The Karen Appears
"What's wrong? What happened?"
I asked in a rush, watching Yeongji's face crumple toward tears.
"Some weird lady! She's so mad!"
"What?"
For a split second I didn't understand her. It didn't last. The moment it hit me that she meant a Karen had shown up, I shot off in the direction she'd come running from.
"You're telling me to get out, right now!"
"Ma'am. These are our cafe's rules. Guests who don't follow the terms of use are not permitted to use our cafe. Please leave immediately."
I got there at a run and found a solidly built employee speaking in a calm, unhurried voice, his face perfectly serene. Mm. The training had taken. Then again, look who did the training. Seeing the results of my own instruction, I nodded, satisfied.
But her Karen power outstripped even what I'd expected.
"I don't know any stupid rules like that! Go get the owner!"
"They're posted on the table you were just sitting at, beside the menu you see when you order, and right behind you at this very moment. It isn't that you don't know them. You're pretending not to."
"Hey! You done talking?"
He laid into her with the facts, perfectly calm, and the Karen started to shake. Unfortunate for someone trembling like a phone on vibrate, but he wasn't finished.
"No, I'm not. You've violated our terms of use, so please leave at once. If you keep refusing, I'll report you for interfering with our business."
He demanded she leave, still looking utterly untroubled.
At any other cafe or restaurant, talk like that would have been unthinkable. Here, it was entirely possible. I'd trained them that way from the start. Unlike other people, who could be badly hurt by the false rumors and reviews a problem customer spat out, I was fairly free of that worry. A review bomb? It hardly meant a thing to me. Our cafe had no real substitute to begin with, so a rating that slipped a little wasn't going to keep away the people who meant to come.
"Get the owner out here!"
Whether she didn't know that, or whether being a Karen was a passive she simply couldn't turn off, the problem customer kept calling for me.
"These are the owner's own instructions, so there's no need to ask for him. You may simply leave."
"Hey!"
"Please don't shout. This is a cafe. Some of our guests would like to rest quietly, so kindly refrain from causing needless noise pollution."
"You! Do you know who I am?!"
"I don't. I can tell you're a Karen, though. Please leave immediately."
He pointed at the exit, utterly firm.
Maybe the sight of it set her blood boiling. She clutched the back of her neck and shook.
Should I call an ambulance? That Karen looks ready to drop from high blood pressure.
She looked bad enough that I was genuinely starting to worry about a Karen's health.
"You keep talking back to me, getting uppity like that? I'm not letting this go!"
But of course, worrying about a Karen was completely useless. Unable to swallow her temper, or so it seemed, she swung for his cheek.
"Well now. That's attempted assault."
Needless to say, the slap never landed. The employee dealing with her was someone who had stuck firmly in my memory: a physical education student on a short leave to earn his tuition, majoring in mixed martial arts. Even a slap thrown by surprise couldn't outpace reflexes already trained like his.
"Now then, please leave at once. Otherwise I'll be reporting you for interfering with business, violating the Animal Protection Act, attempted assault, and a few other charges besides."
"Yaaaaah!"
She had failed to land the slap and only grown hotter for it, and now she shrieked and tried however she could to hit him.
Watching that, I decided I couldn't just stand by any longer, and walked over to her.
"Wandeok."
"Ah—boss."
When I reached him, Wandeok looked at me the way a man looks at his savior. However well trained he was, he could keep from getting hit, but he couldn't hit back or actually drive a Karen off, and the bind of it showed on his face.
"You're the owner? What kind of training did you give them, for an employee to act like this!"
Having heard him, the Karen turned on me and rattled it off in a spray. Wow. Look at that spit fly. If the world had been in the middle of some global pandemic, that would've been preserved on MyTube for all time.
"Wandeok. What happened?"
"What do you mean, what happened! This is because you can't train your staff properly!"
"Boss. So, she was harassing Chikin-i, and when I asked her to leave, she got like this."
"What? Harassing him?"
At that, my eyebrow twitched, and I looked at the Karen.
"How is that harassing! I just touched it a little! What a ridiculous fuss, honestly!"
"Boss. Chikin-i was wearing a Do Not Disturb sign."
"Ha……. Leave. Right now."
Certain now that she had plainly broken the terms of use, I demanded she leave, just as my employee had.
"I'm not leaving! Do you know who I am!"
But far from leaving, she only shrieked harder in my direction.
Right. If she left, she wouldn't be a Karen.
There was one thing she had overlooked, though. She assumed I would be like the owners of other shops, the ones who coax and soothe even a Karen.
"Do you know who I am!"
The easiest way to exterminate a Karen was a mirror match. What it took to beat a Karen wasn't anything else. It was a Karen.
"Wh-what……?"
"I said, do you know who I am?! What are you doing causing a scene in here!"
"Th-that's—wh-wha……."
The mirror match was every bit as effective as I'd hoped. The Karen who had been shrieking a moment ago was stammering now, as if something had gone wrong with her tongue.
But she had her pride as a Karen, it seemed. She gathered herself and launched a counterattack.
"I'm not letting this go! Do you have any idea what my dad does?!"
