The stout, well-built owner, who gave off a faint smell of herbal medicine, spoke in a low, honeyed voice that didn’t match his appearance at all.
“What’s this~ Your name’s Haegil, so I was kinda hoping for a pretty boy, but when you walked in I genuinely thought a squid had learned to walk upright.”
“…….”
That my looks were shit was something I’d heard so often since childhood my ears practically had scabs from it. So even if the owner spat phlegm right in my face, as long as he gave me work and paid me properly, it made no difference to me.
“Why aren’t you reacting? No fun at all.”
When I showed no real reaction, the owner clicked his tongue, then suddenly looked at me with a sly glint in his eye. Then, out of nowhere, he smacked my chest with his palm hard enough to make a slap sound.
“Oh my? Have you been working out? Look at these firm pecs and that ass!”
With that, he started openly groping my chest and ass like they belonged to him. After a stream of admiring noises, the owner suddenly covered my face with his palm.
“Hmm… How about it, want to try being an escort?”
“I’m here for the mascot costume job.”
“Your voice is perfect for it too!! You know ‘King of Mask Singer,’ right?”
“…?”
“You don’t know it? It’s that famous thing these days — singing while wearing a mask!”
I’d never heard of it. Which made sense, since I had no memory of ever watching television.
“You really don’t know it? My god, were you living at the bottom of the ocean or something?”
“…….”
“See that guy over there?”
The owner suddenly pointed somewhere. There stood a man wearing a rabbit mask, dressed in clothes clinging so tightly his physique was laid bare. An escort with an obviously slender, model-like build at a glance.
The owner lowered his voice and said,
“That one used to be a real eyesore, honestly, but I thought his body was too good to waste, so I put a mask on him, and bam — instant hit. Lately he gets some flak for being a ‘premature ejaculator’ or whatever because of the rabbit mask, but back in his day, he was seriously popular. So? Want to try having a hit of your own?”
I glanced at the clock. I had to be at my charcoal-grill restaurant job in thirty minutes, so if I’d failed the interview, there was no point wasting more time. Before standing up to leave, I asked one last thing.
“Did I fail?”
“Hm?”
Judging by his expression, I figured I didn’t need to hear an actual answer, so I went to stand up. I had no particular prejudice against the escort job, but the hours didn’t work for me. Being an escort meant being tied to this place for eight hours to earn a wage, and working three other part-time jobs in that same span paid better than that wage ever would.
The moment I showed signs of standing, the owner latched onto me like his life depended on it.
And said,
“Fine! Do the mascot job! Just do it!”
At his words, I sat back down.
Watching me, the owner let out a blatant sigh. Then, pressing at his temples as if a headache were coming on, he said,
“But there’s a condition. I’ll pay you more per hour than the others, but no running off before the contract’s up. If you can’t take it, you switch to working as an escort here instead. Deal?”
It was a transparently self-serving offer. The contract term was one year. With the higher hourly pay he was offering, there wasn’t much reason not to take it. I’d lived breathing in the stink of a sewer — what was a little rot compared to that? There was no other early-morning job with hours this good, so I agreed on the spot.
And then, a year passed. Every time the owner saw me, he’d shoot me a look and call me “the stubborn squid.” With the renewal period approaching, I had to decide whether to extend the contract or quit. Since I hadn’t managed to find a better part-time job in the meantime, I was leaning more toward renewing.
Even while turning all that over in my head, I kept diligently handing out flyers.
Since the mascot costume wasn’t exactly the kind of look that won people over, my stack of flyers thinned out more slowly than at other shops. Still, I couldn’t just hand them to every man who happened to walk by.
Beyond just the risk of being stopped right at the entrance, it was also a matter of efficiency.
Being a ppikki required more caution than people might think. Handing out flyers, you’d inevitably run into one or two people who overreacted, demanding to know why they were being handed promotional material for a gay bar. Dealing with people like that was honestly worse than getting kicked in the ass by ten different drunk passersby.
In the beginning, not knowing any better, I’d been cursed out and even physically assaulted while handing out flyers, badly enough that the police showed up. I lost time over it, and on top of that, I got fired from my next job at the charcoal-grill restaurant. Thankfully, the bar owner introduced me to the sauna job, which I’ve kept ever since.
To avoid repeating the same mistake, I made sure not to hand flyers to anyone who clearly had a partner with them, or who was moving in a group. Same went for drunk passersby. I also filtered out anyone who looked too old, or who had a temper written all over their face.
Today, there seemed to be more people out on the street than usual. Even after filtering out about half of them, I’d run through every flyer I’d brought. I had to decide whether to go grab more or just wrap up for the night. I glanced at the clock.
