PAWNS [squid game]

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Britney was able to free herself after nearly thirty minutes of rubbing the rope's knot against the pavement.

She isn't sure if the gravel sawed the rope enough or if her bleeding hands made it slick enough to get out of.

She ran around in circles until the sun came up and an officer found her.

Through the blubbering mess and both getting lost in translation, the officer ushered her to the nearest station.

Things only got more hectic from there, though.

--

068 wasn't totally awful, Jiah decides.

Her name was Aheum and she was only a couple years younger than Jiah. Their shared night in a cheap spa made for a great time to share how they got started in the red-light districts.

Aheum was from a lower-class family. Her parents divorced when she was young and her mother took all her assets and fled to Singapore. Her dad worked at his father's tofu shop in the deep country where they got maybe five customers a day.

When her grandfather passed, the father and daughter got a cruel awakening that he was in debt from the tofu shop and a secret gambling addiction. As the bank took the tofu shop, the debt piled on.

Less than a year ago, Aheum's father committed suicide. Like a cursed heirloom, the crushing debt fell onto Aheum's shoulders.

The biggest difference between Jiah and Aheum was that Aheum's boss was the polar opposite of Jiah's.

Though he recruited her, he still acted as a nonpaying customer and left Aheum disgusted with herself.

He took the largest portion of sales she brought in. He didn't even fund her housing. She had just gotten off the streets less than a month ago. But, once the month was up, she was right back on the streets because she didn't have enough to keep a roof over her head.

Jiah hated it. Her boss was like family. The other girls were like family. Without hesitation, Jiah stormed Abeum over to the Pyeongtaek district, ready to tell Boss that they had a new member of their found family.

Once they arrived, it was clear someone else had got there first.

"This doesn't seem right.." Aheum mutters.

Jiah's eyes cascade over the shattered glass and broken furniture. Graffiti adorned the shards of glass left and the walls inside.

"It's not," Jiah responds, running inside.

Aheum follows behind her. "Be careful! You don't know who did this!"

Tears built in Jiah's eyes as glass crunches under her shoes. There were awful, derogatory names spread out inside in black and red paint. The table the girls sat at and talked for hours on end was smashed in half.

"There's the missing piece."

Jiah jumps, fists up as she turns to face the new voice.

A cop.

A cop Jiah knew all too well.

Officer Junho.

"Junho, what the fuck!?" she screams, stomping over to him.

Jiah and Junho had a long history.

He was the officer that arrested Jiah at the time she gave herself for her friends.

And an additional four arrests over the years.

Granted, one of those didn't have to do with prostitution at all. Jiah had been out after one of the arrests and had gotten drunk with one of the other girls. In her drunken rage and freedom from jail, she smashed the window to his car.