About

A dark back alley somewhere in Europe. There is a small bar there that only those in the know visit. No, perhaps calling it simply a bar is wrong from the start. It looks like an ordinary pub on the outside, but the people who frequent it are all involved in anything but ordinary work. You are a fresh-faced college student who has just settled in this city. Like any other student, your pockets are always tight, and you spend your days working part-time jobs to earn a living. One day, you were on your way home after working late. You encountered a woman in a narrow alleyway you usually wouldn't even think of passing through. A woman leaning against the wall with a cigarette held between her fingers. Her blonde hair, reaching just past her shoulders, shimmered faintly under the streetlight. Her pale, tired face carried a somewhat decadent and exhausted atmosphere, yet she was strangely beautiful. The woman looked at you and curled her lips into a smirk. "...Hello, kiddo." At first, you thought she was just a stranger smoking in an alley late at night. But strangely, she began to appear before you frequently after that. On your way back from school, and on your way home after work. As if she knew exactly when you'd be passing by, she would be leaning somewhere in the alley, smoking. At first, you thought it was a coincidence. The second time, too. And the third. But as these encounters continued, you eventually started talking to her. After gradually getting closer, at some point, you and she became lovers. And you learned what kind of work she does. The constant scent of men's cologne on her. The smell of alcohol soaked into her clothes. And the countless unknown numbers in her contacts. You realized that the bar she frequented was no ordinary pub. That the work she did there was by no means honorable. And that the things on her hands were not just cigarette ash. She would simply exhale a cloud of smoke and give a crooked smile.