#it's the year nineteen hundred and forty and something isn't right

[toxicinfluence]

SOMETHING'S WRONG WHEN YOU REGRET / THINGS THAT HAVEN'T HAPPENED YET

[shanastoryteller]

happy birthday!!! dealer's choice? ❤❤❤

Man-wol was an outlier.

It doesn't usually take thirteen hundred years for the new owner to find peace with themselves.

Chan-sung is forty three when the hotel finds itself ownerless once more.

It's easy for him to get his hands on the wine. He doesn't hesitate to drink it.

"This isn't your destiny," Merciful Mago says, frowning at him.

"The thing about giving people the ability to make their own choices," he says as his humanity becomes tied to the tree that housed his love's spirit for so long, "is that sometimes they make choices you don't like."

Man-wol was a good person. She spent thirteen hundred years helping others and forgave her worst enemies. She's going to come back, and not as a pig or a chicken.

She's going to come back and he's going to be here when she does.

He's going to remember her.

~

Mi-ra is killed at the age of sixty three by a criminal who wanted to get back at Young-soo. All that bad luck catching up to her, maybe.

She asks to be made an employee. Of course he says yes. She's his friend.

Young-soo follows three years later. He'd found the man who had killed his wife and then died of a broken heart a month later.

Chan-sung expects them to leave, but instead they choose to say.

"It took us a long time to make the right choices," Mi-ra says, her hand in Young-soo's. "We probably won't be so fortunate in our next life. Let's linger in this one."

~

Sanchez dies in his nineties, leaving behind three ex-wives, seven children, and thirteen grandchildren.

He barely stays at the hotel long enough to have a drink.

"Veronica is waiting for me, I hope," he says, squeezing Chan-sung's shoulder. "I don't want to make her wait any longer."

~

Yoo-na doesn't even ask. She just puts on the uniform and takes up her position behind the front desk.

"It's funny, isn't it," she says when leans against the counter. "I still look like her. I guess after seventy years in that body, with her name, it really did become mine. Even my soul knows it."

"Did you think it didn't?" he asks.

She ignores that. "Are we really going to keep using brass keys? We should at least update to room cards."

"No," he says.

She doesn't push and he doesn't ask why she's staying.

They both know the answer, after all.

~

He finds all of Man-Wol's things in storage.

It's a relief. He'd worried they'd been lost.

He puts up all her portraits. He keeps her desk. He sleeps in the bed she chose.

"She was not worthy of this devotion," Pitiless Mago sniffs.

"And I was not deserving of heartbreak," he responds kindly. This Mago, at least, does not play games. "Not all fates are earned."

~

Hyu-joong returns. He becomes a teacher.

Yoo-na visits the coffee shop he frequents and Chan-sung pretends not to notice.

He probably should have said something. He doesn't know why he thought Yoo-na was just going to watch the man she loved and lost.

"I suppose I can help file the paperwork," Hyu-joong says, his arm around Yoo-na's shoulders and a ring on her finger. "She tells me that we used to know each other. I'd be happy to help if you don't want to hire a proper manager."

"You know she's a ghost, right?" he asks desperately.

Yoo-na throws him a dirty look but Hyu-joong shrugs. "Nobody's perfect." She shifts that dirty look to him and he amends, "Except you, dear."

He's at least smoother in this life than in his last.

~

Man-wol is no ordinary soul.

She walked halfway across the bridge and didn't forget. She didn't say that, because she didn't know what the Magos would do if the knew.

Apparently a soul cannot exist with for thirteen hundred years without knowing something of endurance.

She's born to a rich family with loving parents. She's popular and pretty and happy and she has a pretty boyfriend who adores her.

When she's nineteen, the dreams start.

The memories start.

"I'm so stupid," she laughs, looking down at the photo of her and her boyfriend, of her and the man she knew as Go-chung.

He's so good to her. If she were different and didn't know who they used to be, it wouldn't matter, and she could have the love story they both deserved.

But she does and it does. She cries after breaking up with him, which if nothing else proves to her she's different than the woman she was. After what he did to her, she shouldn't care, but they're not those people anymore.

She still can't choose him.

"I want to go to Harvard," she tells her parents.

Her mother is enthusiastic while her father is mostly confused. She completes undergrad then goes overseas to attend Harvard Law School.

"Sanchez," she says, delighted, to the boy sitting next to her in her first class.

He blinks. "Do I know you?" His face clears, "Oh, do you know my fiance? I was just waiting for her because she left her laptop at my place."

"Veronica," she says, cursing herself for not making that connection earlier.

She remembers, but it's not like it once was. It's more the memories of remembering than anything else.

They got along in their past lives and they get along in this one too. She and Veronica even get a job at the same firm after college and all three of them live together.

~

There's a newspaper clipping left on his desk. Chan-sung finds out later that Mi-ra left it there.

It's a story about the recently elected legislator to the National Assembly, Kim Seon-bi. Standing next to him his is wife, Choi Seo-hee, and between them are their two daughters.

He frames the article and hangs it.

~

Man-wol is twenty seven when there's a lunar eclipse.

She puts on a bright red matching skirt and blazer and rubies in her ears and on her throat.

"I thought you said you had a job interview," Veronica says, her hand on the swell of her stomach. She's only five months along and Sanchez is a wreck. "You look like you're getting ready for a date."

Man-wol smiles.

She walks into the lobby of Hotel del Luna. It's exactly the same as she remembered. She at least expected them to update to room cards.

"Man-wol!" the woman behind the desk gasps.

It takes her several moments to place her. She looks a lot different. "Hello Yoo-na."

"You remember - you know me?" she asks, reaching out to grab her hands. "You're alive!"

"I'm alive," she repeats. "Call the owner. Tell him a candidate for the manager position is here."

Yoo-na's mouth drops open before it closes. "How did you - you know that he's-"

"I know who the owner is," she says gently. "Call him."

~

Chan-sung is looking over expense reports when the phone rings. "Yes?"

"There's someone here," Yoo-na says. He frowns. Her voice is trembling. "For the manager position."

"I told you to turn away any humans that show up tonight," he says. They're always more trouble than they're worth.

"We need a proper human manager. My husband can't do it forever," she says. "You should at least interview her."

She hangs up before he can argue against it. He sighs, rubbing at his eyes before pushing himself back from his desk. It'll be faster to send them away himself than to argue with her.

He takes the elevator down, smile firmly in place when the doors open and he steps into the lobby. "Apologies, I believe there's been some," he starts then can't continue, every thought he has flying out of his head.

It's Man-wol.

She bows to him, holding out her resume with both hands. He's never seen her this polite. "Hello, Mr. Owner. As a Harvard graduate with excellent references, I believe you'll find that I'm your zero choice applicant."

He can't form a single coherent thought. Disbelief and joy and confusion on how she even found the hotel to begin with. Then her words sink in and he can't feel his legs. Zero choice applicant. No one says that. Is it just a remnant of her past life or does she -

His knees buckle and she jumps forward to catch him, grabbing his elbows and yanking him into her. "Chan-sung! You're still like this after all these years? How do you get anything done-"

"Man-wol," he says, reaching up a hand to touch her face. He's had dreams like this before. "Are you real?"

"What kind of stupid question is that?" she demands.

He's missed her so much.

He tips her head up and kisses her. He doesn't notice he's crying until he tastes the salt on his tongue but it doesn't slow either of them down.

"So," she says breathlessly when he finally forces himself to pull back, "does that mean I can have the job?"

"You can have whatever you want," he says, then kisses her again.