Please note that the stories, organizations, and characters appearing in this novel are fictional and have no connection to reality. Also, the fire department’s rank system has been modified from reality for reader comprehension. Please refer to this note while reading.
Prologue
He heard ‘that’ rumor at an acquaintance’s charity party he’d been invited to.
“What? A shaman?”
Grayson, who was killing time exchanging meaningless pleasantries with other party guests,
subconsciously frowned and asked back. The man who had brought it up first chuckled playfully as he sipped his wine, heavily laced with liquor.
“Yeah, a fortune teller who was invited into Hayden’s party. Quite entertaining, actually. Pretty accurate, too. Everyone was amazed.”
“As if.”
Grayson took a sip of his wine with an indifferent expression as he listened.
Fortune telling? Believing in such superstitions is foolish.
… Not that he didn’t. In fact, he had already consulted countless fortune tellers and shamans. Probably ten times more than the maximum number an average person meets in their entire life. The question Grayson always asked them was the same.
Where is his destined partner?
He’d heard many things and paid a considerable price, but the result was this mess. A destined partner? Every time he thought he had finally found them, it turned out to be wrong. And then, when he thought he had found them again, it was wrong once more. After going through this cycle numerous times, Grayson no longer blindly believed in their words.
That’s why, even now, hearing about a new fortune teller, he wasn’t easily swayed. While listening with some caution, he maintained a lukewarm attitude. As if embarrassed by Grayson’s indifferent reaction, the man let out an awkward laugh and added,
“It’s just for fun. Well, to be honest, that guy, Keith, got incredibly angry because they gave him some ridiculous prediction.”
“Keith? What prediction?”
Intrigued by the unexpected name, Grayson asked, and the man answered casually.
“That he’ll face a tremendous hardship soon. And if he’s not careful then, he’ll regret it for the rest of his life.”
“Like he’ll ruin his business or something?”
Another man present chuckled, making a joke. The rest of the men laughed in disbelief. Keith’s downfall? If anything, the world would probably end before that happened-a thought that surely wasn’t his alone. The man who had spoken first opened his mouth again.
“Who knows? They said he’d lose something more important than money, but I have no idea what that is. Keith stormed off in a rage before I could hear any more.”
“He really has such a short temper.”
“I’d be pissed off and leave too if I heard something like that.”
“Yeah, hearing a bad prediction is just a surefire way to ruin your mood.”
Voices of agreement arose from here and there, but the topic soon changed. Grayson, sipping his wine absentmindedly, recalled something.
Several years had passed since Keith, a playboy no less notorious than Grayson himself, had settled down by choosing the absurd institution of marriage. It was a reality that no one could believe, but since his marriage, he hadn’t strayed even once. If there was something so precious to Keith that he would get that furious over a prediction, it could only be Yeonwoo. Or perhaps his two beloved children.
What a fraud.
There was nothing more to see. The idea of Yeonwoo leaving Keith’s side was ridiculous. Not to mention the children who could only whine and had no special abilities.
He’d found his destined partner. Much earlier than Grayson, who was so desperately yearning for his own. Seeing that, God must be an incredibly biased being. Keith had always mocked Grayson’s yearning, yet he was the one who had found his partner. Grayson frowned as he recalled it. That b*stard hadn’t even consulted a single fortune teller, as far as he knew.
It was a miracle that the fortune teller had escaped unscathed after giving such an ominous prediction to Keith. He, or she, must have used up all their lifetime worth of luck at that moment.
If Hayden brought them, they must have been vetted to some extent. After all, it’s not easy to spot a fraud.
That was the extent of his thoughts on the new fortune teller. Grayson soon joined in the trivial conversation, and the story about the fortune teller was naturally almost forgotten.
However, a month later, Grayson’s attitude changed abruptly, and he contacted Hayden urgently. He said he needed the fortune teller’s contact information.
