“Come here~~”
As soon as I got to school in the morning, Yang Jeongwon called me over.
What the hell, that bastard’s already at school?
Why did he get here earlier than me?
Is a school bully allowed to be this diligent?
If he’s a bully, shouldn’t he be skipping school, hanging around with other delinquent kids, and only showing up once in a while?
Yang Jeongwon seemed to have a problem with his qualifications as a thug.
If he’s going to be like this, why even be a thug?
He should give the role to me.
Huh? Maybe not?
For now, back to wimp mode.
“Uh...”
“You fucking bastard. Why didn’t you come to school?”
What?
Was this bastard worried about me?
Because I was absent,
even the teachers don’t care about me. Was this bastard the only one thinking about me?
Seriously, I’m telling you, this bastard isn’t qualified to be a bully.
How can he be a bully with such a delicate heart?
“I... wasn’t feeling well...”
“You little shit, are you playing sick just because you got hit a little?”
“No, I was really sick. I couldn’t even get up.”
“Fuck. How can you be like that after getting hit just that much? Huh? How are you going to manage with such a weak body?”
See~
He really is worried about me.
Tsundere?
“Sorry.”
“You fucking bastard, because you weren’t here, I couldn’t even eat bread. Hurry up and go buy some bread.”
As if it were second nature, he tossed two 1,000-won bills onto the floor.
Last time he only gave me 1,000 won, but today it was 2,000.
I’m telling you, he’s more considerate than I thought.
He’s thoughtful.
“I’ll be right back.”
I ran again.
.
.
.
After arriving at school, Kwon Jua swept her gaze across the classroom.
‘I guess he’s not here today either.’
He had already been absent for several days.
She wasn’t worried.
It was just curiosity?
There was something she wanted to know.
That day, she happened to see Gong Inbae getting beaten.
Gong Inbae getting beaten wasn’t anything special.
He got hit every day.
She just thought, It’s starting again today, but
the beating went on for longer, and Gong Inbae’s expression didn’t look good either.
While she was thinking, ‘What if this turns into an accident?’
Gong Inbae collapsed.
But she saw it.
When Gong Inbae fell against Yang Jeongwon, she saw him touch his necklace.
And she saw the necklace disappear.
No one else would have noticed, but she saw it.
She didn’t know how that necklace had disappeared.
Was it some kind of pickpocketing technique?
She didn’t know the method, but she knew Yang Jeongwon’s necklace had vanished in an instant.
The necklace itself wasn’t important.
How he had done it.
She was simply curious about that.
Because she was curious.
Because she wanted to ask him about it, she waited for Gong Inbae.
But after that day, Inbae didn’t come to school.
Rather than being worried about Gong Inbae, Kwon Jua was simply unbearably curious about how he had stolen it.
She only wanted to ask him.
That was when it happened.
The classroom’s back door opened, and Gong Inbae came in carrying bread.
******
Maybe it was because I’d collapsed,
or maybe he misunderstood and thought his fists were nuclear punches.
Or maybe he still had some pity for me left in his heart. I don’t know, but
today, he didn’t hit me.
So damn nice.
On the way home.
My heart was already fluttering at the thought of dinner tonight.
Before I got the inventory, there had been nothing to eat.
The school lunch was my only meal.
But now I could eat dinner until I was full, and I could even choose what to eat.
The things I’d stuffed away last time at the warehouse-style mart had been a huge help.
I wondered if I had ever been this happy in my life.
“Gong Inbae!”
“Hey~~ Gong Inbae~~”
Huh? Is that someone calling me?
My name is Gong Inbae, sure.
But at school, no one calls me by my name.
They always call me beggar bastard.
I thought that was my name.
There’s someone who remembers the name even I had forgotten?
There’s someone calling my name?
When you called my name, I’ll come to you and get hit a few times, right?
I thought I was going to make it through today without getting beaten,
but as expected, the world isn’t that easy.
When I went toward where the voice came from,
Kwon Jua was standing there.
There were a lot of surprising things today.
It was already strange enough that someone at school knew my name,
but that person was Kwon Jua.
Back to wimp mode.
“Huh? What is it?”
“Can we talk for a moment?”
“With me?”
“Follow me.”
Kwon Jua said only that and turned away first, and I trailed after her like a wimp.
