Chapter 6. A Long-Term Guest
Chapter 6. A Long-Term Guest
Monday morning, 7 a.m.
After sleeping well, I got up, took a quick shower, and started stretching on the rooftop.
Strength training could be done sitting still with telekinesis, but flexibility improved more effectively when I moved my body directly like this.
The national calisthenics routine and some light stretching.
Moving my body directly put me in a good mood, so it was one of the routines I never skipped on my day off.
I ate a sandwich and a banana milk I’d bought the day before for breakfast, then sat on a rooftop bench and devoured medical books. At first, none of it made much sense, but after reading the same parts again and again, I felt like I was starting to understand a little.
“We’re going to eat. Chief Kang, come eat with us too!”
“I ate something simple. Enjoy your meal.”
“Enjoy? It’s the same side dishes every day. I’m sick of it.”
The cleaning team headed out for their meal.
After breakfast, the hard work started again. Starting today it was a weekday, so the total number of cleanings wouldn’t be as insane as the weekend, but the work was harder because one person had a day off. I kept smiling until the aunties went downstairs, then turned my eyes back to the book.
9:47 a.m.
Time to go on shift.
I went into my dorm, lifted my body slightly, and changed from training clothes into work clothes with telekinesis.
Black cargo pants and a white dress shirt.
That was the basic uniform for motel staff. If you added triple-striped slippers, it was the perfect “going to work” look.
I took the elevator and pressed 1.
As the doors opened, I saw a guest coming down the stairs across from me with a troubled expression.
About 180 centimeters tall, solid build.
Most of all, there was a clear scar—like a knife cut—on his face, so instead of handsome, he looked intimidating.
I gave the guest a light nod and headed to the counter.
There were four men in black suits, plus Chanhyeok older brother and the manager. I slipped past one of the big guys blocking the way and stepped behind the counter.
“Hello. Chanhyeok older brother, good job staying up all night. Manager, you’re here early too.”
When you came in, you had to check the room situation first.
Rooms available for sale. Rooms currently in use. Rooms that needed cleaning.
That was the basis of the entire shift.
Since yesterday had been Sunday, it seemed we hadn’t hit a full house. There was nothing written in the handover memo section either.
Smiling, I spoke to Chanhyeok older brother.
“Did anything happen? You can clock out.”
Then—someone cursed, “You fucking bastard…” and a huge man in a black suit swung his hand at my head.
Normally, my telekinesis spread around me in a wave-like form within about a meter radius.
A kind of territory, considered.
If I wanted, I could expand it to dozens of meters, and inside that range I could sense everything that happened.
Thanks to that, dodging the palm flying toward the back of my head was easy—I just tilted my head slightly.
I looked at the man, who clearly hadn’t expected me to dodge and now looked startled, and asked,
“Excuse me, but… who are you? Outsiders aren’t allowed behind the counter…”
Trailing off, I thought about it. These people were probably the gangsters who had come because of the Room 310 incident.
It had been a serious issue, but the fact I’d forgotten it like this meant it hadn’t been very important to me.
“Hey—what the hell are you?”
The scarred man who had come down the stairs shouted at me.
“Um… I work here.”
I answered his question politely.
“Oh—sorry about that. He’s the one working today. He’s just… bad at reading the room. Sorry.”
The manager rushed over, put a hand on my head, and forced me to bow while he bowed too.
At that moment, the entrance door opened and the aunties who had gone out to eat came back in, faces full of annoyance. But when they saw the lobby packed with rough-looking men, they flinched and froze.
“Aunties! I told you to come quickly.”
“What? We ate fast and came.”
Even though he’d rushed them, Chanhyeok was about to explode seeing the cleaning team show up so casually—and seeing Kang Chan not understanding the situation at all. How could he be this calm in front of people like this? He glared at the aunties as hard as he could, sending a warning.
“This… is the cleaning team.”
Chanhyeok grabbed the aunties and pushed them in front of Cheolmin.
“Uh… I called you because I want to ask something. I heard that after the police took the body on Saturday, the first ones to enter Room 310 were you. Is that right?”
Cheolmin asked the aunties.
“A body?”
Auntie Sookhee, who spoke Korean best, asked in shock.
“The cleaning team doesn’t know what happened in that room yet.”
At Chanhyeok’s words, Cheolmin stared silently at Auntie Sookhee. When the scarred man glared at her, Auntie Sookhee looked frightened and answered in a trembling voice.
“Yes… on Saturday. We probably cleaned Room 310 when the police had just come and gone.”
“While cleaning, did you see anything unusual? Anything the guest left behind.”
“That Saturday, we cleaned over 150 rooms. We can’t remember every single one. But it was a VIP room, so I remember a little. It wasn’t messy—it was clean. It ended quickly… and there was nothing left behind.”
She started out shaky, but halfway through, she seemed to remember and fired off her answer rapidly.
Cheolmin felt suffocated.
No matter how he looked at it, what he was doing felt like pointless flailing.
If there were anything suspicious, he’d threaten them harder, but at a glance they looked innocent. Then Cheolmin’s eyes landed on the surveillance screens behind the counter.
He spoke to the motel employee standing there blankly with a smile.
“Copy everything saved on these screens from Friday until now.”
The employee’s answer was absurd.
“We can’t show footage to outsiders. It’s personal information law. Even if you’re police, if you need it, you have to bring a warrant.”
What the hell was this lunatic?
As Cheolmin was thinking that, the manager slapped the employee in the back of the head and said he’d do it himself. But Cheolmin saw it—the employee dodged the manager’s hand like he had eyes in the back of his head. He’d done it earlier too. What a weird bastard.
