“The snake was born holding a divine orb!”
Aigoo! Aigoo! A shaman who looked young — too young, even girlish — snapped her words out like a whip, fan fluttering wildly.
At that, Yong Cheonha’s grandfather nodded rapidly. It matched the prophetic birth dream about his grandson, Yong Cheonha, exactly.
That dream — a baby snake swaddled in cloth, cradling a divine orb larger than its own body, letting out a great big yawn!
He had only given the birth date and time, yet she had divined even the birth dream in an instant. Truly remarkable!
He was gazing at the shaman with boundless trust when she fixed her eyes solely on the chubby-cheeked child and spoke in a scolding tone.
“The snake was born holding a divine orb, I said!”
“Isn’t that a good thing, then?”
“A child of the dragon’s bloodline came out in a snake’s vessel — what’s good about that! When something exceeds its station, it becomes a curse!”
A divine orb had rolled its way into the household, so it was certainly fortune — but apparently, for the child himself, it wasn’t such a good thing at all.
“If a snake handles a divine orb, is it still a snake? It becomes a dragon.”
If you weren’t going to be born a dragon, you should have at least been born a tiger. But no — born a snake, of all things. Tsk, tsk. The shaman clicked her tongue and shook her head back and forth.
“The overflowing fortune draws in all manner of wretched things. Blessings leak out every which way, and only worthless, ill-omened things come crawling in — life will be exhausting. You’re fated to spend your whole life doing good for others, only to be betrayed.”
A cruel fate for one so young.
Of course, the person in question was only half-listening, letting the words drift in and out.
Whatever.
What did it matter what some person of unverified credibility said — why did they have to sit here paying money to listen to this?
It was plain as day that some con artist was just taking a swing to fleece them, and they were supposed to sit here, stiff and uncomfortable, paying for the privilege of listening to this garbage?
A total waste of time on nothing but nonsense not worth hearing another word of. But every single adult in the room wore a grave expression.
“Listen carefully. You! There’s a chance you’ll spend your whole life being used and end up dying alone. One opportunity will come when you’re twenty. Twenty. At twenty, your great fortune shifts, and a guardian figure will appear. You must hold on to that person.”
Hmph. Life is solitude anyway.
Yong Cheonha — a precocious elementary schooler who had hit his edgy rebellious phase earlier than most — let the shaman’s divination flow straight through him without a second thought. The shaman had said quite a lot, but none of it was worth hearing. She was obviously a con artist.
But maybe he shouldn’t have done that.
“Ah.”
He should have listened carefully to the shaman’s precious words. Damn it.
Because he’d let those words — worth more than gold — go in one ear and out the other, things had ended up like this.
When he was little, those torrents of dire predictions had only stirred up resentment in him. But the shaman had said all of it with his best interests in mind, speaking harshly precisely because she cared. And he had dared to fail to grasp that. He hadn’t been able to see it.
Now that he was twenty, Yong Cheonha felt the sting of the shaman’s life spoilers hit him belatedly and deeply. The history of betrayals cut him to the bone.
Could life really be this exhausting? It was hard. And lonely.
“Ha……”
But there was no time to wallow in how hard things were.
It had all happened from one moment of carelessness.
Yong Cheonha washed his sweat-drenched body and moved briskly.
Who was there to blame for such hardship? It was the full weight of the life he had chosen for himself. He had no one to resent but himself for lazily building such a terrible schedule.
Today, too, first period in the morning was waiting for a fresh-faced newcomer.
The major exam waiting for him from first period made a wide grin spread across his face involuntarily. God, this was insane.
Just this week alone — exams, assignments, club activities, and his part-time job on top of it all. The to-do list kept piling up. Still, once this was out of the way, the semester would be over.
It wasn’t as if he had done anything particularly remarkable, yet somehow a whole semester was already drawing to a close.
Thanks to having rushed out of his studio apartment, the transit fortunately wasn’t backed up, so he didn’t have to run to get to the lecture hall.
As he entered the business school building, greetings came at him from every direction.
“Hey, class rep.”
From quick hellos, to invitations to skip the campus cafeteria and try the new brunch café nearby for lunch, to suggestions of where to go once the semester ended, to questions about what he was doing over break — small talk and big talk alike came pouring in.
