Screw Me Over? Screw Yourself (1)
"Ha……. They really sealed it off, didn't they."
I walked up to the car, pressed a palm to my forehead, and let out a sigh. It had been parked with malice packed to the brim and tamped down hard. The nose sat at a slight diagonal, the wheels cranked all the way over, and there was absolutely no way past. Even a little detour to the side was impossible, with drainage ditches running along both edges. At best, a tiny electric car might have scraped through by a hair.
"They just left it here to screw me over. Whether it was that woman from yesterday or her husband…… the culprit's obvious."
And from that malice, I could narrow it down. Among everyone who currently held a grudge against me, the only one with a clear motive was that entitled nightmare.
"Boss. We're not getting in, are we……?"
"Doesn't look like it. Some lunatic went and blockaded the entrance like this."
I said it with a troubled face, watching a customer try to pull into the lot.
"For now, you'll have to park off to that side. If you get a ticket, I'll cover it."
"Ugh……. All right. I don't even know how many people one person is messing up. Are there still folks this thoughtless……?"
The customer shook their head and moved the car. The vehicles lined up behind them reversed all at once and shifted over to the spot I'd pointed out.
Swallowing the irritation slowly boiling up from my gut, I dialed the number stuck to the window. Illegal parking like this, and they'd still bothered to leave a number. The line rang—then cut.
"……They hung up?"
The tone went for a second, and the connection died. It wasn't a message that the phone was off. The screen said the call had ended, which meant they'd picked up and killed it on the spot. I tried again several times after that. Same result every time.
"Wow. They're really trying to piss me off."
With the irritation climbing all the way to the top of my head, I called the police right away. Honestly, dragging the cops out over something this petty felt like a burden, but I didn't have a choice. Leave the car where it was, and I wouldn't be running a cafe. I'd be running a parking lot.
I waited a little, and a patrol car showed up in a stutter of flashing lights.
"You're the one who reported it?"
"Yes. This car is blocking the entrance to our lot. I call, and they hang up right away."
I showed them the call history on my phone. Five attempts, every one of them connected for zero seconds or one.
"That's vicious."
The officers looked at the log and shook their heads. Then, after placing a call somewhere, they turned back to me looking thoroughly stuck.
"Um…… sir. I'm really sorry to say this, but other than contacting the owner, I don't think there's anything we can do to help."
"……What? Excuse me?"
I couldn't hide how absurd that sounded. If the police couldn't clear a car planted smack in the middle of the way, who was supposed to?
"Legally, there's nothing we can do. We checked, and this comes up as private property. We don't have the authority to forcibly tow a vehicle on private land. The Gijang County Office doesn't either."
"Wow……."
A wow was all that came out. There was a person screwing someone over this thoroughly, and the country couldn't lift a finger?
I watched the officers slip away, murmuring how sorry they were, then turned my eyes back to the car blocking the road.
"How much is this thing worth?"
I glared at it for a moment, then searched the price on my phone. Not new. Used.
"A clean one runs about thirty thousand dollars? Hmm……. Doable."
I looked at the figure and thought it over, and it seemed manageable. Even setting the Mutube money aside, a few days of cafe revenue alone would cover a car like that.
"Should I call an excavator or a bulldozer and just shove it out of here?"
I was pissed, and sitting on the problem wasn't going to do me any good, so the extreme idea came on its own. But I couldn't quite bring myself to act on it. If I wrecked the car myself, there could be a legal fight. And as if they'd prepared for exactly that, the dashcam was blinking away, diligently recording.
"Ah! Maybe I can get some help from Byeong-jin."
A lawyer from a well-known firm came to mind. Connections existed to be used at times like this, so I called him right away.
"Hello! Uncle!"
"Ah, Suhwan. It's been a while. I saw the cafe's open—how's business?"
"Good. Whether it's my ability or the animals, we're doing really well. But there's a bit of a problem, so I called."
I explained the situation to Uncle Byeong-jin in detail: some car was blocking the way so nothing could get into the lot, and the culprit was probably yesterday's nightmare customer. I also told him I was this close to smashing it and buying them an identical used car.
"I understand you're angry, but you shouldn't do that. Destruction of property can mean prison."
"Urk……."
One slip, and I'd have left my pregnant Noona behind to sit in a cell making conversation with the rats.
"Uncle. So there's no way?"
"There is a way. I'm heading over now, so wait a minute."
"You're coming yourself?"
"I was planning to stop by the cafe at least once anyway. Figure I'm just dropping in for a visit."
He said he'd be there soon and hung up. I waited, and sure enough he arrived not long after. I gave him a light bow as he climbed out of the car.
"Oh, Mungchi, you came too—gack!"
