Chapter 11
The only things laundromats and karaoke booths have in common is that you can enjoy time alone with just a single coin.
I killed time blankly staring at the Neo Armstrong Tornado Giga Drill Thunder laundry fiercely spinning inside the drum washing machine.
It’s enjoyable just thinking about forcibly sending those who are inevitably destined for h*ll due to someone’s selfish world design to heaven.
Because it’s about returning the debt accumulated over the past to contradictory and selfish beings who want to enjoy rights but don’t want to bear duties and responsibilities. Of course it’s enjoyable.
Even at this moment, in this city, this country, this continent, this world, how many people and souls are suffering alone without being saved?
They are all shadows forsaken by the one true G*d, chewing gum stuck to the floor, a mountain of garbage and filth that no one cleans up or cares about.
All beings created by a single person, rolled around as they please, and then broken. The great one calls the landfill that receives them ‘h*ll’, and the place where he displays only the pure and innocent beings he likes, like a display case, ‘heaven’.
‘Today’s reading of the Bible for gratitude number 1 is finished. Should I increase it to 2 next time?’
Clink.
While reading the thick Bible during the laundry cycle, I suddenly heard the sound of someone entering the empty coin laundry in the early morning hours.
It looked like a person who was so exhausted from being overworked as a part of the giant machine called society that they barely managed to break free.
Wearing a roughly put-on sweatsuit, dragging slippers, a ponytail tied up haphazardly with a hair tie as if even bothering to cut or style their long hair was too much, and a face with almost no makeup.
It takes a lot of courage for a woman to go outside in her raw state, right before putting on the disguise called makeup.
Thinking that, I checked my washing machine, which had just started spinning.
The coat and clothes, which had been dirty with stains, dust, and grime, had regained their innocence, purity, and cleanliness, like a sinner who had just finished repenting.
It may not be pure, innocent, or white, but what does it matter? It’s just clothes for a sweaty, late-20s single man to wear. As long as it doesn’t look as shabby as the sweatsuit that woman is wearing, there’s no problem.
“Hey you.”
“……?”
As I was debating whether to close the Bible, throw it, or what, a voice, quite husky for a woman, poked my eardrums.
I looked back with puzzled eyes, but the woman who called me didn’t even look this way and was shoving her laundry into the drum washing machine.
And she continued talking without looking at me.
“If you want to d*e, d*e quietly alone. What are you doing in a public place where everyone uses it?”
“Is there a problem with doing laundry at a laundromat?”
“Ha!”
She let out a scoff, her face incredulous, as if she didn’t like my calm answer at all, and pressed the setting buttons on the washing machine.
“I don’t care where you rolled in from or why you’re so eager to d*e, but at least you shouldn’t cause trouble for the people around here. Are you trying to ruin all the businesses in the neighborhood?”
“Anyone listening would think I’m running around the neighborhood like a madman day and night, screaming.”
“It’s worse than that. Unless you’re crazy, a living human, especially a man with a healthy physique, wouldn’t be scattering Yin energy everywhere. How can a business district that thrives on people be okay with that? Where there are people, there is Yang energy, and that’s why more Yang energy（people） gather and develop. The symbiosis of human society is based on that premise.”
I rolled my eyes and calmly thought about what this crazy woman was talking about.
Nine times out of ten, people who talk about Yin and Yang are either shamans or Buddhists.
Judging by her appearance, attire, and speech, she’s definitely not a Buddhist nun（female monk）, and since she doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Christianity, it’s safe to assume she’s a shaman.
“What is it now?”
It’s not that I don’t have any idea what she’s talking about.
Actually, even before I chose this path, exorcist priests who sensed my potential approached me.
It wouldn’t be strange at all for a shaman, who is said to have better intuition than exorcist priests, to react to me. It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon.
But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to accuse me of a crime I didn’t commit.
“I don’t know what you see or feel about me, but don’t be ridiculous. What I’ve done is something I’m proud of and can stand tall for. I don’t want to be criticized by someone who makes money by telling fortunes to weak people who tremble in fear of the future.”
“Not only are you foolish, but you’re also arrogant. Do you even realize your current state?”
“Whether I do or not…”
Feeling like this conversation was going to be long, I slammed the Bible shut and cut her off.
“Shall we start with the cliche childhood story that can induce yawns from others just by bringing it up? Or the story of my f*cked up social life? The climax of the story where my existence was ultimately denied? If you have any questions, don’t ask the petty g*d you serve, ask me directly. I’ll tell you everything. And then let’s see if you can still judge me.”
“I know you lost your parents at the age of 8 and had a painful childhood moving from one relative’s house to another. The one I serve is clicking his tongue in pity at your plight.”
“You must not be a shaman who serves some random spirit. Then shouldn’t we both mind our own business? You keep receiving the fortune-telling fees that ignorant humans bring you and do your fortune-telling thing. I’ll do what I have to do.”
“Are you talking about the grave sin of going against the natural order and defying fate?”
“I don’t believe in that s*it.”
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-dong-dong~!