It was exam season, so everyone looked like zombies, but their eyes still sparkled with that fresh, distinctly twenty-year-old energy.
Soon the teaching assistant came in and distributed the exam papers, and a feverish light crept into those bright, eager eyes. Gazes darted quickly across the text, and hands moved even faster.
Yong Cheonha, too, scrawled down answers until his hand ached. He couldn’t stop — the moment he did, it felt like everything stored in his head would vanish all at once.
He tore through the answer sheet until his forearms went past aching and into numbness. He turned in the exam, gave his wrist a light shake, and immediately headed down the stairs to get to his next exam.
It was entirely his own doing — a schedule he had built purely on confidence and stubbornness, with zero thought given to logistics, geography, or his own sanity.
But this life was almost over.
He had already made up his mind that in the second semester, he would repent for this arrogance and build his schedule humbly without exception. First period in the morning? Something like that doesn’t exist in this world.
Regretting the past and taking responsibility for the disaster he had created for himself, he scrambled through exam after exam, then finished a group project presentation on top of it all. He was utterly drained.
Lunch was with his group project teammates. After that, a liberal arts assignment to submit, and one more major exam.
Once the day’s schedule was done, it was time for his part-time job shift.
Without a moment to breathe, he headed to the café and put on his apron. It was a neighborhood commercial district, so unlike an office district where customers flooded in only at specific hours, there were always plenty of people coming and going.
Between the relentless delivery order notifications and the hall customers — each with their own unique preferences who seemed to have never heard of a standardized menu — he was flat-out busy blending smoothies, pulling espresso shots, piping whipped cream, flagging down delivery riders, packing delivery orders, and pulling out cakes.
He also had to keep his brain in gear so the recipes didn’t get jumbled.
Ringing up orders, making drinks, moving cakes, clearing tables, tackling the pile of dishes — he was hopelessly short-handed.
On top of that, it being summer meant a surge of shaved ice and frappé orders, so there was easily twice the usual side work.
Don’t order shaved ice.
Delivery was truly the root of all evil. Hall customers, he could somehow manage — but delivery, really……. No matter how hard he worked, one bad review and the owner would be on the phone chewing him out.
“Ugh. There are just too many people lately……”
“Should I turn off the AC? That’d get everyone out pretty fast, wouldn’t it?”
“They’d immediately start complaining and demand we turn it back on.”
The silver lining was that in this day and age, the place didn’t use kiosks and still employed multiple part-timers.
“I hate summer. I really do.”
“Is the morning shift easy?”
“Apparently the morning shift has way more difficult customers.”
Having someone to chat with while washing dishes, not having to clean this entire café alone — those things were still a comfort.
But today, even on a weekday, it was so busy that he was sweating even standing under the air conditioning.
“Yong. Go take your break.”
The part-timers would take turns ducking away out of the CCTV’s range for a quick rest. Instead of hiding in the stockroom, Yong Cheonha stood at the sink pretending to work while he hurriedly skimmed through tomorrow’s exam material.
“Yong. Are you studying right now? You’re unbelievably dedicated.”
“I could never live like that.”
“I crash the second I get home. Used to be fine with part-time work before, but lately — wow, I get home, shower, and just collapse. There was even a time I ordered chicken, fell asleep, and woke up without having eaten any.”
They were chattering away when closing time arrived before they knew it. One by one, they started clearing the workstations and cleaning the espresso machine.
The café that had been packed with customers now had only five part-timers left.
“Closing time. Closing time. Closing time.”
“Home. Home. Home.”
“Gaming. Gaming.”
They moved briskly with brooms and mops to get out as fast as possible. With plenty of side conversation mixed in, of course.
“I’m seriously thinking of quitting this job. It used to be fine when it wasn’t busy, but now it’s too hectic.”
“Same. It wasn’t always this intense, right? At some point business just got too good. The owner used to say it was just a hobby and didn’t even care, but now that it’s actually doing well, she’s on our case constantly.”
“Right! She must be checking delivery reviews every day. The second the rating dips a little or a review comes in saying a staff member was rude, she calls immediately and gives us an earful. I can handle being busy, but the stress is what gets me.”
