The Heavenly Demon Has Returned (2)
The ID card contained a photo of me wearing a white dress shirt. I had no memory of ever putting on such clothes, yet it seemed they had fabricated even this image. The name Baek Ara and the characters stating I was born in 2011. Finally, the official seal stamped in the corner of the card. No matter how I looked at it, it didn't appear fake.
I set the ID down and picked up the wallet. A chill emanated from inside it. The only thing present was a single card. According to the letter, the money had been deposited into an account. To confirm the exact amount, I would need to open the account, but there was one problem.
A smartphone.
It wasn't that I didn't know what this object was. No matter how senile I might have become, how could I forget something I had used for over a decade in the past? The issue was that I didn't remember everything. I roughly understood how to use it, but recalling the details required a rather long time.
Naturally, my hands moved slowly as they touched the smartphone.
Hmm. I really do seem like an old woman now.
In truth, it was an age where being called an old-timer would be appropriate. Even finding the banking app was a struggle. It had been roughly a hundred years since I last used the Korean language. I had forgotten most of it. Unable to even locate the two characters for "bank," I chose an ignorant method.
I opened every single app until I found what I wanted.
Let's see. The amount in the account...
There were eight zeros. And the number in front was eight. Eight hundred million.
I tapped my lips, recalling memories from my previous life. Back then, the monthly salary I received from my job was roughly two million won. Even adding bonuses and such for the year, it didn't reach thirty million. Therefore, this eight hundred million was money that an ordinary person would need to save and save for decades to accumulate.
That Tiger Spirit fellow. It seems he carried out the request properly.
Come to think of it, this house was also a gift from him. Shall I take a look around?
The house was overall rather bleak. It felt like a newly built place with only basic furniture placed inside. Hmm. That's right. It looked like a model home.
Yet the closet was packed full of fluttering clothes. I take back what I said about him doing a good job. That guy. Did he think I would like this sort of thing? Or was it some twisted grudge, intending to mock me?
Either way, I should have taught him his place a bit more clearly.
In Murim, among the scoundrels who treated me simply as a woman, not a single one walked away unscathed. I didn't take their lives. I wasn't such a cruel person, after all. Instead, what I took from them was their masculinity.
After delivering the same ending to several people, naturally those who would send me flirtatious glances disappeared. Even thinking about it now, it was a decent method.
After finishing my exploration, I sat down at the vanity in the corner of the room. My face was reflected in the mirror.
Choppily cut black bob hair and indifferent black eyes. A languid gaze and tightly pressed lips. Skin as clear as white jade despite having rolled around Murim for so long. A beautiful woman upon whom many young ones had revealed their ugly desires. That was me.
I didn't particularly like this appearance. In Murim, beauty was usually an obstacle. How many were there who possessed power but lacked a brain? It was fortunate that I had the status of the Heavenly Demon's daughter and the greatest martial prowess under the heavens; otherwise, I would have encountered quite a few troublesome situations.
Of course, if I had tried to utilize this femininity, I could have. However, I had been born as a male. That identity hadn't changed much even after becoming the Heavenly Demon's daughter.
I could not love men. That didn't mean I loved women either. In the early days of my previous life, I had felt my heart flutter while looking at other girls, but as my life as a woman grew longer, even that fluttering eventually faded away.
If I had to define myself now, I would be something like an asexual. It was also laughable for an old-timer over a hundred years old to talk about loving anyone.
I stared quietly at the mirror and tried to smile faintly, but it didn't go well.
This is it. Looking at my own face still feels incredibly awkward.
After choosing seclusion and holing up in a remote mountain corner, there were a few things I had longed for while reminiscing about the modern world. Most of them were things I could resolve with martial arts, but I couldn't create what the era's technology lacked. I was a martial artist, not a scientist.
The thing that occupied the largest portion of that longing was related to food.
Just think about it. The food in Murim consisted only of things where proper cooking methods hadn't even been established. The gamey smell was strong, deep flavors were nowhere to be found, and even the basic ingredients themselves were lacking. Spices? If they properly added salt, it was already a blessing.
Even when I lived in relative abundance as the Heavenly Demon's daughter, I never once felt that the food was delicious. How much worse must it have been elsewhere?
In my previous life, I had thought of myself as someone who enjoyed eating. But the reality was different. What I liked was eating delicious food. It wasn't simply about shoving something into my mouth.
Since I had finally arrived in an era where I could enjoy fine dining, the first thing I had to do was, naturally, eat.
After shoving all the fluttering garments in the closet into a corner, some wearable items finally emerged. Jeans and a hoodie. The pants clung too tightly to my legs and I didn't like it, but this much was tolerable.
Dressed, I headed outside without any particular plan. It wasn't that I didn't look for anything. It would be more accurate to say I couldn't look. How could someone who couldn't even read Korean think of searching for something in Korean?
Still, I didn't mind. Wasn't the modern world one of abundance? If I walked around, something would surely appear.
My belief was not wrong. After wandering for only about one mealtime, I discovered countless stores. Everything they sold was equally appealing. However, there was no hesitation.
