HOMA18CL 01
Episode 1: Is This 18th Century England?
Taewon Marriage Information Company
Hyun Tae-oh’s steps, which were headed toward the restroom, paused.
His name was being mentioned in the conversation of employees that drifted over the corner of the hallway.
“Did you hear the news? That the second daughter of Geosan Group and the eldest son of Hwaryong Group—who Executive Director Hyun Tae-oh personally matched—are getting married soon?”
“Really? They’re actually getting married? I heard the relationship between the two families was so bad that it’d never happen, so what changed?”
“Ultimately, Executive Director Hyun Tae-oh pulled off another big win, didn’t he?”
“Wow—Executive Director, your ability is truly incredible! Just where is your limit?”
“Do you think the Executive Director might have been something like the greatest diplomat in a past life? A person with the skill to stop wars with his excellent rhetoric.”
“No way. At this point, he must have saved the country a few times in a past life. Does this kind of performance even make sense realistically? Our company became the No. 1 in this field less than 10 years after founding, all thanks to the Executive Director.”
“But according to the rumors, they say the Executive Director has a Ph.D. in Psychology? Is that true? I heard our president scouted him because of that.”
“Come on—why would a Ph.D. in Psychology work as a matching manager? And does having a Ph.D. in Psychology mean you’ll be good at matching? That’s ridiculous. That’s all just baseless rumors.”
The murmuring of the employees flowed clearly into Tae-oh’s ears.
‘…Why are they being so embarrassing? I can’t even go to the restroom.‘
Hyun Tae-oh was called a living legend in the marriage information industry and was the man who made Taewon Marriage Information Company the unrivaled No. 1 marriage information agency in South Korea, only eight years after its establishment.
The success rate for members he ultimately matched after intense analysis was 98.3%, regardless of whether they were general or noble members.
It was an unbelievable figure that went beyond surprising.
The missing 1.7% was the result of a sudden accident involving a member. Essentially, all couples he took on for matching ended in marriage.
But the merely phenomenal success rate wasn’t the whole story.
Even more astonishing was the fact that not a single couple he connected had ever divorced.
As this fact spread by word of mouth, Hyun Tae-oh’s popularity in the marriage brokerage market soared endlessly.
However, Hyun Tae-oh’s incredible track record was not a result of mere coincidence.
It was the result of a delicate combination of his innate talent and his hidden background.
From a young age, Tae-oh had an unusual fondness for observing people’s behavior and grasping their psychology. Around the time he entered middle school, he surprised those around him by easily discerning a lie just from changes in a person’s eyes.
In high school, he received a commendation from the Chief of Police for preemptively discovering the suspicious behavior of an apartment security guard who was planning to kidnap a kindergartner.
When he became a college applicant, Tae-oh realized that his special intuition was not just a mere sense but a type of psychological science. He immediately decided on a major in psychology.
Tae-oh, who majored in psychology in college, traveled to the United States to earn his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), after which he worked at a university hospital as a Clinical Psychologist.
Clinical Psychologist
The nature of a Clinical Psychologist is very different from that of a Counselor, such as a mental health counselor we commonly know. Clinical psychologists in the US aim to ‘treat’ patients with mental disorders, like a medical doctor, rather than just ‘counsel’ them.
While general psychiatrists primarily treat mental disorder patients through medication prescription, clinical psychologists treat them through psychotherapy, not drugs. They typically examine and treat patients in collaboration with psychiatrists at US university hospitals.
This is a high-income profession with very strict requirements for acquiring a Ph.D. and a license recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Tae-oh fully utilized his innate sensitivity, applying effective psychological treatments to his patients. Word quickly spread, and he became so famous that it was difficult to book a consultation.
Hyun Tae-oh’s ability to feel and read people’s emotions better than anyone allowed him to empathize with the wounded hearts of lonely, suffering patients, sharing their sorrow and comforting them, thereby healing many patients without medication.
However, exceptional abilities that others lack are not always met with just praise. Envy and jealousy are inevitably bound to follow.
Doctors and clinical psychologists who witnessed his abilities began to disparage and conspire against him, treating him like a fraud or a sorcerer.
