The Textbook of a Lover - Chapter 2

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

2.
The moment the door closed, Cha Gyeong shut his eyes. He forced down the irritation rising in his throat.
The Morel account was a project he’d poured months of sleepless nights into.
All that effort, pushed back by a single mishap.
‘Is this also the work of that damned curse?’
His executive assistant approached cautiously as Cha Gyeong regained his composure.
“Director. The honorary vice chairman and the Cultural Foundation director are waiting in the Reception Room.”
His grandmother and mother?
Cha Gyeong’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
“Now? They didn’t mention anything.”
“They said they have something urgent to discuss and asked you to come as soon as you’re free.”
“Understood. Tell them I’ll be there shortly.”
Cha Gyeong straightened his suit and stood, then turned back to his assistant with a sudden thought.
“By the way, that woman who was causing a scene in the lobby earlier—where is she now?”
“Security has her isolated in the security room. Should we give her a warning and let her go?”
Cha Gyeong’s steps halted.
“Let her go? Why would we just let her walk?”
“Then what should we do?”
“Transfer her to the Legal Team. Have them document all the risks from this incident, determine the scope of potential damages we can claim, and proceed immediately.”
“Yes, understood.”
She needed to learn just how reckless her actions were.
A thin, cold smile played at the corners of Cha Gyeong’s mouth.
* * *
The moment he opened the Reception Room door, Cha Gyeong was seized by a sense of foreboding.
Beside his grandmother and mother sat a woman in a jeogori and red skirt, looking rather like an angry duchess—or perhaps an angry princess.
‘Thank heavens Gabriel didn’t notice her.’
Still, he couldn’t let his guard down.
His grandmother, his mother, and a shaman.
When this trio sought him out, it was always for the same reason.
Cha Gyeong barely swallowed a sigh at the thought that today would be no exception, and he spoke.
“Grandmother, Mother. What’s the matter? And why have you brought this woman?”
“This woman? Apologize to the Mudang this instant!”
Despite his grandmother’s stern tone, Cha Gyeong answered carelessly.
“Is it wrong to ask your business?”
“Such insolence! That’s exactly why you’re walking a knife’s edge!”
Cha Gyeong didn’t so much as blink at the Mudang’s outburst. He had never believed in superstition.
To him, superstition was the self-comfort of the weak. When faced with reality too hard to bear, they chose escape instead of endurance.
And shamans were merely merchants exploiting such psychology.
But starting last spring, strange accidents had occurred in succession—enough to shake even his disbelief.
The first was a collision with a drunk driver; the second, an elevator shaft collapse just a day after maintenance; the third, a cabin fire during a business flight.
Fortunately, all three incidents left him with no serious injuries, but at the fourth accident—when the exterior glass of the head office conference room shattered without warning—Cha Gyeong was gravely hurt.
Shards of glass cut deep into his shoulder, and blood poured out like a fountain.
Emergency surgery lasted three hours. He had literally brushed death.
From that day forward, his grandmother and mother—who had been so dismissive of superstition they’d even skipped the blessing ceremony at the new headquarters—became fervent believers.
“I have brought the path to your salvation!”
The Mudang before him was someone his grandmother had recently brought in, rumored to be exceptionally skilled.
Two months ago, after accurately predicting the explosion in the Underground Parking Lot where Cha Gyeong had been—a blind squirrel finding an acorn—his grandmother and mother had placed absolute faith in her.
“I performed a Gut offering on Inwangsan to find the path to your life, and the spirits revealed this: you can only live if you marry.”
A talisman or a proper ritual would have been preferable.
Just thinking of this troublesome solution made Cha Gyeong’s brow furrow.
“But not just any woman. It must be one whose lifeline will extend yours.”
“And where might such a woman be found?”
“You have good fortune despite your lack of manners. Didn’t you see her yourself just now?”
“See whom?”
“The woman rolling around on the lobby floor.”
At those words, the woman who had ruined his contract instantly came to mind.
Cha Gyeong stared at the Mudang in disbelief.
