I knew I was good.

Not just good. I was exceptional.

When you walked through the murky, dimly lit hallway in the evenings, with the dark wooden doors with golden doorknobs, its shabbiness hidden between the pretence luxury of gold paint and cheap red velvet, there wouldn't be an hour when I was at work, and you wouldn't be able to hear me.

But not always.

Some customers required me to be silent. They never had to tell me; at twenty-six, I had enough experience that I could read the room within the first five minutes, as the cheap red wine was poured into simple IKEA wine glasses to trick our customers into believing we offered services more luxurious than what other bordellos could offer, services that seemed far more luxurious than they actually were. In reality, they were only a way to cocoon them into a false sense of safety, that they did nothing wrong, so they wouldn't flee before my services were paid for and would put a mist around the whole thing thick enough for them to only remember the pleasure, and not the guilt, and so come back, giving the owners (and me) more money. I noticed which ones wanted me silent, and so for them, silent I remained. It wasn't hard. The sounds that I usually emitted me were always fake, anyway.

But often if you walked past my door, which was the one furthest and to the left, you would hear moans in time with each thrust, sometimes followed by a coarser grunt behind me, the scraping of the legs of the wooden bed on the uneven wooden floorboards. The moans would be soft at first, but they would increase in intensity until they turned into words that were pleasant to the ear, until the man behind me broke down in an orgasm.

The moans belonged to me.

The men who came were all different. Usually, it was middle-aged men in completely normal marriages that had painfully normal family lives, often CEO jobs and villas, but who were curious about men or even secretly gay. Some were incels who saw no other way of having sex, having saved up their money for years to afford me because I was expensive. Some were handsome young men, sometimes younger than me. I almost enjoyed those times. They were university students or had cafe jobs, sometimes even model contracts and I could tell. I knew all of this because they told me afterwards. The CEO's usually broke down crying, making me feel tired and annoyed, but I always listened intently to increase the chances of them coming back and so give me more money. Some of the model boys sometimes just stayed, hands beneath their heads, staring up in the ceiling and telling me their life's story.

Not that I ever asked.

I hadn't chosen to become a sex worker. I have no idea how it happened. I grew up in this place, and my earliest memories were of me running through the corridors, past the forbidden doors, innocently unaware of what was going on behind them. I had never been shown love or affection growing up, and only realised my upbringing was seriously lacking from the books I stole from the library and the occasional films I watched by sneaking out to the cinema. But honestly, I didn't care. I had never known anything else, and how could you miss something you hadn't know you were lacking while it was happening? The owner had taken main responsibility of me, which was none at all. He beat me up for things I hadn't done every week, once so badly I'd lost half of my front tooth. It was still half, as was my life, but I never stopped to consider how wrong it was. He beat me up because one day because a book in his bookshelf in his office was in the wrong place, or someone had taken one of his expensive pralines. It was never me. I was way more cunning than that. The food I stole remained unnoticed, the books I read seemed untouched. He was too stupid and caught up in his own world of money and sex to notice the mischiefs of someone smart like me.

I had been home-schooled by a teacher, Mr Oliver, first name unknown, but that had come to an abrupt halt the year I turned eighteen. I had been very disappointed, devastated, even, not only because I had excelled at each subject and had learned everything ranging from university level maths to two new languages (I was fluent in French and Italian apart from English), but also because I really liked him. He was twenty-five when I was six and had started my lessons, and I had thought he was ancient then. When we quit, he was thirty-seven, with dull, half-long brown hair, a beige-and-olive-checked suit that was too large for him, and a stubble. He was the kindest man I knew, such a contrast from the owner. There was never anything he taught me I never understood, but if there had been, I was certain he would be endlessly patient.

"Izuna", he'd said one day during geography class on my sixteenth birthday. I honestly didn't know when my birthday was, only that I would turn sixteen that year, but had decided on 22nd of February for myself. Nobody knew. "Izuna." I looked up at him. He cleared his throat, his thin moustache wobbling a little, as it always did when he was uncomfortable, usually when he was teaching biology. He had his hands clasped in front of him, not looking at me. "I've taught many students. I've home-schooled many children from rich families, destined to become doctors, or engineers, or things greater still. I've taught at the finest elementary schools. But you..." he looked up at me carefully underneath his thin fringe. "You're the best student I've ever had." I just stared. "I mean it. There's nothing you don't grasp. There's nothing you can't do. Please..." He reached out his hand. I didn't pull away, but he seemed to think better of it, let his hand retract back again. I was disappointed. "Please make sure to educate yourself and leave this place."

At sixteen, I still didn't know what this place was all about. I rarely went out. I didn't see others my age. I didn't do any activities I later learned was normal for teenagers to engage in. I just didn't know.

But I found out soon enough after my sixteenth birthday.

I was a late bloomer, as the owner would make sure to tell me.

"Good morning. Hit puberty yet?"

He apparently found this indescribably funny, because he would smack his thigh and guffaw. I remained silent over my bowl of cornflakes, milk and strawberry jam that I was eating in the kitchen. He beat me up so I got a black eye because I wasn't laughing. I wasn't disobedient.

I just didn't understand I was supposed to laugh.

But at sixteen, I started to bloom. My voice deepened, softened out with hints of honey. My rounded shapes became sharper, more angular, my limbs elongated, my shoulders became broader. Some things remained the same; I still had a slender frame, my hair in a short cut but still longish, my eyes so deeply brown they were almost black.

"Ahh, perfect", the owner said one morning. "Perfect."

His irises turned into dollar signs and I still didn't understand why.

But I did soon enough. Because with that physical bloom came also something else entirely. I could only describe it as a hunger that no amount of food in the world could satisfy. Rather, the food needed to be different than that you put in your mouth. I realised what it was once when I was in the shower and turned the temperature up too hot for my skin to handle. I burned myself, and that caused me to lean my head back and moan. My hand snaked down to my length, rock-hard, released it from the pain of the skin in the way. A fountain poured from it, indiscernible from the hot water pouring down my body. I pressed my chest against the glass of the shower, exhausted, drool running from my chin. During my midnight strolls in the corridors, I started noticing the moans from the closed dark wooden doors. For some reason, it made my hunger skyrocket to the heavens, and I had to take a shower again. And again.

"You're washing wastefully these days", the owner remarked before beating me up.

I didn't care, but kept showering.

And I knew I had to open one of the doors.

My teacher noticed I was astray during a lecture.

"What's wrong? You seem deep in thought." His question was kind.

"Mister. Behind those doors... People are having sex, aren't they?" I asked. At the time, I had no idea that that was his parent for educating me. 

He was taken aback. "Well- I don't know what to- Izuna, that's- Well, yes." He nodded. "Yes, people are having sex."

I looked at him, one eyebrow raised under the fringe of my chopped hair, cut in a short shape but long enough for it to go past my ears. I cut it myself, and had grown a knack for it.

"Is that why you go through one of the doors every time after our lessons?"

He choked on his saliva.

"I thought sex was for making children? That's what you taught me in biology."

"Well..." He was uneasy, I could tell. His moustache flickered so much, I was afraid he would take off and fly away. "There's also other purposes. Like strengthening the bond between people who love each other."

"Do you love the people that are behind those doors?" I asked, confused.

He shook his head. "No. Sorry, no. I mean, there are other purposes as well. Like pleasure."

Out lecture in blossoms and bees was short, but I believe that was when I began to understand.

What I didn't understand was that I was being groomed to enter that world of giving pleasure. 

The year I turned eighteen passed. Mr Oliver didn't tell me it was our last lesson together. He just disappeared from my life.

The year I turned eighteen, I exited the world of school, and entered the world of something way, way too adult for me.