Kwon Jua stopped behind the school, in a place where no one was around.
Then she spun around and looked at me with sharp eyes.
“You stole it, didn’t you?”
“Stole what?”
“Yang Jeongwon’s necklace.”
“Me? No? How would I steal Yang Jeongwon’s necklace? How much would I get beaten? Even if I’d picked it up, I would’ve given it back.”
In my own opinion, that was a perfect-answer response.
A wimp has to live a wimp’s life.
“No. I saw it. I saw you stealing it.”
“You must have seen wrong. I didn’t steal it.”
Did she really see it?
Even when I put an item in my hand and use the inventory ability,
all I can tell is that it sort of vanishes. How did she see that from so far away?
Does she have good eyesight?
Does she have Mongolian blood mixed in?
“I saw you touch Yang Jeongwon’s necklace when you collapsed. After you touched it, the necklace was gone.”
“It must’ve been a coincidence. Maybe the necklace snapped, and I happened to collapse at the same time. Or maybe, like you said, I might have touched the necklace while collapsing. If I remembered it, I could tell you exactly what happened then, but at the time I’d been beaten so much that I was unconscious. Would I even be able to think about stealing a necklace in that state? I don’t remember either, so I can’t give you a detailed answer.”
I tried to persuade Kwon Jua while emphasizing that I was the victim.
I don’t remember.
Wasn’t I getting beaten at the time?
How could I steal a necklace while I was getting beaten? Like that.
“No. You definitely stole it.”
“No matter how much you say that, I didn’t steal it.”
“Then let me see.”
“See what? My schoolbag? Go ahead~ As much as you want.”
I took off the schoolbag I was carrying and held it out to Kwon Jua.
But Kwon Jua didn’t take my bag.
“No, it’s already been two days. You wouldn’t have left it in your bag. You might have sold it somewhere, or hidden it in some secret place no one knows about.”
“So what exactly are you trying to say?”
“Tell me how you stole it. That’s all I’m curious about. It really happened in an instant. I only want to know the method. I’m not interested in some stupid necklace. I’ll keep it a secret from Yang Jeongwon.”
“What have you been listening to this whole time? I said I didn’t steal it.”
“I’m telling you, I saw it.”
“Then sue me. Go tell Yang Jeongwon. Tell him I stole his necklace. Then I’ll get beaten until the necklace turns up. Because of your guess.”
“No. That’s not it. I’m saying I’m only curious about how you stole it.”
“I’m telling you I didn’t steal it!!”
My voice rose, unlike my usual wimpy self.
Maybe it was because I was afraid I’d be exposed for stealing the necklace.
Or maybe it was because Kwon Jua was showing curiosity about my inventory ability, and I was on guard because of that.
I didn’t know the exact reason myself.
I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
At any rate, for the first time at school, I raised my voice.
“If you have nothing else to say, I’m leaving first.”
I turned around first and started walking.
Kwon Jua followed behind me.
“Let’s go together~”
“Go together where?”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going home.”
“Then I’ll go too.”
“Where?”
“To your house.”
“Are you out of your mind or something? Why would you come to my house? You’re not Kwon Jua, are you?”
“I’m seriously so curious I’m going crazy. Can’t I go and look just once?”
“Ha~ This is ridiculous.”
“You live alone anyway, don’t you? If you have nothing to hide, there’s no reason you can’t show me, right?”
“How did you know I live alone?”
“Huh? Is there anyone who doesn’t know that? Probably the whole school knows you’re an orphan.”
“Really? But I’m not an orphan. Though I guess I’m worse off than one.”
Kwon Jua glanced at me once, then spoke again.
“If you let me search, I won’t suspect you again.”
“... Fine. Okay.”
I didn’t feel like it, but it didn’t really matter.
I didn’t know why she was insisting on coming to my house, but if showing her my house once could reduce her suspicions,
then even though she wouldn’t be able to find it anyway, if taking her home once could lessen her doubts about the inventory, that was enough.
“It’ll be hard. Keep up.”
.
.
.
“How much farther do we have to go?”
“We’re almost there.”
“You said that one minute ago too.”
“You asked one minute ago, so I answered.”
“Tch.”
“It’s that house over there.”
I raised my hand and pointed to a worn-down house at the foot of the mountain.
.
.
.
It was the house my dad bought.
