"We're not in a rush for part-timers right now. Sorry about that."

"Ah... I see. Please contact me if you ever need a part-timer, even for a short term."

Yeonwoo gripped the bag over his knees tightly with his red, chapped hands. He then gave a bright smile and bowed his head politely.

The owner glanced at Yeonwoo and returned the resume with his contact information. Yeonwoo took the thin sheet of paper and turned away without saying much else.

"Tsk."

As Yeonwoo left the shop, the whispering voices of the owner and an employee reached him clearly.

"Why is a beastman trying to work at a gamjatang place?"

"This is my first time seeing a beastman up close. Is it because he's a fox beastman? His face is certainly quite handsome."

"Did we just get charmed? Someone pinch me."

Though he heard the words filled with curiosity and wariness, Yeonwoo steadily pushed open the glass door.

The sign stuck to the door in large letters, 'Night Shift Part-timer Urgently Needed!', was reflected in Yeonwoo's eyes.

When he first saw the sign and went in to inquire, the owner seemed quite welcoming. However, as soon as he scanned the single phrase written at the top of the resume Yeonwoo handed over, the atmosphere turned cold in an instant.

Classification:

Beastman

Species:

Genus Vulpes, Red Fox

It had been nearly ten years since the Anti-Beastman Discrimination Act was established, but prejudice and discrimination against the tiny minority of beastmen were still rampant.

Regardless of age, many still called beastmen monsters or animals.

It was understandable, as beastmen possessed superior physical abilities compared to humans and sometimes even had minor special abilities. Furthermore, though very rare, accidents occurred when they failed to control their pheromones or instincts, so it was not unreasonable for ordinary people to keep their distance and avoid them.

In the first place, no matter how superior their physical abilities were, they were merely a small minority group. Moreover, even among beastmen, those of natural predator-prey species were instinctively wary of one another, making it difficult for them to raise their voices together.

Because of this, beastmen had historically been used as slaves or as spectacles for the nobility, and were even hunted as monsters, so they held no good feelings toward human society.

It was also a well-known fact that the Anti-Beastman Discrimination Act was merely a means for the state to systematically control and manage beastmen.

While social perception hadn't changed, the fact that one was a beastman was now documented, making it easy to discover their identity through an ID card alone.

In a society where no visible changes to speak of had occurred, and only facts that could be used as vulnerabilities were exposed, life was not easy for a beastman.

And that was the reason Yeonwoo was currently putting in the legwork only to be met with cold water.

It was difficult to find a decent full-time job because he was a beastman, and even part-time jobs were often cut short, so Yeonwoo was always living the life of a multi-jobber.

Though he worked steadily at a taxi driver diner, he had recently been fired from another night shift job, so he had to find a new one as soon as possible.

"Let's look around a few more places."

After putting his resume away as he always did, Yeonwoo straightened his shoulders, which had slumped slightly without him realizing.

'It's not like this is the first or second time. There's no need to be discouraged.'

People couldn't tell he was a beastman unless they saw his resume or ID anyway. He always had to be careful not to let his ears and tail shift, but that was something as familiar to Yeonwoo as breathing.

'Besides, the people who discriminate are the problem. It's not a crime to be born a beastman.'

He repeated this to himself.

Gaining strength, Yeonwoo clenched his fists and walked forward briskly. However, as soon as he passed an alley and stepped out onto the main road, a car sped past him at a high speed. In the process, the water pooled at the edge of the road splashed all over Yeonwoo.

"Ugh."

The snow from a few days ago had melted and seemingly gathered every bit of dust on the road; the water couldn't have been filthier.

Yeonwoo froze for a moment, then sighed softly and roughly brushed off the dirty water from his body.

While everyone was glancing at him and murmuring, a middle-aged woman approached and showed concern for him.

"Are you okay? Oh my, you're soaked! Can't you report that? That driver needs to slip on an icy road once to come to their senses!"

"I'm fine. Thank you. Please be careful, or you might get some dirty water on you too."

Yeonwoo smiled and took a step back, worried he might get her dirty.

"Oh! Watch out behind you!"

The woman checking on Yeonwoo shouted. A motorcycle crossing the sidewalk to get to the other side of the road was charging straight toward him.

Fortunately, thanks to the woman's warning, Yeonwoo quickly turned his body and avoided the motorcycle. Instead, he slipped on the icy patch and rolled on the ground, but it was better than being hit by a motorcycle.

"That, that crazy person! Driving a motorcycle on the sidewalk like a lunatic!"

While Yeonwoo calmed his racing heart, the woman pointed her finger at the escaping motorcycle. As the commotion grew, more people stopped walking and looked at him with concern.

"I'm okay."

The faces of the people looking at the poor young man who was covered in dirty water, nearly got into a motorcycle accident, and fell on his buttocks were filled with pity.

Even in his shock, Yeonwoo hurriedly pretended to brush himself off while checking his ears and tail.