Everyone seemed to have built up a lot of grievances.
“I’m seriously only doing this until the break, then I’m done. I’m going on a Europe trip with my friends.”
“Lucky……. I’m just going to a pension with my boyfriend this summer.”
“I’m thinking about it too. I think I finally understand what people mean when they say health over money……. If it’s going to be like this, I’d be better off with a different job.”
Seeing them wearing pain patches or going to a traditional medicine clinic on their days off made it clear that everyone was struggling quite a bit.
Yong Cheonha was an omega, but his secondary gender had manifested late, and he had been born with an exceptionally sturdy constitution on top of regularly exercising — so this café job wasn’t all that hard for him physically.
What was genuinely hard was something else entirely. Specifically……
“Yong. Are you going to keep working here?”
“Hm……. Yeah, probably?”
He had been lost in other thoughts when the question hit him out of nowhere. Were they asking if he’d keep working through the break?
“I haven’t hit my goal yet. Once break starts, I’ll probably extend to the midday-through-close shift.”
At his words, everyone instantly made sympathetic faces and snatched the mop away from him, telling him to go study.
His slender wrist in its wrist brace was trembling, yet they grumbled that he should go get himself a full scholarship instead.
The eyes of the part-timers looking at Yong Cheonha held a mixture of pity and admiration.
He was only twenty, yet he never complained and always greeted customers with a smile, never cutting corners.
Part-timer Yong Cheonha.
By the standards people talked about these days, he was a model of dedicated living — a wholesome, hardworking young man who gave everything his all. And his schedule was always filled with healthy, constructive activities.
While attending Hanguk University, he ran with a dawn running crew, diligently arrived at school from the morning to attend classes, participated in club activities, and faithfully carried out his duties as class representative.
And on top of all that, he worked a part-time job just to earn money!
Even when assignments piled up, even when the exam material was completely unreasonable, even when faced with a customer so insufferable that Buddha himself might have wanted to smack them — watching him handle it all with gentle composure never failed to draw admiration.
“You’re going to do well no matter what you do.”
“For real. Once you make it big, you can’t forget about me, okay?”
He kept up with his studies without slacking, got along well with everyone around him, and while he seemed reserved, he was very much an extrovert — throwing himself into running and study groups alike.
On top of that, he didn’t lean on his parents financially — or perhaps couldn’t — and somehow found time to work part-time on top of everything else.
He was younger than them, yet it was impossible not to respect him. Wasn’t it just human nature to want to cheer on and support someone you could see genuinely trying?
And it certainly helped that he was good-looking enough that you wanted to do just about anything for him.
“Everyone worked hard today. Take care!”
Thanks to everyone sweeping and mopping the floors diligently in the name of clocking out on time, it was 10 PM and they were all able to leave right on schedule.
Since the shift ended late, some of the part-timers had a partner or a younger sibling come to pick them up. He gave them a light goodbye and was hit by a wave of exhaustion.
Under the weight of that heavy fatigue, Yong Cheonha rubbed his face dry with his hands.
And before him, a sleek sedan pulled to a stop. A man with an intimidating face and broad, squared shoulders stepped out and opened the rear door for him.
Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought they were witnessing a kidnapping, the atmosphere was that tense — but Yong Cheonha took his seat in the back without hesitation, as if it were perfectly routine.
Even after getting in the car, exhaustion had him rubbing his face dry again.
“Ha……”
No — correction. Not from exhaustion. From envy.
“Why am I still single?”
Was it because he had let the con artist — no, the shaman’s — words go in one ear and out the other?
“What exactly am I lacking? No, no matter how much I think about it, I genuinely can’t figure it out. Why?”
You’re going to do well no matter what you do? Oh, screw that. I’m twenty and I watched the cherry blossoms alone. Everyone else has a partner on their arm, so why don’t I have one pretty alpha to call mine — why am I running myself ragged like this?
“……Hyung. Should we head to the club?”
Glancing at the back seat passenger in the rearview mirror, he turned the steering wheel. Our precious boy, being hysterical again as always.
“Yeah.”
This would be Yong Cheonha, youngest young master of the Yongmun faction.
