Chapter 3
No way. I must have heard wrong.
Please, let that be true.
Clinging to that hope, Sohee slowly turned around.
Forget the photos. She couldn’t stay here anymore.
She wanted to run straight out, but her legs refused to cooperate, as if heavy stones had been tied to them. The muscles above her knees trembled uncontrollably.
She had barely managed to grab the doorknob when—
“So Youngho’s granddaughter, So So…”
“Kyaaaah!”
She didn’t even have time to think.
The clear voice called out again, and Sohee flung the door open as if she had been launched forward.
“Aah!”
As she hurried outside, her foot caught on the entrance steps.
She fell hard onto her backside.
The impact shot through her body, making her head spin.
“Ow… It hurts. I’m dizzy.”
She needed to get away somehow.
But her head was ringing so badly that she couldn’t even open her eyes properly. All she could do was sit there, clutching the lower back she had badly twisted.
I’m scared. Someone… please help me….
Trembling all over, Sohee wrapped her arms around her head.
She didn’t dare look up.
She felt as if some terrifying creature that had tried to call her name must be standing right in front of her, glaring down at her.
“Welcome… that is…”
“Today… more than expected…”
“No… that can’t…”
There were even faint murmuring voices around her.
At this point, Sohee genuinely wanted to cry.
If she was hearing things now, then she must have been thoroughly possessed by something.
How could everything possibly go this wrong?!
This wasn’t just some abandoned old motel.
It was a haunted motel!
The muffled sounds, as though they were coming through a telephone receiver, gradually became clearer.
Before long, she could distinctly hear people talking and the ordinary noises of daily life.
Overwhelming fear pressed down on her.
Ah….
Sohee’s consciousness began to blur.
Her head spun violently, and nausea churned in her stomach.
Cold sweat poured down her body like rain.
By now, even Sohee couldn’t endure it anymore.
The extreme stress made it feel as if her body was trying to shut itself down.
I can’t… anymore….
The noises around her slowly faded into the distance.
Sohee’s consciousness began sinking into darkness.
“So Sohee!”
Sohee’s eyes snapped open as though she had just woken from a dream.
“……?”
She froze.
A wide, open street stretched before her, crowded with countless people walking back and forth.
No matter how much she stared or tried to understand what she was seeing, her eyes and brain simply refused to agree on what was happening.
“New motel manager. So So.hee.”
Someone called her name in a mechanical, AI-like voice.
Startled, Sohee quickly turned around.
“Uh… uh?”
Gasp!
She covered her mouth with both hands.
Where the half-collapsed motel should have been stood a painfully bright and cheerful building.
“The motel… was pink?”
Sohee rubbed her eyes again.
Nothing changed.
There’s no way this is my motel.
The sign had clearly been one step away from falling off before.
Her gaze naturally moved upward.
“Love’s Regression, Possession & Reincarnation Motel?”
At both ends of the horrifyingly embarrassing name were two enormous red hearts proudly showing off their presence.
Sohee stared blankly at the sign.
There was only so much a person could try to understand.
This had gone far beyond that limit.
“Hey, let me through.”
“What? Oh, yes.”
…Huh?
Sohee naturally stepped aside.
Then her mind suddenly cleared, and she stared at the person walking past her.
A foreign man wearing full armor casually walked by with an axe resting over his shoulder.
Beside him, someone wearing a black robe swept past as if they were flying.
And next to that person walked a beautiful woman with long red hair, dressed in an extravagant gown.
His Korean is really good….
No, that’s not the problem!
Only then did Sohee properly examine her surroundings.
There were people wearing hanbok and traditional gat hats.
A woman who was obviously disguised as a man.
Beautiful and handsome beggars.
People dressed in royal clothing.
Every kind of outfit she might have heard about at least once or read about in novels seemed to be gathered on this street.
“All right, everyone. Form a line and follow properly. We’ll register your identities first, then I’ll give you some time to look around.”
There was even a long line of people following behind a man dressed in a black dopo robe and a traditional gat.
“Hey now! This is the village in front of Wicheon. The dead are supposed to go that way!”
“Reaper! There’s someone over here who still hasn’t come to their senses!”
“I told you not to pick up and eat random things!”
Everyone hurried past without paying Sohee any attention.
Sohee stood there alone, dumbfounded in front of the motel that had somehow turned completely bright pink.
“…How… How is this possible…?”
And there was only one conclusion she could come to.
“I’ve finally gone insane. The stress made me crazy!”
Sohee shivered her shoulders before suddenly turning toward the moon jar.
“Why did you suddenly call my name like that?! You scared me! My heart still pounds whenever I think about that day.”
“A heart is supposed to pound.”
“Then what about my back?! Do I really have to suffer from back pain at twenty-five years old too?”
Sohee deliberately groaned, “Ow, ow,” while patting her lower back.
She had slightly strained it when she fell in surprise that day.
