New Normal - Chapter 1

01. Big D1ck Energy

People say you never know what will happen in life. Of course, there are always exceptions.

“It’s really bad luck.”

When the famous shaman* said this, Jisoo’s face darkened in an instant.
T/N note: *Fortune Teller

***

In a busy part of Seoul full of office buildings, there was a fancy mixed-use apartment building.

On the 13th floor of this building was the shrine of a shaman who was an expert in feng shui but could also read fortunes, birth charts — everything.

The place looked just like a normal home, so Shin Jisoo only found out about it thanks to her friend Jung Haeyoon.

“The NW owner’s family goes there all the time. Usually, they only see old VIPs and don’t take new people, but I managed to get you an appointment. The shaman’s spirit is super clean, so he’s really good. You have to try it.”

They said even politicians and rich people secretly came here.

But instead of being old and spooky, the shaman’s place was strange in another way.

At first glance, it looked like a new skin clinic in a fancy neighborhood. At the entrance, there was no jade bead curtain — just a modern wooden door. In the waiting area, the living room, there was a soft boucle fabric sofa that looked like fluffy wool.

The shaman’s main room was the same. Under warm lights, colorful fans, candle holders, and statues gave off a soft shine. On a new flat-screen TV, there was an image that looked like a Buddhist painting.

Only the yellow talismans stuck all over the silk wallpaper felt out of place.

She didn’t know if she should call this place modern or what…

Jisoo looked around the room, her eyes wandering here and there, then lowered her gaze with a heavy sigh.

After a hard and anxious twenties, she had finally reached her thirties — it had already been about a year.

She was used to seeing a ‘3’ in front of her age now, but for some reason, this year had felt restless from the very start.

And sure enough —

“Guys… I’m sorry. It just happened.”

One of her friends, who had sworn in their twenties they would never get married — like a kind of friendship pact — had just announced their wedding.

It wasn’t like hearing about a wedding was new, but this one felt different.

She was the same friend who once told Jisoo, “Let’s move into a retirement home together when we’re old grandmas.”

But now, she gave Jisoo her wedding invitation while confessing she’d been dating someone — and that she was pregnant after just three months.

It was good news, so Jisoo truly congratulated her.

But the shock must have been bigger than she thought.

Right after the get-together, she came home to her empty studio apartment and felt so lonely she couldn’t think straight.

In the end, she opened a can of beer. She spent the boring weekend eating convenience store pork slices with beer and watching Netflix.

Then suddenly, her vision went dark and her ears felt blocked. She felt so sick.

She managed to hold onto the toilet, but right before she passed out, she was taken to the ER.

“Ms. Shin Jisoo, if you keep your liver like this, you could die.”

Losing her only small pleasure in life was just the start.

At her regular health check-up, they found a polyp in her colon.

Then her heel, which never gave her trouble before, suddenly got thick, yellow calluses.

She’d always been proud of her good health, but as soon as something went wrong, more bad luck followed.

It was like life was laughing at her for blaming it all on turning 29.

Bad things just kept coming all through the first half of the year.

“Jisoo, I just got a strange phone call. And now the money is gone from my account. Isn’t this voice phishing? Oh no, what should I do now?”

Her uncle, who was always super careful about everything, lost a huge amount of money to a voice phishing scam.

To help him — he was like a father to her — she tried to take out her deposit money from her rental apartment, only to find out the place was a scam too.

Luckily, she had insurance, so it didn’t turn into a bigger mess.

But fixing it all was enough to drain every bit of her energy.

Jisoo always believed life depended on her own effort.

Of course, whenever things didn’t go well, she still looked up online fortune readings or feng shui videos on YouTube — anything that might help.

But after so many bad things happened in just half a year, she started to feel sure that life was controlled by something she couldn’t see.

After thinking for a long time, she even took a day off work on a weekday — just to visit this shaman she’d never thought about seeing before.

“It’s bad luck. Really, really bad luck.”

Hearing this nonsense did not make her feel better at all.

“Bad luck?”

She asked again with a shaky voice. The man sitting across from her just nodded without much interest. Jisoo closed her mouth and tried to calm her surprise.

She looked at the man with a doubtful gaze — this shaman who so calmly said such a terrible thing.

The shaman, known as Seok Doryeong, looked like he was in his late forties. He was a big man wearing Prada glasses and a full Thom Browne outfit. He definitely looked special in some way, but…

Was it really okay for a shaman to say something so certain about someone’s future?

More than that — could she really trust this “young forty” who looked like he belonged in the luxury streets of Cheongdam-dong?

At first, she doubted him. But then she changed her mind.

In a world where money means power, money was proof of his special power too — and he was living proof.

The sparkling diamond watch on his wrist, the rings on his index and thumb. The Cartier panther wrapping around his finger probably cost more than the whole rental deposit she had lost in the scam — so he must be really good.

“Sir, I don’t really understand. Why…?”

Jisoo kept repeating the curse-like reading in her head, but couldn’t finish her question.

She tried to deny the hopeless future he predicted, but it didn’t work. It was already stuck in her mind and wouldn’t go away.

“What do you mean you don’t get it? Want me to say it again? It’s bad luck.”

Seok Doryeong, sitting on a gold cushion, scratched his chin lazily.

“No, I mean… it’s not even this year but next year? Last year was already really hard for me!”

“Last year was your first bad year, this year is the second — of course it’s hard. Next year is the third, but your birth chart clashes with it. That’s the real problem. Compared to next year, this year is nothing.”

“What’s going to happen next year?”

