Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Chapter 46 The Tail Was Too Long (2)

"Haah, haah, it's all over now. It's already too late..."

Sani spoke with difficulty as he lay on the sofa with a wet wipe on his forehead.

"It's not too late yet."

"It is too late! Even if Jinseong gets here and starts cooking, it'll take thirty minutes. By then, I'll have starved to death!"

"He said he'd just buy some rice and come straight back. Let's wait a little longer, okay?"

"That's the problem!"

'Why is buying rice a problem?'

Lia swallowed the question that was about to escape her lips.

After all, Sani, who was bedridden for some incomprehensible reason, might use it as another excuse to make unreasonable demands.

But even in Lia's silence, Sani steadfastly continued his argument.

"The supermarket has sausages, dumplings, and pizza too. But Jinseong will only buy rice. It's because Jinseong is stupid. He's too stupid to see one step ahead. Waaah!"

An accusation utterly devoid of logic or any connection between cause and effect.

Why a divine beast that didn't even need to eat was so obsessed with Jinseong's cooking was a mystery, but seeing him crying so pitifully, Lia finally revealed a solution.

"Then let's call and ask him. Maybe he'll buy some for us."

"That's right! We can order him to get them over the phone!"

"No, we're not ordering him!"

It was the moment a cautious request instantly turned into an order for food.

Lia hurriedly tried to correct him, but Sani had already pressed the call button.

(Hello?)

"Jinseong! You can't just buy rice! There aren't any sausages either!"

(What are you talking about? You want me to buy sausages too?)

-Nod, nod.

"What's the point of just nodding at the phone?"

"Ah! That's right! Jinseong, buy sausages! The ones with the savory yellow stuff inside that stretches out really far!"

(The ones with cheese?)

-Nod, nod.

(He's just nodding again, isn't he?)

"Yes..."

Even from where he was sitting, Jinseong seemed to know exactly what was happening inside the coffeehouse.

(Is there anything you want to eat, Lia?)

"I like sausages too."

(I mean something Lia wants to eat, not what Sani wants.)

"Ice... cream..."

Lia lowered her head and barely managed to answer in a tiny voice.

Since gaining a soul, she had begun thinking of things she wanted to do and foods she wanted to eat more often, but she rarely expressed those desires, so Jinseong always made a point of asking her again.

(All right. I'll buy some and be home soon, so behave yourselves.)

"Dumplings! I want dumplings too..."

-Click.

Sani's urgent additional order went unheard as the call ended.

"It's a disaster! I should've ordered dumplings too!"

"Don't call again!"

But once again, Sani was a little faster with the phone.

(Hello?)

"We need dumplings too! I want the ones rolled up into round shapes!"

(All right. I'll buy dumplings too. I'm driving. If you call again, I won't buy anything at...)

-Click.

This time, Sani pressed the end-call button first, having finished his business.

"Phew, I almost missed out on crispy fried dumplings for lunch."

'Mister is definitely going to pull his cheeks a lot when he gets back.'

"By the way, why are you looking at me like that?"

"Huh? It's nothing."

Vaguely imagining what awaited Sani, who was sighing with relief, Lia looked at him with pity before hurriedly shaking her head.

"Anyway, I have a packed schedule today too. I'll eat ten sausages, then have ice cream for dessert, and then eat dumplings for lunch. Oh, I'll have ten dumplings too!"

But his grand plan could only begin once Jinseong returned from the supermarket.

Waiting for the sausages, ice cream, and dumplings that would arrive at some unknown time brought another kind of hell to both Sani and Lia.

"Is he still not here?"

"It's only been five minutes."

"He might already be on the road out front by now! Huh? Where are you going?"

Exhausted by the endlessly repeated questions and answers, Lia could no longer endure it and went into the storage room to fetch a broom.

"Should we clean up before Mister gets home?"

"Jinseong will do that even if we don't."

Sani calmly uttered something only a person with a thoroughly rotten character would say, then turned his gaze back toward the window.

But this time, Lia did not back down.

"He always cleans first thing in the morning. If we do it before he gets back, we'll be able to eat sooner."

"Ooooooh! That's right!"

"I'll start upstairs and come down."

"Then I'll do the first floor!"

'Good. It should be quiet for a while now, right?'

Her plan involved not only helping Jinseong with the cleaning but also naturally distancing herself from Sani by dividing up the areas they would clean.

How much time passed like that?

-Vroooom.

From outside came the sound Sani had been waiting so desperately to hear.

"Jinseong's back already! Where are the sausages? I've finished cleaning too, so now all he has to do is cook! Huh?"

Sani flung the door wide open.

But the person standing outside was not Jinseong.

It was Dohyeok, a huge man nearly 190 centimeters tall, holding kimchi containers in both hands.

"The raccoon dog is talk..."

-Thud.

Upon seeing Sani without his divine power concealed, Dohyeok immediately lost consciousness and collapsed.

"Th-This is bad!"

_____________

When I hurried back to the coffeehouse after receiving the call, Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok was lying unconscious on the floor, just as I'd expected.

He was far too large for Sani and Lia to move, so they'd brought a pillow and blanket and laid him down on the floor for the time being.

"It's my fault... I was so hungry that I thought he was Jinseong..."

"It's okay. It's nothing serious."

When I actually faced Sani, who was hanging his head and mumbling, I no longer felt like getting angry.

To be honest, I'd suspected that an accident like this would happen someday.

