In the back alleys of Seoul, where morning fog clung like incense smoke in an abandoned temple, Yoon Hwa-yeong arranged her fortune-telling tools with the solemn precision of a court ritual. Three chipped teacups, a deck of cards so worn their faces had faded into abstract art, and a small bronze mirror that reflected more rust than face—these were her instruments of divine revelation, or so she told the skeptical universe each dawn.
"Honorable spirits of the four directions," she murmured in speech so formal it belonged in a historical drama, "this humble servant requests your guidance for today's petitioners, that they might find clarity in their earthly troubles, and this unworthy one might afford tonight's meal."
Her stomach growled loud enough to startle Minister Jung, the stray cat perched atop an oil drum nearby, though he pretended it was beneath his dignity to notice.
A crushed beer can skittered past her blanket, followed by the sharp voice of Mrs. Kang from the fried chicken stall.
"Yah! Hwa-yeong! Stop chanting to ghosts before customers think my chicken's haunted! Come move this oil drum!"
Hwa-yeong's eye twitched. In her previous life—the one where she'd worn silk hanbok and composed poetry for yangban patrons—no one had ever demanded she perform manual labor while communing with the celestial realm. But in 1985 Seoul, mystical dignity was a luxury she couldn't afford.
"In a moment, Mrs. Kang," she called back, maintaining her formal tone even as she scrambled to her feet. "I must first complete the morning invocations lest the spirits grow displeased and curse your establishment with rancid oil."
"The only thing cursing my oil is this damn humidity! Move your skinny ass!"
Hwa-yeong sighed and carefully folded her fortune-telling blanket. At twenty-three, she possessed the refined bearing of a court lady and the empty stomach of a street orphan—a combination that made for particularly eloquent hunger pangs. Her long black hair was pulled into a modest bun secured with a wooden hairpin that had cost her a week's meals, and her hanbok, though clean, bore the kind of careful patches that spoke of pride wrestling with poverty.
She had just finished helping Mrs. Kang wrestle the oil drum into place when her first customer of the day appeared: a factory worker in her thirties, still wearing yesterday's makeup and the defeated expression of someone whose love life was going about as well as the Korean economy.
"Are you the fortune teller?" the woman asked, eyeing Hwa-yeong's textbook diction with suspicion. "You sound like you swallowed a Confucian manual."
"This humble practitioner offers guidance in matters of the heart, health, and prosperity," Hwa-yeong replied, settling back onto her blanket with the grace of someone who had spent years perfecting the art of sitting elegantly. "Please, honored customer, seat yourself and share your concerns."
The woman snorted but sat down anyway, clutching a crumpled won bill. "My boyfriend's been acting weird. Disappearing on weekends, won't tell me where he goes. I need to know if he's cheating."
Hwa-yeong studied the woman's face with the intensity of a scholar examining ancient texts. Dark circles under her eyes, cheap perfume failing to mask factory chemicals, calluses on her hands from repetitive work. In her past life, she would have seen a servant girl worried about a kitchen boy's affections. The times changed; the hearts remained achingly familiar.
"The cards shall reveal the truth of his wandering spirit," Hwa-yeong intoned, shuffling her worn deck with theatrical flourish. "But first, might this unworthy diviner suggest that honored customer's skin appears troubled? The morning light reveals what harsh factory air and poor sleep have wrought upon your complexion."
"What's that supposed to mean?" the woman snapped.
"No offense intended to your beauty, which surely rivals the lotus blossoms of summer," Hwa-yeong said smoothly, laying out three cards. "Yet this humble servant has studied the ancient arts of herbal restoration. For merely the cost of today's reading, I could prepare a mixture to restore your skin's natural radiance."
The woman leaned forward despite herself. "What kind of mixture?"
From a small cloth bag, Hwa-yeong produced what looked like a collection of dried weeds but smelled surprisingly pleasant. "Pine bark for purification, ginseng root for vitality, and crushed pearl powder for luminosity. Mixed with pure water and applied nightly, it shall make your skin so radiant that your faithless lover will weep with regret."
"And if he doesn't?"
Hwa-yeong turned over the first card—a torn piece showing what might have once been a king or a beggar, depending on how you squinted. "Then honored customer shall be too beautiful for his common affections to matter."
