Welcome to the Goblin Hotel - Chapter 21

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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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Episode 21
A notification chimed, and footsteps echoed across the lobby floor.
A man in a black suit, crowned with a black gat.
Kangnim, the Underworld’s fashion icon, stepped into the lobby.
“What brings you to call me here? Ha ha ha! I never expected you to summon me so quickly.”
“That hat of yours… every time I see it, it really….”
“Isn’t it fashionable? Ha ha ha ha! It’s lightweight, shields me from the sun, and serves me well in many ways.”
Kangnim’s face was radiant with pleasure.
“You seem to be in particularly high spirits today?”
“Well, being invited to a meal like this—how could I not be in good spirits?”
Ah.
I had promised to treat him to a meal the next time we met, hadn’t I?
I’d called Kangnim the Chasa for another reason entirely, but….
First, I should feed him and see.
I’d completely forgotten about it.
‘I can’t say that now, can I?’
Since Kangnim possessed something as formidable as the Death Note, I always had to be careful around him.
‘Maybe I could ask him to show it to me sometime?’
It seemed possible if I fed him well enough.
I led Kangnim toward the restaurant.
“Yes, well. Let’s have our meal first.”
Kangnim laughed heartily as he headed toward the dining room.
“Ha ha ha, indeed.”
As we entered the restaurant, Minju spotted Kangnim and greeted him brightly.
“Chasa, hello!”
Kangnim offered a gentle smile and nodded.
“Minju. Looking forward to your service again today.”
A savory aroma was already drifting from the kitchen.
“Minju, I’ll be eating with the Chasa, so could you prepare two bowls, please?”
“Of course. I’ll bring them right away.”
Kangnim removed his hat and set it on a chair, then took his seat.
I sat down across from him and spoke.
“My daughter was quite ill through the night.”
“Was she?”
“You did warn me not to go out on the New Moon, but I had to take her to the hospital.”
Kangnim leaned toward me with concern.
“Nothing went wrong?”
“Nothing serious, I thought. It turned out to be nothing much.”
“Ha ha… nothing much….”
“I did encounter a few wayward spirits, but I dealt with them quickly.”
“That’s—”
Kangnim was about to say something.
When Minju brought out the meal.
Clear broth steaming with fragrant wisps.
It was galbitang, topped with large chunks of meat and finely sliced green onions.
Kangnim’s eyes widened.
“This is…! Isn’t this galbitang?”
Minju answered with a slight smile.
“Please, try it. I made it myself, and it really is delicious.”
Kangnim picked up his spoon and tasted the broth.
“Ah—! Minju’s skill truly is remarkable…!”
She’d said she was preparing a nourishing meal for ailing Songyi.
So it had been galbitang.
Kangnim the Chasa was fortunate indeed.
There was no need to mention that he’d ended up eating it as an unexpected bonus….
…none at all.
‘He’s enjoying it so much.’
Kangnim grasped a rib bone and blew on it gently, then tore the meat away with his teeth.
A bite of meat.
Then a sip of broth.
And so, eating his fill, by the end he’d scraped the bowl clean, soaking the last of his rice in the broth and scraping every last grain from the bottom.
“Haha! I was exhausted from overtime last night, and here you’ve served me such hearty, restorative food…! I’m truly moved.”
“Overtime?”
“On New Moon nights, there’s hardly a moment’s rest. You’ve been fortunate, sir. If you’d encountered an evil spirit, you’d understand that it’s no trivial matter.”
“Are evil spirits truly so formidable?”
“Vicious and incredibly powerful.”
Kangnim sighed and continued.
“That’s why most Reapers are men. There are female Reapers, of course, but dealing with evil spirits is a war of endurance.”
“Is that so?”
Now that I thought about it, I’d never once imagined that female Reapers might exist.
“Those creatures won’t listen to reason. In the end, you have to overpower them with brute force—and even then, it takes three or four Reapers hanging onto one just to subdue it.”
Kangnim rolled his shoulders as he spoke.
“After spending all night wrestling with evil spirits, your energy just drains away. Being a civil servant isn’t easy, you know.”
Just then, Minjae brought over the wayward spirit he’d confined to Room 210.
“Reaper! Hello.”
“Good to see you, Gatekeeper.”
Minjae scratched his head.
“Haha… Gatekeeper….”
“By the way, what about that wayward spirit?”
