Chapter 1: Scales, Brand Names, and Betrayed Offerings

Prologue

In a narrow alley in Shinjuku, hidden behind the glitter of neon, there once lived a woman who had been called legendary. By the time she reached old age, she was living in poverty, spending her days like a machine at a convenience store checkout. And yet, whenever she stepped out of her leaking apartment, she always wore the brightest crimson lipstick and a Chanel suit—frayed at the seams, but still pressed with unyielding care.

The young men at the entrance of the alley whispered insults behind her back, calling her an old whore trapped in a dream of the past. Only after she died alone did people discover the truth among her belongings: many of the same people who had sneered at her had once taken her money, survived on her loans, or clung to her help when their own lives were collapsing.

This city likes to dress itself in pale morality. It repeats, with a smug little smile, that the poor are virtuous and the rich are wicked. But poverty is not always misfortune. Often, it is the result of a life spent envying other people’s success while refusing to work one’s own soil. They hide beneath the costume of ordinariness and use morality as a weapon to judge those who are already drowning, all to conceal their own fear and incompetence.

In truth, this city has always lived by a simpler rule: it laughs at the poor, but not at the whore.

At the very least, the prostitute spends her own life without pretense. She sinks into filth with her body and soul exposed, bartering both for the smallest chance to survive. Compared with the so-called pure poor—those who settle for mediocrity, complain about society, and yet never shed a single drop of sweat—these women, who sell smiles in the dark, possess a terrifying honesty toward life.

Chapter 1

“Dandruff Monster!”

Even now, twelve years later, that mocking cry still returned to Moe’s dreams with merciless precision.

In third grade, she had suffered from severe seborrheic dermatitis. Fine white flakes clung to the shoulders of her deep-blue school uniform like a layer of cheap scales that would never come off. The boys would recoil from her, laughing as they scattered, as if she were something contagious and vile. That cruelty—being cast out by the whole world—etched itself deep into the young Moe’s heart.

If you looked pathetic enough, even your kindness would be ugly.

That was the lesson she learned.

Now, at twenty, Moe lived in a six-tatami apartment in Adachi Ward. Though the illness had long since passed, she still scrubbed her hairline every morning with obsessive care until her scalp burned red. Her face was plain in the most forgettable way, the sort of face that disappeared the moment it entered a crowd. And because she knew this better than anyone, she had become almost vicious about her appearance.

‘So long as I look decent, no one will ever call me a monster again.’

She whispered it to the mottled mirror as she spread a third layer of foundation across her skin.

Once, she had been the pride of an elite high school. That name had been her armor. But her family’s poverty had split her future in two, snapping her university dream cleanly in half. To compete for respectable work as a bank clerk, she survived on a single discounted rice ball for all three meals, saving every yen for a fake-brand suit bought from a roadside stall.

The fabric scratched at her skin. It carried the faint, stubborn smell of mold—the unmistakable odor of secondhand things.

Staring at her own distressed reflection, bitterness rose in her chest.

She did not dream of luxury. She did not ask for jewels or a life of ease. All she wanted was to walk into a department store one day and buy a new dress at full price. A dress that had never been worn by anyone else. A dress that smelled like clean fabric and belonged to the world of people who were ordinary in the right way.

As evening settled over the city, Moe once again walked the neon edge of Kabukichō in her awkward little armor.

That was when a woman stopped her and pressed a gold-embossed business card into her hand.

Ginza Club • Night Butterfly.

“There’s a hunger in your eyes,” the woman said, her voice calm and sharp at once. “A hunger to rise no matter what it costs. That’s worth more than beauty.”

Moe’s pupils trembled as she accepted the card.

For one brief instant, her pride as an elite-school girl was struck hard enough to sting. I’m from a prestigious school. Even if I couldn’t go to university, I don’t need to sink into hostess work.

That was what she screamed inside herself.

But she did not say it aloud.

She only watched the woman disappear into the lingering haze of cigarette smoke, while her fingers tightened around the card burning against her palm.

Back in her cramped apartment, Moe opened her old laptop, the machine humming faintly with age. Her current work was as an academic ghostwriter, drafting a thesis on the History of English Literature for a mediocre professor.

She poured all her hope into the document, her fingers racing over the keys as she silently prayed:

If the professor is satisfied, maybe he’ll give me more work. Maybe he’ll even recommend me back into the academic world.

“Nothing is as honest as money,” she murmured, staring at the screen.

Then a memory, long buried, rose in her mind like tidewater returning to a shore.

It was fifth grade. Moe had won a county reading competition with her unusual literary talent and received prize money.

Before that, everyone called her the Dandruff Monster. Ugly Thief. Names thrown at her like stones.

Wanting to wash away that stain, she had not bought the new shoes she desperately wanted. Instead, she spent all the prize money treating her classmates to a feast of monjayaki. She thought that if she were generous enough—if she proved she had value—they would finally accept her.

That night, everyone came.

They ate heartily and laughed, wasting the money she had earned through countless nights of reading and writing. Moe sat in a corner and watched their smiling faces, tasting for the first time an illusion called happiness.

But the next day came.

When she gathered her courage and stepped toward the group of giggling classmates, the lead girl drew back as though Moe carried filth on her skin.

With a cold sneer, the girl said, “Hey, Dandruff Monster. You think treating us to a meal means we’ll actually play with someone like you? Disgusting.”

The air around them burst into laughter, the same old laughter rolling over her like a wave.

Standing there in the middle of the playground, smelling yesterday’s food still faintly on their clothes, Moe understood something at last.

Cheap generosity does not buy dignity.

The blue light of the monitor fell across her face as she kept writing, weighing each word carefully, trying to use her talent to knock on the tightly sealed door of a respectable life. She believed that once the professor read her manuscript, everything would begin to change.