As soon as the cheerful alarm rang, I took out the perfectly spin-dried laundry and moved it to the coin dryer.
If a laundromat has coin dryers, shouldn’t it be renamed a coin laundry and dryer?
“If things like natural order, fate, and inevitability really exist, then we’re all just programs moving according to a set plan, right? Oh, of course, humans have free will. A half-assed right to move freely only within the set program. That’s why I recently realized that contradiction and I’m requesting A/S. I’m doing the work that you can’t and won’t do.”
“If you’re talking about the vengeful spirits in that motel, I was planning to guide them to the afterlife soon. It was obvious that those who died unjustly would refuse to be guided unless their resentment was fully resolved, so I just left them alone for a while.”
“Bullshit. The truth is, it was a tedious, difficult task that didn’t even pay, so you were putting it off until the building owner requested it. Thanks to that, there were quite a few people who suffered the same way before me.”
“Fate led them there. It was their destiny to d*e there.”
“Yes, that destiny is the problem. Because of that destiny, which you can’t escape, can’t change, and didn’t even choose, some suffer their entire lives while others live enviably happy lives. Does the Jade Emperor, whom you consider the supreme g*d, just throw people’s destinies around like scattering feed to pond goldfish?”
“…Your karma is deep, so deep. How can a human harbor such a venomous heart?”
The woman muttered like that for a moment and then took out a bell from her pocket and shook it.
“First, I need to enlighten you on the fact that you’re wrong. To begin with, I’m not the fortune teller you think I am.”
The moment she changed the way she addressed me from ‘you’ to ‘you, child’, I could feel her voice and atmosphere change completely.
“You poor, pitiful child. You foolish child who thinks you bear all the misfortune of the world alone. How can you, a mere human, know the will of G*d, and how can you find the principles of all creation and the truth of the world with your narrow vision?”
“Is the logic that my misfortune is a blessing compared to the lives of others who are suffering even more? I’m sorry, but I’m not leisurely enough to have such a baseless argument. As you can see, I’m a very busy person. It’s unfortunate enough that I was given a s*itty life, lived a s*itty life, and now know that a s*itty end awaits me. But I don’t think this misfortune will turn into a blessing. If such salvation really exists, I would have already been saved.”
“You’re no better than a child throwing a tantrum. All things have their appropriate time of demise, and a fair outcome is given according to the karma and virtue they accumulated in their lifetime. You should be accumulating virtue to receive a great reward in the afterlife, but instead, you’ve accumulated an unwashable amount of karma in such a short time. Don’t you realize that your sin is so great that the heavens are splitting and the earth is trembling?”
“I don’t know. I can’t know. Because no one taught me and no one cared. Repent and realize it on my own? I’m fed up with such unkindness. Those who are given everything from the beginning without needing to repent or realize anything on their own wouldn’t understand this feeling even if they died and came back to life. The saying ‘You see what you want to see’ is truly meant for times like this. The happy see only happiness, and the unhappy see only unhappiness.”
If only there had been even a tiny bit of happiness in my life.
If only it had become a glimmer of hope in my miserably ruined life.
Then I wouldn’t have to exist here like this.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. What’s so wrong with me, the victim, wanting to repay what I’ve suffered? Don’t you think so?”
“Against G*d?”
“There’s nothing I can’t do. Everyone loves a good story of poetic justice, right?”
Me, the victim, as good, and someone, the perpetrator, as evil.
It was a truly simple and clear answer.
“Then, even if I have to bear the karma of killing, I must tear you apart here and now.”
“Sorry to break the mood you’ve worked so hard to build, but let’s do that next time.”
Wooo-wooo-wooo-wooo-wooo!
Her stormy momentum instantly dwindled at the sight of three or four police cars gathering in front of the laundromat.
With her momentum gone, she once again looked like an ordinary woman in her early 30s, either unemployed or studying for the civil service exam, someone you could see anywhere.
Meanwhile, the police seemed to briefly look around the laundromat, then approached me as I was putting the warm and stiffly dried laundry into a plastic bag and asked,
“We received a text message reporting a large-scale stabbing in front of the laundromat, is anyone here the reporter or a witness?”
“Excuse me? I’m not sure. We were busy doing laundry here, so…”
As I showed them the warm and stiffly dried clothes in the plastic bag, the policeman looked troubled and picked up his walkie-talkie.
“It seems like a false report. We’ll have to track the sender’s number and summon them to the station for obstruction of justice.”
━D*mn it, it’s bad enough being called out during my off-duty hours, but making prank calls at this ungodly hour? If I catch that b*stard, I’ll grind him to…!
Click.
The policeman quickly turned off his walkie-talkie, scanned the inside of the laundromat, gave a slight nod, and left.
I also left with my clothes, following the police. I could feel the shaman, who was still doing her laundry, glaring at me from the corner of her eye, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t feel like talking about repentance or anything to a woman whose destiny was set for heaven because she had no sins, a woman who had lived a life like a machine. A woman who knows her own destiny will surely find her way to heaven on her own.
I smiled faintly as I flushed the shattered fragments of my smartphone and the USIM chip down the drain with all my might.
