoned and entered Room 3. I was about to greet him as usual when Wang Wei sent the other staff member away. Today, the room was filled with thick, suffocating smoke, and only Wang Wei and I remained.

‘Care for a drink?’

I didn’t even have time to feel uneasy about that fact. Wang Wei immediately offered me a cigar he was holding. Wispy gray smoke rose from the ember.

‘Or drugs?’

‘No, I don’t do drugs…’

‘Tell me what you want. I’ll get it for you.’

It wasn’t the first time a customer had offered me drinks. Whether their intentions were pure or not, there were many who would offer drugs as a “favor.”

‘I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to consume the customer’s food.’

At Oceans, unless you were the one entertaining the guests, the employees weren’t allowed to consume anything on the table. This wasn’t necessarily to protect the employees, but rather to prevent anyone from getting so intoxicated that they couldn’t function at work. Theo occasionally accepted drinks from the Omegas, but that was something only he could get away with.

Of course, my refusal wasn’t just because of that.

‘Oh… really?’

His lifeless eyes seemed eerily disturbing today. The bloodshot whites, the hazy, drugged pupils – only added to the tense atmosphere in the room. The unease I felt kept growing for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp.

‘You didn’t want to come with me, you didn’t want to sit next to me, and now you don’t even want a drink…’

His muttered words reached my ears without missing a single syllable. My throat tightened, and I wanted to adjust my collar, but all I could do was maintain a blank expression.

‘So, would you take it if I fed it to you?’

‘…’

I couldn’t answer because just imagining it made me feel sick. I had no memory of swallowing, only of almost vomiting. If I showed such weakness in front of him, I had a feeling it would end badly. Of course, if the money was good enough, I would have to endure it somehow.

‘How much?’

I thought he was asking how much it would cost to feed me, but Wang Wei kept the cigar in his mouth and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. Then, he extended his middle finger and mimicked inserting it into the circle.

‘How much to use your h0le?’

‘…Ah.’

It had happened before. Customers who couldn’t outright purchase would try to rent instead. In such cases, I would usually politely deflect by saying I needed to check with the boss about the pricing. I’m not sure what the boss’s responses were, but I had never actually ended up having to sell my body.

‘More expensive than the liquor over there?’

Before I could respond, Wang Wei gestured towards the liquor with his cigar. His mocking smile clearly conveyed the sentiment: as if someone like you could possibly be that expensive.

‘Of course not, right?’

‘…’

Wang Wei, apparently taking my silence as agreement, drew on his cigar with a satisfied expression. He coughed and blinked his eyes, already half out of his mind. After taking a few more drags, he casually moved the hand holding the cigar.

‘Come over and pour me the drink that more expensive than you.’

Until then, I had thought it was just his usual vulgar joke. Wang Wei didn’t seem to have any intention of paying, and was focused on smoking his cigar again.

As I approached to pour the liquor, he slowly opened his mouth, exhaling smoke.

‘I’ve probably made this offer to you more than five times now.’

Had it really been that many? I  hadn’t kept count, but it must have been around that number. He had shown signs of subtle displeasure after the third time.

‘Until now, I’ve let it slide because you’re pretty…’

His bloodshot gaze lingered heavily on my face. The cracking in his voice was as chilling as the thick smoke hanging in the air. The sickeningly sweet fragrance was almost dizzying.

‘But now it’s just pissing me off.’

With that, Wang Wei unceremoniously dropped his cigar into the glass of liquor. Sizzle, the sound of the cigarette extinguishing was followed by the dirty mix of ash and amber liquid. Just as I hesitated, wondering what the hell he was doing, my wrist was grabbed, and my vision turned upside down.

“Ugh, uh…stop…”

And now, I find myself pinned down on the table, Wang Wei’s hand crushing my shoulder as he begins to undress me. The shirt buttons had been ripped off long ago, and my struggling legs were held down by his weight.

“Damn, stop squirming so much… Is money the problem?”

Wang Wei muttered irritatedly, pulling a leather wallet from his pocket. As I opened my mouth, perhaps to say something, he shoved the wallet into my mouth before I could make a sound.

“Urgh!”

“I’ll give you the whole thing when we’re done, so just shut up and take it.”

Saliva dripped from the corners of my forcibly pried-open mouth. The distinct leather scent only further roiled my already nauseous stomach. The suffocating cigar smoke and Wang Wei’s pheromones had filled the room.

“No matter how I think about it, it doesn’t make sense for someone like you to be worth that much. So what am I supposed to do, huh?”

This wasn’t the first time I’d found myself in such a situation, and normally I would have easily brushed it off. But for some reason, my body refused to cooperate, my vision spinning and my stomach churning as if I were drugged.

“If you won’t come with me, you’d better be worth the high price.”

“Ugh…”

Damn, I must have gotten high on that cigar smoke. Or maybe his disgusting pheromones had messed with my nerves.

As his hand ventured lower, I desperately groped around the table, searching for anything I could use to fend him off. My palm was cut by jagged glass, but the pain was negligible. Anything I could grab, anything that might help me get rid of this man, would do.

“You little slvt. You even shaved everything off…”

I barely heard his words as he groped my lower body. In my blurry vision, I thought I glimpsed the 4HAE Group logo. The moment my fingers touched the hard glass, I grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck without hesitation and swung it at him.

“Aaaagh!”

Smash! The whiskey bottle shattered violently as it struck the side of the brute’s head. Wang Wei staggered, clutching his head with one hand while the other braced against the table. The spilled liquor was tinged with what appeared to be his blood.

Not stopping there, I drove the jagged edge of the broken bottle down onto the back of his hand with all my strength.

***

The last time I got into a fight with those groping bastards, the boss told me that if I had been just a bit cheaper, he would have sold me off right away. As long as I was still profitable, he’d let it slide, but the moment I started costing them, it would be over.

“You bastard!”

Slap! Slap! Slap!

The sharp sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed loudly in the deathly quiet of the counter area. The only sounds were the boss’s bellowing voice and the relentless slapping against my face.

“I treated you nice and called you pretty, and this is how you repay me? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

I lost count of how many times he slapped me. My head throbbed, and a metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. At first, I could feel the exact spots where I was cut, but now even the pain seemed to fade.

How long has it been since I’ve been hit like this?

When I was on the streets, I lived with injuries daily, but working at Ocean’s, those incidents had become rarer. Even when I fought with the guys I shared a room with, I was more likely to throw a punch than take one. But now, after all this time, I was reminded just how miserable getting hit can be.

“You think you’re high-class just because I sell you for a good price? Just because your face is halfway decent, you think you’re all that?”

Right after I swung the liquor bottle, Lingling had burst into the room. Wang Wei was immediately taken to the hospital, and before I could even change my clothes, the boss had grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the front desk. There, in front of everyone, I stood with my hands behind my back, taking slap after slap to the cheek.

“As if someone like you could be that expensive! Your cheap ass isn’t even worth a fraction of what that man’s body is worth!”

To be honest, I felt a sense of resignation the moment I saw the bewildered Lingling. I should have just endured it quietly, not caused any trouble.

I didn’t regret hitting Wang Wei. I was just annoyed that this situation had arisen, and that I’d lost out on the tips I could have earned today.