The woman stared at the card, then at Hwa-yeong's solemn expression, then burst into surprised laughter. "You know what? Fine. Give me the face stuff and tell me about this idiot boyfriend."
As Hwa-yeong began mixing herbs with the solemnity of a royal physician, Mrs. Kang's voice drifted over from the chicken stall: "That girl could sell dried snake skin as premium noodles if she put her mind to it."
From somewhere behind the stall came a rusty meow. Hwa-yeong's head snapped up, her formal composure cracking just slightly. A scruffy gray tomcat sat watching her with golden eyes that seemed far too intelligent for a common street animal.
"Ah," she whispered, momentarily forgetting her customer. "Minister Jung honors us with his presence."
The factory worker followed her gaze. "You named a stray cat Minister?"
"That is no common feline," Hwa-yeong replied with absolute sincerity. "Within that humble form dwells the reincarnated spirit of a great nobleman from the Joseon court. He appears when important destinies are about to unfold."
The cat yawned ungracefully, unworthy of his noble rank, then padded over to sniff at Mrs. Kang's chicken scraps with the focus of someone who understood that some questions were best answered with a full stomach.
"Right," the factory woman said slowly. "The fortune? Before His Majesty the Cat gets distracted by garbage?"
Hwa-yeong turned back to the cards, her fingers dancing over them with practiced grace. "Your beloved does indeed wander, but not to another woman's arms. These patterns speak of… family obligations. Secret shame. Perhaps elderly parents he cannot afford to support, or debts that burden his masculine pride."
The woman's expression shifted from suspicion to recognition. "His mother has been sick…"
"Pride prevents him from seeking assistance, as it prevents him from confessing his struggles to one whose opinion he values above all others," Hwa-yeong continued, warming to her theme. "Approach him not with accusations but with understanding. Offer to accompany him on his weekend journeys. Show that his burdens need not be carried alone."
For a moment, the narrow alley filled only with the sound of sizzling oil and distant traffic. The factory worker stared at the cards, then at Hwa-yeong's earnest face.
"Shit," she said finally. "You might actually be onto something."
She paid for both the reading and the herbal mixture, promising to return next week with results. As she walked away, Mrs. Kang appeared with a plate of slightly burned chicken pieces.
"On the house," she grumbled, setting it down beside Hwa-yeong's blanket. "Can't have you fainting on my property. Bad for business."
"Mrs. Kang's generosity rivals that of the ancient sages," Hwa-yeong said solemnly, then immediately demolished a chicken leg with considerably less dignity.
Minister Jung approached and fixed her with that unsettling stare again. In her mind, she could almost hear the voice of her long-dead patron, the nobleman whose failed prophecy had sealed both their fates three centuries ago.
"Little songbird," the imagined voice whispered, "your true performance is about to begin."
Hwa-yeong paused mid-bite, a strange chill running down her spine despite the morning warmth. She looked around the grimy alley—at Mrs. Kang's struggling chicken stall, at the boarding house where she rented a room barely large enough for a sleeping mat, at the endless stream of Seoul's forgotten people who passed by without seeing her.
"Minister Jung," she said quietly to the cat, "do you think this time will be different?"
The cat blinked once, slowly, then turned his attention to the chicken scraps.
From the main street came the sound of approaching footsteps—heavy boots belonging to someone official. Hwa-yeong quickly began packing her fortune-telling supplies, her movements swift but graceful. In 1985 Seoul, mystical practices existed in the gray spaces between tolerance and persecution, and a smart fortune teller learned to read the signs of approaching authority as clearly as any card.
As she bundled her tools, a small, fleeting hope flickered in her chest. Perhaps today she'd read the fortune of a rich businessman. Perhaps he'd be so grateful he'd fund her herbal skincare shop, and she could finally sleep on a real bed instead of wooden floors that left her back feeling like pressed tofu.
But as the fog lifted, revealing a city of peril and possibility in equal measure, she couldn't shake the feeling that this was more than another narrow escape.
Somewhere beyond the sirens and traffic, she could swear she heard the faint pluck of gayageum strings, playing a melody she hadn't heard in three hundred years.
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