Chapter 4.2

Chapter 4.2

Ara looked down at her still-tingling legs. She could barely manage her own body, let alone carry bundles of cash down the mountain.

“So you’re really going to transfer the money? Through mobile banking?”

“Look, human girl. Let’s live in the present, be smart about it. You should expand your imagination.”

The man tapped his temple with his index finger.

Getting this kind of lecture from a goblin who must be at least a hundred years old…

Feeling her pride wounded, Ara struggled to stand on her wobbly legs. The world tilted back to a proper angle from the unusually low vantage point she had been in.

“You’re not going to steal someone else’s money and put it in my account, are you? Or hack a bank?”

“What exactly do you think goblins are?”

“The kind of malicious… spirits who would leave my legs like this and expect me to crawl down the mountain in the middle of the night.”

Ara pointed at her dirt-smeared legs.

The man quickly scanned her from head to toe. A short sigh escaped his lips.

“I have a lot to say, but I’ll just point out two things.”

He held up two sleek fingers in a V-shape.

“First, I’m not a spirit. Spirits and goblins are entirely different beings. One of my abilities is actually exorcising spirits.”

As he finished speaking, he folded his index finger, leaving only the middle finger extended.

In other words, Ara had just been flipped off without a chance to respond.

“Wow, did you leave that finger up on purpose? Do you even know American insults?”

As Ara realized she had been tricked and was about to protest, the man’s middle finger quickly folded back down.

His elegant hand, even with its pronounced knuckles, suddenly thrust the smartphone right in front of Ara’s face.

“Second, this really is a goblin’s magic club. It can create not just ten billion but a hundred billion or a trillion with just a few taps. It’s simply been conveniently merged with a smartphone.”

Ara grabbed his hand and pulled it down.

The man stiffened momentarily, then pulled his hand away from her grip, stepping back a couple of steps, a look of irritation on his face.

“Why would I go through the hassle of using an old-fashioned method for such a trivial amount when I can just tap a few times and be done with it?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll give you my account number.”

Ara knew there was no point in arguing further.

She obediently recited her bank account number. The man listened and tapped away on his smartphone.

With nothing else to do, Ara sat back down and began tidying up the scattered cards.

“Check your account.”

It was over in an instant.

Before she could even put the cards back into their case, he spoke as if the matter was already settled.

Ara pulled her phone out of her front pocket. She had turned it off to avoid being tracked, so it took a while to boot up. She worried he might get impatient and rush her, but he waited quietly.

Finally, when the phone finished booting up, there was a new text message.

[Korean Bank]

[08/14 23:11]

[Deposit]

[1,000,000,000 won]

[Kim Seok-kyung]

Ara read the short message twice. It didn’t feel real.

To think it was such a simple problem to solve. She had quit her job and fled here, ready to die because of an enormous debt she couldn’t even grasp.

As she stared at the slightly teary-eyed screen, she chewed over the three letters at the bottom of the message.

“Who’s Kim Seok-kyung?”

“Me.”

“Goblins have names?”

“What, did you think they’d be called Goblin One, Goblin Two, or something? Do you even know how many goblins there are in the world?”

“Well, I didn’t know, so I asked. No need to get snippy about it.”

Ara pouted but thought to herself.

For an annoying goblin, he sure has a pretty name. And… a pretty face, too.

“Um… Kim Seok-kyung?”

Just as she was about to press the back button to exit the message, she noticed something.

“There’s a mistake with the deposit.”

Something about the message, which had seemed perfect until a moment ago, now felt incredibly off. Specifically, the numbers.

“A mistake?”

“Yes. You’re missing a zero.”

Ara counted the digits repeatedly with her eyes.

One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million, ten million, hundred million. No matter how many times she counted, the number of zeros following the one didn’t change.

He acted so smart, but he made such a simple mistake.

Ara stood up, smiling slyly, ready to tease Seok-kyung.

“Oh, that? It’s not a mistake.”

“What?”

“I meant to send you one billion only.”

Ara’s smile froze as the reality of his words sank in.