Chapter 11
Elisha sprang to her feet in alarm.
“Y-You! Why would you crumple that?!”
“You said I wouldn’t understand even if I read it, so what’s the point of me looking at it?”
When Sohee raised her hand as if she were about to tear the paper apart entirely, Elisha hurriedly got up and snatched it away.
She still couldn’t see anything written on it, but Elisha carefully smoothed out the crumpled paper with both hands.
“Still, why would you… why would you crumple it?”
Tears began streaming from Elisha’s eyes again.
The wrinkled sheet of paper felt like her ruined life itself, so she kept smoothing it over and over.
But once paper had been creased, there was no way it could ever return perfectly to how it had been before.
Sohee squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.
The sight was so heartbreaking that it felt like Elisha’s pain was being transmitted directly into her own heart.
She took a moment to steady her breathing.
Then she continued in a cold tone once more.
“That’s right. I don’t know your life. How could I understand it just from a few lines of writing?”
Elisha, who had been desperately smoothing out the paper, raised her head and looked at Sohee.
Sohee’s face remained cold and stiff, showing no sign of softening.
“Even if I died and came back to life, I still wouldn’t be able to understand everything you’re feeling.”
Sniff.
Only the sound of Elisha holding back her tears and Sohee’s low voice echoed through the room.
Sohee swallowed a sigh and continued.
“You called it just a piece of paper, right? But when it comes to regression, possession, or reincarnation, what’s written on these few pages of your Life Record is the most important thing.”
Her expression remained serious.
“I have a responsibility to judge this properly and guide my client in the right direction.”
And from an objective point of view, the conclusion Sohee had reached was regression or reincarnation.
There simply wasn’t enough justification for possession.
If they forced it anyway, the possibility of failure would be extremely high.
And what if they failed?
It wouldn’t simply end there.
Elisha would disappear completely, and all the karma she had patiently accumulated until now would be reduced to zero.
She had come all the way here seeking regression, possession, or reincarnation despite such terrible conditions.
And yet she wanted to proceed like this?
Regression, possession, and reincarnation could only succeed when the client and Sohee worked together in perfect harmony.
That meant there were only two possible choices right now.
Either Sohee had to make Elisha give up her obsession with possession—
Or Sohee herself had to give up on the client.
Sohee abruptly stood from her seat and opened the consultation room door.
“It seems like it’ll be difficult for the two of us to reach an agreement.”
She gestured toward the exit.
“Please take care on your way out.”
Kuku, the chef exclusively assigned to the regression-possession-reincarnation motel, was a young man with a cute and lovable appearance.
He had bright orange-red curly hair, and his skin had been lightly tanned by the sun. Small freckles dotted the bridge of his nose.
Even among the villagers, his appearance attracted quite a bit of attention.
Naturally, most of that was thanks to his striking hair.
At the moment, he was carrying a cold drink filled with ice as he headed toward the lobby.
In Kuku’s opinion, something extremely troublesome was currently happening there.
“This is even worse than I expected.”
The scene he saw when he entered the lobby was a complete mess.
The woman who had stubbornly refused to leave was sitting on the lobby sofa as though she had been nailed to it, her face covered in tears.
Whenever Sohee tried to leave, Elisha immediately burst into loud sobs as if she had planned it in advance.
Because of that, Sohee had no choice but to remain seated across from her.
Why doesn’t she just drag her outside?
That was what Kuku thought as he walked toward Sohee step by step.
Of course, he had his usual lovable smile plastered across his face.
When he approached, Sohee lifted her eyes from where she had been staring downward with a troubled expression.
“It’s a sweet and refreshing drink. I think this would be a good time for you to have it.”
“Thanks.”
Just as Sohee was about to reach for the glass—
“…!”
In the blink of an eye, Sohee quickly grabbed the hand Kuku had extended toward Elisha.
“…Kuku.”
“Yes?”
With his wrist firmly caught in Sohee’s hand, Kuku innocently tilted his head as though wondering what the problem was.
“No.”
Kuku simply raised and lowered his shoulders in a shrug.
“I was only going to put her to sleep for a little while.”
A thin, sharp needle was held between Kuku’s fingertips.
After confirming what it was, Sohee turned her head toward the front desk.
As though it had been waiting for that exact moment, a voice immediately spoke.
“Coated. With. Sleeping. Medication.”
Sohee let out a relieved sigh after confirming that it wasn’t poison.
Then she looked at Kuku again.
Kuku was a villager who had been granted an adorable appearance and excellent cooking skills.
He was calm and rational, but he tended to see things in a rather black-and-white manner.
And there was one more thing.
He used to be a mercenary who specialized in drugs and blades.
Sohee remembered the trait she had momentarily forgotten.
If Kuku had appeared in some novel, countless people would probably have been distracted by his harmless appearance only to end up getting their throats cut.
With an expression that said there was nothing he could do, Kuku tucked his weapon back into his clothes.
“Are you perhaps practicing how to increase your patience?”
“…Huh?”
“Because otherwise, I can’t think of any reason why you would listen to someone whining for more than two hours.”
Hic.
Elisha quickly covered her mouth after an involuntary hiccup escaped her.
“Kuku, employees aren’t supposed to treat customers like that.”
“That’s why I wasn’t going to kill her.”
He had only been planning to make her sleep as though she were dead.
Kuku slowly looked down at Elisha.
The moment he had taken out that terrifying needle, Elisha’s tears had completely disappeared.
“O-Okay. I understand. For now, I’ll… I’ll try to talk things through properly.”
“Yes.”
Kuku gave a simple reply, turned around, and headed back toward the kitchen.
Elisha stared at his retreating back, her hands tightly clenched as her body remained stiff.
“Um… but, Sohee-nim.”
Kuku suddenly turned around again.
“If we’re not in an employee-and-customer relationship, then I don’t have to tolerate it, right?”
He smiled brightly at Elisha.
Go ahead. Try whining one more time.
