Until the caretaker came running over in a fluster, the atmosphere was so awkward that I couldn’t say a word. Ms. Jea, too, seemed to be trying to understand that my expressions were different because I came from another world, but the problem was that the meaning behind the gesture had put us in a difficult situation.
“Um. Did I come too late?”
The caretaker, flustered by the stiff atmosphere, actually ended up easing the tension. Ms. Jea quickly accepted the file and began filling out this and that.
Then, after marking something like a signature, Ms. Jea handed the documents to me.
“P-please sign. Here.”
“Huh? Huh? Ah! Yes!”
I hastily took the documents, saw Ms. Jea’s signature written in hanja, quickly wrote my own signature beside it, and handed it to the caretaker. The caretaker took out a terminal with a scanner function.
So I was about to take out my phone, but Ms. Jea stopped me and said,
“This manor is a gift from me.”
Then Ms. Jea took out her phone and paid the price. I didn’t even know how much this manor cost, and it felt wrong to just accept it out of nowhere. So I tried to stop her, but she refused so firmly that I had no choice but to back off, watching her uneasily. Then Park Manuk cautiously said to me,
“From what I’ve heard, it costs roughly twenty thousand won.”
It was an expensive sum. I tried to stop her again, but Park Manuk instead grabbed me and said,
“She has already called it a gift, so refusing would be impolite. That is how it is here.”
I couldn’t help but grimace. Sure, even on Earth, refusing a gift wasn’t polite to the other person. But here, I had the feeling that it was a matter of etiquette with something much deeper behind it, so all I could do was let out heavy sighs.
Meanwhile, only the caretaker’s mouth spread into a broad grin as he hurried off, saying it had been a fine deal.
Yeah, I guess it must feel like he’d made a killing. Twenty thousand won was two hundred million in Earth money. Two hundred million, just like that, huh?
But this huge manor only cost two hundred million? As that thought surged up, I wondered if I should become a land baron. Land speculation?
There I was, indulging in such ridiculous thoughts. I guess I really was Korean to the bone. Ms. Jea approached me, looked around, and said,
“Since it’s old, there are a lot of places that need work... I’ll have to call in contractors and have it repaired.”
“Y-yeah, I suppose so. Anyway, thank you. It ended up being an expensive gift.”
“Compared to what I received, it’s nothing at all.”
Come to think of it, had she said one million one hundred thousand won? Truly, it was a staggering amount that left me with nothing to say. I had wondered when in my life I would ever touch that kind of money, but if I sold just a few treasures inside my Collection properly, I figured that much money would be more than possible.
Regardless, Ms. Jea looked around here and there, her face full of curiosity as if she had bought a newlywed home, which made the earlier situation feel all the more awkward.
But that didn’t last long either. As if her excitement had cooled in no time, Ms. Jea took the lead, saying we should repair the house.
Perhaps because she was royalty, there was certainly no hesitation in her actions or decisions.
We went out into the city and roamed from place to place, hiring workers for furniture, household goods, repairs, and arranging materials. Time flew by in an incredibly hectic blur.
At last, only when evening had nearly come did things barely settle down, but the problem was lodging.
According to Park Manuk, I could rest at the Gate Shelter, but since I had gone to the trouble of acquiring a house, I wanted to leave the shelter.
There were still repairs to be done and many things to bring in, but I had achieved the dream of owning my own home. I didn’t feel like resting anywhere else.
“Ms. Jea, shouldn’t you slowly be heading back? If you spend too long wandering around with an unrelated man, the rumors won’t be good... And...”
“It’s all right. I may be an ongju, but I’m treated like a castoff child at home, so they probably won’t care.”
The fact that a woman like this was treated as a castoff child was a little absurd. But the reason Ms. Jea gave was simple.
They disliked seeing a child of the royal family awaken in such an unladylike manner and wander from gate to gate.
No, she was royalty with ability, trying to make her own way in life. I couldn’t understand why that would displease them, and it was Park Manuk who helped me grasp it.
“Royal princesses and ongju of royal families are often used as political tools between nations.”