Jisoo cried out, feeling it was so unfair. Seok Doryeong just lifted his glasses with an uninterested look. He clicked his tongue, then pulled out a piece of paper from a drawer.

After writing down a few things carefully, he started drawing a graph on a grid.

“Look here. Your big luck shifts at ages three, thirteen, and twenty-three. This one goes from twenty-three to thirty-two. Even if things were rough, you were still going up, see? So far, so good. But look here.”

The line on the graph went up and down, then started to rise — but suddenly dropped.

“See? It started going down last year. And it keeps dropping — all the way to the bottom. That’s next year.”

When the line fell straight into the minus, Seok Doryeong clicked the pen shut.

“Bad luck often shows up right before your big luck changes — and you’re exactly like that. You were born like a pond that can’t move, and now a huge tree is blocking all the sunlight. The plants in the pond need sunlight to grow, right? But they’re rotting in the shade now. How could anything live in that? It all dies.”

Jisoo’s eyes shook as she stared at the graph. Seok Doryeong calmly scratched his chin again and spun his pen with one hand.

“It really doesn’t look good, so don’t do anything big next year. Just live like you’re half dead — that’ll be the easiest way.”

Jisoo shut her mouth tight and lowered her head in despair. Seeing her looking so heartbroken, Seok Doryeong stopped spinning his pen and cleared his throat.

“Well, um… it’s because your yin energy is unusually strong.”

He looked her up and down like he didn’t really want to deal with it, then pulled out a yellow piece of paper from a box next to him. He dipped a brush in red ink and quickly wrote Chinese characters on it.

“There’s nothing holding your energy up or balancing it out, and your inertia is too strong… Anyway, your yin and yang are out of balance. That’s your biggest problem right now. Here — keep this in your wallet. It’ll boost your yang energy.”

He handed her the talisman with an annoyed jerk of his chin. Jisoo, already deep in worry, stared at the yellow talisman for a moment, then asked gloomily,

“Sir, if next year is really my bad luck… then what should I do?”

“What do you mean, what should you do? When the waves are rough and high, you have to dive deep. Lie low and wait until the sun comes out. It’s always darkest right before dawn. Just hang in there.”

“But still… is there any way I can get through it safely, even a little?”

She pleaded desperately, and Seok Doryeong tapped the desk like he was thinking — then snapped at her.

“Watch your mouth, Ms. Shin Jisoo.”

“What?”

“People like you are easy targets for fakes and scammers. What if I asked you for five thousand and told you to get a spirit ritual? What if I said your ancestors have a grudge and you need to pay for a special ceremony — would you do it? Do you have that money? How can you be so reckless?”

Jisoo looked like she was about to cry at the sudden scolding. Seok Doryeong glared at her and pulled out a jar from beside him.

“You look like someone born to be special — you have an aura of wealth. So I’m giving you this extra service for free. You’d better know you met the right person today, okay?”

Jisoo nodded hard, and Seok Doryeong let out a deep sigh that sounded like it came from the bottom of the earth. Then he grabbed a handful of rice.

Rustle.

He scattered the rice wide with a sharp sweep and stared at it carefully. Then he closed his eyes and slowly started shaking a golden bell.

At first, his hand moved slowly, like he was conducting an orchestra. But the more intense his movements got, the louder the bell’s ringing became.

Jisoo hunched her shoulders and held her breath as she watched him.

Jingle, jingle.

The bell rang wildly for a long time, then suddenly stopped. At that exact moment, Seok Doryeong’s eyes snapped open.

”…An axe.”

He said it in a serious voice, and Jisoo swallowed hard.

“An axe?”

“I see an axe. A big, heavy axe that can cut down trees. The axe is your noble person — someone who will appear and turn your bad luck into good luck.”

“Someone who turns my bad luck into good luck?”

Clang

He tossed the bell to the floor and suddenly leaned his upper body forward. Startled by how close he was, Jisoo pulled back.

Behind his thick-rimmed glasses, Seok Doryeong’s eyes glinted sharply.

“Ms. Shin Jisoo — you’re a virgin, right?”

“What?”

A baffled sigh slipped out of Jisoo’s mouth. It wasn’t just the old-fashioned word — she was stunned that he could ask something like that to her face. She frowned, not even sure if what she’d just heard counted as harassment.

“Excuse me… sir, what does that have to do with—”

“Strangely enough, the axe has the shape of a man’s thing.”

Cutting her off, Seok Doryeong wrapped his hand around his elbow and lifted his fist to show her.

“The axe has very strong yang energy. So strong it’s overflowing. You know the Dolhareubang statue, right? The one that blocks bad luck and brings blessings with its strong male energy? The axe is just like that.”

“Dolhareubang? Are you telling me to… go to Jeju Island or something?”

“Ugh, why can’t you understand what I’m saying? The noble person has strong yang energy, like a Dolhareubang!”

Seok Doryeong slapped his elbow with his palm a few times and snapped at her.

“Listen. This is a big, thick, solid rope being thrown to someone drowning — like you, Ms. Shin Jisoo! Your bad luck all starts with your yin and yang being out of balance! Do you get it?”

He shouted so hard that spit flew, and Jisoo pulled her head back. The talk about manhood, yang energy, and his weird gestures — it all felt embarrassing, but for some reason, it also felt like he was scolding her.

“Yes… the root…”

She nodded, feeling crushed. Seok Doryeong finally calmed down, took a deep breath, and went on more quietly.

People say you never know what will happen in life. Of course, there are always exceptions.

“It’s really bad luck.”

When the famous shaman* said this, Jisoo’s face darkened in an instant.

T/N note: *Fortune Teller