Chapter 22: The Scariest Creature in the World Is Human

It rained.

On a rainy weekday, Lee Young’s bookstore was quiet from the very morning.

“Why is it so quiet again today…”

With the rain falling peacefully and the bookstore unusually quiet, it would normally have been nice to enjoy some long-awaited tranquility. But Lee Young couldn’t. Sa Hae had thoroughly turned her insides upside down, leaving her incapable of feeling at peace.

Whenever she sat still and looked out the window, there was only one person she could think about: Sa Hae. No, to be more precise, she kept remembering the kisses they had shared last night and again this morning.

A morning kiss.

Lee Young had only learned this morning that something like that was even possible in her life.

She remembered the expression on Sa Hae’s face when he had grabbed her wrist as she was about to get out of the car. When she pushed him away, he had looked puzzled before asking,

‘Why? You don’t like it?’

‘…’

‘If you don’t like it, forget it.’

When Sa Hae acted as though he wouldn’t ask twice, it was Lee Young who reached out and took his hand.

That heartless yokai never asked twice. Did he really not know that doing something only once made him seem cold?

At Lee Young’s gesture of taking his hand, Sa Hae’s handsome lips curled upward, and he kissed her. As she felt his lips against hers, Lee Young had felt as though her entire body were melting.

“I’m screwed. Seriously…”

All day long, there was only Sa Hae in her thoughts. Even when she opened a book in an attempt to think about something else, Sa Hae appeared in her mind before she could finish reading a single line.

At the end of every sentence, the Bulgasal, the iron-eating yokai, was dangling there.

In the end, Lee Young closed the book without managing to read even a single page and simply stroked Tori’s head.

“Tori, what am I supposed to do?”

Her heart kept pounding so hard she thought she might die, and she kept thinking about him so much she thought she might die. Did Sa Hae feel the same way?

He certainly didn’t seem to. And that only made Lee Young more troubled.

It wasn’t the primitive fear that she might end up spending her first night with a yokai that bothered her most. What worried her was that, to Sa Hae, she might be nothing more than a little girl.

Right now, it felt as though she were the only one trembling helplessly in this situation. That thought made things even harder for her.

It was Tae-yi who finally broke through the hours filled with Lee Young’s troubled thoughts.

The moment he entered the bookstore, Tori began barking furiously.

“Hi! Hello, Ms. Lee Young, too!”

Even when Tae-yi saw Tori barking at him, he simply smiled and waved.

When she had first seen that smile yesterday, it had looked nothing more than bright and innocent. But after thinking about her conversation with Sa Hae last night and the phone call Tae-yi had made, something about it now felt unsettling.

“You’re here?”

“Why did you hang up on me yesterday?”

“You called? I must have answered while I was half-asleep.”

Lee Young said this as she awkwardly rose from her seat.

“Oh, really? I don’t have filming today, so I came by to visit. Is it okay if I visit? Am I bothering you? Should I leave?”

“No. It’s quiet today anyway.”

Tae-yi had a way of saying things that somehow made it difficult for the other person to refuse his requests. Without even realizing it, Lee Young said it was fine and offered him a seat.

“Oh, not there…”

Tae-yi was once again heading toward the chair Sa Hae always sat in. Before he could sit down, Lee Young called out to him and shook her head. Then she pointed him toward another chair.

At that, Tae-yi stared at the chair he had been about to sit in for a moment before speaking in a light voice.

“That’s the yokai’s seat, right? The one whose body gives off lights. What was he called again? A Bulgasal?”

“Yes.”

“The one who told me to get lost yesterday.”

When Tae-yi said the one who told me to get lost, Lee Young noticed that his voice suddenly turned cold.

“He’s just a little rough with his words. He doesn’t mean anything by it…”

Tae-yi’s gaze fell upon Lee Young’s wrist.

“That little mark on your wrist. He left that too, didn’t he?”

“…”

“He looks pretty vicious.”

Several of his words came flying sharply and lodged themselves in Lee Young’s ears.

The word mark itself, that crude, thug-like choice of wording, wasn’t what bothered her. What upset her was the way he said he as though Sa Hae were some mere thing.

It was disrespectful toward Sa Hae. More than simple disregard, it was the kind of expression that revealed Tae-yi considered Sa Hae, deep down, to be little more than an object or an animal.

“He’s not vicious.”

“He seems pretty vicious to me.”

“He’s a good person.”

The comment irritated her, so Lee Young deliberately defended Sa Hae even more strongly. She hated hearing Tae-yi call him vicious when he didn’t even know him properly.