'Nothing came out, right?'

He instinctively felt relieved that his tail and ears hadn't been revealed.

It was lucky that Yeonwoo was a half-beastman who couldn't fully shift into the form of a fox; otherwise, he might have put on a transformation magic show on the main road in broad daylight.

"This belongs to you, right, young man? Oh dear, it's all wet."

His bag must have been slightly open, as a few candies and Yeonwoo's resume had fallen onto the ground. As the woman picked up the water-soaked paper and handed it to him, her gaze naturally drifted toward the resume.

"Ah, thank you."

Had she seen the part saying he was a beastman? The letters were small, so perhaps she hadn't. Yeonwoo took the resume, pretending as if nothing was wrong.

However, the woman who had been nothing but worried just a moment ago now looked Yeonwoo up and down. She didn't say anything, but it wasn't hard to understand what that gaze meant.

Avoiding the woman's eyes, Yeonwoo bowed his head politely to express his thanks.

"Thank you for your help. Happy New Year."

Though her final expression seemed somewhat uncomfortable, the woman didn't say anything further to Yeonwoo. Having wished her the luck he didn't even have himself, Yeonwoo headed home.

It was a shame the resume was all soaked, but he was lucky his ears hadn't shown and that he had avoided the accident.

The wind brushing against his wet clothes was biting.

"It's so cold."

Facing the wind in the dead of winter looking like a drowned rat made his body tremble uncontrollably. He didn't want to bother others by taking the bus or subway, so Yeonwoo walked and walked for over an hour.

"Maybe I'm colder because I'm hungry."

Recently, to make up for his lack of living expenses, he had drastically cut down on food costs, his largest expense, and his stomach growled continuously as he walked.

When he finally reached the stairs of his rooftop room, he almost sprained his ankle because he stepped on the hem of his half-frozen pants. But since he didn't roll down the stairs thanks to quickly grabbing the handrail, it seemed today's luck wasn't the absolute worst.

"Sigh... The sun is already down."

He had gone out to hand out resumes since the weather, which had been cloudy all day, had cleared up and he wanted to get some sunlight. But instead of getting much sun, he ended up getting soaked.

As soon as he returned home, Yeonwoo headed to the bathroom and scrubbed off the dirty water remaining on his body. Feeling uneasy for some reason, he shifted his tail, which he didn't even reveal often at home, and washed it with warm water.

His buttocks throbbed because he had fallen hard, but he tried to think positively and forget the pain, thinking it was a relief no bones were broken.

"Maybe it's because I haven't been eating well lately. My tail fur seems a bit dull."

Yeonwoo, who dried his tail first as soon as he came out of the bathroom, began brushing it diligently with a serious face.

He quite liked the high-quality dog brush he had recently received as a gift from his only friend, Hyunmin, who knew he was a fox beastman.

Last time, he had bought a cat brush on sale at the supermarket, but the dense pins had pulled out a lot of his already sparse tail fur. For Yeonwoo, to whom every single strand of hair was precious due to scarring tail alopecia, it was a memory he didn't want to recall.

He felt like he could make money just by collecting and selling tail fur, but having been born in an illegal breeding farm, Yeonwoo didn't even want to think about that.

After checking his fluffy tail by wagging it, Yeonwoo hesitated for a moment before putting his outdoor clothes back on. He chose the cleanest and neatest shirt among his few clothes and grabbed a few extra resumes he had left at home.

"It's a bit late, so I should try looking around bars and meat restaurants this time."

A normal person would have called it a day and rested at home after experiencing such a series of misfortunes. But for Yeonwoo, this level of bad luck was a familiar daily occurrence that happened every few days.

No, today was actually a decent level of bad luck. Even though he had been covered in dirty water, he hadn't shown his ears or tail in front of people, and even though he had fallen spectacularly on the ice, he hadn't been hit by a motorcycle.

The life of a lone fox beastman with no pack was bound to be difficult. On top of that, fox beastmen had a bad image because society had framed them negatively, calling them vixens, bewitching creatures, or gumiho.

In fact, unlike other species, fox beastmen uniquely possessed a fox bead; this seemed to have been distorted into malicious rumors that foxes absorbed people's essence.

However, strictly speaking, while the fox bead was a means to maintain a pack safely, for Yeonwoo, who had lost his pack and his fox bead, it was no different from a curse.

The fox bead was a symbol of absolute trust that a fox beastman could give to their partner, and a fox beastman could not be separated from the partner who held their bead.

If they didn't take care of their mate or betrayed them, misfortunes would pile up like mountains for the fox beastman without a bead.

Because of this, fox beastmen often lived in small packs as family units with their own kind, with whom they could share beads, and were closed off from interaction with other species.

Just as Yeonwoo was about to pack his things and head out, he discovered a missed call notification on his phone.

"Why would he call at this hour?"

Missed Call (2)

Choi Hyunmin

And following that, a series of messages full of typos arrived.