A leap year to find love

°°°Kang Min Soo Pov Perfection. That was what I aimed to achieve whenever I wanted something. This was not perfection. I barely even listened. "And what do you call this miserly presentation?" I said in a voice that gave away the fact that I was simmering like water in a kettle beneath my skin. The entire conference room fell silent as my eyes scanned the pathetic lot sitting and standing before me. This was the reason I insisted on perfection. It was something that humans was not and it pissed me to the core of my being. "Sir I-" The lady who was standing afore me tried to explain herself just before I interrupted her. She had kept on stumbling over her words and making stupid little mistakes. I had let her trip up with the hope that she would pull herself together during the rest of her presentation. I was wrong. I was always wrong about humans. “Enough!” I snapped as my voice cut through the conference room like a blade. “You have wasted enough of my time already.” Her fingers shook as she opened her mouth, likely to offer an apology that I had no interest in hearing. The board members shifted in their seats as they flipped through notes that they already knew were insufficient. “Are you all so pathetic?! Must you all prove to me at every meeting that you all are f*****g losers!” I bellowed. "No reply? Well get out of my conference room then! And take your incompetence with you!" I snapped at her. "You are fired!" "No sir I-" she managed to say before she burst into tears. "Please sir! Please I am sorry sir! I'll change I promise, I will please!" Her desperate pleas fell on deaf ears. "Shall I have to tell you to get her out of this place?" I said as I turned to the security personnel in the corner. He hurried to her after mounting an apology. I did not even bother to look at her as she backed out of the room shaking as tears slipped down her cheeks, escorted by the security. I dismissed that sudden twinge of sympathy that rose in me. Those silly emotions were distractions that I had learnt to ignore in my entire centuries of living. “Reschedule this meeting when you all have something tangible to show to me,” I said, letting the words fall flat as I scanned the rest of the people in the conference room. I rose to my feet and stormed away. I sank into my chair the moment I got into my office, loosening my tie. I sighed as I closed my eyes. But just then, a rather strange but familiar feeling crept upon me. I knew that feeling, it was the indication of a supernatural presence that cold sensation that was prickling the edges of my mind, growing stronger by the second. It was as if the air in the room had shifted, humming with a low vibration that only I could sense. My focus was instantly on the shadows collecting in the far corner as a chill crept down my spine. I stood with supernatural speed, morphing into my real form. My body filled with that familiar rage as I transformed, my nine tails emerging behind me. My eyes burned with that hazy red gaze and a shimmering overlay and I smirked at that presence with patience. A swirl of thick gray smoke rose in the air as time seemed to stop. Everything whirled around me as she rose from the gray clouds that had formed, her robes billowing in an unseen breeze while her gaze did not waver as it met with mine. I knew who it was. It was the Shaman of Heaven. “Kang Min Soo,” she said to me as she balanced against her silver staff. I smirked, letting my guard down. "You have lived for ten centuries and you have learned nothing." Her voice was a cold echo that reverberated through out the office. “You are not to lecture me are you dear shaman?” I asked her. She chuckled at my question. “Why do you think I am here?” she asked me with nonchalance. I shrugged a reply. “You have learnt nothing here Kang Min So, hiding yourself among the humans and living among them like a king, exerting dominance. This is not the reason why you were banished to the human realm Nine tailed fox.” “You asked me to come here and mingle with these low lives,” I said to her, “And that is what I am doing with these deceitful beings. I have been with them for centuries.” "You, Kang Min Soo, are a cold hearted bastard who have learnt nothing from being in the midst of humans. You have not removed the hate buried deep in your heart." "I haven't killed a human since you sent me here," I defended myself. Her eyes narrowed in anger. "But you treat them no worse than garbage!" She snapped. "You were sent to the human realm to find the beauty of humans, and is definitely not what you are doing." "I have no ill intentions towards those lowlifes." Her face twisted in disappointment. "And here you are content with pretending to be one of them?" I said nothing to her, quite unwilling to answer. That question did not deserve an answer, at least not from me. I was not obligated in any way to justify myself to her or to anyone. "You were once a human too Kang Min Soo! Why do you keep despising the people?!" "Because they have no good on them I think?" I said as I leaned against my office desk, unbothered. “You certainly think that you are untouchable,” she said to me with a sigh. “You have kept your human side at such a distance that you have forgotten what it means to feel.” "That's how I want it thank you." "Well, that is not how I want it!" She snapped as she pointed her staff at me. A faint silver light began to firm around the top, its glow growing brighter by the second. “What are you doing?” I demanded as she directed the staff at me. Tension rippled through me as the light coalesced into a searing pulse, intensifying till it blazed. “I curse you Kang Min Soo!” "What?" I said with narrowed eyes as the light seared into my chest. It was so hot that it burned straight down to my core. I clenched my teeth hard as I swallowed the urge to flinch while the light sank into my skin and coiled around my left wrist, branding my skin with a faint yet glowing mark. “You have a leap year to find true love with a human, one that would accept you for who you are. And if you fail," she continued, her words ringing with finality, “you will return to your primordial spirit, your true form and your physical body shall cease to exist. This shall happen if you do not find a woman who will truly love you for who you are, a gumiho, after one leap year."