Was Happy Being a Despised F-Rank Healer, You Know? - Chapter 172

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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18. Who Opens Their Eyes (11)

Watching Bbang-deok Eomeom swing her fan wide and plant herself squarely in front of Sim Bong-sa, the children waiting backstage all held their breath at once, pressing their lips together with every ounce of strength they possessed.
“If your father can’t even find the outhouse properly this morning and is wandering around the courtyard like a fool, then clearly you’re not doing a very good job playing the filial daughter, are you?”
“I found the outhouse.”
“You found it? Then why aren’t you going, and why are you dithering here instead? It must be because Cheong didn’t escort you!”
“Please, stop.”
Sim Bong-sa spoke firmly. Four plates trembled in unison.
Isang Hee, playing Sim Cheong, bowed her head as she spoke.
“I am lacking in many ways. Please teach me more, Mother.”
Then, with a slightly exaggerated gesture, she tilted her head and said “Wait,” continuing on.
“Now that I think of it, Mother, where do you go every dawn?”
“Are you saying I should report my comings and goings to you? How presumptuous!”
Every time Bbang-deok Eomeom spoke, her artificially high voice cracked, but Hyun I-seo was truly doing his best.
“I ended up in this wretchedly poor house, fooled by this blind charlatan, but he still carries himself like a man of consequence, doesn’t he? I’m busy.”
“A, a charlatan? My father was only… deceived by a mudang…”
“What did the mudang tell him?”
“…That if he married again to a woman who looked like a potato, his eyes would open…”
“What, a potato?”
Laughter erupted from the audience.
In truth, every time Hyun I-seo forced out that acerbic tone with his whole being, something like stifled laughter kept spilling out.
“Did you just compare me to a potato? How dare you, to me, the famous beauty of this neighborhood!”
As her voice finally cracked, even Choi Ji-hyeong’s expression turned peculiar, his eyes clouding over.
Sim Cheong spoke.
“Ah, perhaps she said potato flower, not potato. Isn’t that right, Father?”
“Huh?”
Lee Si-hyeon, playing Sim Bong-sa, had been twisting his body more and more, making it clear he was desperate for the outhouse, and reacted a beat too late.
And he committed a team kill.
“It was definitely potato. That’s why I spent so much time searching the neighborhood for the woman who most resembled a potato, trying to see an unmade-up face. You know this too, Cheong,”
As Bbang-deok Eomeom began glaring ominously, half-covering her mouth with her fan, Sim Bong-sa’s survival instinct belatedly kicked in.
“…well, I couldn’t. It was in a dream, you see. Heh-heh-heh-heh.”
After a brief chuckle, Bbang-deok Eomeom—who seemed to have fallen for the fraudulent marriage after Sim Bong-sa posturing as a wealthy man—poured out a stream of harsh words before exiting, shouting:
“Anyway! Until I get back every last coin of the dowry I brought, I won’t leave you alone. Your father is like that, so what can you do? You’ll have to pay me back.”
“Mother…”
Isang Hee made a show of weeping pitifully, her appearance innocent and pure.
“She’s quite a strange woman. From the moment we first met, she got so angry just because I asked her name.”
“She got angry just from being asked her name?”
“She suddenly opened her eyes halfway and said, ‘Grandfather, please remember my face.’ So I asked her name, and she got angry.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Bbang-deok.”
“…Ah.”
At Sim Cheong’s wistful response, as if suddenly understanding, laughter rippled through the audience again.
“It’s a good name, isn’t it? ‘Bbang’ means spinning round and round, and ‘deok’ means virtue. The name carries the meaning that if you give virtue, it returns to you in the end. But strangely, whenever I call her by that name, she just gets angry.”
“Did… did she say that?”
“No, I didn’t have a chance to tell her.”
“I see…”
Sim Cheong took her father’s hand and led him inside the house, saying,
“I wish Mother had as much virtue as her name suggests. Come inside, Father. You’re getting cold.”
“Heh-heh, let’s do that.”
Except for a few silly moments and Bbang-deok Eomeom’s early appearance, it wasn’t a drastic departure from the original Sim Cheong legend.
The audience thought it was just a traditional play with a few more comic scenes added.
Then, as Sim Cheong and Sim Bong-sa exited, Bbang-deok Eomeom, left alone at the far right end of the stage in the dimness, ground her teeth and muttered.
“That damned thing, hurry up and…”
Her eyes gazing toward the exited Sim Bong-sa looked both menacing and somehow complicated.
***
“I-seo’s acting is really good.”
“Right? When he was cursing, it felt genuine though.”
At Seo-yun’s remark, we all giggled.
“Hyun I-seo is perfect for the part.”
The ones who’d written the script thinking through the flow afterward spoke with satisfaction.
We’d decided to support Hyun I-seo’s recent resolve to stop hiding his Cursing Skill and instead reveal it, and the play’s timing just happened to align.
