“That’s right! I came to my hometown after a long time and showed her around my house!”
“Showed around the house….”
The eyes of the villagers softened somewhat.
Someone asked with a suddenly polite attitude.
“You didn’t come to kick out Tae Rin, did you?”
No way. I was going to beg her to live here for the rest of her life.
“No,”
Choi Yoon answered firmly.
The villagers’ faces brightened.
However, one person still looked dubious. Ji Chun Bae, who had come to fix the forklift last night with black wings drooping behind his back, asked accusingly.
“Then why did you come?”
“As you know, I’m the ambassador for the census survey. I felt responsible when I heard rumors of protest, so I came to check the situation.”
For a moment, the air froze chillingly.
Though not unexpected, Choi Yoon felt slightly tense. He added politely.
“I couldn’t find any related articles, so I had no choice but to visit in person.”
The villagers looked utterly bewildered.
Some faces even showed signs of displeasure.
Ji Chun Bae muttered.
“You expect us to believe that? After supporting every yokai suppression policy all this time, now you say you feel responsible?”
Following this, everyone started chiming in.
“Did you come to interfere? To spy?”
“This isn’t a place for you to be. Is the hometown house thing just an excuse? It’s strange that you suddenly came after never visiting before.”
“Are you planning to secretly film and maliciously edit to post on SNS? That precious SNS of yours where you constantly trample on yokai.”
Choi Yoon tried to explain.
“It’s true that my image has become fixed due to me taking the lead on various policies for a long time. But I absolutely don’t want the census survey to lead to discriminatory policies…”
However, no one was willing to listen.
“Shut up!”
“Don’t make excuses!”
“Think we’ll fall for that handsome face? You don’t know what a yokai’s life is like! You’re just a silver spoon human who grew up pampered in Haeu!”
“I lost my job because of the policy you promoted!”
“Get out of our Tae Rin’s restaurant right now!”
“Yeah! Go to those no-monster zone restaurants you keep recommending! This is a no-Choi Yoon zone!”
“Get out! Get out!”
“Choi Yoon! Wake up!”
“We oppose the census survey!”
There was no need to go all the way to Jangcheon County Office.
This was the protest.
Just then, a cranky old man’s voice flew from behind the villagers.
“What’s going on? Why is everyone standing around instead of going inside?”
The people’s faces instantly lit up.
“Village chief!”
“The village chief is here!”
The people parted neatly to both sides.
An old man strode briskly through the gap.
It was the village chief I had met last night.
As soon as his eyes met Choi Yoon’s, the village chief opened his mouth cheerfully.
“Ah, that young man from yesterday…”
The village chief trailed off, his eyes widening as he muttered.
“Choi Yoon?”
Choi Yoon reflexively tried to take a step back, but regained his balance and stood firm.
“You, you, last night… I thought I’d seen you somewhere before!”
I should have shown my face and revealed my identity from the start. It was too late to regret now.
“Yes, that’s right.”
In that moment, the village chief’s face contorted terribly.
Choi Yoon instinctively confirmed that he had no pickaxe or broom, just empty hands.
He immediately backed away. The village chief’s dry fist grazed his chin.
Kim Tae Rin hurriedly pulled the village chief back and hugged him from behind as he lunged at Choi Yoon.
“Village chief! You can’t just hit people like that!”
“After eating his own father, what more does he want, crawling in here!”
“What do you mean eating? Don’t say such things!”
“If you had any conscience, you shouldn’t have come here! What face do you have to walk in here on your own two feet!”
“Village chief, please stop! He can come if he wants. It’s his hometown after all.”
“What hometown, that damned…!”
The village chief spat on the ground. He shouted at the top of his lungs.
“How many died because of him!”
Choi Yoon did not avoid the village chief’s bloodshot eyes.
Though he didn’t remember that wrinkled face, he must have been one of the survivors of the village.
One of the few survivors.
Kim Tae Rin forcibly sat the village chief down in a chair and strode over.
“Choi Yoon, come here for a moment.”
A pretty hand reached out and firmly grasped Choi Yoon’s hand.
Moist, cold and soft.
His mind went blank. A chill ran down his spine.
It wasn’t his first time holding someone’s hand. He had skillfully done even more in front of cameras.
Yet his heart kept beating unfamiliarly.
After that, everything was a blur. In an instant, he was led by the hand through the restaurant door and out to the yard.
At the edge of the yard, Kim Tae Rin let go of his hand. She stood with her back to Choi Yoon as if protecting him, and gestured for the villagers to go inside.
“Unless you want to ask the celebrity for an autograph, everyone go inside.”
The villagers obediently filed into the restaurant like a flock of sheep, and the door slammed shut.
Soon, people were packed tightly against every window. With wide eyes, they jostled each other, busy gawking at this side.
Kim Tae Rin clicked her tongue. As she was about to say something to the neighbors, Choi Yoon spoke first.
“I guess it was my selfishness. The very idea of going together with the people here.”
“I suppose so. It seems unrealistic to go together. They’re not prepared at all mentally.”
Then Kim Tae Rin added.
“You don’t seem to be either.”
“Me?”
“You look like you’re about to faint.”
“I’m just, a little surprised.”
