Chapter 344.
<strong>Chapter 344. At a Motel with a Prostitute in the Room Next Door: A Chat with the Prostitute in the Morning. (4/8)</strong>
<span style="font-weight:400">Right at that moment, the washing machine clicked off.
<span style="font-weight:400">I headed over to the washing machine and checked the sheet. I held it up and confirmed the bloodstain on it waspletely gone. The bleach had worked wonders. I tossed it in the dryer and turned it on.
<span style="font-weight:400">After that, I returned to cleaning up what was left in her room. Twenty minutester, I was finished. There were about fifty minutes left on the dryer. I looked at the prostitute on the bed but she wasn’t moving. When I approached the bed on the side she was facing, her eyes were shut and she was breathing steadily. She’d fallen asleep.
<span style="font-weight:400">Without anyone to talk to I decided to find something else to do. The first ce I checked was the fridge. I was convinced there would be a bunch of stale stuff to throw out. I’de across a lot of stic bags from delivered food buried among all the trash inside her room. There was bound to be more hidden away in here with her track record so far.
<span style="font-weight:400">When I opened the fridge, I felt a strange sort of nostalgia looking at it. The only thing in it were bottles of beer. There wasn’t any food. Not too long ago I had a fridge quite simr if you just reced the bottles of beer with cans of coke.
<span style="font-weight:400">I opened the freezer next, but it waspletely barren. She didn’t even use it. Come on, you could have at least hidden a decapitated head in here or something if you’re not using it for any frozen food.
<span style="font-weight:400">I was naturally disappointed in theck of an interesting plot twist. She wasn’t some sort of psycho killer on the run keeping her dead boyfriend''s head with her hidden in the freezer. What a letdown.
<span style="font-weight:400">Well, there was nothing for me to do here.
<span style="font-weight:400">Since I have nothing else to do while I wait, I guess I could get a few things to make something to eat for me and Yuna before we head out. While I’m at it I could make something for her.
<span style="font-weight:400">When I say make something, I mean eggs and toast. That was the most I was willing to cook. I was no master of cooking like Rosa, but I was at leastpetent enough to make a pretty good egg. My mother had taught me when I was young how to cook some things, I just never had the time or energy to cook for myself.
<span style="font-weight:400">I exited the room with the full garbage bags in hand and disposed of them in arge dumpster. I spent a half-hour round trip using my motorcycle to go to the store, but what I needed, and headed back to the prostitute’s room.
<span style="font-weight:400">When I entered the room again, she was still asleep.
<span style="font-weight:400">I headed over to the kitchen to prepare her meal. It cost about $6 for everything. Eggs at $3, bread for $2, and a roll of foil for $1.
<span style="font-weight:400">I got a cup of water from a fast food restaurant for free then dumped the water out so I could use the cup to crack and mix the eggs. They also had free stic forks and knives which I could use to turn the egg when it was cooking. As long as I was quick and careful about it, it wouldn’t melt from the heat. I also got a few small packets of salt, butter, and olive oil for free there as well.
<span style="font-weight:400">Thankfully, she at least had a metal pot to boil water in so I was able to use that to cook the egg in.
<span style="font-weight:400">She better be grateful for all the energy I wasted to get everything just to cook this egg. But anyway, consider your portion my thank you for your soul and the discovery I made thanks to your random suggestion.
<span style="font-weight:400">With this, we’ll be even. As for giving you a second chance at life, only you can grab hold of that opportunity by standing back up on your feet with your own strength. If you’ve given up before you’ve put everything you have into it, you’ll never acquire that second chance at life you so secretly desire.
<span style="font-weight:400">It only took ten minutes to finish cooking everything. As for how I toasted the bread, that was what the foil was for. I’d ced the bread on a sheet of foil in the oven since there wasn’t a toaster.
<span style="font-weight:400">I didn’t have any tes, so I used a sheet of foil in ce of tes. Since we were in the ghetto, it was only fitting to implement an improvised ghetto solution like this.
<span style="font-weight:400">I walked over to the sleeping prostitute''s side with her portion inside a sheet of foil. I nudged her on the shoulder to rouse her from her slumber.
<span style="font-weight:400">Her eyes cracked open a bit before her nose twitched and she said, “What is it? Something... smells good…”
<span style="font-weight:400">Shezily sat up and rubbed her eyes.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Here, something to eat. Consider it my thanks for your soul.” I ced the sheet of foil down on the bed with the fried eggs and toast on top of it.
<span style="font-weight:400">“You… cooked this yourself… for me?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“With what? There shouldn’t be anything here to cook with.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Altogether it cost $6 to prepare. I went out and bought the ingredients while you were asleep. I got a bunch of things for free from a fast-food restaurant.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Only $6? My soul is only worth that much, huh?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What do you mean only $6? That’s a whole $6. I value the money I’ve worked my ass for quite a lot. Even squeezing a single penny out of me is considered a miraculous feat, an aplishment to be proud of for the rest of your life. You should hold your head up high knowing that you got any money out of me at all. Not even when you offered your body were you able to get any money out of me. If you take a look at the ratio here, your body got $0 when your soul got $6 from me. Let’s say I spent a penny for your body, it would mean your soul would be worth six hundred times your body. So by that same logic, since I spent nothing on your body, doesn’t that actually mean your soul is priceless to me since you’re dividing by zero in the denominator?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What the heck is with that convoluted analysis? There’s no way my soul is worth that much.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well, too bad for you, value is determined by the one who is in possession. To you it was worthless, but to someone else, it may be priceless. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’re saying you’d… treasure my soul?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Sure.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“More than my body?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, I don’t need your body.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“The soul of some worthless, useless prostitute who can’t do anything like me, you’re really saying you’d treasure my soul?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Then… if that’s the case… please... take care of it for me.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Sure. Just remember, if you ever want it back you can burn the contract.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I doubt I’d ever want it back. It isn’t worth anything to me at all. It never will be. But if it’s worth something to you, I’m fine if you keep it forever.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well, like I said, if you ever change your mind, just burn it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Mmm.” She nodded and picked up the piece of toast from on top of the foil and ripped off a quarter. She tore off a piece from the egg, wrapped the toast around it, and stuffed it into her mouth. The second she closed her mouth, her body froze in ce.
<span style="font-weight:400">Two streaks of tears flowed out the corner of her eyes. She sniffed once. It didn’t seem she’d noticed her own reaction yet.
<span style="font-weight:400">Sticking around felt awkward so I took a step back and said, “I’ve got to deliver a portion to someone else. I’ll be right back.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I made a run for the exit. I opened the door and shut it closed behind me. Standing directly outside the door with my back to it, I could still hear her from inside.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Tears? When was thest time I’ve seen these? About three years ago? Why am I crying now all of a sudden?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What the... heck? They won’t... stop... no matter... how many times... I wipe them away.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She was sniffling between every pause in her words. When she stopped talking, the only thing that could be heard was her sniffling. She wasn’t bawling but judging by how much she was sniffling, she was definitely crying without stop.
<span style="font-weight:400">She didn’t say anything after that. A lone prostitute simply cried quietly, all by herself, alone, inside her room where nobody else would see her.