Although he found fulfillment in seeing his patients heal, the excessive malicious talk and jealousy gradually wore Hyun Tae-oh down.
Then one day, while treating a patient who was suffering from emotional distress over a relationship, he realized that a certain type and fixed pattern exist in human love. He discovered that if he intuitively found these patterns and connected people with compatible tendencies, they could maintain a highly satisfactory relationship for a long time.
Tae-oh immediately shifted his focus, voluntarily analyzing friends who hadn’t found a match and connecting them.
As he watched their happy dating and married lives, he tasted a very special sense of accomplishment he had never felt in the hospital.
Subsequently, Tae-oh abruptly quit his hospital life in the US and returned to Korea to join the marriage information company his uncle had just established.
By actively utilizing the method he discovered, he was able to achieve the miraculous results he had now.
.
A hotel ballroom in Seoul.
The wedding of the daughter of the Daegwang Medical Center Director and the second son of the Myungseong University President had just finished, and the reception was in full swing.
However, in a corner of the bustling ballroom, one man was struggling, surrounded by middle-aged women.
It was Hyun Tae-oh.
“Executive Director Hyun? When are you going to match my eldest daughter? Huh?”
“Madam Kim, what are you talking about? There’s a proper order for things. My son is in a hurry right now! He’ll be in his mid-30s the day after tomorrow. Executive Director? You should do my son first, shouldn’t you?”
“Oh my—my daughter is returning home after finishing her studies abroad. Don’t just say you’ll take care of her; please make some time.”
Tae-oh was sweating, bowing repeatedly.
“I apologize, I apologize. But please don’t do this here; if you come to the office later…”
“Oh, but we can’t even meet you when we go! They always say you’re not there.”
“Exactly! The most difficult person to meet in South Korea, even more than the President, is you, Executive Director!”
“Set a schedule for me right now! Otherwise, I’m absolutely not letting you go.”
“Me too! Me too!”
These were all wives of prominent families. To continue working in this industry, he couldn’t just ignore them and run away.
Tae-oh was finally released only after promising multiple times that he would definitely make time.
Thud.
“Phew—”
Tae-oh, who had hurriedly retreated to the balcony, sank onto a folding chair and let out a long sigh.
It wasn’t something he experienced only occasionally, but today felt particularly exhausting.
‘I’m so… tired.’
Tae-oh gulped down the remaining wine in his glass and stared blankly at the night view spread before him.
And at that moment,
“Ugh!”
A terrifying pain, as if his heart was about to tear, shot up through his chest.
And then…
“Gasp!”
The chest pain seemed to move upwards, and soon an intense headache enveloped his head.
“Aargh!”
Tae-oh collapsed sideways, clutching his bursting head.
Crash—
How long had he been unconscious?
Smack!
With a sharp shock to the back of his head, Tae-oh jerked his head up.
But…
‘?’
He looked around with a bewildered expression.
The balcony with the dazzling city night view was nowhere to be found. He was sitting in an empty, storage-like room with a narrow, crude wooden table and a few odd-looking household items.
‘What is this? Where am I?’
After the chest pain, he felt an enormous headache, collapsed, and woke up here.
Just then, a foreign old woman with two missing front teeth glared and screamed at Tae-oh.
“Theo! What are you doing sleeping slumped over the table? If you’ve finished eating, why don’t you get out and look for work?”
She was a wrinkled, very unpleasant-looking white old woman.
‘Am I not fully awake yet? How does that foreign grandma, who looks like a wicked witch, know my name and call me…?’
It was that moment.
Buzz—
After a brief moment of staggering with intense dizziness,
An unbelievable thing happened.
The surroundings, which had felt completely unfamiliar, suddenly began to feel familiar.
Not only that, but memories of this dilapidated, crumbling house burst forth all at once, like a floodgate opening.
“Huh? Wait a minute… This is where I was born… and grew up?”
“What is that idiot mumbling? Did you have some kind of a dream in the meantime?”
Tae-oh immediately realized that he had entered the body of a mid-20s English lower-class young man named ‘Theo Sanderson’. And hundreds of years in the past, at that.
And he quickly recognized that Theo Sanderson’s life was Hyun Tae-oh’s previous life.
