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Join the ServerThe sheer audacity in his confident words, to the point of seeming shameless, left Lee Young staring at him in disbelief.
“It suits you.”
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“What? I said it suits you.”
“Hey.”
Hmph.
Like a petulant child, Lee Young abruptly turned her head away and hugged Tori’s neck even tighter, leaving him in his enlarged state.
“Tori, you mustn’t grow that big.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.”
“Like that, okay? You mustn’t grow that big and become so promiscuous.”
Promiscuous, huh?
Though Sa Hae looked at Lee Young as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, he deliberately didn’t correct her.
Whether they saw him as the most clueless fool in the world or as a womanizer didn’t matter.
Humans had always seen things however they wanted to see them, and Sa Hae had never particularly cared how others viewed him.
“I mean, seriously, what is this snake doing from so early in the evening?!”
“If you start early, you can keep going longer.”
At Sa Hae’s utterly indifferent reply, Lee Young looked at him as though he were the most despicable man in the world.
****
Several days passed.
Every day, Lee Young searched for a way to grant Sin’s wish, while Sa Hae came shamelessly to her bookstore and home every other day.
By now, she had grown so accustomed to having Sa Hae in her house that it felt perfectly natural.
They would close the bookstore together and head home, then spend the evening together until late under the excuse of figuring out how to grant Sin’s wish.
Lee Young was gradually becoming accustomed to having Sa Hae by her side.
“But why do you think Mr. Sin went to our ancestor Hyeonjo?”
“He probably went to ask him to grant his wish back then, too.”
“Ah… Do you think our grandfather found a way?”
“Who knows?”
At Lee Young’s question, Sa Hae wore a thoughtful expression for a moment.
If he had found a solution back then, Sin probably wouldn’t have come looking for Lee Young again.
“But the world has changed since then. Maybe things are different now.”
“Ah.”
What kind of method could it have been?
Lee Young placed her now-small Tori on her stomach again and thought.
Sa Hae’s gaze turned toward Lee Young, who was lying stretched out on the living-room rug, stroking Tori.
After seeing her face day after day, Sa Hae had apparently grown accustomed to her, too, because he was sitting in a much more relaxed posture now.
There was something strange about the way Sa Hae looked at Lee Young.
Yokai often had to change their appearances.
Not aging was something that inevitably aroused human suspicion far more often than one might think.
Claiming that you simply looked young could work for a day or two, but when everyone around you grew old while you remained unchanged, that was another matter.
Unless you withdrew into some mountain, practiced cultivation, and eventually became an immortal, there was no easy solution.
And in the twenty-first century, even that was difficult.
Besides, becoming an immortal wasn’t something every yokai could accomplish.
Was it easy for yokai to devote themselves to becoming immortals?
Yokai who had no human bound to them by a promise were even more vulnerable to temptation than humans.
For such beings, cultivating themselves toward immortality was anything but easy.
Having a human who knew what you really were and still accepted you was like winning the lottery.
Sun-young came to Sa Hae’s mind again, but this time he quickly pushed the thought aside.
Perhaps Lee Young would be like that, too.
A foolish promise made without thinking was, little by little, making Sa Hae feel at ease.
“What do you think the method is?”
“Anything could happen. They might break up before we even find that method.”
“How can you say something so awful?”
Lee Young looked up at Sa Hae, who was sitting on the sofa, her eyes narrowing slightly.
“When the first button on a relationship is fastened wrong, the whole damn thing stays screwed up to the end.”
Sa Hae spoke as though he knew every truth in the world.
Lee Young found his attitude thoroughly irritating.
“You don’t know that.”
“Want to bet?”
He raised an eyebrow provocatively, looking as though he had just found something amusing to wager on.
Sa Hae didn’t have much faith in either yokai or humans.
Especially when it came to a button that had been fastened wrong in the first place, he didn’t believe it could ever be fastened correctly again.
“Okay.”
And Lee Young didn’t have much faith in either humans or yokai, either.
But she believed in love.
Whatever form that love took, love was ultimately something that changed living beings.
“What are you betting, Mister? How about your steel company?”
“How much is that worth?”
“Then what are you betting?”
“What are you betting?”
“I’ll grant you a wish.”
A wish.
The word came so easily from Lee Young’s lips.
Honestly, whether human or yokai, everyone tossed around promises to grant wishes far too casually.
Are you all trying to get yourselves into serious trouble? Tsk.
“What makes you all so confident that you can just casually promise to grant wishes? Besides, granting wishes does something good for you, too.”
“Then is there something you want from me? You don’t, do you? Should I give you my liver or something?”
“…”
“…Why are you silent? Why?”
Lee Young, who had been speaking so casually, turned pale at Sa Hae’s silence.
Noticing her uneasiness, Tori grew larger, and Lee Young hugged him tightly while shooting Sa Hae a suspicious look.
“Busted.”
“W-What?”
“It’s a secret.”
Not realizing Sa Hae was joking, Lee Young got up and moved all the way to the other end of the living room before looking back at him.
Seeing that, Sa Hae finally burst out laughing.
Lee Young really was honest to a fault.
“Do you really think I’d ask you for your liver?”
“…”
“Your blood, maybe.”
Flinch.
He was serious.
He was absolutely serious.
Lee Young had relaxed when she realized he meant something other than her liver, only to become even more horrified than before.
There was no way she could take that as a joke.
“Just kidding.”
“…”
“Probably.”
‘Ugh, I really hate him.’
“Pretty funny.”
Sa Hae said that as he looked at Lee Young.
Her honest reaction amused him.
