Chapter 177

└ yes...

[Title: Park Yeonwoo at a m**d café, is it real?]

If you only go by how they talk, they’re totally a brusque Gyeongsang dude, so I never imagined this kind of taste, haha.

└ Huh? Search Park Yeonwoo on the bird app right now, Hongdae sightings are pouring in.

└ +1 There’s a post that some maniac was screaming while sprinting, and when they looked it was Park Yeonwoo coming out of a maid café building — I am dying [laughs]

└ Up to that point the leading theory was they went into the wrong café by mistake and bolted when they realized, [laughs/crying]

└ Turns out it wasn’t a mistake — they went there on purpose, lol

[Title: Has Park Yeonwoo lost it...]

If they smear mud on Roy’s face, I will not let it slide. As Shooting Star, please keep some dignity.

└ Is this Park Yeonwoo?

└ Yeonbal, Siu hyung!! Read the room!

└ It’s soft, it’s cold, hey you

Meanwhile, while Yeonwoo sightings were heating up SNS, Han Gyeol and Taeeon were also visiting a butler café.

The difference from the place Roy and Hojin went to was that this venue served only adult customers.

It was a “café” in name only; in reality it wasn’t any different from a normal bar. The service level was correspondingly higher, too.

Of course, this was not information Han Gyeol and Taeeon particularly wanted to learn.

“Um... Mr. Taeeon, my stomach’s churning. I can’t stay any longer.”

“Me too... Shall we head out?”

Their upset stomachs weren’t from alcohol.

It was because of the “special menu” ordered at the next table a moment ago.

✧

A little earlier.

Taeeon and Han Gyeol stepped into the café.

They had just moved to their assigned seats and were ordering drinks when a bell rang at the next table.

“Did you call, my lady?”

A butler with something like a towel or blanket draped over his arm approached and answered politely. Then came a word that made them doubt their ears.

“We’ll have the all-together dance.”

All-together... dance?

Up to that point, the two had no idea what the phrase meant.

The team leader had told them to check carefully for anything suspicious, so they were busy scanning the place with wary eyes.

Then the background music in the shop suddenly cut out, and a completely different rhythm began to play.

“......?”

“Huh? This song?”

Unlike Taeeon, who couldn’t place it, Han Gyeol caught on at once.

To be exact, halfway.

“Isn’t this some challenge music?”

As an actor, he wasn’t as up on trends as idols.

Same for Han Gyeol — he only knew it was challenge music, not which challenge.

Thrown by the abrupt vibe shift, the two young masters just rolled their eyes around.

They were taking in the situation for a moment when their ordered drinks were set on the table.

At the same time, the butlers started gathering one by one around the table next to them...

“......?”

Trying to stay nonchalant despite the bewilderment, they sipped their drinks and snuck a glance at the next table —

“?!”

The butlers ringed around the table suddenly put both hands behind their heads and started shaking their hips left and right!

“Pffft!”

“Kh-k, kuh!”

Both of them, with drinks still in their mouths, sprayed each other right in the face.

“Young masters, are you all right?”

The butler assigned to their table hurried over with tissues.

His pitying gaze seemed to say, Why would two men come to a butler café only to subject themselves to this sight...

“Th-thank you.”

“Kh-k, kek, cough cough!”

Taeeon stammered as he accepted the tissues, while Han Gyeol, more shocked, couldn’t stop coughing for a while.

He’d really swallowed wrong.

Taking a proper psychic hit, the two couldn’t last long and had to get up and leave quickly.

If they stayed even a little longer, they felt like they’d lose their minds.

But their ordeal did not end there.

“Mr. Taeeon, I think I’m losing it.”

“Sorry? ...What do you mean?”

Taeeon was just starting to edge away from Han Gyeol warily when Han Gyeol continued.

“Even when I close my eyes, that... that indecent body-work keeps flickering in front of me— ack!”

Clutching his head, Han Gyeol said he wanted to pluck out his eyeballs.

He’d been sure he’d seen it all in show business, but apparently there were still horrors he had yet to witness!

“Are you oka— mmph.”

Taeeon wasn’t in great shape either.

The mishap from a moment ago flashed through his head and a dry heave surged up.

As the two men leaned against a wall side-by-side, suffering—

“Excuse me.”

A woman in half-rim glasses approached and spoke to them.

