Occult | JJK 🔞

9| Clairvoyant

Pyeongju was calmer in the afternoon.

The sky was the colour of washed-off jeans, skinny white clouds scattering in the breeze that was flowing from the ocean, traveling through the forest and smelling of damp earth and this biting salty sea perfume Khepri wasn't able to put her finger on. The marketplace, a little further to her right, had gone quiescent with the sun traveling to disappear around the West mountains, but she could still see the merchants from afar, getting ready to close as they shook away the dust from their aprons and washed off their knives.

How she wished she was hammered right now.

Anything would have done the job at this point; tequila, morphine, jumping off a cliff... Alas she had a task to do.

The girl closed her eyes for a second, just breathing-in the briny wind and imagining she was elsewhere, somewhere far, far away, in the desert maybe, where the cerulean sky met unending shores of golden sand.

She opened her eyes, started walking away from the hotel and the center of town to disappear in a smaller street to her left. The asphalt was unequal there, small brick shops and houses with painted doors succeeding themselves. The area wasn't as prosperous as the rest of town and plastic barrels as well as trash bags littered the sidewalks.

It didn't take long for her to find what she was looking for; a tiny shop in between two small shacks with a blue metal sheet roof. The flaked golden paint above the door spelled The Alchemist ~ Apothecary. Khepri pushed it open, which immediately made a golden bell jingle, announcing her arrival.

The inside of the shop was dark and dusty, cluttered with a jumble of objects one could imagine being kept in a witch's house: grimoires, crystal balls, shiny moon stones, tarot cards, incense, and probably every possible herb on that side of the globe.

Of course most of it was fake. Humans had absolutely no idea what witches really were about, and for most, they were only a bedside story scaring away their kids into submission.

Go to bed or the evil witches are going to eat you.

That said, along her journey Khepri had met witches that did eat children. She couldn't say they were her favorite kind of company.

"Hello! Is it your first time here, can I help you with anything?"

The voice was coming from a small girl, huddled behind the counter. Her big almond eyes peered at Khepri like she was trying to see through her cape and the witch directed her head down to make sure her hood was concealing her face.

"Is Myung-Hee around?"

"Myung-Hee?" the girl asked, chewing loudly on pink bubble-gum, "You know my grandmother?"

"I'm an old friend."

The girl looked at Khepri up and down, clearly doubting her connection to a very old senile lady.

"Who are you?" she asked, pushing a river of raven hair behind her shoulder.

"Does it matter?"

"Kwan? What's going on?" a loud rattling voice asked from the back store.

A cane appeared from the doorway, pushing aside the red curtain that was hiding the room, and a very old lady appeared, hunched and crumpled as she shuffled inside the shop.

She took one look at Khepri, hummed, then turned to her granddaughter.

"Girl, take some cash in the register and go get something to eat. It's almost dinner time."

The other, Kwan, didn't argue, looking rather happy to be relieved from her position. She grabbed a couple of bills and hopped down her stool, skipping to the door.