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Join the ServerSa Hae lay sprawled diagonally across the armchair in his home, staring up at the ceiling.
“Seriously, what an idiot.”
Sa Hae muttered the words as he recalled Sin’s appearance. What was it about love, anyway?
Perhaps it was because the earliest memory he had was one of hunger? The desires Sa Hae possessed were nothing particularly special.
Fascinated by the humans and yokai who clung so desperately to life, he had tried all sorts of things, but even now, Sa Hae could not understand why they were so attached to living.
He had seen plenty of people blinded by greed, so he had owned a huge house and amassed enormous amounts of money. He had even tried indulging in every pleasure under the sun.
And yet, despite all that, Sa Hae still could not understand why they clung so desperately to life.
Why were they so obsessed with it?
“…”
Perhaps if Sun-young’s one remaining wish had not existed, if Sun-young had not asked him to protect Lee Young, Sa Hae would have disappeared long ago.
Unable to find a reason to remain in this world where nothing was interesting, he would simply have vanished.
‘I want to watch the woman I love grow old.’
Sin’s words kept coming back to him.
What kind of feeling was that?
Sa Hae had stayed by Sun-young’s side simply because he had a wish of hers to fulfill. He had never once thought that he wanted to watch Sun-young grow old and die.
“What, it’s love, I guess.”
Right. What Sin was feeling was love, so perhaps that was why.
Thinking that, Sa Hae tore his gaze away from the ceiling.
He understood it with his head, but he could not understand it with his heart.
What was love, anyway?
To Sa Hae, who had never been in love, Sin’s behavior was nothing more than foolishness.
“Love, my ass. When you die, that’s the end.”
Death was an immutable law.
What was there that could not be forgotten?
Yokai naturally lived far longer than humans, but like humans, they lived with the ability to forget.
So why couldn’t they forget?
Sa Hae quietly thought of Sun-young.
Starting with the very young girl who had first given him his name, he saw her face gradually grow older. Past the wrinkled face of an elderly woman came Lee Young’s face.
And with the image of Lee Young, the woman who had been captivated by the word love and volunteered to grant Sin’s wish, Sa Hae closed his eyes.
The yokai floundering helplessly in love, and the humans who acted as though love were some grand and precious thing, were all understandable in his mind.
But it was nothing more than a waste of emotion.
The world moved on nothing but promises.
“What the hell is love, anyway?”
Sa Hae murmured the words as a light as dark and cold as an abyss radiated from his body.
****
“Tori, do you think there’s a way?”
Woof!
At Lee Young’s words, the three-legged dog sitting on her lap barked.
Before opening the bookstore, Lee Young sat by the bookstore window, seriously pondering the matter.
She genuinely wanted to grant Sin’s wish.
She wanted to fulfill the final wish of a man who claimed to have fallen in love with the same woman through all three of her reincarnations, a man who said he had loved only that one woman.
“Yokai really are kind of romantic, even now, aren’t they?”
Lee Young spoke as she gently stroked Tori’s fur.
He wanted to stay beside the woman he loved and watch her grow old.
People these days did not say things like that.
Even if she wanted to believe that there were people who felt that way, fewer and fewer people believed in reincarnation itself anymore.
Perhaps that was why she found it fascinating. And perhaps she was a little envious of the person who received such love.
“Love, huh.”
Maybe because she had never properly been in a relationship herself, she could not quite comprehend it.
Was love like that really possible?
“It must be a blessing to be loved like that, right?”
Woof, woof!
At Lee Young’s musings, Tori barked and climbed down from her lap. He trotted around nearby on his three legs.
“The world really feels like it’s turned upside down in just a few days.”
Thinking that, Lee Young began preparing to open the bookstore.
Granting Sin’s wish was one thing, but she still had to work to make a living.
By the time she finished preparing for opening, Sa Hae arrived as usual.
By now, Sa Hae coming to the bookstore felt completely natural.
“You’re here?”
“Yeah.”
Sa Hae sat down in his usual spot as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and Lee Young dragged a chair over and sat nearby.
Whenever Sa Hae came to the bookstore, customers stopped coming in as if by magic.
Lee Young knew that well by now, so whenever Sa Hae arrived, she felt relaxed, almost as though it were break time.
She sat near Sa Hae and took out her phone.
She had been too busy all morning to call Sin, even though she had wanted to.
For some reason, she felt a little afraid of seeing his face, but a phone call should be fine.
Lee Young called Sin to give him at least a progress report and let him know she was working hard to find a solution.
“Haa, haa…”
“…Um, hello?”
“Ha, f*ck. Who is this?”
“Mmm, honey, haa. Ah!’”
“Th-this is Lee Young…”
“Later. I’m busy.”
Click.
Lee Young stared down at the call that had been abruptly disconnected, her face turning bright red in an instant.
Was that just now…?
The woman’s moans she had clearly heard in the background…
“Why is your face so red?”
“…”
“Why?”
At Sa Hae’s question, Lee Young shook her head, her face still bright red.
Seeing her expression, Sa Hae clicked his tongue as though he already knew exactly what had happened.