The wayward spirit writhed, bound tightly in rope.
“We caught it at the hospital. It was hiding under a bed, trying to escape, so we seized it.”
Kangnim’s eyes narrowed as he studied the spirit.
“A soul that’s only recently become a wayward spirit. It’s at its weakest now.”
Kangnim rose from his seat and flicked the spirit’s forehead lightly with his finger.
“Come.”
With that single word, the wayward spirit dissolved into smoke.
The smoke was promptly drawn into the sleeve of Kangnim’s robe.
Minjae’s eyes went wide as he asked, “What did you just do?”
Kangnim puffed out his chest proudly.
“Haha! Nothing special. I seal them inside here, and once we cross the Yellow Spring, I simply release it. Simple as that.”
I felt envious.

Was that sleeve some kind of magical vessel?
I gazed at Kangnim’s sleeve with narrowed eyes.
He then waved his hand dismissively.
“It’s not that the garment is special—it’s an ability of mine. Haha! Which is why I’m a full Reaper, not some subordinate, wouldn’t you say?”
“Wow… that’s impressive.”
I offered the praise in a deflated tone, but.
once Kangnim’s shoulders had risen that high, they showed no sign of coming back down.
Kangnim lifted the empty stone bowl and asked, “All this talk has made me hungry again…. Could I get a refill?”
What did he do to already be hungry again?
His fuel efficiency was terrible.
Kangnim ended up eating another whole bowl of galbitang.
“Haha! That was delicious, thank you!”
Having eaten his fill, vigor returned to his voice.
The restorative food I’d prepared for Songyi had instead gone to nourishing a Reaper.
Still, the visitor was a Reaper.
I had to make sure any Reaper was well fed.
On the surface it seemed like I was losing out, but I really wasn’t.
Probably.
No, truly.
***
Meanwhile, at Gangbyeon Restaurant, the Old Man’s son and daughter-in-law had been discharged from the hospital and returned home.
The Old Man, proprietor of Gangbyeon Restaurant, patted his son and daughter-in-law’s backs.
“You’ve been through an ordeal. But everything’s fine now. Everything’s all right.”
His son laughed awkwardly.
“Mom, we really weren’t faking it. It felt like we were going to die… and then suddenly we were fine?”
“I know. I know. It’s all thanks to the Dokkaebi.”
At those words, his son tilted his head in confusion.

“Mom, why are you bringing up dokkaebi all of a sudden?”
The old woman led her son and daughter-in-law to a spot inside the restaurant where a broken stone lay.
The son cried out in shock at the sight of the black stone split in half.
“No! Mom…! I worked so hard to get this! How did it end up like this?”
“I heard all your illnesses were because of that stone.”
“Mom, you didn’t actually crack this stone after hearing some nonsense somewhere, did you?”
The old woman pulled out a chair and sat down as she spoke.
“No, that’s not it. A dokkaebi came to our house yesterday, dressed as a person.”
“Not the dokkaebi talk again! What am I supposed to do about my stone!”
“Blue fire blazed from his hands, and it consumed that black stone.”
The son couldn’t make sense of what his mother was saying and shuffled his feet impatiently.
“Mom, that doesn’t make any sense! Does it?”
“He said there was a kuryong’s resentment trapped inside it. That this wasn’t just any stone—it was the stone that killed a kuryong.”
The daughter-in-law standing beside them trembled.
“That’s the stone that killed a kuryong?”
“Yes. Now that I think about it, I never liked that stone from the start. Every time I saw it, my spine tingled.”
“That’s right. Honestly, I got chills every time I looked at it too.”
The daughter-in-law nodded in agreement with the old woman’s words.
With both of them saying the same thing, the son found it harder to stay angry.
His breathing, which had been sharp and agitated moments before, gradually calmed.
After his breathing settled.
He turned to his wife and asked.
“You really felt that way?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you say so from the beginning?”
“You liked it so much. I couldn’t just tell you to throw it away. I thought maybe it was just my imagination.”
The son fell silent for a long moment.
His eyes, which had been fixed on the broken stone, began to flicker.
Then he carefully picked up the shattered stone.
“…This is strange.”
“What is?”
“It’s lighter. Before it felt quite heavy. Now it’s like it’s hollow inside.”
The old woman rose from her seat.
“You lived because that stone broke. The moment it shattered, the phone call came from you two. You said you weren’t sick anymore.”
