Chapter 87
Chapter 87
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 87
Chapter Title: All That's Left Is Earning Money (1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A room adorned everywhere with dazzling gold.
The ceiling was filled with brightly glowing lotus lanterns, bathing the space in even more splendor and brilliance.
One wall was densely packed with paintings and statues of various gods, and in front of them, lit candelabras and incense burners emitted a thick, acrid smoke.
Nearby, three young men and women sat across from each other with a table in between.
Toward the room's entrance sat the two visitors, while against the wall sat the apparent owner of the room, a woman.
She was dressed in vibrant, colorful hanbok, holding a folding fan in one hand and gently fanning herself. Each sway revealed glimpses of her extraordinarily beautiful face.
Her snow-white skin and long, extended eye corners could have veered into the territory of a fox spirit from ancient legends, but they stopped just right, crafting a sexy and alluring appearance instead.
Moreover, her languid, slightly downcast expression suited her features perfectly.
Her name was Kim Do-yeon. Twenty years old.
The young shaman of 'Dohwa-dang', a shaman house in Apgujeong, who went by the moniker Lotus Fairy.
Meanwhile, the man and woman sitting opposite her were the epitome of beauty and the beast.
The man had rather unattractive features, but his skin was flawless, and he was tall.
What truly turned him into the beast was the woman right beside him. She was a ravishing beauty who didn't pale in comparison to the seductive Kim Do-yeon.
Her glossy bob haircut, smooth forehead, large eyes, straight nose, and red lips fulfilled every criterion of beauty. Because of her, the man next to her inevitably looked even plainer.
Thinking the two didn't match at all, Kim Do-yeon opened her mouth.
"Why'd you come here?"
She spoke bluntly in informal speech right off the bat, scrutinizing their expressions. The man's eyebrows twitched, and the woman swallowed hard.
'The woman, then.'
Having selected her target, Kim Do-yeon fully turned her body toward the woman.
"Yu-ra, this stuff's all superstition. Last time you believed that demon nonsense too—you're surprisingly into this kinda thing..."
"Oppa, just stay quiet for a sec."
The woman called Yu-ra slapped the man's thigh and straightened up, looking at Do-yeon with serious eyes.
"We want our compatibility read."
"Hmm..."
Compatibility, huh.
This was why Kim Do-yeon hated summer and winter. That's when middle and high school kids, plus college students on break, swarmed in as couples. As someone who'd been dumped by her boyfriend after admitting she was a shaman, serving these nauseating lovebirds made her stomach turn. Hell, it was hot enough to die—why not hold hands and go splash around at a water park laughing 'haha hoho'? Why drag themselves here all clingy to check compatibility? They'd get heat rash, those idiots!
'But what can you do. Gotta make money.'
Finishing her thoughts, she calmed her bubbling resentment and began observing the couple coolly.
No matter how she looked at it, they didn't match. A pearl necklace on a pig's neck.
Their mismatched looks, her jealousy toward couples, and her irritation at the man treating shamanism like superstition all mixed in her head. The conclusion that emerged shot straight out of her mouth.
"No... Um, hmm."
Do-yeon, about to say they didn't match, flinched and clamped her mouth shut.
Let's think about it. Birds of a feather flock together, right? There had to be a reason a pretty girl like that was with an 'ugly guy'. Maybe he was a chaebol heir, or had a job starting with 's' (like lawyer or doctor), or was great in bed.
The last one she didn't care about, but a chaebol heir? That spelled trouble. What if they broke up because of her and he came after her with a curse!
Having learned about chaebols from dramas, Kim Do-yeon felt a twinge of fear.
"Ahem! First, names."
"Guess 'em."
She glared daggers at the man being snide from the start.
"Oppa, just stay still, okay?"
"Ah, why? I can guess names too. Lemme be a fortune teller."
"Oppa!"
"Okay, okay. Why're you mad?"
The woman held the reins.
As Kim Do-yeon muttered inwardly, the woman handed over a slip of paper—likely with their names, birthdates, and personal details pre-written.
"Here."
"Lemme see... Huh?"
"What's wrong?"
"N-nothing."
Kim Do-yeon flinched while examining the paper the woman gave her. It wasn't just their names.
[Choi Jun-young, Kim Yu-ra]
[Choi Jun-young, Mia]
[Choi Jun-young, Yeon Du-na]
[Choi Jun-young, Ahn So-jin]
"A-all of these?"
"Yes."
The man, assuming it was just their names like Do-yeon had, glanced at the paper and made a dumbfounded face.
"What the hell? You got me to find out Yeon Du-na's for this? And how'd you even get So-jin-ssi’s?"
"Sent Pomi. Told her to find out at the convenience store."
"That Pomi bitch? Yu-ra, I swear it's just customer-clerk with that girl."
"...How desperate do I have to be? What, anyone else besides these two? Add 'em."
"N-no, no? Just those two! No, So-jin-ssi really isn't—"
"Hmm?"
Listening to their exchange, Kim Do-yeon was pissed. What? A player with that face? Real jackpot? But he groveled to the woman like he had nothing.
