Chapter 46
“Ah, no.”
He hadn’t had enough time to look in the mirror yet. Just as he was trying to escape from Yeo Moon-beom, who was attempting to undress him right after dressing him up, despite trying to put on more clothes earlier—
Bzzt—
Suddenly, a vibration sounded. Pausing what he was doing, Yeo Moon-beom took out his phone from his pocket and checked the screen. A clear frown appeared between his brows.
“What is it?”
Yeo Moon-beom answered the phone in a low voice, surprised by the unexpected caller’s name.
“I’m here, Manager Yeo!”
“…”
“I said I’m here! Didn’t you miss me?”
His blood pressure suddenly spiked at the frivolous tone coming from the other end of the line. It was truly remarkable how Professor Bang Ki-bong could still joke around after what he had been through. His complete lack of tact and consistent inability to read the room was also a talent in itself.
“Are you drunk calling in broad daylight? I’m hanging up.”
“Huh? It’s true! Don’t you believe me? I’m almost there, so please open the door…”
Click.
Yeo Moon-beom hung up before Professor Bang could finish his sentence. Even that brief conversation gave him a headache, and he rubbed his face with a tired expression.
“Um… Yeo Moon-beom.”
Having overheard the conversation, Eun-hwi, who had been fidgeting and watching cautiously from the side, pointed outside.
“Dr. Hong-salgwi is here.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hmm. I can smell buckwheat porridge, lotus leaf rice, and the millet red bean rice cakes we had before.”
Having showered not long ago, Yeo Moon-beom couldn’t smell anything other than the shampoo scent from his hair. However, he couldn’t ignore the words of the half-dokkaebi with his sharp hearing and keen sense of smell, so Yeo Moon-beom frowned fiercely.
Knock knock.
Soon after, the sound of someone knocking on the gate was heard.
“Dokkaebi sir! Have you been well? Dr. Hong-salgwi is here!”
Professor Bang called out to Eun-hwi loudly, as if intentionally wanting to be heard. It was infuriating how he not only made another unannounced visit, seemingly not valuing his life, but also resorted to such obvious tricks.
Should I kill him here where no one would know, on this uninhabited island?
Having found the answer himself, there was no need to receive the data on ability absorption that Professor Bang had researched.
As he was contemplating whether to eliminate him directly or order debt collectors to recover the debt, Eun-hwi quietly grabbed his arm and asked in a hesitant voice.
“Hey, Yeo Moon-beom. Can I go outside?”
Unable to keep still, he bounced his buttocks, which were even rounder and softer than hericium mushrooms. It seemed he wanted to show Professor Bang his new outfit.
Yeo Moon-beom rubbed his throbbing temples and took a deep breath. He couldn’t show his indignation to the innocent half-dokkaebi.
“Dr. Hong-salgwi isn’t a friend like you, Yeo Moon-beom… But he’s not a stranger either, so I want to see his face and greet him… And I enjoyed the millet red bean rice cakes last time… But if you don’t like it, I won’t go out.”
It was pitiful yet cute how he kept chattering, unable to give up despite hesitating, holding the cuff of his sleeve and bringing it to his mouth.
A smile escaped. He had a knack for not just breaking but completely destroying one’s fighting spirit.
Can’t be helped.
“Let’s go out together.”
“…Huh?”
“Even if we open the door, he can’t come in, so we have to go out.”
“Is that okay?”
“Of course. Go show off your new clothes. Tell him I gave them to you as a gift.”
“Okay!”
His eyes, narrowed like a crescent moon, curved gently. Yeo Moon-beom reached out and patted his head in response to the clear and harmless eye smile, and Eun-hwi lowered his head like a puppy, leaning into the touch.
Although he was closer to a gentle rabbit than a dog, not knowing how to bare his teeth even in situations that warranted caution.
“Wear this too when we go out.”
Yeo Moon-beom picked up the hat that had fallen to the floor and pressed it firmly onto Eun-hwi’s head. His golden eyes, which seemed not of this world, and his unforgettable appearance still proclaimed him to be a dokkaebi, but at a glance, his appearance was no different from a human’s.
Hoping that Professor Bang’s interest in the dokkaebi would be reduced, Yeo Moon-beom left the house with Eun-hwi.
“Dr. Hong-salgwi! Hello!”
As soon as the gate opened, Eun-hwi darted out and greeted Professor Bang. Perhaps due to his significantly changed attire, Professor Bang responded with a surprised face.
“Wow. Your style has changed. I almost didn’t recognize you, Dokkaebi sir.”
“Yeo Moon-beom gave these to me as a gift. How do I look, isn’t it cool?”
“I think the hanbok you wore before suited you much better… Oof!”
Yeo Moon-beom kicked Professor Bang’s shin for tactlessly revealing his true thoughts. Eun-hwi looked up with puzzled eyes at the sudden violence.
Yeo Moon-beom spoke with an indifferent expression as if nothing had happened.
“There was a disgusting bug on his leg.”
“Ah…”
There must have been bugs outside the house.