Then she took the black stone from her son’s hands.
“Whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter to me. But you should remember the debt of a life saved. That’s what makes you human. Isn’t it?”
The old woman walked toward the back of the restaurant, holding the black stone.
Her son and daughter-in-law followed behind her.
An empty plot with a view of the river below.
The old woman set the broken black stone down in that place.
“This is where it belongs.”
Then she took incense from her pocket.
“Mom, what’s that for?”
“No matter how much of a beast it was, if it died wrongfully, you have to appease its spirit.”
As she lit the incense, a thin wisp of smoke drifted on the wind toward the river.
After watching the incense burn for a long time, the old woman went into the kitchen and returned with a porcelain bowl filled with water.
Clink.
She set the bowl down beside the stone and spoke.
“If there is anger, let it go before you leave. Do not trouble my family again.”
A silence fell.
Only the gentle sound of the river’s water was heard.
“This one bowl of water will be enough.”
The son shrugged his shoulders awkwardly.
“Is it all over now?”
“It is. I’m just doing this for my own peace of mind.”
The black stone was now nothing more than an ordinary stone lying by the river’s edge.
And yet, knowing what it was.
The old woman’s heart had finally grown light.
“When the dokkaebi comes next time, treat him with respect. Never be careless with him.”
“Mom, I hear you already. Can we go inside now? I’m so hungry I might pass out before I even meet that dokkaebi.”
“Yes, let’s go in and eat. I’ll make you that miso stew you love.”
***
The Dokkaebi Hotel was remarkably quiet during the daylight hours while Songyi slept.
Without her bright, giggling laughter echoing through the halls, the place felt somehow hollow.
Songyi stirred from her afternoon nap and made her way outside.
“Dad!”
“Woof!”
Before I could answer, Hwanggeum-i beat me to it.
The dog bounded toward Songyi, his tail wagging furiously.
“Songyi, did you sleep well?”
“Hehe… I slept quite a lot, didn’t I?”
I pulled her into a tight embrace.
“When you’re not feeling well, you need to eat and rest properly. You did good.”
“Songyi, are you hungry? Minju made galbitang.”
Songyi shook her head.
“No. I want to check the vegetable garden first.”
“The vegetable garden?”
“I haven’t been there yet today.”
Songyi visited the vegetable garden every single day to look after her tomatoes.
When the stems grew, she’d beam with delight; when the leaves unfurled, she’d cheer.
“All right then. Let’s go together.”
Songyi scampered over to the tomato seedlings and crouched down before them.
After peering through the thick foliage for a while, she suddenly jumped to her feet.
“Oh! Dad, Dad! Look at this!”
Songyi pointed between the tomato stems with her finger.
“Flowers have bloomed! Tomato flowers!”
“So they have.”
Just yesterday there had been nothing but lush leaves, yet now delicate blooms adorned the plants.
“Here too! And there!”
Watching her bounce and leap with excitement, I couldn’t help but smile.
I crouched down for a closer look.
Beneath the yellow petals hung tiny green buds, no larger than a fingernail.
“Wait—Songyi, the tomatoes are setting fruit already.”
Songyi gasped in surprise and pressed herself against my side.
“Where?”
“Look here. It’s a tiny fruit.”
The moment Songyi saw the miniature tomato, barely the size of a bean, her face flushed with joy.
“This is going to become a tomato?”
“That’s right.”
Songyi stood and began performing an odd, spontaneous dance.
“Turn red! Turn red!”
She looked like a Native American performing a rain dance.
At this rate, she’d dance without stopping until the tomatoes ripened.
Yesterday evening felt like a lifetime ago—her fever, her whimpers of discomfort.
‘She’s fully recovered.’
Truly, my daughter is remarkable.
She’d conquered a childhood illness in a single day.
“Turn red! Grow big! Turn red! Grow big!”
Songyi’s dance continued for some time.
Inheriting the Dokkaebi Hotel
Author
: Whygraenotha
Production Date
: August 25, 2026
Publisher
: ACIS Media Inc.
Editor
: ACIS Media Editorial Team
Address
: 10F Urban Bench Building, 325 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Email
: [email protected]
※ This work has been published by ACIS Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder,
and the content may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and author.
This e-book is a copyrighted work protected by copyright law, and unauthorized reproduction or duplication may result in legal liability.
UCI
: G720:N+A129-20260730113

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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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