In our adapted script, Bbang-deok Eomeom held a twist, and to reveal that twist, a “good curse” was exactly right instead of just any curse.
It could also give a decent influence on forming Hyun I-seo’s image.
Anyway.
Since it was essentially all about dividing roles for Hyun I-seo’s sake, even I-seo didn’t protest.
“Let’s just call him Bbang-seo. Four syllables is too long.”
“Right, that’s perfect. But he told us not to call him that.”
“Just while we’re doing the play, okay? It’ll help him focus better, right?”
“Now you’re really pushing it.”
Lee Hae-sol shook his head as he watched Seo-yun’s excitement.
Seo-yun, who’d taken it on the chin from I-seo—an S-ranker—particularly hard during training, seemed desperate to call him “Bbang-seo” just one more time, but…
I watched several male classmates who’d tried calling I-seo “Bbang-seo” during training, their eyes brimming with tears.
That woman would be coming backstage soon…
I just hoped the punishment would wait until after the festival ended.
My wish seemed to come true—I-seo only went for the back of Seo-yun’s head.
Fortunately, since Seo-yun wasn’t up next, a brief loss of consciousness should be fine.
As I nodded, Han Seong and Lee Hae-sol standing beside me were looking at me with unusually similar eyes.
When our eyes met and I asked why, they both shook their heads.
With amusement playing at the corners of their mouths.
Isang Hee, who had just been smirking along with them, was now looking at me with murderous intent in his eyes.
Yu Hee was gazing at such a murderous Isang Hee with a radiant smile.
Was it just my imagination that Yu Hee’s beautifully curved eyes looked more murderous than Isang Hee’s lethal gaze?
“Alright, next scene!”
Eden slapped the script against the wall repeatedly as he shouted.
***
Choi Ji-hyeong couldn’t help but let the corners of his mouth rise.
Hyun I-seo’s ridiculous appearance was an excellent prelude to the skill he was about to showcase.
‘Wrap him in familiarity and good feelings, then reveal it. Not a bad approach at all.’
The Cursing Skill belonged to the Mental-type category, so unlike skills like brainwashing that needed complete concealment, it wasn’t something that should necessarily be hidden.
There were awkward angles to using it in Dungeons.
But Hyun I-seo is S-rank.
He’d already accomplished enough without revealing his skill.
So now was the right time to reveal the Cursing Skill in earnest.
And if the venue was a Festival Play stage, with reporters present no less, it couldn’t be better.
Not like they’d hide it for a lifetime anyway.
-And so the winter of the poor father and daughter grows even colder, frost-bitten by harsher winds.
Using the dowry Bbang-deok Eomeom brought, they paid off debts and treated Father’s illness. But once that was done, nothing remained, and they needed to prepare a new dowry to give back to Bbang-deok Eomeom, who was kicking up a fuss about being scammed… or rather, to the potato woman.
But that wasn’t all.
There were additional expenses needed just to survive the winter.
Sim Cheong laid out all these circumstances through her dialogue—as if deliberately making sure it was heard—before meeting some suspicious-looking people while fretting over her troubles.
-After much deliberation, Sim Cheong accepted their proposal.
Kim Myeong-hyeon’s voice announced the scene change.
The stage lights dimmed once, then brightened again.
It was a theatrical convention signaling the passage of seasons.
The swirling wind that had been circling throughout, occasionally playing pranks on audience members to keep them from getting bored, began to settle.
And in the silence after the wind sound faded, Sim Cheong stood alone in front of the thatched house courtyard.
Her expression grave.
“If Father’s eyes can open, then I don’t need to earn money…”
…Wait?
The audience doubted their ears.
“He won’t die either, or so they said. Three hundred stone should be enough to get rid of that woman—whether she’s Bbang-deok or a potato—with money left over. I could use what’s left to buy myself new clothes.”
Though wearing tattered clothes, because of the thin barrier Isang Hee maintained continuously, she still stood out.
She looked very sacred, but her dialogue was ominous.
“Wait, that… doesn’t sound like a filial daughter’s lines at all…”
“Oh, look. There’s something written small on the edge of the pamphlet.”
“Huh? …Was Sim Cheong really a filial daughter? And if she wasn’t a filial daughter, then what else could she be…?”
What is this about?
Since it was during school hours when only people from campus were present, most were either staff or students, and they all looked bewildered.
“So, let’s think about this realistically, is that it?”
Some found it entertaining.
But none of them knew.
They had no idea how much and how far “Sim Cheong” would diverge from its path now that Class 8 had gotten their hands on it—a tale that had always only boasted diverse skills at the seaside or the lotus flower-parting scenes.

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