"Do you have any idea what my dad does?!"
"Y-you—!"
She trembled, seething with the unfairness of it.
Figures. There's no beating a man who still goes fishing after he's retired, even while getting his back walloped.
I made a mental note to buy Dad a fishing rod one of these days, and looked at the Karen as if daring her to try again.
"M-my husband isn't going to let you get away with this!"
"Then my wife isn't going to let you get away with this!"
"Aaaah! Are you messing with me?!"
After one mirror match too many, her anger finally shot straight to the top of her head, and she raised her hand the way she had at my employee.
I wasn't worried.
Pssshhhhhh—
"This is Chikin-i's revenge!"
"Kyaaaaaah!"
Hand still raised, the Karen screamed at the sudden warmth soaking her foot and stumbled back several steps. Jjamong, who felt a kinship with him as a fellow short-legged runt, had declared it Chikin-i's revenge and unloaded pee all over the woman's shoe.
"You mutt!"
Naturally, that only set her off again, and she moved to go after Jjamong. Once more, I didn't react. I didn't need to.
"I, Yubu, shall not stand idle and allow you to lay a hand upon my dear friend!"
"Kyaaak!"
Yubu had appeared out of nowhere, great wings spread wide, and swept straight past her face. Her vision filled with owl in an instant and then emptied again. She startled so hard she toppled over and landed on her rear—right on top of the puddle Jjamong had made.
"Pfft."
"I-I'm not letting this go!"
She glared at me, her face twisted with rage. Her ordeal, however, was not over yet.
"Trash! It's trash!"
"Whoa, that's a big piece of trash! Hurry up and gimme the snack! It's trash!"
The two little convicts of our cafe were treating the Karen as garbage. They tugged and tugged at the cuff of her fallen pants, on the side still free of Jjamong's mark, demanding a treat. The meaning was plain enough. We brought it in, so pay up.
I snorted a laugh and stroked the raccoons' heads.
"Good work. Did it just like I told you. Here—eat plenty."
As if putting on a show for her, I handed the pair a fistful of snacks. They hugged the haul in delight and scampered off to a corner.
"Guess the little thieves officially recognized the Karen as trash!"
"Good grief, how bad did she have to be for Jjamong, who uses the bathroom, to pee on her?"
"I'm telling you, Karens are always the problem. If the animals don't want it, just don't touch them."
"They're cute and lovely just to look at. Do you really have to bother them before you feel better?"
"Does she even have a dad? A husband? Where's all that confidence coming from."
And so, at the sight of the Karen the raccoons had certified as trash, the murmuring around us swelled. Every last voice was cursing the woman sprawled on the floor.
She could hear everything I could hear. Her face flushed crimson, and she shot to her feet.
"You……! I'm not letting this go! Just you wait!"
She glared at me with murder in her eyes, then hastily covered her face and fled. It was a sight uglier than any third-rate villain.
"Suhwan. Think we'll be all right?"
Noona came over, having watched the woman run, and asked with a worried look. Driving the Karen out didn't seem to trouble her much. It was the threat left behind—the fear that the woman might come back and make trouble.
There was no need to worry.
"Karens with real backing don't exist. What makes a Karen is the urge to dump your inferiority complex on people weaker than you. Either that, or it's just a way to show yourself off."
"That's all well and good, but why did you have to bring me up while you were arguing with her?"
"So what? You have no idea how much your pinches hurt. If that Karen couple comes looking, I'll throw a light hook at the husband, so you pinch the lady."
At that, Noona let out a baffled little pfft and laughed.
I was serious, though.
I hadn't been joking. I'd meant every word, but Noona seemed to have taken it as one. Did she have any idea how much it hurt when she pinched for real? Correcting her would obviously just earn me a pinch of my own, so I decided things had worked out fine and smiled back.
Still laughing, we made our way over to Yeongji, who by then was holding Chikin-i and grinning brightly.
Yeongji had come running on the verge of tears because Chikin-i was being bothered. With the cause of it dealt with, she had no reason left to look ready to cry. If anything, even though she had been the more startled one, she was stroking him gently and soothing him.
"You okay?"
"Yeees! Chikin-i seems okay too!"
At my question she beamed and lifted the cat she had been petting. He was idly licking the bridge of his nose, and I couldn't see anything particularly wrong with him.
Even so, the placard still hung around Chikin-i's neck, the words on it plain as day.
Of course, sign or not, Chikin-i didn't refuse Yeongji's hands. She stopped by our house almost every day, half an hour at the very least, to play with the animals before heading home from work, so to them she was family too. What he was refusing now was a total stranger's touch, not a family's.
"But Chikin-i. Why were you wearing that all of a sudden?"
"My tummy's full!"
"Ah. Is that so……."
People had a habit of slipping him snacks while they petted him, so it seemed he had shut down every approach on the grounds that he was full. A slightly ridiculous reason, but one I could accept well enough on its own terms. I let out a baffled little laugh and looked away from Yeongji and Chikin-i. There was no need to worry about either of them now, and the Karen had been dealt with. Nothing left that could be a problem.