‘I… I came into my past life’s body? And with a similar name, Theo? This is ridiculous… this must be a dream, right?’
The old woman, who had been glaring fiercely at Tae-oh, couldn’t take it anymore and yelled.
“How long are you going to sit there with that vacant look? You should get out and look for work, shouldn’t you?”
The person screaming, brandishing a worn-out wooden ladle, was Theo Sanderson’s mother. More precisely, Hyun Tae-oh’s past life’s stepmother.
“Don’t even think about coming home if you don’t get paid today! Understand?”
Tae-oh was rushed out of the house, practically chased away.
Clank—
As soon as he opened the door, the alleyway of a slum in Bristol, England, in the 18th century, spread before his eyes.
(The accurate name for ‘England’ at the time was the ‘Kingdom of Great Britain’. However, for the sake of easy understanding in this novel, the commonly known name ‘England’ will be used.)
‘Ugh—What is this…’
Everything was foreign, but at the same time, a strange phenomenon continued where everything felt familiar.
Tae-oh, lost in thought, began to walk aimlessly wherever his feet took him.
He knew every corner of the alleyways. There were quite a few people he knew, too.
In the midst of extreme confusion, he could only let out a hollow laugh at his own image, exchanging greetings with acquaintances.
‘Seriously. Is this a dream or reality? Am I dreaming that I’ve entered my past life? But it feels far too vivid for a dream?’
The old neighborhood was dirty and dilapidated.
The unpaved paths were muddy, and trash and filth overflowed everywhere, emitting a foul odor. Between them, rats the size of forearms scurried around as if they owned the place.
The residents’ appearances were as shabby and bleak as the neighborhood. Worry about the next meal was clearly visible on all of them.
‘Could it be that I… developed Alice Syndrome after the extreme headache?’
In the field of psychology, people who struggle to distinguish between reality and fantasy, much like Alice in Wonderland, are considered to suffer from Alice Syndrome.
However, Alice Syndrome often involves distortion, where parts of the body or other objects appear much larger or too small than their actual size.
If everything was appearing in a realistic size and felt this vivid, it was difficult to consider it Alice Syndrome.
‘No… Then what on earth is this absurd situation?’
Tae-oh’s mind, where his past and present lives were mixed and coexisting, was utterly confused.
While agonizing and walking absentmindedly, he arrived in front of a large warehouse near the Bristol harbor.
Upon closer inspection, this was also Theo Sanderson’s workplace.
“Hey—Theo, you’re here?”
In front of the warehouse, groups of porters were gathered, discussing things with worried expressions. All of them were familiar faces.
Tae-oh subtly slipped into their conversation.
A balding man continued grumbling.
“When is this damned scurvy going to end? Because of that awful disease, the ships can’t sail, so there’s no cargo to load or unload… We’re all going to starve to death at this rate!”
“Who knows when that terrifying disease will end? When scurvy is prevalent, you just have to endure it. If you foolishly board a ship, you’ll die horribly, bleeding from all over your body. It could even spread to us who move the cargo.”
“We’ll starve to death before scurvy gets us!”
Suddenly, an incident from his past life around this time came clearly back to Tae-oh.
‘That’s right, I remember. Scurvy was so severe then that ships couldn’t sail for nearly half a year—an unprecedented situation. I suffered greatly because there was no work. Does that mean I’ve come back to that exact period? This really doesn’t seem like a dream, does it?’
Scurvy was a disease where people suffered from bleeding gums, bloody urine, bloody stool, and other hemorrhagic symptoms throughout the body before dying. It was the disease sailors feared the most.
Out of the 1,854 people belonging to the British fleet that set off for a circumnavigation of the world, about 1,400 died of scurvy, and only about 400 returned alive, making scurvy an absolute terror to sailors.
Since it rarely occurred on land and mainly affected those on long voyages, many at the time believed it was caused by a curse of the sea.
‘They treated a disease that can be easily cured by simply consuming vitamin C, like fruits and vegetables, as some kind of great epidemic back then.’
Just then, a piece of paper was stepped on by Tae-oh’s foot.
‘Huh? An Almanac?’
The word Almanac was printed largely on the paper.