Mungchi, who'd come charging out of the car with him, slammed straight into me.
"Good to see you! It's been ages!"
Having bowled me over, he rolled across the ground with me, licking my face without mercy.
"Mungchi!"
"Ack!"
At the shout, Mungchi flinched and bolted back to Byeong-jin's side.
"Oof……. That's one way to say hello."
"Sorry. No matter how many times I warn this little troublemaker, the charging never gets trained out of him."
He shook his head, adding that even he ended up rolling around on the ground about once a week. I decided I'd straighten Mungchi out later, and got down to taking Byeong-jin's help.
"I've seen illegal parking go all the way to a lawsuit a few times……. But this is the worst of them."
"I don't even know how many cars are sitting on the street because of this one. Some of the customers who showed up even turned around and left."
While I'd been waiting for him, people really had left once they realized parking was impossible.
"First, let me try the owner."
He called the number stuck to the window. But they seemed to be picking up every call just to hang up, and his died immediately too.
"Ha……. What a headache."
He shook his head.
"So we really can't do anything?"
"Not in a strictly legal sense……. But we can set up grounds to deal with it."
He grinned, then stepped to a spot the dashcam wouldn't catch.
"You said earlier you were even thinking of smashing the car and compensating them, right? Want to actually try it?"
"It's not that I can't. It's just…… the going-to-prison part."
"Don't worry. Destruction of property isn't a criminal offense when it's negligence rather than intent."
"……Negligence?"
He nodded and pointed up at a few magpies and crows circling overhead.
"Bird talons are viciously sharp. They scratch a car beautifully. And droppings eat the paint. What if droppings covered the whole car? If I were the owner, I'd come running."
"Is that really all right? They probably know about my ability……."
"Your superpower is conversation, not forcing anyone to obey, isn't it? You just insist you never gave an order like that. If someone says, 'Please poop right here,' is anybody actually going to poop there?"
"Oh……."
The more I listened, the more it strangely made sense. I wanted to call every bird in right then. I even wanted to send Yubu to round up every little sparrow on the mountain.
"Still, doing it this second isn't good. If you warn them first, it's less of a burden later."
He said he'd send a warning and started tapping at his phone. A glance at the screen showed he was writing that if the vehicle wasn't moved, it could end up buried in bird droppings.
"Could you tell me roughly what the cafe makes in a day? It helps if I also mention we can claim damages for interference with business."
There was nothing I couldn't tell him, so I answered right away.
"Yesterday's sales were about eight thousand dollars. Not profit—just sales. Profit was around five thousand……?"
"Wow, that much?"
He sounded thoroughly impressed. The place was spacious, sure, but thousands of dollars in profit from a single cafe in a single day—of course it stunned him. One look at the menu, though, and it was easy to understand. The cheapest americano was five dollars a cup, and it cost me under fifty cents to make. Land and building were both mine, so nothing leaked out as rent. And the snack machines, our best sellers, ran at something like a ninety-five percent margin. I bought the treats by the kilogram for about eight dollars and sold them off in ten-gram portions at seventy-five cents—there was no way that didn't make money.
"It's one drink per person, and we sell snacks for the animals too, so the sales get huge. These days this side is even a little higher than the Mutube money."
"A Supreme Rank superpower really is something to envy."
He laughed lightly, as if he truly envied me, and finished the message he'd been writing.
"There……. The text is sent. We'll wait a moment, then call."
I nodded, asked if I could see it, and checked the message he'd sent. The moment I saw how long it was, I handed the phone right back. It was crammed with pursuant-to-such-and-such-statute, this-is-what-applies, this-is-what-we-can-do. The screen was full of words I could only assume were legal terms, and just looking at them made me shrink.
"Looks like they've seen the text, so let's try a call."
He checked the time, decided that was enough of a wait, and dialed. The other side still wouldn't answer. It felt like a dare to really choke on it this time.
"If they're going to play it like this, it can't be helped. We dirty the car as planned, and we claim damages too."
On his advice, I decided to gather the birds.
"Yubu!"
I threw his name into the empty air, and before a few seconds had passed an owl came winging down to me.
"Thou didst summon me?"
"You've got troops, right? The ones on the mountain."
"At thy request, I stationed a portion of them upon the mountain to stand ready, did I not."
"I need you to bring them. As many as you can. They don't even have to be your troops—if you can call them, bring them, will you? I'll make sure there's plenty to eat."
"Await me!"
At the promise of plenty of food, Yubu beat his wings hard and headed for the hill just behind us. A few minutes later he was back, a flock of dozens—no, easily more than a hundred birds—streaming along behind him.
Yubu, who usually took a beating from Namcat and shed every last scrap of an owl's dignity, looked magnificent today.