After all, this was a coffeehouse.

Although the Divine Tree's power and the shamans' talismans made it less noticeable, they couldn't stop people who deliberately sought it out and opened the door.

And I had never intended to stop them in the first place.

What was this, a no-humans zone instead of a no-kids zone?

If I'd intended to be selective about my customers from the beginning, Elder Nine-Tailed Fox would have been the first to be disqualified.

And Sani went without saying.

-Jingle.

"What happened!"

"You're here, Elder. This fellow saw Sani when he wasn't concealing his divine power."

"Mmm."

"Ha! What a fellow. He's been struck by divine energy, yet he doesn't show the slightest sign of suffering."

"He does have a remarkably sturdy body."

"Then why are you leaving him like this? This little one and I shall leave in the car Mahyeon sent. Wake him and make up some excuse. It's a method that has worked for thousands of years."

"There's another way."

"Hm?"

We had two options.

The first was to follow Elder Nine-Tailed Fox's suggestion and insist that Dohyeok had apparently tripped upon entering the coffeehouse and lost consciousness.

The second was to honestly tell him about Sani's existence and what kind of place this coffeehouse was.

Of course, the first option was the wiser choice.

Three men can make a tiger.

It takes only three people to convince others that a nonexistent tiger exists. With Lia and me agreeing on our story, it would be easy to dismiss his encounter with a talking raccoon dog as nothing more than a dream.

But I didn't like the idea.

Lying, making Lia tell such a lie, or deceiving Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok.

"I intend to wake him and tell him the truth."

"What truth?"

"Who Sani and you are, Elder, and what kind of place this coffeehouse is."

"Don't do it. If he lives without knowing, no problems will arise. But the moment he learns the truth, the world he has lived in will change. You, of all people, know how difficult that is for an ordinary mortal to bear."

"I know very well. From the moment my Divine Eyes opened, my life has been anything but ordinary."

That was precisely why I needed to tell him the truth.

After all, I no longer concealed my Divine Eyes.

It was entirely a path I had chosen for myself. There was no such thing as a blindfold placed over someone 'for their own good' on that path.

It made no sense for me to place a blindfold on someone else when Goddess Mago herself had never placed one on me.

"It seems you've already made up your mind."

"He's the sort of person who buys mountains of presents for children at an orphanage almost every day. Even if he learns the truth, I doubt it'll cause any problems."

And so I woke Dohyeok, intending to calmly explain everything that had happened.

___________

After regaining consciousness, Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok accepted my explanation surprisingly quickly.

Though perhaps that was because a raccoon dog capable of human speech was sitting right beside him.

And then came a barrage of questions.

"So you're saying you've really lived for thousands of years? Then you must've met King Sejong too?"

"Yi Do? Ha! Of course I met that audacious fellow."

"Fellow? Is our great King Sejong a friend of yours or something?"

"You brat! I am two thousand years older than Yi Do!"

"No, but he was still a king! Oh, and can you use mystical arts too? Like making talismans fly around?"

"I certainly can. That one cannot, though. Heh heh."

"Hmph! I can too!"

"If you could, you wouldn't have been discovered in the first place."

"Everyone, enough of that and help set the table. You all show up at mealtimes, yet I always have to ask before you'll help?"

Since the two monsters had used the question-and-answer session as an excuse to avoid helping, I carried the tray of food I'd prepared alone to the table.

"Ooooooh! It's beef! There's thiiiiis much beef!"

"You're right. It must've been quite expensive."

"Expensive? It's just meat. Anyway, the kid said she'd never eaten steak before, remember?"

"Yes! I've never eaten meat this big before!"

Only then did I understand why all the meat packed into the kimchi containers consisted of T-bone steaks.

Apparently, Lia's passing remark that she'd never eaten steak had stayed on his mind.

It was a thoughtfulness that didn't match his imposing build.

"But this is raw meat. What, are we eating it as beef tartare?"

"We'll grill it right here."

-Clank.

I opened the lid of the wood-burning stove, took out a few pieces of charcoal that had caught fire nicely, and placed them on top of the stove.

"Wow, I thought that was just a decoration, but it's pretty useful."

"That's right! Pork stir-fried on this is incredibly delicious!"

"This will probably be ten times tastier. I brought it straight from Majang-dong."

-Sizzzzzle.

Amid everyone's anticipation, the meat secured in the grill began making an appetizing sound.

"By the way, Director Baek hasn't been around lately. It would've been nice if he could join us."

"Heh heh. Is food really what you should be worrying about right now? You should have told him about revealing our existence to this fellow first."

"Things were hectic. Now that you mention it, I should contact him."

"Leave him be. He's been away on business so often lately that even I rarely see his face."

"Then I'll send him a photo! I'll take it with my latest-model phone!"

"Latest model?"

"Right, let's take one quickly. Everyone, gather over here. You know how to use the timer, right?"

At Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok's puzzled question, I hurriedly gathered everyone around the stove.

The term 'latest model' was extremely relative, depending on who was looking at it and how. The phone I'd bought Sani last time was more than new enough by my standards, but there was a very good chance Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok wouldn't see it that way.

"I'm taking it! One, two, three!"

"..."

"It's not taking the picture."

"It's on a timer..."

-Click.

And so the slightly ridiculous photograph taken with Sani's latest-model phone was uploaded to the chat room shared by the Director and the shamans.

Along with the caption, 'The Coffeehouse's Newcomer.'