ATTEW – Chapter 2

“Living as a woman won’t bring you anything good. Even if your face is half-decent, all it does is draw bugs.”

“I know.”

“What do you know? You’re tiny.”

“I’ve heard that enough times to know.”

Nine-year-old Eunho looked down with indifferent eyes at the light brown hair falling in clumps around her feet. Her hair had only grown to about the length of a single finger joint.

It was the weekend. Hwajin had slept in late and woke up complaining about the cold. Startled by the shout, Eunho—who had been squatting in the corner of the tiny kitchen off the room, watching ants—jumped up and hurriedly changed the briquettes.

Sniffling, she entered the now-warm room. Hwa-jin, refreshed and in a good mood after her long sleep, beckoned with her finger. That was how Eun-ho ended up with her head shaved close again.

It happened nearly once every two months, so she didn’t think much of it. Only this time, her scalp hurt terribly.

“Good thing I got those clippers when Myungjin’s place moved out. Look—see? Not as crooked, right? Better than scissors, don’t you think?”

“Scissors are better.”

“Why?”

“It hurts.”

“How does it hurt?”

“It really hurts. Be gentle.”

With the cheap clippers’ dull blades, it felt like her hair was being torn out by the roots. Even so, Hwajin paid no heed to Eunho’s complaints and hummed to herself. She seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood today.

“Any rice left?”

“No.”

“Ramen?”

“None.”

“Eggs too?”

“Mm.”

“There’s nothing to eat in this damn place. I should go out later and buy some. Hey—why are your feet so black?”

“…….”

“Ugh, filthy. Go wash up.”

At Hwajin’s remark, Eunho wiggled her toes, streaked with grime. She spat on her index finger and rubbed gently around it; only that spot turned pale. Around it, black dirt rolled up like eraser shavings.

Eunho spread her small hand and folded her fingers one by one, counting how long it had been since she last washed.

“It’s only been a week.”

“Hey! You wash every day!”

“You said if I’m grimy, I look more like a boy—told me not to wash.”

“Feet get washed every day!”

“Okay.”

The moment she nodded, the clippers nicked the side of her head a bit too hard, making her small body flinch.

“What’s this? Why’s it like this here? What’s this bump?”

“I hit the doorframe earlier while dodging the lady from the shop—she was about to hit me.”

“What? Why was she going to hit you?”

“I got caught stealing bread.”

“What? Fuck!”

Hwajin tossed the clippers down onto the newspaper scattered with short hair and sprang up, fuming. The hair on the side of Eunho’s head wasn’t finished yet, but that didn’t matter to Hwajin now.

She ran her hands through her long, wavy hair, fluffing it up, and put on her coat while jerking her chin. It meant “lead the way.” Eunho reached out her small hand and grabbed the hem of Hwajin’s dress.

“Just… don’t go.”

“What do you mean, don’t go? You got hit and just stood there?”

“If I don’t stand there, then what—flip the place?”

“You flip it! You make a goddamn scene! What did you do wrong to get hit?”

“I did steal the bread… and I wasn’t hit—I dodged and then—”

“Same thing! That bitch—kids can eat a piece of bread. And she puts her hands on someone else’s kid? Where is there to hit a little kid? I raised you without hitting you even once!”

That much was true. Hwajin had raised Eunho without hitting her. Maybe she thought hitting counted as affection. When little Eunho cried, Hwajin covered her ears and went to sleep.

A heavy sleeper, Hwajin left Eunho mostly to the aunts’ hands rather than her own. From them, Eunho got food and learned how to hold back her tears. That was why Hwajin herself rarely disciplined her directly.

Eunho’s aunts dressed provocatively year-round and wore heavy makeup. They masked cigarette smoke with cheap perfume, cried by day, and laughed by night.

They were prostitutes from the red-light district in front of the U.S. military base. Eunho called them aunties. And Hwajin, too, sold her body there—a young prostitute with a child, pregnant at twenty-one and giving birth to Eunho that winter.