Then an unexpected clear voice rang through the motel lobby.
“Ya khachu zaselit’sya. Yest’ li svabodnye nomera.”
A blonde woman was standing in front of the counter, speaking Russian. Cheolmin, who was fluent in Russian, could tell she wanted a room.
But the motel staff just stared at her blankly.
“This crazy bastard wants to die.”
One of Cheolmin’s subordinates suddenly roared and charged at Kang Chan. He was probably only now getting angry about being refused for the footage.
I was currently flustered by the blonde woman’s alien language.
I could understand English to a degree, but her language was… France, Europe, Russia—somewhere like that.
I couldn’t understand a single word.
While wondering what country she was from, I dodged the thug rushing at me, then pressed down on the back of his knee with telekinesis and made him pitch forward.
Unlucky for him, he fell and slammed his head hard into the room key cabinet on the counter, then passed out.
“This bastard—”
The other three thugs charged at once. Their boss only stared at me in shock from inside the office.
“Aaah!”
The cleaning aunties panicked at the sudden brawl, fled to the elevator, and trembled.
I lightly struck the front guy’s Adam’s apple, drove a fist into the second guy’s solar plexus, and chopped the back guy’s neck with the edge of my hand. One lost consciousness; the other two dropped down, suffering.
“Can you speak English?”
I ignored the collapsed thugs and focused on the customer.
“Izvinite, ya govoryu tol’ko po-russki.”
The blonde woman in sunglasses stepped over the thug on the floor and spoke again.
Still, I couldn’t understand a word.
One of the thugs who had been hit in the throat crawled toward the entrance, then shouted at the thugs waiting outside in a line.
“Khk… Hey! All of you, come in.”
“Uh… boss… what the—”
The lobby was narrow, so more than ten thugs who had been waiting outside shoved the entrance doors open and flooded in. The guys in back were pulling steel pipes out of the cars in the parking lot.
I pulled a handful of pens out of the pen holder on the counter with telekinesis and caught them in my hand. The pens slid through the air and landed in my grip.
No one saw it in that instant.
Or… did they?
It felt like the gangster boss might have seen.
Telekinesis was supposed to stay secret…
Do I need to silence him?
Those thoughts went through my head, but I kept smiling politely at the blonde woman as I threw the pens at the thugs. The pens flew and stabbed into the thugs’ shoulders and thighs. To anyone watching, it would look like I’d thrown them with muscle strength—but I was controlling them with telekinesis. With telekinetic force behind them, the pens pierced flesh easily and stuck.
The huge men toppled and tangled at the entrance.
They groaned like they were dying, but I’d avoided muscles and nerves, so they weren’t major injuries. They were big, but they were dramatic.
“Zdes’ yest’ kto-nibud’, kto govorit po-russki?”
Even with a fight happening right next to her, the blonde woman only kept speaking alien language at me. I knew I didn’t have normal emotions like ordinary people.
But this woman didn’t look normal either. A normal person would be trembling in fear like the cleaning aunties…
Still, guests came in all kinds.
Even if they were weird, as long as they paid, they were customers.
“Sorry. I only speak Korean. And a little English.”
I’d been proud of my English. Not fluent, but enough to communicate with the occasional foreign guest.
But today, I regretted not studying beyond high school. Back then, foreign languages hadn’t seemed like something I’d ever need…
Then the gangster boss inside the office spoke up.
“Kh… ahem. That guest wants a room. She’s saying she wants to check in right now. I know some Russian!”
“Oh. That’s perfect. Can you tell her she can check in now? If you check in at this hour, our base overnight rates are 120,000 won, 160,000 won, and 200,000 won—but right now… please tell her we only have the 160,000-won room left.”
I was in a bind, and the last person I expected helped me.
Normally, overnight stays only started at 10 p.m. at our motel.
So if you wanted to stay twenty-four hours, you had to pay double.
Because of this, foreign travelers who didn’t understand Korean motel rules often got annoyed, and long-term stays at our motel were rare.
I understood the complaint, but it couldn’t be helped.
A motel like ours maximized profit by rotating short-stay guests, not relying on overnight guests.
The rooms currently available for sale were Room 210, the VIP room, and Room 102, the special room.
I recommended Room 102.
When the boss translated, the woman pulled out a bundle of 50,000-won bills from her handbag. It was obviously a 10,000,000-won bundle. I knew because I’d counted something similar last night.
“She says she wants to pay overnight for now with this amount, and she’ll pay again in a few days.”
The gangster boss looked brutal at first glance, but he was surprisingly warm. I felt deeply grateful. His subordinates were dramatic and swung their hands around, but the boss himself seemed like a decent man.
“Thank you for your help.”
I bowed politely to him and quickly counted the cash.
As expected: 10,000,000 won.
Sixty-two days of overnight fees came to 9,920,000 won, so I gave her 80,000 won from the safe and told her to pay again in sixty-two days if she wanted.
The gangster boss stood close beside me and interpreted kindly.
I pulled the woman’s large suitcase and opened Room 102 for her, halfway down the first-floor hallway.
Room 102: Special Room.
Twice the size of a standard room. The facilities were probably better than most business hotels.
As she went in, the woman nodded lightly and said something like “shiba shiba,” but I knew it wasn’t an insult—it was Russian—so it didn’t bother me.
I could still see the cleaning aunties clustered by the elevator, frozen in shock.
“Aunties. It’s work time. Standard rooms are urgent right now, so clean the standard rooms first.”
“Chief Kang… can we really go work?”
Auntie Sookhee asked.
Smiling, I said,
“Of course. The most important thing right now is cleaning the standard rooms. Please—”
hurry.”