This was because he’d learned that the fortune teller’s warning about Keith had come true, and Keith was now in a tremendously difficult situation.
***
“Hmm……”
Grayson watched with a deep frown as the middle-aged woman stared intently at the cards spread out on the table, a serious expression on her face.
Quite a bit of time seemed to have passed, but the fortune teller remained silent.
Why was it taking so long? Was it difficult to say? Or couldn’t she read the cards?
When his distrust in her slowly spread and filled his eyes, the fortune teller finally straightened up as if she had made up her mind.
“This is… difficult.”
At those meaningful first words, Grayson crossed his arms and stared at her face intently. Whether trying to avoid his sharp gaze or ignoring it altogether, the fortune teller kept her eyes fixed on the cards as she tinu I speaking slowly.
“Your destined partner… it’s difficult. Very difficult…”
“So? Are you saying there isn’t one?”
Grayson couldn’t stand it any longer and pressed her. The fortune teller blinked, seemingly startled, and then hurriedly cleared her throat.
“I didn’t say there isn’t one. But I can’t say there is one either…”
“Do you think I came all this way for word games?”
Grayson asked the fortune teller who continued to stall. He asked with a smile plastered on his face, but nevertheless, the fortune teller knew all too well that his mood was severely soured. Grayson was practically emitting pheromones of rage with his whole body.
“Of course not.”
Relying on years of experience, she quickly put on a smile and tried to smooth things over.
“You seem to have tried very hard to meet your partner so far. But you wouldn’t have been able to. That’s because the time hasn’t come yet…”
“So?”
Grayson pressed the fortune teller, no longer willing to waste any more time.
“When will that time come? Is it still far off? How much longer do I have to wait? Don’t tell me they’re an undertaker? Are they coming to clean my corpse after I die? Is that it?”
“Now, now, please calm down.”
Raising up a hand as if to stop a bulldog that was about to pounce on her excitedly, the fortune teller
opened her mouth after creating some distance.
“It’s not far off. You’ll meet them soon. In fact, you may have already crossed paths once.”
“They were right in front of me, and I didn’t recognize them?”
Just as doubt began to rise, the fortune teller added,
“It might not have been a direct encounter. Many encounters brush past us in this world. There’s a
Buddhist saying, ‘Even a brush of sleeves is a connection’…”
Grayson frowned and stared at her. He slowly crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, a posture that seemed to indicate he didn’t have much patience left.
“So.”
Contrary to his impatient heart, Grayson began slowly.
“How can I meet this person?”
The fortune teller picked up a stack of cards beside her and drew one of them. She said to Grayson, who
was staring at the card she had placed on the table,
“Fire.”
“Fire?”
When he frowned and asked back, the fortune teller nodded and added an explanation.
“Helping others, and fire, I see both.”
“A firefighter?”
“It could be, or it might not be.”
The fortune teller, who had been speaking clearly until now, took a step back again.
“It could also mean that while you’re doing that work and helping others, your partner will appear. In any case, the keyword is fire.”
Grayson continued to frown at her. As if contemplating how much he should trust this fortune teller’s
words.
“Is there anything else?”
At Grayson’s request for more information, she pulled out another card and checked it before answering,
“It could be a woman, or it could be a man.”
“Of course it could.”
Grayson sarcastically retorted without hesitation, then fell into thought for a moment before narrowing
his eyes and asking,
“What about their br3asts?”
“Pardon?”
Caught off guard by the unexpected question, the fortune teller blinked and asked back, and Grayson
repeated,
“Can you see if their breats is big, small, or non-existent? You can see that, right? So? What about their
br3asts?”
“Uh… um… They’re big.”
At the fortune teller’s hesitant answer after drawing and flipping over a card, Grayson declared decisively,
“A woman, then.”
The fortune-teller blinked in surprise at his tactic of determining gender, but a question soon arose in her
mind.
If that were the case, why wasn’t the gender clearly revealed in her earlier reading?