It was obvious even without asking.
“Crazy bastard. What the hell has that Saekgwi been teaching him?”
“…Th-that…”
“He probably is busy.”
“…”
“Snakes have two, you know.”
Sa Hae said it in the driest voice imaginable, and the sheer dryness of his tone seemed to set fire to Lee Young’s face.
“Why? You didn’t know?”
“K-know what?”
Seeing Lee Young stumble over her words, Sa Hae’s handsome lips curled into a mischievous grin.
Sa Hae was more playful than Lee Young.
He was especially playful right now.
Sitting in his designated seat in one corner of Lee Young’s bookstore, Sa Hae looked at her face and smiled.
Mischief practically danced in his eyes. As though he had no intention of letting this opportunity slip away, he narrowed his eyes at her.
“You don’t know what there are two of?”
“Forget it!”
“Why? Aren’t you curious? No matter how much an ordinary human woman was supposedly his destined partner, how did she manage to fall in love with a python in every single life?”
“Aah!”
Lee Young screamed as though she had heard something she absolutely should not have heard.
At that moment, Tori’s body suddenly grew, swelling until he was nearly the size of an ordinary wolf, and he stepped in front of Lee Young.
More accurately, he stepped between her and Sa Hae.
Grrrr.
A low growl rumbled from his throat, and Sa Hae stared at Tori in disbelief.
“What the hell? Are you insane? Why haven’t you changed back to your original size?”
“Why are you picking on our Tori?!”
Our Tori.
Lee Young wrapped both arms around the enlarged Tori’s neck as she spoke, and Sa Hae let out an incredulous laugh.
That three-legged bastard was practically a fox.
“You damn mutt.”
“I never call you an iron lump bastard!”
“Is that dog you?”
“Don’t you know what a companion animal is?”
Huh. Now she was calling him a companion.
She was using a term even the yokai barely used anymore for an animal.
“Call it what it is. Not a companion animal, but a companion yokai.”
“…”
“Then keep it by your side until you die.”
At Sa Hae’s words, Lee Young stared at him with her eyes wide.
“I was planning to anyway, even without you saying that, Mister.”
Sa Hae’s sharp gaze shifted from Lee Young to Tori.
I don’t like this. Damn mutt.
Sa Hae clicked his tongue.
“So, what did the python say?”
“…H-he said he’s busy right now….”
“He’s making excuses because he’s too busy f*cking. Crazy bastard.”
Sa Hae shook his head as though he had a pretty good idea what was going on.
He didn’t need to see it to know.
Yokai were simple creatures by nature.
What difference did it make that the python had lived for five hundred years?
Humans were the complicated ones. Yokai had always been simple.
Even the fact that he had ultimately chosen physical intimacy as a way to keep his wife from leaving him was brutally simple.
It was exactly the kind of choice Sin would make.
Sa Hae clicked his tongue.
“Still, if someone’s heart is going to change, it’ll change.”
“We don’t know that!”
“What don’t we know? They couldn’t stay together in all three previous lives. What makes this one any different? Think about it statistically.”
Lee Young, who had been raising her voice, abruptly closed her mouth and looked at Sa Hae as though he were some heartless bastard.
“Especially in the third life. She personally set his skin on fire, didn’t she? If that woman remembers her past life, do you really think she’ll want to sleep with that python again?”
“You don’t believe in love, do you, Mister?”
‘Huh. Look at her.’
At Lee Young’s blunt question, Sa Hae glared at her with an almost appalled expression.
She was seriously lecturing someone who had lived for hundreds of years about love.
Love.
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Have you?”
At Sa Hae’s question, Lee Young flinched.
“You and me are the same.”
“We’re different!”
“How?”
“You’ve lived longer than my grandmother!”
“So?”
“I’m only twenty-eight, but you’re over two hundred and eighty. Is not having experienced love yet the same as you never having loved anyone in all that time?”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t. Even if I never loved anyone, I’ve experienced every pleasure under the sun, so shut up.”
“…”
Every pleasure under the sun?
Lee Young gave him a slightly sharper look at Sa Hae’s unapologetic statement.
He really was ridiculously handsome.
He was well over 190 centimeters tall, had an exceptionally handsome face, and everything he wore from head to toe was designer.
It would have been stranger if he had never had women around him.
“Mister, do you like drinking?”
“Who doesn’t like alcohol?”
“Mister, do you gamble too?”
“You want to play a game of blackjack with me?”
Blackjack.
That word had just come out of the mouth of a yokai who had presumably been alive since the Joseon era, perhaps even earlier.
Lee Young would have been stunned if he had mentioned hwatu or seotda, but blackjack?
She stared at Sa Hae in disbelief.
“What are you so proud of?”
“I’m proud of it.”
“Mister, you’ve had a lot of women too, right?”
At Lee Young’s question, Sa Hae looked at her as though she had asked something painfully obvious.
“Curious?”
“I’m not curious!”
The adventure continues! If you loved this chapter, There Is a Monster in The Imperial Palace is a must-read. Click here to start!
Read : There Is a Monster in The Imperial Palace
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