Choi Yoon pretended to be nonchalant as he touched the back of his neck, then flinched. Kim Tae Rin’s moisture still remained coolly on his fingertips.
“I guess it’s rare to see yokai gathered like this, loudly asserting themselves in big cities. I heard they don’t even act with yokai actors.”
He couldn’t answer.
He was confused. Was his flushed body due to his breathing tightening at the sight of yokai, or because of senses heightened sensitively from just a brief touch?
Kim Tae Rin rubbed the ground with the toe of her sneaker, then looked up.
“Let’s be clear. Is it true? That you came feeling a moral responsibility. Not because you dislike the protest?”
“It’s not.”
After quietly steadying her breath, Kim Tae Rin spoke as if she had made up her mind.
“Then wait down below. Come with me. I’ll just pack up the villagers’ lunchboxes and come down too.”
“May I come again?”
Choi Yoon asked abruptly without realizing and tensed slightly.
Kim Tae Rin furrowed her brow.
“Pardon?”
“Can I come here again?”
“This is a restaurant and we don’t turn away customers. But the villagers won’t like it.”
Then Kim Tae Rin added.
“It’s not your fault though.”
It’s not your fault.
It was a phrase he heard countless times outside of Soseul-ri.
When his past became a hot topic as he debuted in the entertainment industry, many people grasped young Choi Yoon’s hands and repeated it.
‘It’s not your fault.’
He could have let it slide like back then. He could have taken it as mere courtesy, nodded politely and said see you later before leaving.
But strangely, Choi Yoon felt the urge to refute.
“I was the cause. I guided the gumiho to the village.”
Kim Tae Rin calmly nodded.
“I know the details of the incident too. It was all over the news for a while, and I heard a lot from the villagers. Though everyone’s words were different, they all said it was because of you in the end. I think differently. It’s not your fault.”
“My mistake was the cause. Are you playing word games?”
He blurted out sharply without realizing.
In contrast, Kim Tae Rin was not shaken at all.
“If we trace back the causes, there’s no end.”
She continued slowly.
“If you hadn’t let the gumiho into the village. If the gumiho hadn’t escaped before that. If it hadn’t been caught. If it hadn’t committed the act that led to its capture. If a gumiho had never been born in the first place. If we keep going back like that, nothing remains in the end. I don’t see the point in singling out and condemning your mistake in this situation.”
“It happened because of me.”
“It’s not your fault. At least this.”
Choi Yoon rubbed his cheek as if wiping away tears that hadn’t fallen. Then he said as if spitting it out.
“How can you be so sure? When you weren’t even there.”
The conversation flowed opposite to the pattern Choi Yoon had experienced so far.
Unlike always reflexively defending that it wasn’t his fault, Choi Yoon was startled to realize he was trying to thoroughly convince Kim Tae Rin why it was his sin.
Kim Tae Rin gazed at Choi Yoon steadily, as if caressing him with her eyes. She said.
“How should I explain this? It’s not your fault because it’s not your fault.”
The wind blew, gently scattering the May air pooled between them.
The clouds moved.
Light fell on Kim Tae Rin’s clean, expressionless face like a child’s palm, then faded into shadow, then appeared again as a faint light shadow.
Like a god.
Choi Yoon thought that the way the sun rippled over her coldly exquisite features didn’t seem human.
His heart began to beat fiercely. Newly, as if it had never properly beat even once before.
With a radiant face, Kim Tae Rin declared.
“There were no perpetrators in that incident. Everyone was a victim.”
A voice straight as if cut by a knife, yet warm.
“So it’s not your fault.”
Unable to look her in the eye, Choi Yoon turned his head.
He felt dizzy.
He couldn’t even tell why.
Maybe because he hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. Because the speaker was unrealistically beautiful. Because the sunlight was just right and the wind was gentle. Because the scent of grass and flowers grew stronger with every breath.
If not this or that, then because he heard the words he had earnestly wished for through someone else’s mouth in a way he had never experienced before.
Overwhelmed, Choi Yoon lowered his gaze.
Why would this person say such things with such a face? If only one had been less.
“You dislike me, don’t you?”
He looked up with a sigh-like utterance and flinched.
Too close.
Those densely black pupils were close enough to touch. He endured without showing it.
The gap was barely three spans. The warmth of the May midday breeze or Kim Tae Rin’s exhalation gently seeped in.
Afraid his breath might reach her, Choi Yoon barely suppressed his breathing.
As he had gauged last night, Choi Yoon’s lips were at a height to reach Kim Tae Rin’s forehead.
To kiss, he would have to tilt his head slightly.
Of course, he had no such thoughts. Absolutely none.
He repeated with difficulty.
“You dislike me, don’t you? Then why are you taking my side?”
“I don’t dislike your past, I dislike your attitude.”
The look in her eyes as she gazed up was not the anger she had poured out last night, but closer to empty resignation. There was no sign of holding back tears.
Yet her smooth, luminous eyes, the even lashes around them, seemed to always hold tears.
He vaguely thought they didn’t look like human eyes. That her large, moist pupils looked just like those of a beast.
“It’s horrifying how you trample on others with a single word without realizing it’s wrong.”
Kim Tae Rin continued slowly.
“I would never have come in if I had known it was your restaurant.”
__________
“Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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