It was already summer vacation.
When I was living as a shuttle, the semesters had felt so damn long.
Vacation never seemed to come, but once I got out of that shuttle life, the semester felt short.
I was still receiving no one’s attention.
Ah! Kwon Jua did keep paying attention to me.
It seemed like she’d come by my house a few times, too.
I knew because ramen that hadn’t been there before was sitting on the wooden platform.
I don’t even eat that ramen, but she bought it and left it there as she pleased without even knowing my tastes.
I don’t know what kind of feelings Kwon Jua has that make her pay attention to me, or why she comes to my house.
From what I can see, she doesn’t seem to know her own feelings either, so how am I supposed to know Kwon Jua’s heart?
And I don’t want to know.
At a glance, she probably just missed the sense of liberation she felt here that day and came back a few more times.
Every time she got stressed, she probably came here to let it out.
I had a rough idea, but I pretended not to know.
I don’t want myself, or my house, to be used as someone’s stress relief space.
If she wants to relieve stress, if she wants to feel liberated,
she can go hiking, or go to a campsite, or go to coin karaoke, or exercise.
Why come to my house?
Making people uncomfortable.
That was why I pretended not to know, even more coldly.
With summer vacation here, I decided to take on a part-time job.
No, not a part-time job. A business.
I needed money.
Thanks to my Inventory, I had no problem feeding myself,
but I was still short on money.
I’d bought and sold things on Karrot, but after trying it a few times, I realized I couldn’t do it.
If they didn’t sell, I got stressed, and before I knew it, I’d lower the price.
I was also scared for no reason that I might get caught.
Food was fine because I could eat it and get rid of it, but goods remained.
Maybe that was why they bothered me more.
I couldn’t keep selling things I’d stolen from marts on Karrot for very long.
I still had some money left, but money was always necessary.
So while looking for something I could do over summer vacation, I decided to sell ice cream at the top of a mountain.
Last time, the gym had gone hiking as part of physical training.
When we reached the summit.
“Ah, man~ Having an ice cream right here would be killer.”
“Huh? If you brought ice cream here, it’d all melt. How would you eat ice cream here?”
At the head coach’s words, the coach scoffed as if it was ridiculous.
“You don’t know? In the old days, people sold ice cream at mountain summits. They’d put it in iceboxes.”
“Really??”
“Look it up on that internet you like so much. Of course it exists.”
“Hold on... I’ll search it. Huh? It’s real.”
I was surprised watching from the side, too.
They really sold ice cream at mountain summits?
They carried that heavy stuff up a mountain and sold it?
At the same time as I thought that was amazing, I wondered what it would be like to sell that during summer vacation.
I have an Inventory, after all.
If I had ice cream right now, I’d want to eat it, so other people would probably feel the same, right?
“But why did it disappear?”
“How would I know that, you punk? It was probably too hard, so they stopped. And these days, lots of people have tumblers, so they can bring cold water from home or freeze bottled water and bring it up. Since there are ways to bring cold water, ice cream probably sold less. Maybe that’s why they quit?”
That day’s hike made me think, what if I tried selling ice cream on a mountain summit during summer vacation?
I judged that it would be fine.
I prepared in advance.
First, I went to a mart and put a decent-sized icebox into my Inventory.
This was a very important step.
If the icebox didn’t go into the Inventory because of its size, this business would collapse on the spot.
Honestly, I had no confidence in carrying an icebox up a mountain.
Full of worry, I placed my hand on a fairly large icebox, big enough that I thought it probably wouldn’t fit, and put it into my Inventory.
Swoosh.
It went in naturally.
Good. Success.
Now all I needed was ice cream.
I could buy it at the mart and go, but I wanted to get it somewhere cheaper.
I went to an unmanned ice cream store.
An unmanned ice cream store with no one inside.
For a moment, I felt the urge to put everything into my Inventory.
But I held back. There were CCTVs installed all over the place.
If it were one or two, maybe, but I thought taking this much from here wouldn’t work.
And it was a business. I didn’t want to run a business with stolen goods.
I wanted to do business fair and square.
First, I had to choose the items.
I didn’t know what kind of ice cream would be good, so I was staring for a long while when someone who looked like the owner came in.
