Dad's Coal Pit Hid a Dungeon, Now Guilds Pay Me to Enter novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: Wages

Seok-hyun put the fortieth envelope into the fortieth hand at ten past five on Tuesday morning.

The line outside the lamp house had not got any shorter.

It ran out of the door and down the lane in the dark, men and women in work coats stamping on the gravel.

Every one of them had come for a job that was already full.

He had promised the council forty by Christmas.

He had hired them over the last week from the shelves of the town, one at a time, on Sun-ja's lists.

They were the sons and daughters of the Nine, the bus drivers' relatives, two nurses' aides and a retired welder.

One of them was the boy who had filmed the shaft spitting out raiders from his bicycle.

The boy was eighteen now, he said, and had been since October.

Each of them held a brass tag from his hand.

Each of them had signed the Association's rider at the counter in front of Da-hae.

The warden from the Association's new office in the lamp house had watched.

The first envelope held a hundred and fifty thousand won in notes for a day on the lane.

None of the forty had seen cash with their name on it in thirty-five years.

The woman with the red mitten on her bag took hers at the counter and counted it twice, standing.

He had taught the town to count that way a fortnight ago.

Then she folded the bills into the inside pocket of her coat and put her hand over the pocket.

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