Of course, it had healed a long time ago.
“…I prepared a top-quality chair for you. At current Korean prices, this luxury brand’s signature product costs more than six million won.”
Sohee leaned back comfortably, practically melting into the soft, cushioned leather chair.
The expensive chair was far more comfortable than any bed she had ever lain on in her previous life.
“An ergonomic chair. I even purchased it separately with my own personal funds. A benefit that no previous manager has ever received…”
“I know, I know. That’s why I’m letting it go.”
Sohee nodded playfully while stroking her chair.
She complained about her back with words, but everything she did made it painfully obvious how much she loved this chair.
Patience.
I must endure.
Three times. Endure three times, and….
The moon jar swallowed his irritation over and over again.
Whenever that young brat scraped at his nerves, he reflected on himself.
Do I still lack cultivation?
The moon jar was, in fact, the true owner of this motel and the guardian spirit of the land.
He had settled here from the moment Wicheon first came into existence.
Wicheon had existed since ancient times, back when stories were passed down orally because writing had yet to become widespread.
In other words, he had lived here for an unimaginably long time.
Whenever he grew tired of his appearance, he changed it slightly.
At the moment, out of countless objects he could inhabit, he happened to like this moon jar, so he had settled inside it.
I should have realized what she was like on the first day we met.
Over the years, he had met countless characters and many different motel managers.
He had trained them.
He had watched them leave.
He had met such a wide variety of people that words couldn’t even describe them all, and he had experienced every strange situation imaginable.
Even then, So Sohee was different.
On the very first day she fell into this place, So Sohee had burst into tears.
“I suddenly fell into a place like this! How am I supposed to live if I can’t even feel comfortable here?!”
Perhaps because she had searched recklessly through the mountains trying to reach the motel, scratches covered her body here and there.
Her hair was a complete mess, and her clothes were covered in dirt.
But the biggest problem was her body.
She was painfully thin, like a half-burned stick of firewood.
She looked like an abandoned kitten as she cried her eyes out.
Eventually, the moon jar had given in and told her she was allowed to live comfortably.
His complete failure had been not realizing just how shameless a personality was hidden inside that pitiful appearance.
I told her to live comfortably. I never told her to become disrespectful.
Considering the life she had lived, it would have made sense for her to have a timid, withdrawn personality.
Yet strangely enough, whenever she needed to stand her ground, she refused to back down even in front of customers.
She wasn’t even slightly afraid of him, despite the fact that he was the guardian spirit of this entire place.
If she were bad at her job, I could at least discipline her properly.
The moon jar looked toward the ledger Sohee had carefully filled out, one precious entry at a time.
A mad scientist’s idea notebook.
A candidate high priest’s holy stone.
The jade hairpin belonging to a king’s third wife.
A knight’s secondary sword.
Even a fortune-telling orb belonging to a magician who had failed to awaken.
In total, she had successfully sent five people through regression, possession, or reincarnation, and had received quite a few valuable items in return.
Unlike her grandfather, So Sohee seemed to have a certain talent for this business.
But there was one major problem.
Most characters below the supporting-character level had absolutely no interest in regression, possession, or reincarnation.
“Then advertising has to come first!”
Sohee decided that her first objective would be to properly introduce the motel to people.
And so began her first advertising strategy.
It was extremely straightforward.
「One last chance to fix the life you still regret!
Specialized one-on-one consultations tailored to each customer!
Come inside and receive a consultation!」
A standing sign written in an old-fashioned calligraphic font was placed proudly at the motel entrance.
For the moon jar, whose tastes were closer to those of an old scholar, this was embarrassingly direct and commercial.
But So Sohee merely raised her eyebrows at him.
“This barely even counts as advertising. We need to make the minor characters interested somehow. Who doesn’t have at least one moment in their life they wish they could change?”
“It is useless. For characters without much importance, disappearance offers far better conditions. For the sake of the author’s next work.”
“…Are you seriously talking like this is someone else’s problem? Then what are we supposed to do about the taxes due in two months?!”
Wondering if anyone might have come by, Sohee threw the motel doors wide open.
As expected, there was nobody.
“Taxes give me a headache both in the living world and here. They don’t even do anything for us, so why do they take so much every quarter? If they’re going to do that, they should at least loosen the conditions for supporting characters to regress, possess someone, or reincarnate!”
Sohee’s irritated gaze naturally fixed on one particular place.
Across the road, some distance away, people constantly entered and exited a building.
It was the regression, possession, and reincarnation hotel that protagonists from stories were allowed to use.
The hotel manager welcomed customers with a relaxed smile.
While guiding another customer, he suddenly glanced in Sohee’s direction.
Chunrok.
The manager of the Regression, Possession & Reincarnation Hotel.
When he gave her a subtle smile—
Sohee couldn’t sleep that night.
After that, she threw herself into advertising with near-maniacal enthusiasm.
…I should have stopped her back then.