As soon as he arrived, he started organizing the store.
I naturally picked up an ice cream and paid for it.
The owner glanced at me, then focused on organizing the store.
I spoke to him.
“Sir~ Are you the owner here?”
“Yeah. Why?”
His voice was a little blunt.
Did I look like an annoying customer?
Was he worried I’d say my half-eaten ice cream had melted and ask for a refund?
“I’m sorry, but could I ask how much you buy the ice cream for?”
“What? Why are you asking that?”
“I want to sell some ice cream at a mountain summit during summer vacation.”
“You’re going to carry this up a mountain and sell ice cream?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t.”
Before I knew it, the man’s voice had softened.
“I don’t know what you heard that made you want to sell ice cream on a mountain, but you need to think realistically. How many ice creams do you think you can sell on a mountain in one day?”
Shit.
I hadn’t thought about it.
“About 100?”
“Do 100 people pass by the spot where you’re selling? And are all those people going to buy ice cream?”
“I’m not really sure about that.”
“At the very least, shouldn’t you figure out how many people pass by the spot where you’ll sell in a day, what time has the most people, what their age range is, and what that age range likes?”
“That’s true?”
Honestly, I didn’t know.
I thought I could just go to a mountain and sell it.
I’d only thought about easily bringing it up and selling it with my Inventory, not about who my customers would be.
“Do you think you can fit 100 ice creams if you fill an icebox with them? Personally, I think it’d be a little hard. You have the weight of 100 ice creams, plus the weight of the icebox. Iceboxes are pretty heavy. You’re going to carry that all the way to the summit? Absolutely not easy. And can you sell all 100 if you bring them? Before they melt? What if you can’t sell them? You throw them away as is. Did you calculate that?”
“You might get lucky and sell all 100. That’d be a good thing. Then how much will you have left? In my opinion, no matter how much margin you take, you won’t make more than 2,000 won per ice cream. If you sell 100, that’s 200,000 won. It’s not a small amount of money, but compared to the work you put in, it’s not some enormous amount either. You have to think about losses if they don’t sell, and you have to think about your own labor costs. From that perspective, just study. That’s the best option. Can’t do that? Then learn a trade. Don’t try to run some half-baked business.”
He was saying nothing but damn correct things.
They say getting hit with facts hurts. So this was what it felt like.
I had no memory of ever being hurt by getting hit with facts before.
No one had ever even spoken to me in the first place.
That didn’t mean that man was 100% right, though.
I had an Inventory that other people didn’t.
I didn’t need to carry heavy ice cream on my back up a mountain,
and I didn’t need to worry about melted ice cream.
Because inside the Inventory, things maintained their initial state.
I could take out only as much as I needed and sell it.
I said 100 a day, but I didn’t know how many I would sell.
Most of all, I wanted to try.
“I still want to do it. I want to try.”
“If you insist.”
“Can I buy ice cream here?”
“100 of them?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Not now. I’m going to start when vacation begins, so from three days later.”
The owner thought for a moment, then spoke.
“Most of the bar ice creams here are 700 won. It depends on the type, but I usually get them for between 400 and 500 won. But I’ll just give them to you for 500 won each. Clean and simple, 50,000 won for 100.”
“Oh~ Thank you. Then I’ll pay in cash. Without a cash receipt.”
“Is that so? Then I’ll throw in some dry ice as a service.”
“Thank you so much.”
And so, after finishing all my preparations, I was able to begin vacation.
.
.
.
The day of the part-time job, and the first day of vacation.
The day before, I had received the ice cream from the owner in advance.
I put the icebox containing 100 ice creams into my Inventory and headed for the mountain.
The mountain I chose was Bukhansan.
Why Bukhansan?
The reason was simple.
The number one mountain for hikers in our country.
A mountain visited by seven million people a year.
Twenty thousand people visited it every day.
If not here, where else would I go?
It was a bit tiring, but maybe because my stamina had improved a lot from boxing, it wasn’t that hard.
After climbing for nearly two hours, the summit came into view.
After hearing the ice cream shop owner’s advice, I’d climbed the mountain a couple more times to think about where it would be best to sell.
My choice was the summit.
There were already many shops at the entrances to the hiking trails, and there were some at rest areas and mountain shelters too.