Well, of course, it wasn’t as though she knew Sa Hae all that well herself. But that was that. She simply didn’t like hearing the man in front of her talk about him that way.

“He’s not a person.”

“…”

“Oh, come on. You see ghosts and yokai, so how can you call him a person? Right?”

Tae-yi said it as though he were merely playing along with Lee Young’s joke.

For a moment, Lee Young found it difficult to understand how someone who spoke like that could be searching for his companion dokkaebi.

“Weren’t you looking for your companion dokkaebi?”

“Yes. My companion dokkaebi.”

“But then, what do you mean by…”

“She’s the same as a companion animal.”

Ah.

This guy was trash.

The thought struck Lee Young instantly.

Of course, she herself sometimes called Tori her companion yokai. But she had never meant it in that sense.

The way Tae-yi used the term companion dokkaebi sounded less like companion animal and more like pet.

An animal that belonged to him. Something like a toy.

Once Lee Young realized that, she felt vaguely sick and found it difficult to even look at Tae-yi.

Regardless of what she was feeling, Tae-yi wore an expression that suggested he had absolutely no idea what was wrong with what he had said.

“But do you have a boyfriend?”

“What?”

“If you don’t, how about me? I fell for you the moment I saw you yesterday.”

What the hell was this guy?

The instant Tae-yi finished speaking, Tori began barking even more violently.

It felt as though he were trying to protect Lee Young. Or perhaps he was trying to alert someone to the presence of an intruder.

“That damn dog is really noisy.”

“Hey.”

The informal word slipped out in a moment of anger.

‘Calling Tori a damn dog? This bastard was less worthy of being called a human being than that damn dog.’

“Did you just say that to me?”

“You’re a year younger than me. Why are you calling someone else’s dog a damn dog? Who the hell do you think you are?”

Tae-yi gave a hollow laugh at Lee Young’s words and stood up.

He was a head taller than Lee Young. Looking down at her, he wore a chilling expression.

Just how many faces did this guy have?

Lee Young glared back without looking away from his eyes. She felt as though she finally understood why Sa Hae had disliked him so much yesterday.

“Oh. I like this side of you, too.”

“You crazy bastard.”

“You figured me out quickly, huh? Our Banji took a really long time to realize I was a crazy bastard.”

“…”

“Will you go out with me? I’ll treat you well.”

They were the same words, you’re pretty, but when Sa Hae had said them last night, her heart had pounded. Hearing them from Tae-yi now only made her feel as though insects were crawling all over her skin.

“Get out.”

“Ah. What a shame.”

Even after Lee Young told him to leave, Tae-yi stepped closer to her.

At that moment, Tori suddenly grew larger and charged at Tae-yi.

Tori swelled to the size of a hunting dog and pounced on him. Tae-yi fell backward with a crash, knocking over books on the shelves and those displayed around the store, sending everything into chaos.

“Tori!”

As the sounds of things falling and breaking rang through the bookstore, Lee Young hurried to pull Tori into her arms before Tae-yi could do anything violent to him.

“Get out right now! Otherwise, I’m calling the police!”

“…”

“Do you want me to make you appear on the news? I even know a pretty famous influencer. If he posts on his social media that Han Tae-yi is a pervert, you can bet reporters will happily write articles about it!”

Sin would at least do something like that for her.

Lee Young shouted furiously at Tae-yi, while Tori, still held in her arms, continued to growl at him.

Tae-yi frowned and looked coldly between Lee Young and Tori. His expression suggested he wanted to do something to them right then and there, but perhaps because of Lee Young’s near-threat, he couldn’t bring himself to make a move.

“Phew. Whatever. Just find my dokkaebi, you.”

“…”

Tae-yi spoke to Lee Young in a cold voice, as though he had never smiled at her in the first place.

“If you can’t find her, I’ll make sure you’re the first one I deal with.”

It was clearly a threat.

Yet he said it with such frightening sincerity that Lee Young could only watch as Tae-yi walked out of the bookstore.

“T-That crazy bastard!”

Left alone, Lee Young hugged Tori tightly and shouted at Tae-yi’s retreating back.

Somehow, compared to the yokai who had come to ask her for help, the Jade Rabbit who had given her that strange medicine, and even the virgin ghost who had stolen her first kiss before ascending to the afterlife, that human man seemed like the most vicious creature of them all.

Sa Hae had been right that time.

Humans really were the scariest things in the world.

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