Hearing him say that while glancing at Ms. Jea’s reaction made me feel somehow sorry for her. And when I recalled a few things I had learned in history class and realized that being royalty was not all good, I began to see Ms. Jea differently.
That didn’t mean I was thinking of making a move on her. I just felt bad for her.
Noticing my changed gaze, Ms. Jea said to me with a slightly angry look,
“I would rather you not look at me like that.”
At her firm words, I hurriedly apologized and asked,
“Those team members know your identity too, right?”
“Yes, they all know. They were my childhood friends.”
“Childhood?”
“Yes. I awakened when I was around six. Because of that, I often ran out of the royal household and played with the children in the castle.”
I felt like I understood. I also felt like I understood why the royal family treated her as a castoff. She must have behaved like a nuisance without hesitation, and strange rumors about Ms. Jea may have spread.
A princess mingling with commoners—if the lofty imperial family or royalty from other nations heard of it, they would probably be horrified.
So after roughly understanding the circumstances, I said to Ms. Jea,
“That gesture I made earlier—I’m sorry. In my country, it’s used to say someone did well, or to praise something as the best.”
“I see?”
Her expression softened a little, and she looked at me as if she understood.
“It must have been bothering you all along?”
“Well, I happened to learn what it meant here.”
It had been thanks to Park Manuk’s help, but since it was an act that could easily have caused a misunderstanding, I had to clear it up. Ms. Jea seemed to understand that and nodded. She told me not to worry about it and said she would be going now. After seeing her off, I asked Park Manuk,
“Since this is fate too, how about a drink?”
“A drink... you say?”
Park Manuk looked as if his mouth was already watering. So we went straight to a pleasure house, ordered a heap of Five-Fragrance Wine, and the two of us began drinking heavily.
Park Manuk drank with the expression of a man tasting alcohol for the first time in ages, while I gulped it down again and again, thinking it was so delicious I might die. Anyone watching would have thought a ghost who’d died from not getting to drink had possessed us and was making us drink in its stead. We kept the drinking party going until we were on the verge of passing out.
* * *
The next day, after returning home late at night, I had shoved the unconscious Park Manuk into a suitable room and gone to sleep alone in another.
Feeling a little sick to my stomach and thinking it was somewhat noisy outside, I came to my senses and saw Park Manuk looking perfectly lively as he directed workers carrying furniture and laborers repairing the manor.
“...He sobered up faster than me? For real?”
I couldn’t help but be genuinely shocked. I hurriedly straightened my clothes and went outside, and when Park Manuk spotted me, he slowly bowed his head and said,
“Have you awakened, sir?”
“Uh, you really don’t have to be that formal...”
“How could I not? If I am to serve as your steward, I should at least do that much.”
“...I understand. But are you all right?”
At my question, Park Manuk spoke with a bright face.
“The world has changed, so how could my body and mind remain as they were?”
Park Manuk flashed me a smile with one front tooth missing. If there were a dentist, I felt like I would have wanted to get him an implant. For some reason, I turned my gaze away from that smile.
Then I looked around and asked,
“I sure slept well through all this noise.”
“You must have been tired. In any case, they say that if we begin working on the manor today, it should look splendid in about a fortnight.”
“A fortnight...”
It wasn’t a short time. But it wasn’t that long either. So for now, I asked Park Manuk to take charge of the site and went to look for another citizen of the Republic of Korea.
And, just as expected, I was able to see a woman who had been worked so harshly that she was gaunt. There did not seem to be any particular signs of sexual abuse, but the problem was that she had a family.
She had four children, and including her husband, I learned that all six of them were state slaves.
“I don’t have enough money...”
To free them all from the status of state slaves as a group, I needed at least three hundred thousand won. So I considered scraping together what I had, but then changed my mind.
Since they did not seem to be in any immediate, severe danger, I decided that I should first find a way to earn money and then free them from slavery.
Then I went to find another citizen of the Republic of Korea, but instead of the citizen who was supposed to be there, some unrelated state slave greeted me. And what he said made my anger rise: the person had become ill and decrepit, and had been sent long ago to the outskirts of Gyeonggi-do. If I wanted to find him, I would have to go through quite a lot of trouble.