2:45.
Better wrap it up.
It seemed like a good point to call it. As if on cue, it had started raining. The inside of the mascot head was already a rotten mess of spit and sweat — no need to add rain on top of that.
I went in through the staff-only back door. On the way in, I bumped into someone. The person had come barreling into me one-sidedly, but they bolted right back out the door without so much as a word, as if running from something.
Using the staff-only back entrance meant they had to be an escort, and it struck me as a little strange that an escort would be rushing out like that, looking chased, at this hour — but I didn’t think much of it.
Stepping inside, sticky, syrupy music greeted me first, drifting from somewhere far off. Whoever had gone out had left the back door to the main hall wide open behind them, so they must have been in quite a hurry.
It made sense that the street had been unusually packed tonight — sure enough, the hall inside was packed too. Once I shut the open door, the sound vanished completely.
West Hollywood took up an entire four-story building, which made it large for a bar. With over fifty escorts on staff, it ran more like a mid-sized company than a bar.
The first floor was the natural main bar, and from the second floor up, things escalated to an unusual degree. So-called nude strip shows were child’s play here. Everything from simulated sex acts to themed rooms designed to satisfy every conceivable customer need. The themed rooms in particular were redecorated by season, and the popular ones couldn’t even be entered without a reservation. On top of that, there was the fourth-floor room reserved for VIP clients only.
The bar’s reputation for being selective about its clientele came partly from how unusual its VIP membership standards were. Run as a strictly private membership system, it only admitted people after thoroughly verifying their identity, age, assets, criminal record, personal inclinations, social influence, and even their public image.
No matter how much money someone had, a criminal record meant no entry to the VIP room. No matter how high someone’s status, a trashy public image got them filtered out just the same. Even then, they weren’t simply thrown out outright. They’d be offered status as a “preferred customer,” one tier below VIP, free to use every room except the fourth floor. But ordinary troublemakers were rarely satisfied with that level of service. They tended to get even more furious at being denied true VIP status.
The worse ones would threaten retaliation against the bar itself, but neither the owner nor any of the escorts ever so much as blinked at threats like that. No one knew exactly what kind of connections the owner had, but the same men who’d sworn up and down to bring the place crashing down would vanish without a trace, hair and all, by the very next day.
The escorts joked about it sometimes, half-seriously wondering if the owner had buried someone somewhere, but no one ever knew the truth.
Better not to know, probably.
Instinct was telling me as much. That it was wiser not to speculate at all about whatever went on in this place.
None of which had anything to do with a part-time worker who showed up only from 1 to 3 a.m. and then vanished.
I pulled off the mascot head, which felt like it had been steeped in slime. The stench was familiar enough by now that I barely noticed it. But if I let it sit on me unwashed like this, the smell would soak into my skin and stay, and the sauna owner would ask if I’d taken a bath in sewage.
Getting rid of the stink was all about timing. I could technically wash up at my sauna job, but since it took a full hour just to get there, I couldn’t head out like this — so I always used the staff shower at West Hollywood instead.
I peeled the damp, clinging shirt off my body and was about to head into the shower when my phone rang. The bar owner always asked, every time he saw my discontinued old clamshell phone, whether I was some kind of caveman.
Anyway, the call was from the sauna owner.
“Yes, boss.”
— Haegil, you’re not on your way here already, are you? I forgot to call you earlier today — a pipe burst this afternoon, so we’re closed today. Since we were already planning that remodel, we’re just doing it all together now, so you probably won’t need to come in for about a week.
“Ah…”
— I’ll call you once the work’s done. Get some good rest while you can.
“Yes, understood.”
The call ended, and with this unexpected news, my movements toward the shower slowed down. My next job wasn’t for another five hours, leaving me with a stretch of dead time I had no idea what to do with.
That’s when I spotted the rotting mascot head.
Might as well wash this thing.
I’d never had the time to even think about cleaning it before now, so this worked out well.
I picked up the sticky, foul-smelling mascot head and headed for the shower. But then—
Click, click.
No matter how I turned the handle, the door wouldn’t open.
Why’s this locked?
Normally, the escorts used the bathrooms attached to their rooms.
This was called a “shower room,” but really, it was just a storage closet with nothing more than a cleaning sink hooked up to a rubber hose.
Something felt off, but on the off chance, I knocked on the door. No sound came from inside at all. Figuring I’d need to get a spare key, I called the owner. But all I got was ringing.
“…Not picking up.”
He usually didn’t answer during business hours, but tonight, maybe because of how packed it was, the ringing just kept going on and on with no sign of him picking up.
