Chapter 1: A Fated Encounter

“Do you happen to believe in gods?”

“…Pardon?”

“Ah, whether you believe or not doesn’t matter.
It’s a predetermined fate, after all, so you won’t be able to refuse it anyway.”

“…Pardon?”

“Though I must say, I’m a little surprised you’re a man.”

Jichan was sitting at a business partner’s establishment, explaining the details of a newly released menu, when a dark shadow fell over him.

The man standing above him wore an impeccably tailored suit and had sharply defined features.
His gaze was fixed on Jichan, examining him meticulously from head to toe as though he were selecting a product.

“I’m sorry, but who exactly are you…?”

The man paid no attention to Jichan’s bewilderment or the shop owner sitting across from him.
He continued to scrutinize Jichan from the tips of his hair to the soles of his feet, his eyes moving busily over every inch of him.

“Have you ever slept with a man?”

“What?”

“I didn’t expect to run into you while taking a walk.
I searched everywhere for you, yet I couldn’t find you.”

His outfit seemed a little too extravagant for a casual stroll, but Jichan had already concluded that the man wasn’t in his right mind, so he kept his mouth shut.

Although this was one of his company’s business partners, Jichan himself wasn’t in a position of authority.
Besides, if the wrong rumors started spreading, he might get unceremoniously fired from the company he’d only recently managed to join.

Drawing on his experience in the workplace, Jichan forced the corners of his mouth upward into the most amiable smile he could manage.

“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“Impossible.
I can clearly smell that ‘fragrance’ coming from you.”

Fragrance, my ass.

Jichan was already horrified by the words coming out of that mouth, which was attached to a face so ridiculously handsome that it could have been considered a bonus feature.

Still, at thirty-two, he could confidently say he’d experienced his fair share of life in society.
And yet, he suspected this might be the third-greatest crisis of his entire life.

“Ah, if you’re talking about that fragrance, please place your order for fried chicken with the part-timer over there.
Cu-sto-mer.”

Jichan helpfully extended an open palm toward the part-timer at the counter, desperately trying to redirect the attention of this utterly unreasonable man.

The shop manager was right there, perfectly capable of handling customers, and there was even a part-timer at the counter.
Why, then, was Jichan the one stuck dealing with this lunatic customer?

Still, the man’s gaze was fixed exclusively on him, so Jichan decided there was little else he could do.

The man stood with his arms crossed, watching him.
Then he raised one hand and stroked his chin.

He looked as though he were deep in thought, exuding the air of a highly capable businessman contemplating some important matter, perhaps something along the lines of, Where should I invest next?

“Do I have to order you as fried chicken before I can have you?”

That mouth was saying whatever it pleased, completely disregarding the perfection of its owner’s appearance.

“…No.
Not me.
Fried chicken.”

A sharply defined nose, smooth lips with elegant contours, and piercing eyes that remained fixed on a single point, sharp yet strangely uncanny.

Judging by his appearance alone, the man seemed to be around Jichan’s age.
Yet something about the aura he gave off was entirely different.

‘Haah…
Why am I even scrutinizing the appearance of this lunatic when I’m not even gay?’

Just then, one of the man’s thick eyebrows twitched slightly.

“I don’t care.
Whether you’re a man or not gay makes no difference to me.”

“W-What?”

“It means we’re destined for each other.
Hmm.
You seem busy, and humans call this present life, don’t they?
Since you appear to have a lot going on in your present life, I’ll come back another time.”

“Present life?”

‘Some kind of cultist?
Present life?
Past life, present life…
Is that what he means?
And what does he mean, we’re destined for each other?!’

Jichan’s mind began to overheat.

Meanwhile, Hanseong turned away from Jichan, who was staring at him in a daze, and walked off with the coolest smile in the world.
Privately, he was rather pleased with himself for having come up with such an excellent expression.

Not long ago, he’d paid close attention to a turtle who had been obsessing over a girl group that appeared inside the little boxes humans used to watch things on.
These days, those boxes had apparently become large rectangular screens, but that was beside the point.

‘Our Chacha’s a must-support, but my present life is just so busy!
Why is the human world always spinning around so frantically?
Huh?
Hanseong!’

Remembering how the turtle had wailed in a manner completely at odds with its appearance, Hanseong had come to understand that humans referred to their lives as their present life.

His beloved was probably in a similar situation.

“But what does must-support mean?
Does it use the characters for virtue and sequence, meaning to accumulate virtue in order?
Humans these days certainly have bizarre ways of combining words.”

Hanseong tilted his head slightly.
Then, sensing the wind that had just enveloped his body before disappearing, he closed his eyes.

A faint, sinister smile escaped his lips.

“I should go see which young upstart dares to make trouble in the White Tiger’s territory.”

When his eyes slowly opened again, they were filled with a chill far beyond anything he’d shown earlier.

Jichan trudged home carrying the whole fried chicken the shop manager had insisted on giving him.

Even though he’d repeatedly said it wasn’t necessary, the manager had kept pushing it on him.
Jichan was softhearted enough that, when someone insisted like that, he never knew how to refuse.

Working for a chicken company didn’t mean he ate nothing but chicken, and, truthfully, Jichan wasn’t particularly fond of chicken dishes in the first place.