It made me wonder just how cruelly they must have been treated to end up unable to manage them.
Moreover, I had heard he was young. Roughly in his late thirties. And yet the fact that he had become ill and decrepit was simply absurd.
In the end, I had ended up unable to accomplish everything I wanted. That displeased me greatly, and it made me angry.
“This is annoying. I’m pissed.”
I felt like I could only calm my anger if I spoke my honest feelings aloud.
To put it bluntly, I didn’t think there was any human being who deserved to be treated like this. But there were limits to what I could do, and because of those limits, resentment surged up inside me at the fact that there was nothing I could do.
Moreover, since I had no idea just how much power I possessed, I couldn’t act rashly. To put it bluntly, I didn’t think that with only one percent of a demon’s power, I could become someone on top in this world.
A method. If I searched, I felt like I would find one. After thinking and thinking, the conclusion I reached was one thing.
Gate exploration. I began thinking of capturing every creature living there into my Collection. I did not know whether this would truly be the answer, but there was at least one thing I was certain of.
The fact that, however faintly, I could become stronger.
Even within gates of the same grade, the number of monsters that appeared was surely very large. Just recalling what had been reported, there were over hundreds of species. If I accumulated even one percent of each of their powers, I was certain I would grow infinitely stronger.
“Let’s do it.”
Having reached that conclusion, I headed straight to the Gate Yard. There, I began seeking a Gater through the staff. It was absurd how everyone seemed so busy and demanded such high fees, but what the employee said was this:
“Their fees are high enough that even most court ministers would have to take a step back.”
Were they power standing above power? A faint laugh escaped me. After searching for quite a while, I was finally able to find a Gater who had only just shed his beginner’s label. A little after the summons went out, the Gater appeared from somewhere.
He came to me, looked at me intently, and asked,
“You are Isan, correct?”
The Gater looked somewhat clumsy, but he habitually adjusted his glasses and handed me a small chart as he said,
“As you can see on the rate chart, the amount changes according to the gate grade, which follows the Heavenly Stems—the closer it is to Gap, the higher the price. And since the highest gate I can open is up to Gyeong, please consider carefully before making your request.”
At the Gater’s words, I looked over the amounts.
I couldn’t help but be a little surprised that a gate corresponding to the Heavenly Stem of Gye cost five thousand won, while the Gyeong grade he said was his limit cost a full thirty thousand won.
I couldn’t quite get a feel for it. At times like this, it would have been nice if Ms. Jea appeared with a flourish, but no such thing happened.
After thinking for a moment, I decided to start from the lowest grade first and said to the Gater,
“I’d like you to open a Gye-grade gate first. I don’t know how capable I am yet.”
The Gater looked at me as if I were a greenhorn. Fine, I was a greenhorn. But I didn’t think I deserved to be ignored with that sort of look. Unconcerned with my gaze, the Gater took the lead, then looked back at me and said,
“Hurry up and follow me. If we’re late, there won’t be any spots, so I won’t be able to open a gate.”
The system here was unique in that gate exits existed. Gates could be opened according to the number of those exits, and once a gate was opened, it would belong for one day to the person who had commissioned its opening.
In other words, if more than a day had passed since someone else opened a gate, then one could enter it, but the Gater said that most people usually did not.
After looking around a bit, the Gater found an empty exit and stepped into it. Soon, as if it were nothing, he began opening the gate.
The Gater stretched out his hand and focused on something. Soon, a small blue circle appeared in the air and gradually grew larger. It was not something I had seen often, nor was it a sight I was used to.
At least in Earth’s case, when hiring ants, they would first check the situation inside the gate, and if it seemed like it would bring in big money, they would mainly recruit ants.
If possible, they had a tendency to handle things themselves.
That was because ants would sometimes secretly discover important items and fail to report them. Though they were eventually caught later, once black market dealings began to flourish, Earth had become a place where catching them was no longer easy.
In any case, since I still could not tell whether such trends existed here or not, I was dumbfounded as I watched him open the gate, say, “It’s done,” and then leave for somewhere.