There were hardly any cases where anything that man did ended cleanly.
Most of the time, he brought trouble.
Whether it was big or small, he created trouble fairly and without discrimination.
He made the wrong choice every time.
The one thing he did right was buying this house.
Why?
Because the wrong choice actually worked out well for me.
A house he bought on impulse because it was cheap, without looking into it properly.
It turned out the owner of the land and the owner of the house were different.
What my dad bought was the house, and there was a separate owner of the land.
And not just one, either. Two? Or three?
For someone to buy this house, they’d have to meet our dad, the homeowner, as well as the two or three landowners, negotiate the price, and sign contracts.
But that process is by no means easy.
Even buying an ordinary house where the land and house come as a set is already such a pain.
But finding and coordinating with owners of a house where the landowner and homeowner are all different, then making a deal?
It’s genuinely hard.
On top of that, human greed has no end.
If someone says they want to buy, whether it’s the homeowner or the landowner, they’ll ask for a high price.
The buyer has to purchase it at that price while coordinating all these circumstances and conditions.
But to go through all that trouble and pay that price, there are way too many properties better than this one.
For that reason, this house is extremely hard to sell.
That’s why, even now, this house is still under my dad’s name,
and it’s also the reason I don’t have to live out on the street.
Because the house won’t sell.
If it had sold, I probably would have been kicked out onto the street long ago.
But it’s not just this house.
This whole area is like that.
There are about twenty or thirty houses around here,
but they say there are nearly fifty landowners.
The landowners, house owners, and residents are all different.
That kind of complicated contractual relationship creates a lot of difficulties for redevelopment.
Although it’s a hillside neighborhood, that’s the biggest reason it hasn’t been redeveloped despite being in the center of Seoul.
It wasn’t as if construction companies had never tried to redevelop it.
Companies whose names anyone would recognize came around, saying they would redevelop the place, handing out flyers and meeting people.
They confidently went around making contracts, saying they were different.
First, they bought the houses that could be purchased and had clean paperwork.
They also tried to sign contracts for the houses with complicated ownership.
They went around one by one, finding people and persuading them.
But even people who owned less than one pyeong of land demanded compensation plus an apartment,
and those who owned large plots said their compensation should increase in proportion to those with smaller plots.
If someone with one pyeong got compensation plus one apartment,
then someone with ten pyeong demanded ten times the compensation and ten apartments.
Holdout tactics were deployed here,
and the landowners and homeowners used unreasonable demands and threats as naturally as eating.
They were impossible to deal with.
In the end, even the construction company gave up and left.
The people who had sold their houses left the neighborhood,
the construction company left,
and since there were no people, the merchants who did business in this neighborhood also left.
Empty houses started appearing all over the neighborhood,
and vacancies began appearing in the shops.
The neighborhood turned into a slum.
It was gloomy.
Even juvenile delinquents don’t come here.
They say the energy of the land is bad or something.
I live at the very top of that neighborhood.
.
.
.
In the end, I brought Kwon Jua all the way to my house.
Even Kwon Jua, who had insisted we go to my house right away, seemed to hesitate once she actually stood in front of my ruin-like home.
Was she afraid a ghost might come out?
“Hurry up and search, then leave.”
I said it bluntly and slipped into the yard.
My house was small, but the yard was fairly wide.
To be honest, I didn’t know whether this was our yard, the neighbor’s yard, or part of the mountain.
It didn’t matter.
I just liked placing a wooden platform there and living while looking down over Seoul.
I put my bag on the platform, opened the front door of the house, and spoke to Kwon Jua.
“This is my house. I won’t even go in. Go ahead and search wherever you want. Ah~ I can take this, right? I’m hungry.”
I grabbed the portable burner and two packs of ramyeon that were sitting right in front of me and went to the platform.
“Yeah...”
Kwon Jua spoke in an unconfident voice.
Was she getting scared now that she actually had to go into a haunted house?
While Kwon Jua hesitated in front of the door, I started cooking ramyeon on the platform.
Even if Kwon Jua searched for the rest of her life, the necklace wouldn’t turn up.
Because the necklace was inside my inventory.
The ramyeon cooked deliciously.
Now I just had to eat it.
I was about to blow on it and take a bite when
“Can I have one bite?”
An unpleasant sound came from behind me.