On the other hand, there was no one at the summit.
There was a suitable space as well.
I settled down in a shaded spot and began selling ice cream.
I took the icebox out of my Inventory, took out a camping chair, and sat down.
Then I hung up the sign I had prepared in advance, something I had roughly scrawled on a box.
I had thought a lot about the price.
The conclusion was that.
That price seemed right.
If it was too expensive, people wouldn’t buy it.
If they endured just a little, they could go down and eat.
Eating it here was a momentary taste.
Not the taste of the ice cream itself, but the sweetness of success enjoyed together with the sense of achievement from climbing to the summit.
They would enjoy that together with the ice cream.
I thought if it was too expensive or excessive, they wouldn’t indulge in it.
The time I arrived at the mountain summit was around 10.
As soon as I set up my stall, a middle-aged man who had been resting at the summit came over to me.
“You selling ice cream?”
“Yes. Which one would you like?”
I opened the icebox wide.
Inside, ice creams were arranged by type.
“Oh~ It’s hard to find this ice cream these days.”
The one the middle-aged man chose was Bibibig.
It was a red bean-flavored ice cream.
He gave me 3,000 won in cash and left.
After that...
People kept coming and coming.
“If I get four of these, it’s 10,000 won, right?”
“Of course.”
“How much if I buy three?”
“7,500 won.”
“Do you take cards?”
As if.
I’m in the middle of committing tax evasion without even a business registration, and you think I’d take cards?
Might as well ask for a cash receipt too.
“Do you have water or drinks?”
Did you come to a mart?
Why not ask if I have makgeolli too?
“Hey, you don’t have any makgeolli?”
Someone really did ask for makgeolli.
“Do you have gimbap or anything to eat? I’m hungry.”
I’m hungry too.
If I’d known it would be like this, I would’ve eaten a hearty breakfast before coming.
“How old are you? You’re handsome. What time do you finish today? Once you sell all this, you’re done for the day, right? We’ll buy everything for you, so after you finish, want to hang out with us?”
Ma’am, if you hang out with me, you’ll hear the clank-clank of prison bars right away.
I’m a minor.
And if you’re going to say something like that, say it when the icebox is full. There are only a few left at the bottom now, so that’s a bit much.
I sold ice cream for only a short time, but I got to meet all sorts of people.
Maybe thanks to that, before it was even noon, I had sold all the ice cream.
I’d only sold for barely two hours.
Since I had no more ice cream to sell, I packed up right away.
The ice cream sales that started with 50,000 won had turned into 250,000 won in two hours.
Wow~~
Amazing.
Was making money this easy?
I’d just been sitting there,
and the only hard work I’d done was climbing the mountain.
Other people climbed mountains for their health anyway,
but I took care of my health, earned money, and got a sweet deal.
This summer vacation, I was going all in on this.
While packing up, I called the ice cream shop owner.
“Sir, tomorrow, I’ll take 500 ice creams. And could you freeze two boxes of 24 bottles of 500ml bottled water? Yes, yes, I’ll take those too.”
— What, 500? That’s ridiculous. First of all, you won’t be able to carry them. And bottled water on top of that...
“Don’t worry. A friend agreed to help me.”
— If you split it with a friend, there’ll be even less money in it.
As expected, the owner worried a lot.
After coming down the mountain, I didn’t go home. I went to the market.
Once I arrived at the market, it was full of food everywhere.
There were lots of foods that stimulated my salivary glands, from mung bean pancakes to tteokbokki, jokbal, sundae, fish cakes, dumplings, and more, but I hadn’t come to buy food for myself.
After doing business today, I realized my customers had diverse needs.
I couldn’t meet them all, but I thought it wouldn’t be bad to stock as many items as possible, so I came to the market.
My Inventory wouldn’t let things spoil, after all.
“Please give me some cucumbers and apples.”
“Please give me ten rolls of gimbap.”
“Five servings of mul-naengmyeon to go, please. Pack them separately.”
“Please give me ten hamburger sets. Pack each set separately.”
I went to a large mart and filled up on all sorts of drinks,
then stopped by a camping goods store and carefully picked up camping chairs and even a table.
I was looking forward to tomorrow’s business.