Chapter 16: Chapter 16

Arum was about to race to the editor immediately, when manager Kyong, who overheard her conversation, asked with a worried look, “Did they say Hojoon couldn’t cooperate?”

Oops! She had to pretend to be downcast on purpose, as there were some in the office watching her.

“What shall I do?” she said.

Terrific news to her, of course.

But she couldn’t make a merry laugh before her senior, manager Kyong.

“Can I try? I hear the wife of my brother’s alumna…”

“Her friend?”

Very close. If Kyong tried to contact Hojoon by using her network, Hojoon would not refuse.

Arum’s face turned pale.

“Well, I mean not the wife, but her friend received consultation from Hojoon…”

Fortunately she’s a stranger.

“I hear Hojoon’s schedule is fully booked already. We have to wait at least six months.”

“If that’s the case, I’m afraid we have to put it off until this fall when we are doing a feature on trousseau.”

“I guess so. As things stand now, it’s very hard for me to continue with this feature project. Can I contact another geomancy specialist?”

“Well, the editor has a crush on Hojoon. I don’t think she will approve your idea.”

As expected, the editor was an indefatigable woman and editor. She didn’t budge an eye at all after she was briefed.

“…Really?”

The editor’s eyes slanted upward a bit.

And she said, “Does he think he is…”

Most probably she would speak ill of him. Single Woman was a female magazine boasting of the largest circulation in the field.

She continued, “How come he is so arrogant when he is not a popular entertainer?”

Arum could read how the editor felt. How could he reject our request for an interview when there were so many celebrities waiting to be interviewed by us? She could not accept such humiliation as a woman who was so confident of her pride.

“Well, I think he could be regarded as an entertainer, given his current popularity. Try to contact him at least three times. Okay?”

Arum expected the editor would give up and ask her to turn to another geomancy expert, but she didn’t. Her single-hearted loyalty to Hojoon was already set into motion.

“Weren’t you ready to be rejected at your first try?”

“But I hear he’s tightly booked for the next six months.”

“Did you talk to Hojoon directly?”

“No, I talked to someone with his company.”

“I see. You never know unless you meet CEOs or representatives in person. They are trying to avoid interviews with various excuses like breakfast meeting or conference, when, in fact, they’re idling away their time everyday. You can never approach them if you tend to think of them from an employee’s standpoint. Have you ever seen his lecture?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“You have to watch them all. He is our country’s best geomancy consultant. Don’t even think of preparing a story with the material on paesanimsu alone? Go back to work!”

Biting her lips, Arum had to get out of the editor’s room.

***

Reporting to work at his company, Famed House of Geomancy, Hojoon had a lot on his mind.

His peace of mind was disturbed by the client’s provocative question “Are you in love with someone?” yesterday.

Her question was still echoing in his ears.

Looking back, he felt ashamed about himself because he announced so confidently that love was easy, and that love would be solved through geomancy. He has never thought of meeting and dating another woman.

He had vowed he would not love anybody all his life.

The moment the client asked that question, why did he recall Arum Yang?

In the meantime, Arum survived another long day in the battlefield of her workplace.

While she was on her way back, she had a lot on her mind.

‘I wish I had drawn the line between official and private matters. Did I think wrong?’

While she was walking up to her villa, she found something that caught her eye.

A doll’s house toy thrown into the recycle garbage box. The staircase leading to the second floor was broken.

‘Oh I didn’t know there were still people playing with that toy these days.’

Come to think of it, she received a doll’s house as a gift by pestering her parents when she was six years old. She really cherished it back then, but she couldn’t remember where she put it.

‘When did I put it away? Did I throw it away?’

Though she didn’t keep it to the end, it was her most precious toy.

Even when her parents quarreled over the matter of money or the matter of hospitalizing grandmother to a nursing hospital or when her father had an extramarital affair, she closed the door of her room and played dolls without eating until it got dark.

When she was so hungry and opened the door, she found the living room empty. Her father left the house already, while her mother called her sister, bursting into tears, in the main bed room.

She didn’t have the heart to tell her mother she was hungry.

Looking back, when she was a child, she just wished her family would be just happy like the doll’s house.

Suddenly her bitter memories of childhood came to her mind, with her eyes welled with tears.

After she came into her house, she said to herself on purpose while humming a tune, “What should I cook today?”

She should eat well in order to shake off her depressed moods.

Opening the refrigerator, she chose the day’s menu.

“Chicken! My diet food.”

Thawing the spicy frozen chicken breast, she prepared fruits. She had a simple dinner. She tried to eat less to lose weight on those days she didn’t have drinks.

“Let’s study! Geomancy!”

Sitting at the dining table, she began to enjoy dinner, playing Hojoon’s lecture on geomancy.

It was a video titled, ‘Cleaning is diet – Pungdok Cultural Center.’

Most of the audience were middle-aged housewives as the special lecture by Hojonn was hosted by the shopping center in Pungdok District.

“Does anybody know why cleaning is dieting?”

Hojoon was attracting the audience effortlessly.

“Labor? Yes, that’s correct. But that’s only half true. Geomancy is energy force. So is man. When we smooth out the flow of energy, the spirit of our body is back to life and the fat clogged in our body is discharged.”

The audience seriously listened to his lecture.

“That’s why the most important thing in daily geomancy life is cleaning. Did you clean your room before you came, right? I see dust even here…”

He cleaned the dust on the audio box installed in the back of the stage. He looked at the black dust on his hand.

“But wiping the dust visible in your eyes is not cleaning. Even if you wipe the dust, dust is supposed to collect. If you put the stuff there, even a bad spirit stays there. Let’s assume there is a piece of trash on the street. The next day you see trash piled up like a mountain on the same spot. Trash has the power to collect trash. Look at this belly fat. There is a reason for that.”

The word ‘belly fat’ attracted the attention of the housewives.

“Dust on the wardrobe, behind the door and the refrigerator filled with food! All these bad spirits collect together to block the circulation of the body. Even though you don’t see it, the energy of congestion is coming out of the whole house.”

Housewives present at the lecture nodded their heads, carried away with his lecture.

“That bad energy gets stuck in your belly, which is most hard to lose, back, side and forearms to form flesh. Right here. In fact, I met lots of housewives who said their constipation disappeared or they lost weight after cleaning miscellaneous articles.”

It seemed they couldn’t believe it.

“That’s true. If you surf the internet fan cafe of my company Famed House of Geomancy, you can read the testimonials by those who have experienced the miracle of geomancy. There are many people who said their lives changed after listening to my lecture.”

While chewing tomato, Arum grabbed her belly fat.

Oh my… It was fatter than before.

Grabbing her wobbly belly fat, she looked at the veranda. That stuff piled up there is like my belly fat?

She couldn’t believe it. Belly fat is belly fat, and miscellaneous stuff is miscellaneous stuff. Hojoon’s talk is just nonsense! But there was something that bothered her while she was chewing tomato.

‘Yeah, that’s nonsense.’

She ignored it and focused on his lecture again.

At the end of the video were posted several housewives’ comments.

‘I purchased large trash bags on my way back home, but they were not enough. When I cleaned the refrigerator, it was more efficient and my husband wanted home food only.’ ‘I found nest egg 300,000 while I was cleaning the wardrobe.’

There were also numerous testimonials by those who said they lost as much as 5 Kg by throwing piled trash.

“Really?”