Have I Finally Gone Mad?

No way. Surely she had misheard.

Praying that was the case, Sohee staggered backward, one shuffling step at a time. Photo or no photo, she could not stay in that room a second longer. Her heart wanted nothing more than to bolt for the door, but her legs had turned to lead, refusing to carry her. Above her knees, a fine tremor was spreading.

She had just barely wrapped her hand around the door handle when—

"The granddaughter of So Youngho, So So—"

"KYAAAAH!"

There was no time to think. The voice came again, crisp and unmistakable, and Sohee flung the door open as if it had burned her.

"AAAGH!"

Bolting out in a headlong rush, she caught her foot on the entrance step and landed hard on her backside. The jolt of the fall shot up through her in a crackling wave, and her head spun clean off its axis.

"Ow... ow. Everything's spinning."

She had to get away somehow, but her head was buzzing so loudly she could barely keep her eyes open. All she could do was sit there, clutching the back she had twisted, half-paralyzed on the ground.

I'm scared. Somebody, anybody, please help me...

Trembling, Sohee wrapped her arms around her head. She didn't dare lift it. Some unspeakable, terrifying presence had spoken her name, and in her mind's eye it was glaring down at her right that very moment.

"Welcome... well, that is..."

"Today... more than we expected..."

"No... that can't be..."

And now, on top of everything, faint voices were muttering in her ears. She was at the point of tears. If she was hearing things that weren't there, then clearly something had gotten hold of her—possessed her, body and soul.

How could everything that could possibly go wrong go this wrong? It wasn't just an old motel. It was a haunted motel!

That muffled sound, as if drifting through a telephone receiver, was growing clearer by the second. Before she knew it, she could make out conversations, the ordinary noises of people going about their lives—and at that point, an overwhelming terror crushed down on her.

Oh...

Sohee's consciousness was slipping. Her head whirled dizzily, her stomach churned, and cold sweat poured off her like rain.

By now, even Sohee couldn't hold on much longer. Under stress this extreme, it felt as though her body were reaching for its own power switch.

I can't take any more of this...

As the noise in her ears slowly receded into the distance, Sohee's awareness drifted further and further away.

"So Sohee!"

Her eyes snapped open as if waking from a dream.

"...?"

Faced with a wide, open thoroughfare and countless people streaming back and forth, Sohee froze solid. No matter how she looked, no matter how she tried to understand, her eyes and her brain refused to agree on anything.

"The new motel manager. So So. Hee."

When someone called her name in a mechanical, AI-like voice, she spun around in fright.

"Uh, uhh...?"

With a strangled yelp, she clapped a hand over her mouth. Where her crumbling, dilapidated motel should have been standing, there was instead a building so bright and cheerful it hurt her eyes.

"The motel was... pink?"

Sohee rubbed her eyes and looked again. Nothing changed.

There's no way this is my motel. The sign was practically falling off its hinges a second ago.

Her gaze drifted, inevitably, up to the signboard.

"The... Love RPR Motel?"

Flanking that skin-crawling name, two enormous red hearts were preening for all the world to see.

Sohee stared at the sign, her face blank with shock. Trying to understand something was one thing, but surely this had gone past reasonable limits long, long ago.

"Hey, let's move along, shall we?"

"Huh? Oh, of course."

...Wait, what?

She had stepped aside to let the man pass, entirely on reflex, and now she stared at him as her senses snapped back.

A foreigner in full armor was striding down the street with an axe slung over his shoulder.

Beside him, a figure in a black robe swept past as if gliding on air, and behind them came a breathtaking woman with cascading red hair, magnificent in an ornate gown.

Your Korean is very good... no, wait, that's not the point!

Only then did Sohee take a proper look around her.

A man in hanbok and a traditional horsehair hat. A woman so obviously cross-dressing it hurt. Beggars who were strangely pretty and handsome. People dressed in full royal regalia.

Every costume she had heard of once or read about in novels was out there on that street, worn by someone.

"All right, everyone. Please stay in line and follow along. We'll handle identity registration first, and then you'll have some time to look around."

And there they went, trailing single file behind a man in a black durumagi and a horsehair hat.

"Move it along! This is the Village, front quarter of Wicheon—spirits of the dead, that way, please!"

"Messenger! We've got one here who hasn't come to his senses yet."

"How many times do I have to tell you not to just eat whatever you find off the ground!"

Of all the people bustling past, not a single one spared Sohee a glance. Alone in front of a motel that had turned flower-pink from head to toe, she stood rooted to the spot, lost to the world.

"...How. How did this happen."

And the conclusion she reached was a simple one.

"I've finally gone mad. The stress has driven me insane!"

Sohee gave a full-body shudder and whipped her head around to glare at Moon Jar.

"Why did you have to call my name like that, out of nowhere, and scare me half to death! My heart still pounds like a drum whenever I think about that day!"

"Hearts are. meant. to pound."