It didn’t matter whether the chicken was fried, stir-fried, or boiled.

Whenever people around him waxed lyrical about the divine glory of fried chicken, he merely played along with an appropriately enthusiastic reaction.
He wasn’t the sort of person who went out of his way to seek it out.

That was why this kind of generosity sometimes felt like a considerable burden.

“Haaah…”

Still, since he’d gotten free food, he figured he might as well pick up a few cans of beer to go with it, so he stopped by the supermarket near his home.

It had been an exhausting day, made worse by having to wear a suit that was completely unsuitable for the sweltering heat.
Nevertheless, he considered it a satisfying day.

Besides, for an office worker, there was nothing better than a Friday evening—the glorious start of the weekend.

He was admiring the supermarket’s wonderfully cool air-conditioning while picking out three or four cans of his favorite beer and some ingredients to eat over the weekend when he heard the sound of someone arguing nearby.

He turned his head and saw the same man he’d encountered a few hours earlier bickering with an elderly woman.

“Oh, honestly!
I told you, you can’t!”

“Why not?!
I want to eat some now, too!”

“Now, now.
I said no.
You’ve lost all your teeth, so what do you think you’re going to eat?”

“You’re really too cruel!
I’m all grown up now, too!”

“What good is growing old on the outside?
You’ve still got a long way to go.”

“Just once, please.
Just one time.
How much longer do you think I have left to live, anyway?”

“That’s exactly why I’m stopping you!
You don’t have much time left, so you should live as long as possible.
What’s the point of going there early?
There’s nothing worth seeing.”

The truly astonishing part was that the elderly woman was speaking to the man in honorifics.

Jichan had been holding a bunch of green onions when he’d frozen in place to watch the scene.
The man sensed his gaze and turned his head.

And in the man’s hand was a piece of sweet chocolate.

In that instant, an entire drama began playing in Jichan’s head.

An elderly woman addressing someone much younger than herself in honorifics.
An elderly woman demanding chocolate like a little child.

‘Is she suffering from dementia?’

After the unpleasant encounter earlier, he’d already felt awkward about the man.
Now he’d stumbled upon an even more uncomfortable scene, and it left him feeling thoroughly unsettled.

‘I really don’t want to get involved with this guy again.’

Besides, wasn’t the man even more out of his mind than an elderly woman with dementia?

Jichan’s brow furrowed slightly.
Watching him, Hanseong let out a quiet chuckle.

“We meet again.
They say that when coincidences pile up, they become fate.
It seems you and I truly are destined for each other.”

“Ah…
Yes.”

Jichan slipped the green onions he’d picked up into the shopping basket tucked under his arm.

Then the elderly woman standing beside the man chimed in.

“That one over there looks fresher, though.”

“That’s what she says.
And this fellow is a dog, so don’t misunderstand.”

“A dog?
That’s really hurtful.
Lord White Tiger.”

At the elderly woman’s words, Jichan was in the middle of pulling the green onions back out of his basket when the bombshell declaration made him freeze all over again.

Even if the old woman did have dementia, treating someone like a dog?
The man was even crazier than Jichan had initially thought.

“Now, now, I told you, that’s not it.”

“So you’ve finally found your beloved.”

Despite her aged appearance, the elderly woman wore an innocent smile and seemed genuinely delighted.

Unable to find any reasonable explanation for the bizarre relationship between these two, Jichan simply turned around and walked away.

Perhaps it was because he’d failed to eat anything on the day of Chobok, the first of Korea’s three hottest summer days, even though the day had already passed.

He felt as though all his energy had been drained away.

He hurried to finish his shopping, eager to get home, take a shower, and enjoy a cold beer.

Watching Jichan’s retreating figure, Hanseong smiled and spoke to the elderly woman.

“You certainly do seem to enjoy taking the form of an old woman.”

“I merely appear as I should at my age.”

“And you expect me to believe you don’t deliberately take the form of an old woman just to tease me?”

At those words, the elderly woman’s face broke into a bright, mischievous grin.
She snatched the chocolate from Hanseong’s hand.

“And yet, Lord White Tiger, don’t you tease me about my true form?”

“Hmm.
If you look like a dog, then I call you a dog.
Why are you blaming me for that?”

“Didn’t you say you liked dogs, Lord White Tiger?”

“Compared to that ugly lump of stone, isn’t a dog much cuter?”

With that, Hanseong snatched the chocolate back from the elderly woman’s hand.

“Besides, I saw on one of those rectangular screens a few days ago that dogs don’t live long if they eat chocolate.”

“Exactly!
I’m not a dog in the first place, so why do you keep calling me one?!”

Despite the elderly woman’s aggrieved protests, Hanseong didn’t so much as bat an eye.

He was too busy striding after Jichan, who had already reached the checkout counter.

“I’m only doing this for your sake.
You need to live a long, long time, don’t you?
Until the very end of my life, you must stay with me.”

“I’m telling you, I’m not a dog!
Lord Hanseong!”

Hanseong watched Jichan’s retreating figure as he finished paying and left the supermarket without even looking back.

Then, muttering quietly to himself, Hanseong began to walk.

“Gods certainly do seem to enjoy making things troublesome.”

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