Thanks to the barrier set by Gabi, no living creatures could enter the house, allowing them to live without bugs despite being in the middle of the mountain.
Thinking it was fortunate that Yeo Moon-beom, who disliked bugs, could at least be comfortable inside the house, Eun-hwi asked Dr. Hong, who was rubbing the kicked area.
“Dr. Hong-salgwi, does the clothes not suit me…?”
“Ah, no. I was going to say that while I thought the hanbok suited you much better, you pull off these clothes stylishly too. As expected of the world’s most handsome dokkaebi!”
Dr. Hong gave two thumbs up.
“Dressed like this, do I look human?”
“Yes, absolutely. You look completely human, Dokkaebi sir. If you stood in the plaza in front of Korea University, no one would know you’re a dokkaebi.”
“Korea University? Where’s that? Is it in Hanyang?”
Eun-hwi’s small head tilted at the unfamiliar name he was hearing for the first time.
“Yes. It’s a school in the center of Hanyang, similar to the old Sungkyunkwan. If you go to the plaza connected to the subway station, it’s so crowded it puts Yukjo Street to shame. Both Manager Yeo and I received our education there.”
“Wow… So Yeo Moon-beom went to Sungkyunkwan too.”
Eun-hwi, who had heard stories from Gabi, who had served as a Daesaseong long ago, knew well how great Sungkyunkwan was.
Having never attended a school himself, the half-dokkaebi envied the two people before him greatly. At the same time, he thought that if he ever became human, he must visit the plaza in front of Korea University at least once.
“Now that we’ve greeted each other—”
Just as Yeo Moon-beom was about to speak, Dr. Hong quickly cut in with his own words.
“If you haven’t eaten yet, would you like to go on a picnic with me to a scenic spot nearby, Dokkaebi sir? I’ve brought picnic supplies that are popular among young people these days.”
“Dr. Hong-salgwi.”
Yeo Moon-beom called Dr. Hong in a low voice, seemingly angry. Although Eun-hwi was full of curiosity about what picnic supplies were, he couldn’t interject due to the three threatening scars rising above Yeo Moon-beom’s clenched jaw.
“Did I upset you by only looking for the Dokkaebi sir? I thought that might happen, so I bought protein drinks that Manager Yeo would like. You always used to sip them while monitoring the situation whenever things got heated, remember?”
Dr. Hong tried to lighten the mood with a joke as he took out a drink container labeled ‘Chocolate Flavored Power Shake’ from the cart he had brought.
“Oh? It’s chocolate milk!”
Although the shape of the container was slightly different, the mysterious elixir with an unforgettable taste, chocolate milk, was right before his eyes.
Suppressing the urge to open the lid and gulp it down immediately, Eun-hwi tugged on Yeo Moon-beom’s clothes.
“Let’s go eat together. Okay?”
While Yeo Moon-beom was down in the village, Eun-hwi had focused on work to comfort his lonely heart, and he had gotten hungry. But rather than wanting to eat right away, he hoped that Yeo Moon-beom, who had prepared meals without fail every day, could take a break just for today.
Moreover, on the day they went up the mountain to gather firewood, there had been a commotion, and they had to return home without eating the kimbap they had prepared.
The half-dokkaebi, who had been constantly thinking about that day, wanted to use this opportunity to make up for the regret.
“Come on, Manager Yeo. I deliberately brought three fishing chairs. So why don’t you stop frowning and come eat with us?”
Yeo Moon-beom let out a hollow laugh at the cunning rhetoric that took away the other person’s choice while pretending to be kind. Professor Bang’s desperate attempts to spend time here were so pathetic that Yeo Moon-beom couldn’t say anything.
“Yeo Moon-beom”
“…”
“Can’t we go?”
The reason he had to fall for Professor Bang’s tricks despite everything.
It was because of the young dokkaebi looking at him with desperate eyes, tugging on his T-shirt with a weak hand. Yeo Moon-beom gently removed the small white hand clutching his clothes and quietly told the pleading Eun-hwi.
“Wear socks. If you walk for a long time in new shoes without breaking them in, your heels will get scratched and injured.”
“Even such expensive shoes can hurt your feet?”
“If you wear them barefoot.”
He had forgotten that in his excitement for the outing, he had come out wearing shoes without socks, barefoot. Nodding vigorously, Eun-hwi rushed back into the house to put on socks.
“Wear these.”
As Eun-hwi was opening the drawer to find socks of appropriate thickness, Yeo Moon-beom, who had followed him in, took out a new pair of socks from a paper box and handed them to him. They were cute socks with a rabbit picture on the ankle and a carrot on the sole.
“Are these mine too?”
“Of course. I bought everything for Eun-hwi.”
New clothes, new shoes, new socks.
And an outing with Yeo Moon-beom.
Wondering if this was truly not a dream, Eun-hwi grabbed both his cheeks and pulled them. His soft skin stretched like rice cake, and soon he felt a stinging pain.
It wasn’t a dream.
The half-dokkaebi’s mouth opened wide in a grin.
