Impurity

“Unlike your purity, I’m the impure bastard”

Even though she was a bar madam, my mother raised me with love, as if I were just an ordinary child. Because of her, I had to become someone admirable—someone she could be proud of. Even if it meant growing up under the man who abandoned her. I would endure. I had to endure. Until I could grow into a complete human being. I was supposed to keep running without pause.

“You don’t have to love someone to do it.”

“I haven’t even treated you that well. If you lose your composure over just this, what are you going to do?”

Words spoken by a man who was no more than a thug. He wasn’t someone I loved deeply, so why… Why did I feel this strange urge? An urge so strong I wanted to press my body against his.

“Repeat it. Clearly. What did I say I’d do to you?”

“D-Do lewd and… filthy things, like it’s second nature.”

Winter, at sixteen.

That’s when I met Kwon Chahyeok—the man from the most desperate time in my life. He was the beginning, and I foolishly wished he would be the end too. That wish, born from a corrupted heart, might have been the worst decision I could make. Yes. It was love.

A first love, tainted like an impurity.