Set days after dictator Chun Doo-hwan declares free elections, poor men at the bottom of society spend their nights at a comic book shop run by the beautiful woman they know as Madam. Three of these men begin working at the shop. Dong-pal is a gangster on the run from a rival gang; Ki-young is a labor activist wanted by the police, and Eugene is a young writer whose work has been deemed subversive. This is the story of how regular people who dream only of a happy life are inadvertently caught up in the repressive society of the 1980s.