In the past, when he had nothing else to eat, he had even tried drinking human blood.
Back then, he hadn’t known why drinking human blood made him feel a little better.
He hadn’t known that blood contained iron.
Since he was rather squeamish, there were times when even drinking blood had been too much for him.
So he would carry a freshly killed animal to a yokai living at the foot of Chiaksan and have it made into little round pills.
The smell of blood was the same either way, but at least swallowing a pill whole was better than gulping down blood directly…
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“There might be a way.”
“What way? A way for you to drink my blood?”
‘What a joke.’
“A way to grant the wish of that snake with two dicks.”
At Sa Hae’s words, Lee Young’s eyes went round.
****
“You’re lying, right?”
“Why do you think I’m lying?”
“Then you expect me to believe that?”
“You believe me, sitting right beside you, don’t you? A Bulgasal whose body glows.”
“Well, that’s…”
At Sa Hae’s words, Lee Young rolled her enormous eyes and looked at the things resting on her lap.
A cake box sat on top of a wooden chest tightly wrapped in a cloth.
“There have been way too many things happening lately that feel fake.”
“Life is all fake to begin with.”
“…”
With his hands on the wheel, Sa Hae continued driving in a calm voice.
His expensive car drove deeper and deeper into the mountains.
“Twenty-third descendant of the Sa family?”
‘I didn’t even know it, but I guess I’m popular among yokai.’
At the voice recognizing her, Lee Young nodded.
In her arms were still the chest containing Sin’s shed skin and the box of carrot cake.
“So what brings you here?”
“…H-Hello…”
It was still incredibly difficult to get used to animals talking.
No, honestly, this whole situation was difficult to process…
“This…”
Sniff, sniff.
She could see the red nose twitching as it sniffed.
‘It’s not going to bite my wrist off if I touch its nose, is it?’
“You may touch it.”
“…”
“He’s not that bad-tempered.”
At Sa Hae’s words, which had been watching her struggle, Lee Young finally couldn’t resist and gently touched the red nose nestled in the white fur.
“What are you doing?”
She flinched.
A white rabbit was talking.
In other words, Lee Young had come all the way to Chiaksan with Sa Hae to meet the Jade Rabbit said to live on the moon.
So the Jade Rabbit lived in Chiaksan, not on the moon…
“This is carrot cake.”
“Carrot what?”
“Carrot cake. I hope you like it.”
She had bought the carrot cake from the most famous bakery in Seoul specifically to give it to the Jade Rabbit.
Was this how Alice felt when she followed the White Rabbit?
Lee Young couldn’t shake the feeling that everything happening to her was a dream.
“I came because I have a favor to ask…”
The rabbit was about the size of her forearm, roughly the same size as Tori normally was.
Yet somehow, she kept finding herself speaking formally to it.
According to Sa Hae, the Jade Rabbit was more than a thousand years old.
“Could you perhaps turn this into small pills?”
“Isn’t this Gureongdeongdeong Sinseonbi’s shed skin?”
Lee Young nodded.
After discussing it at length with Sa Hae, that was the conclusion they had reached.
Turn the shed skin into small pills and have Sin’s wife eat them.
Of course, whether she chose to eat them would be entirely up to her.
But if she swallowed one and it became part of her, the shed skin couldn’t be burned until she died.
And if that happened, Sin would have no reason to worry about being betrayed.
“I heard Sin has been desperately searching for a way to keep his wife from leaving him. So this must be that way, then?”
“Yes, exactly.”
The only problem was that there was no way to know whether she would actually swallow it.
“If you turn a wish this strong into a pill… even if she hates him, she won’t be able to part from him until death?”
“That’s what he wants…”
“And when the person who ate the pill dies, Sinseonbi won’t live much longer either?”
“…”
“Why don’t you ask him once? Whether he’s all right with dying together.”
At the Jade Rabbit’s words, Lee Young immediately pulled out her phone.
There was no signal, so they wandered around here and there until, thanks to Sa Hae, they finally had to climb to the top of a cassia tree before she could get a call through to Sin.
‘Please answer normally this time. Please. Please…’
“Hngh… Wh-Who…?”
“That damn snake, at it again.”
Sa Hae, who had been listening beside her, muttered in disbelief.
Lee Young stopped him and composed herself before speaking.
“Hello, this is Lee Young…”
“I’m busy. Later…”
“Would it be okay if you died together?”
“What?”
“I mean, we’re going to make pills out of your shed skin. They say if your wife takes one, you’ll die when she dies. Are you okay with that?”
“Ahh, honey…”
“Ah, I came.”
“…Excuse me?”
“It’s f*cking hot. Dying together sounds great.”
‘…I think this snake is insane, too…’
“Do it. I’m busy.”
Click.
The call ended just like that.
Lee Young, still in Sa Hae’s arms at the top of the cassia tree, turned to him.
“…Do we really have to grant this wish?”
“If you don’t want to dream about snakes every night, you’d better. I told you, you don’t have to grant every wish.”
“I really hate this.”
The pill was made in no time.
According to the Jade Rabbit, the stronger the wish, the faster it could be made.
“This is a gift.”
“A gift?”
“There were some medicinal herbs and snake scales left in the mountain, so I made this with them. It’s good for your health.”
“…”
“It’ll flush all the toxins right out of your body, too.”
Lee Young stared at the silk pouch handed to her by the Jade Rabbit.
Inside was a single round pill.
The excitement doesn't stop here! If you enjoyed this, you’ll adore There Is a Monster in The Imperial Palace. Start reading now!
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