She sighed involuntarily. Damn, she'd been dumped too, rotting away her youth in this incense-stinking room at the flower of her age, while this asshole paraded around multiple girls getting readings.
Summer now—water parks, pounding rice cakes like crazy. With so many girls, probably orgies, right? Life's so fucking unfair.
Right then, to Kim Do-yeon, the man before her was marked as society's evil.
'Sure, I'm a fraud, but you're mine to drag down.'
Like Non-gae embracing the pirate and leaping off Manji Cliff!
Unaware her eyes gleamed with annoyance and jealousy, Kim Do-yeon spoke, gripped by a bizarre sense of mission.
"The guy's got a lot of women, huh?"
"Huh?"
The woman jolted in surprise, half-straightening her kneeling posture.
"Y-yeah. Lots of women."
The woman nodded frantically, as if amazed how she knew that huge secret.
"Hey, Yu-ra. You wrote 'em all! Look, picking on a perfectly fine couple."
The man shot up angrily, pointing at Do-yeon and advancing. Startled by his menacing aura, she flinched back.
"M-Mommy!"
"Yu-ra, hear that? Why call a shaman 'mom'? No, I'm just excited, words slipping. What shaman calls for mom!"
Terrified but committed, Kim Do-yeon pointed at part of the paper the woman had given her.
"L-look here, uh... Y-Yeon Du-na? Yeah! She matches great! Total soulmates!"
Crunch.
Kim Do-yeon thought she heard something chilling, but drunk on the cooling couple's vibe, she ignored it and spat out the forbidden words.
"You two don't match. Break up."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ That evening.
Queen Bodhisattva Jang Su-mi, the Lotus Fairy's mother, stopped by Dohwa-dang to pick up her daughter on the way home—and witnessed a horrific sight.
Her only daughter was rubbing her bruised eye with an egg.
"Omma, what happened! Why's your eye like that? Who hit you?"
"Ugh, dunno."
Her daughter snapped curtly at the worried question.
The swollen purple eyelid was one thing, but the messy hair was clearly left that way on purpose to show mom. Still, seeing through the ploy but playing along—that's parenting, right?
"What's wrong, kiddo? Tell Omma."
Su-mi crouched by her daughter to soothe her, but her face hardened at the next words.
"I told you I hate being a shaman! I quit."
"Again with that. You'll regret it big time. Think Omma wants you suffering? After your initiation rite, all that sickness gone, right?"
"Ugh, that was just me as a kid craving attention!"
"Kiddo. And when you were little, huh? Found that customer's lost ring?"
"How many times with that story? Pure luck! Coincidence!"
"Coincidence my ass, you brat! That's all..."
Jang Su-mi thumped her chest in frustration and sighed deeply.
"Sigh, fine. This mom's the sinner. How'd I end up with a mom like me, dragging my girl down."
"Ugh! So frustrating! Go! Hurry!"
Kim Do-yeon, already tousling her messy hair, forcibly hauled her mom up.
"Gotta eat dinner!"
"You go first!"
After the commotion, having shooed mom out, Kim Do-yeon flopped back inside and sprawled out.
She closed her eyes like in meditation, breathing 'whew, whewww' to calm down, but it didn't work—she screamed 'Aaaah!'
"Argh. I said it for her sake, and she grabs my hair? Fraud? Unbelievable. Fine, it's her boyfriend, not mine. Don't come crying when he dumps her. Wasting that face."
She vented loudly, but still fuming, flailed her limbs a bit before tiring out and quieting.
"Sigh. Why get worked up. I am a fraud."
She didn't believe in gods, ghosts, or anything unscientific—including the shamanism she peddled. She classed her peers as either psychos or con artists. Mom was the former; herself, the latter.
Never imagined childhood ramblings for attention would twist her life this bad.
"All 'cause of money. Money! Money!"
For her, who couldn't quit despite the cash because of it, days like today—fighting customers—deepened her doubts.
She stared blankly at the ceiling's ornate patterns for a long while.
"Sigh, guess I'll head home."
As she wriggled up, a thick male voice reached her ear.
-Kim Do-yeon...
"Hiii!"
No one else in the cramped room, so her near-faint shock was natural.
-Kiiim Do-yeeeon...
Not a hallucination! The voice returned clearer. Chills crawling up her spine, she hunched her shoulders.
"Uh, uwooo."
Clack, clack clack, clack clack.
Terror gripped her, jaw chattering. Soon, with weird shrieks, she scrambled toward the door on all fours.
"Uwaaa, Mommmy! Mom! Eek!"
Finally reaching the door threshold, hands on it.
Her tear- and snot-streaked face lit with hope—then paled as something clamped her slender ankle.
"Aaa! Ack!"
She kicked desperately, but no use.
Drag drag drag.
Caught by the ankle, she was yanked back the way she'd crawled, wiping the floor with her body!
"Uwaaa!"
Scraaaape.
She scraped the floor with nails, wiggled her butt in resistance—futile. By the time she reached her original spot, she'd already passed out cold.
-Kim Do-yeon? Hey, Kim Do-yeon? Kim Do-yeon! Hellooo?