*Almanac: A printed title of a book or publication that provides dates, months, movements of the sun and moon, astronomical phenomena, milestones, and other technical information.
And below that word, the current year was printed.
‘1774? Then I’ve gone back 250 years to England?’
In his past life as a porter, he had never considered what year it was.
His was a humble life, only concerned with earning enough to survive day by day.
But the situation was different now.
Tae-oh possessed the expertise and rich clinical experience of a Ph.D. in Psychology, as well as a vast knowledge base accumulated through continuous reading.
In particular, he loved history, so his knowledge of world history was considerable.
To him, 1774 was not an ordinary year.
‘1774, huh—The American Revolutionary War is about to break out soon, isn’t it?’
.
A week passed in this manner.
Tae-oh, who still couldn’t find work, was lying blankly on the shabby bed, clutching his empty stomach.
‘I worked as a porter my entire life, couldn’t get married, and was hit by a carriage in my early 40s, suffering for a few days. And I don’t remember anything after that.’
He likely passed away from that accident.
‘Died after being hit by a carriage while living as a porter? Was my past life just that kind of existence?’
He didn’t believe that a past life was real, but he had harbored a vague hope that if it were, he would have been something special.
He had even imagined that his abilities as a Clinical Psychologist or his phenomenal results as a matching manager might have been the manifestation of some ability from a past life.
But what the hell, there was nothing.
He was merely a humble porter who wandered through the slums, living hand-to-mouth.
‘Did I die from overwork at the wedding reception then? Is that why I’ve come back to my past life? No, there’s no reason to return to a past life just because I died, is there?’
He asked himself thousands of times how he had returned to his past life, but there was no way to find an answer. Asking further just felt meaningless.
‘In the meantime, do I have to continue living in this cesspool? Leaving behind my supercar and my cool house? How on earth can I go back to the present day? This is truly driving me crazy.’
At this point, his past life here felt like reality, and his life in South Korea felt like a dream.
.
More time passed like that.
His resolve to find a way back gradually weakened as time went on.
He simply couldn’t find a way to return.
Instead, other thoughts began to take hold.
‘Ultimately, I know the future of my past life, don’t I? If that’s the case, couldn’t I change the future of my past life with my own power?’
Upon reflection, this was also a pointless question.
If he couldn’t return to his original time and had to live here as is, there was no choice.
If he spent his time vaguely only contemplating how to return to the future, there was a 100% chance that he would repeat the exact same path of his past life and die miserably.
Grumble—
‘I’m too hungry. All the pain and desires feel so vivid. That means this is definitely not a fantasy or a dream. I don’t know why this bizarre thing happened to me, but it’s certain that it’s getting harder to return to my original time.’
If he had to continue living this bottom-tier life, what could be more unfair?
Tae-oh pushed off the bed and sprang up.
‘Why am I starving like this, so listless? Right! I’m not the ignorant porter Theo from before! I’m educated, and above all, I have knowledge of what’s going to happen, world history knowledge, and the ability to formulate modern business strategies.
Even if I do go back to the present day, shouldn’t I first radically change Theo Sanderson’s pathetic life with Hyun Tae-oh’s abilities?’
.
That same evening, Tae-oh immediately sought out a man named Samuel Scott.
Samuel Scott was a shipowner who operated several small to medium-sized trading vessels and was considered a man of means in the Bristol area.
“Well, isn’t that Theo?”
“Sir. It’s been a while. How have you been?”
“Ah, I’ve been well. But what brings you all the way here?”
Theo Sanderson’s father, who died about ten years ago, and Samuel Scott had sailed together in their younger days.
It was thanks to his kindness that Theo Sanderson was even able to get a job as a porter at the harbor.
“I haven’t been able to find work recently because of the scurvy.”
“Yes. It’s giving me a real headache. I’m also suffering considerable losses.”
“That’s why I’m here to tell you. Sir… You might find it hard to believe, but I know the cure for that scurvy.”
Samuel looked at Tae-oh with wide eyes.
“What nonsense are you suddenly talking about? Numerous doctors have tried, yet they don’t know the cure for that incurable disease. How do you know about it?”
“………”
Post Comment