“Hello. I just saw you coming out of the butler café. By any chance, are you looking for a job?”

“......Pardon?”

Taeeon and Han Gyeol exchanged a look at the same time.

Just then Roy’s reminder surfaced in their minds: if a suspicious person approaches, be unconditionally polite.

They held their tongues and followed the woman’s gaze with a turn of the head. Next to the stairs down to the basement café, there was a poster.

[Butler Café is recruiting butlers.

In that instant, the two realized the woman had mistaken them for applicants for a butler café part-time job.

“Ah, well...”

“Sure, something like that.”

While Taeeon froze and fumbled, Han Gyeol quickly changed his expression and answered smoothly.

“I knew it. You stood out even from a distance. Have you already decided where you’ll work? If not—”

Before she finished, the woman handed each of them a business card.

[★Mass Recruitment — Eclipse Manor Butlers★

Work happily inside a fantasy-concept world!

We’re looking for butlers to create delightful time with our Master♡]

“Actually I run a butler café called Kasumi Manor — you’ve probably heard of it.”

Wasn’t Kasumi Manor the place Roy and Hojin headed to?

The two caught on fast and nodded.

“We’re preparing an adults-only second location, but we still haven’t found staff who can pull off the vampire and werewolf concepts. And then the two of you show up right in front of me!”

“Vampire...”

“Werewolf...?”

“Yes! You two—”

With a flushed face, the woman grabbed their hands and pleaded earnestly.

“If you haven’t signed anything yet, how about working at our café? I’ll pay double the hourly rate!”

✧

Five hours later.

Shooting Star regrouped at Hongdae-ipgu Station Exit 6 and piled into a black van.

The weather was nice, but it was a weekend afternoon; the crowds made it impossible to keep talking outside.

“Okay, let’s start by sharing what each of us found.”

Roy, in the passenger seat, opened first. Yeonwoo, who had been waiting for this moment, shot up a hand.

“Me! I’ll go first!”

In truth, Yeonwoo didn’t have anything worth a proper report. They’d fled the maid café halfway through, unable to endure the shame.

Even so, there was a reason they were this eager...

“I really messed up. Okay? I’ll bow till my forehead hits the floor.”

Hands pressed together and rubbing, Yeonwoo pleaded with a tearful face.

“Right now ‘Park Yeonwoo maid’ is trending number one. Does that make any sense, huh?”

To hit that notoriously hard number one just by showing up in Hongdae — truly Park Yeonwoo.

As if on cue, the team all clapped at once.

“This is not something to celebrate!”

But Yeonwoo was not happy at all.

They screeched at the team, then poured out the slights and injustices of the day.

“I’m telling you, people only looked at me! Every single thing I did is on SNS...! I didn’t know being an Awakener was this much of an extreme job.”

They griped that this was tougher than national team training, and only then did Roy confer a badge.

“Remember, there will always be many eyes watching you. Do not act out just because you have that badge.”

“Of course! I’ll never act out again!”

“Especially you — your dialect makes you easier to identify.”

“Got it. I’ll really be careful.”

Yeonwoo had gotten some odd misunderstandings today, but once the issue they were investigating broke the surface, a fuss of this level would naturally resolve.

Roy turned his gaze to Taeeon and Han Gyeol.

They looked every bit as worn out as Yeonwoo. When their eyes met, Taeeon spoke first.

“We...”

After exchanging a glance with Han Gyeol, Taeeon pulled a business card from his pocket and held it out.

“Eclipse Manor — Butler Recruitment?”

A business card, when he’d asked for a report?

Roy tilted his head. Taeeon added,

“We happened to meet the owner of Kasumi Manor. She said she’s about to open a second location and asked if we’d like to work there.”

They remembered the instruction to answer politely if a suspicious person approached, so they hadn’t refused and just accepted the card.

Roy’s eyes went wide.

“Hold on. Kasumi Manor?”

He’d already been thinking the second floor of Kasumi Manor was suspicious.

Feeling like he’d struck gold, Roy clapped once and answered brightly.

“Perfect! Call her right now and say you’re absolutely in!”

“...Huh?”

“What?”

They had brought the card expecting Roy to treat it like trash.

But when things took a different turn than expected, a flustered Han Gyeol hurriedly cut in.

“No, but that place is kind of weird—”

“Enough. Make it happen!”

And that is how the two of them became a vampire and a werewolf.