"Then what about my back, huh? I'm twenty-five years old. Am I supposed to have back problems already?"

For no particular reason, Sohee thumped her lower back with her fist while making a pained "aigoo, aigoo." She had, admittedly, given it a slight tweak when she'd fallen in fright that day. Long since healed, of course.

"...I have prepared. a chair of the. highest quality. A signature piece from a luxury brand, worth. over six million won at. current Korean prices."

Sohee leaned back, sinking into the plush, supple leather as if letting it cradle her whole body. The expensive chair was more comfortable than any bed she had ever lain on in her living years.

"An ergonomic chair. Purchased separately, with my own. personal funds. A benefit no manager here has. ever enjoyed..."

"I know, I know. That's exactly why I let it go."

Sohee nodded with a playful grin and stroked the armrest of her chair. She could complain about her back all she liked, but every gesture she made screamed how much she adored that chair.

Patience. I must endure. Once, twice, three times. the word for patience...

Moon Jar swallowed his irritation down, over and over. Every time that impossibly young upstart scratched at his composure, he found himself taking stock of his own conduct.

Is my training still. insufficient, after all this time?

Moon Jar—the de facto owner of this motel and its oldest resident—had been here since the day Wicheon itself came into being.

Wicheon had existed since the far-distant ages when "stories" were passed down by word of mouth, before writing. He had lived here for a very, very long time indeed.

Whenever the years grew tedious, he would change his outer form a little at a time; the moon jar he currently occupied was simply the vessel he had liked best among countless options, and so he had claimed it for his own.

I should have known, the day I first. met her.

Over the ages he had met, trained, and seen off countless characters and motel managers beyond number. He had encountered every variety of humanity imaginable and weathered every kind of strangeness. And yet, even so, So Sohee was different.

On her first day here, So Sohee had wept her eyes out.

"I got dumped here out of nowhere! How am I supposed to survive if I can't even get comfortable!"

She had scraped herself up all over, apparently from rooting around the mountains searching for the motel, her hair a bird's nest and her clothes caked in dirt. The real problem, though, had been that body of hers—withered and bent like a burnt-out fire poker.

When something in that pitiful, abandoned-kitten state wailed and sobbed hard enough, Moon Jar had ended up granting her permission to stay and live at her ease. He had failed to glimpse the utterly shameless ego lurking inside her—and that was his one perfect blunder.

I told her to live comfortably, not to abandon every. last. manner.

Given the life she had lived, one could forgive her a cowed, timorous personality—yet somehow, when the moment demanded she stand up and fight, she never once wilted in front of a client. She didn't even show him, the resident elder, a shred of fear.

Useless at the work itself, is she? Then she shall receive a very. thorough. reeducation.

Moon Jar looked down at the ledger Sohee had so carefully and painstakingly filled in.

A mad scientist's idea notebook. The sacred stone of a High Priest candidate. The jade hairpin of a king's third wife. A knight's secondary sword. Even a fortune-seeing orb belonging to a mage who had failed his awakening.

Five clients sent successfully through the RPR process, and a respectable pile of valuable items received in return.

Unlike her grandfather, So Sohee seemed to have a genuine knack for Hoe-Bing-Hwan. The great problem, however, was that most characters of supporting rank and below didn't want Hoe-Bing-Hwan in the first place.

"Well then! Promotion comes first!"

And so Sohee set her first goal as simply "introducing the motel well" to the people of Wicheon. The first promotional method she devised was eminently straightforward.

The placard stood square in the motel entrance, lettered in old-fashioned scholar's script. To Moon Jar's scholarly sensibilities it was far too blatant, far too mercantile—it made him wince with embarrassment. But Sohee just arched an eyebrow and answered him.

"This doesn't even count as promotion. We need to make supporting characters feel even a flicker of interest. Tell me—who among them doesn't have a single moment in their life they wish they could take back?"

"It is. useless. For characters of little weight, Dissolution is by far the better bargain. For the sake. of the author's next. work."

"...Are you talking about someone else's business right now? Because if so, who's going to pay the taxes I owe two months from now!"

Wondering whether anyone might come, Sohee flung the motel doors wide open. And sure enough, not a single person came.

"Taxes are a headache in my old life and a headache here too. We do nothing for them, and they still rake us over the coals every quarter. If they're going to rob us blind, the least they could do is loosen the RPR conditions for supporting characters!"

Her sharp, irritated gaze had settled, quite naturally, on a single spot. Quite a distance away, across the street, people were streaming in and out without pause. That was the RPR Hotel—the one main characters could enter.

The hotel's General Manager, greeting guests with a smile of effortless ease, happened to glance this way as he guided them inside. Chunrok, General Manager of the RPR Hotel. The moment he flashed her that sly little smile, Sohee lost a full night's sleep.

From that day on, she threw herself into promotion with a fever bordering on madness.

...I should have stopped her. Right then.