She didn’t know what possessed Hwajin not to get rid of her, or how she’d managed to carry her to term in that place. But……

[“You’re asking who her dad is? How the hell would I know? There has to be more than one asshole who came and bolted after dumping their load! What am I supposed to do if some fucker slipped the condom off behind my back without me knowing? Fuck—while I’m busy moaning oh my god for their sake, you think I can stop and check whether the condom’s still on?”]

[“Even if I caught him, what then? “You not condom, you fucking head!”—yelling that just makes them laugh among themselves. Fucking bastards, seriously. Hope they catch an STD and die.”]

[“You think I wanted to have her? By the time I found out I was pregnant, they said the baby was already grown. I went to the hospital to get rid of it. I went! Fuck…… there was this grandma selling fruit out front, and I wanted a melon so bad. You know me—I hate fruit that’s just sweet. But that melon—I wanted it even if I had to steal it. And then—fuck—I don’t know why, but I put my hand on my belly. That day, I came home with nothing but melons instead of hospital money. I’m a crazy bitch.”]

Eunho had heard Hwajin shout like that more than once when she was drunk, after Eunho was old enough to understand. So she only guessed that her father might have been one of the irresponsible Americans stationed at the base.

Despite being mixed-race, Eunho didn’t stand out much. Her features were just a bit more defined than most; her hair and eyes were a bit lighter. Few noticed the difference—she was small and always moving fast, easy to miss.

Two years ago, when the red-light district was demolished under a local government policy, Hwajin had been lucky enough to get a small compensation payout. It was the result of regularly servicing the pimp and laying on the flattery.

With that money, Hwajin took Eunho and moved to a fringe city in northern Gyeonggi. There, in a back alley of the newly formed red-light district known as Night Pass, she rented a small shop with a room attached and started a business.

Unlike before—when only U.S. soldiers came—anyone could come now. The shop sold contraceptives, dubious virility pills, cheap adult toys, cigarettes, and gum. In truth, the biggest seller was her body.

Now twenty-nine, Hwajin was pretty enough to have once dreamed of acting, with a good figure to match. Add to that her ripe, worldly air—and the fact she was a mother—and the local muscle who ran the district began to salivate.

Men who’d first come and gone under the pretense of buying cigarettes soon started slipping into the back room. Hwajin would feign resistance just enough to spice things up, and before long, the number of customers grew.

Of course, it was illegal. Red-light districts were illegal to begin with, but Hwajin’s place went further still—hidden in a blind spot of police crackdowns. And because she was the only one in a street full of debt-bound women selling their bodies who dared call herself “self-employed”, there were times the pimps came looking for trouble, eyes blazing.

When they did, Hwajin never backed down, raising her voice right back.

[“Hey, go run your businesses! Who’s stopping you? If I sell my body, who the fuck are you to stop me? I work my pussy raw, and it’s my pussy that hurts—who the hell are you to tell me what to do? I told you I don’t take random customers. I just helped the guard oppas blow off steam, got it?”]

Maybe that was why people called Hwajin’s unmarked shop the GuhyeongjipGuhyeongjip¹ —the “Hole House.” It could mean a hole-in-the-wall, but more often it was a crude, demeaning slang for a woman’s sex.

[“Best bang for your buck—nothing beats the hole shop. Twenty thousand won per shot.”]

[“No idea where she learned it, but her technique’s something else. Fuck—last time I went to bust one and ended up busting two.”]

[“A bitch who popped out a kid after fucking this one and that one still makes you pay extra for condoms. Says she can’t trust anything not sold in her shop—then jacks the price. Careful as hell about birth control. The health clinic ought to give her a medal.”]

[“She just doesn’t want to give birth twice with a life like hers. Guess the bitch isn’t completely brain-dead.”]

As the hulking men snickered and spoke loudly enough for all to hear in front of the shop, Hwajin took it as praise and spread her legs. Each time, she waved a hand at Eunho—telling her to leave.

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