From the moment I stepped outside, I had already decided what to eat.
What I chose was, of course, chicken.
The crispy fried skin and the juicy flesh packed inside. That flavor that never got old no matter how much you ate. Back when I missed delicious food, I had tried to recreate chicken in Murim.
In the end, wasn't chicken just a bird fried in oil? I had thought that even if I failed several times, I would eventually succeed. But after failing even at making simple market chicken, I realized something. The chicken itself was different.
Comparing the tough, flavorless, foul-smelling chickens of Murim to the ones in the modern era would be an insult.
Hiding my anticipation, the moment I opened the store door, the scent I had only imagined pierced my nose. The smell of oil mixed with a savory aroma. An incredibly appetizing fragrance. I swallowed my saliva without realizing it.
The clerk standing at the counter smiled brightly the moment he saw me and shouted something.
“Welcome! Would you like to eat here or take out?”
...Ah. That's right. I can't speak Korean, can I?
A fundamental problem that even the Heavenly Demon could not overcome with martial prowess.
Chicken shop owner Ha Il-geun yawned with his mouth wide open. An hour had passed since he opened, but the store was quiet. That made sense; how many people would come all the way to the shop at lunchtime to eat chicken? There had been a few deliveries, but not many. Based on his experience so far, it would only get busy once evening came. Until then, killing time was his only task.
While watching a broadcaster's video on his smartphone, the bell on the door rang. A customer? He hoped it was for takeout. Having customers in the store made him feel self-conscious.
When he looked up, he saw the customer's face. Indifferent eyes scanning the store and a slightly raised corner of the mouth. Messy black bob hair that looked self-cut. In contrast, flawlessly maintained pure white skin. A sensual figure noticeable even beneath the thick hoodie. Even with that disastrous hairstyle, she was a woman to whom the word "beauty" suited perfectly.
Please let her be a dine-in customer. Just looking at someone like her is healing.
“Welcome! Will you be eating here?”
He asked while hoping she would nod, but a look of distress appeared on the woman's face. What? Did I do something wrong?
“Nǐ huì shuō zhōngwén ma?”
Chinese?! Cold sweat ran down Ha Il-geun's forehead. He was someone who had graduated from university and worked at a company, after all. He could handle basic English. A little Japanese was possible too. But Chinese? From his perspective, that language was no different from what aliens from outer space would speak.
“Uh… um. Can you speak English?”
“Wǒ bù zhīdào nǐ shì shénme yìsi.”
We can't communicate at all. If you've come to Korea, you should speak Korean. Those words rose all the way to his throat, but Ha Il-geun ultimately couldn't say anything. The one who looked most troubled here was the woman tapping her lips.
Should I turn on a translator?
“Here. Food possible?”
Fortunately, the woman wasn't completely unable to speak Korean. He nodded with relief inside, and the woman let out a long breath. Being pretty really was a good thing. The distress from just moments ago had completely vanished with that single relieved expression.
Ha Il-geun personally moved to guide her to a seat and handed her the menu. The woman focused more on the pictures than the text on the menu. She probably couldn't read the writing anyway.
After pondering for a while, she pointed at the photos of fried and seasoned chicken and spoke in clumsy Korean.
“This. This.”
Wondering if she meant half-and-half, he asked again, but the woman only tilted her head. Sigh. In the end, the frustrated one had to move first.
Ha Il-geun took out his smartphone and turned on the translator. He had never translated Chinese before, but with China's population being what it was, it should work fine, right?
The translator's performance seemed decent. The woman read the text the translator had converted and shook her head.
“No. This. This. Separately.”
She must want one of each. She didn't look like someone who would eat that much. It was strange, but he didn't bother adding anything. If she had leftovers, he could just pack them up.
“Ah! And co… la?”
“Cola?”
“Yes.”
Having taken the order, Ha Il-geun fled into the kitchen. Like most Koreans, he was afraid of foreigners speaking to him. No matter how beautiful the person was.
It was troublesome. He hadn't realized that not being able to communicate in the language would be this inconvenient. He had somehow managed to communicate for now, but if things continued like this, it would clearly cause problems in many ways. He would have to learn Korean.
But where would he learn it? In his previous life, Korean had been his native language. It was something learned naturally while growing up. Something one came to know without being taught. So if someone asked where to learn Korean, there was no way he could answer.
Where exactly could an adult learn how to read, write, and speak Korean? At this age, he couldn't exactly go to kindergarten or elementary school.
As his worries deepened, the clerk brought over a plate. The beautiful appearance of the chicken placed upon it.
The sight of the chicken emperor dressed in a yellow dragon robe and the chicken king in a black dragon robe appearing together moved me to the point of emotion. I wanted to eat it right this instant, but there was something I had to do first.
I grabbed the sleeve of the clerk who was trying to flee back. He looked troubled, but what could he do? As a stranger in this land, this was the only place I could ask for help.
“Help.”
“XX helpX neededXXXXX.”
How should I say the words, "Where should I go to learn Korean?" A contradiction had arisen where I needed to know Korean in order to learn Korean.