“Are you trying to poison me?”
“Cha Gyeong, mind your tongue!”
His grandmother’s rebuke forced Cha Gyeong to swallow the rest of his words.
Marriage to extend his lifeline was already absurd—but marry whom?
Yet the two women nodded with the earnestness of those grasping at a rope.
“Meet that woman, Cha Gyeong.”
“Are you insane?”
“Is that any way to speak to your grandmother? What’s so difficult about just meeting her once?”
When Cha Gyeong firmly shook his head, the Mudang spoke.
“If you don’t marry that woman, you’ll die.”
“Keep quiet, please.”
“Cha Gyeong! I told you to watch your words!”
Cha Gyeong had no intention of marrying. Especially not to a woman who stormed into someone else’s building and shrieked into a megaphone.
As Cha Gyeong refused to yield, his grandmother Gyuseon suddenly began to cough.
“Hack, hack!”
“Mother, are you all right?”
“Grandmother, are you unwell? Should I call for a car?”
Gyuseon had recently received a thyroid cancer diagnosis and was facing surgery.
Given her age and the size of the tumor, her family’s worry was immense, yet she remained composed.
Cha Gyeong regretted raising his voice, but Gyuseon’s next words stopped him cold.
“If you refuse to meet that woman, I won’t have the surgery.”
“Mother!”
“Grandmother!”
Unfazed by the outcries of mother and son, Gyuseon continued.
“I’ve lived long enough. What good is surgery to me? I’ll leave it to fate and live out my days as they come—just like you.”
There was a saying that circulated through the Hyunsin Group.
The chairman’s stubbornness ranked first in business circles, but even that couldn’t break the consort’s will.
A low sigh escaped Cha Gyeong’s lips. The answer was already decided.
* * *
‘Why does everything I do go wrong…….’
Do-ah sat quietly on the edge of a sofa in the Executive Director’s Office, her shoulders hunched.
She’d stormed into Hyunsin Department Store bent on revenge against her ex-boyfriend, and now she found herself detained on the ninth floor.
The director himself had requested to see her in person, so she’d been brought here directly from security.
‘Why would a director want to see me?’
She’d only shouted briefly with a megaphone in the lobby—she hadn’t expected things to escalate like this.
Meeting with a director, not the police? Had she really done something that serious?
‘Sigh…… Did I really overdo it…….’
Do-ah exhaled quietly, hands folded in her lap.
Anxiety compounded, and her heart continued its anxious pounding. In that moment, the root cause of all this trouble surfaced in her mind.
‘It’s all because of Gyeong-jun, that bastard……!’
At the injustice, Do-ah’s eyelids trembled.
Do-ah and Gyeong-jun had met in university and been together for seven years.
While he was in the military, she’d waited faithfully. During his job search, she’d taken part-time work to help support him.
Whenever he apologized for never managing anything special on their anniversaries, Do-ah had always comforted him.
After all those years, Gyeong-jun got a job, and soon after proposed.
“Do-ah, let’s get married.”
“G-Gyeong-jun……!”
That day, Do-ah was happier than anyone in the world.
She believed she could spend her whole life with him, so naturally she began preparing for the wedding.
That was when Gyeong-jun made an unexpected proposal.
“We’re getting married next year anyway, so we’ll need to prepare the dowry then. How about you buy household appliances and furniture for my place now, and we can think of it as getting a head start?”
Do-ah nodded without hesitation at his words.
Since she took their marriage for granted, the proposal seemed reasonable.
‘But he cheated? He’s furnishing a newlywed home with another woman using the dowry I bought?’
It was infuriating. Humiliating. She wanted to make them pay.
At first she’d tried to resolve it legally, but every lawyer she consulted said winning would be difficult because it was unclear whether the furniture constituted a proper dowry or was merely a gift.
‘So I tried to get the dowry back by humiliating them in public…….’
Instead, she’d ended up looking like the fool.
As she sighed heavily in frustration, the office door suddenly opened with a click.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————