####
‘Wow, this lamp is seriously weird-looking.’
I glared at the lamp, which was riddled with holes, turning it this way and that.
They’d said this place was both a furniture store and a home goods shop, so I guess this counted as home goods.
Shopping was always fun.
Shopping was fun even when you didn’t buy anything and only looked around, but this place—where you could actually sit on things and try them out—was practically a playground for adults.
Maybe that was why the prices were for adults, too.
‘One lamp is 140,000 won?’
I carefully set the lamp back down.
Then I wandered around for no particular reason and found an area where they had gathered every chair they sold.
Sofas and armchairs.
Like a sparrow stopping by a mill, I pattered over and plopped myself down in a chair I liked.
‘Now that I’m sitting in it, my butt really does sink right in.’
An armchair with armrests. On top of that, it came with a cushioned stool to rest your legs on.
I couldn’t put my feet up because I had shoes on, but if I sat like this at home, it would be pure paradise.
‘This would be perfect for looking at my phone.’
Thinking that, I decided to buy one in a color that matched the sofa I’d put in the living room.
‘This one is 330,000 won…….’
I stood up and looked at the price tag attached beside it.
It was pretty expensive, but the price made sense.
It was a chair you’d never be able to get up from once you sat down, so of course it had to cost this much.
It was a kind of danger premium.
I made a silly joke to myself, giggled alone, and moved on to the next section.
Past the bedroom section, living room section, kitchen section, and the chair section I had just crossed through, I eventually arrived at the bed section.
Cozy-looking bedrooms and all sorts of beds, mattresses, bookcases, display cabinets, nightstands, and more that could be used to decorate a bedroom were scattered throughout an enormous space.
‘Wow.’
I’d heard that in some country’s stores, people even lay down in bedrooms like these and took naps.
I didn’t want to understand it, but I felt like I could kind of see why they did something like that.
‘Still, sleeping somewhere everyone can see you is a bit much.’
The people looking at the beds were only briefly sitting on the mattresses or examining the structure of the frames. They weren’t crawling under the blankets and lying down to check them out.
Like the people around me, I slowly walked around, then made my way over to a bed I liked.
A frame that looked as if it used solid natural wood as it was.
And a bed with storage drawers that made use of the space underneath.
It seemed there was also a separate option to attach a bookcase slash display cabinet designed to be used with this bed.
“It’s pretty…….”
Muttering quietly to myself, I touched the furniture with my hand.
Unlike its raw-wood appearance, it was smooth. And when I pressed it with my hand, there was no feeling of it giving way.
‘Then the price is….’
Frame: 970,000 won. 1,300,000 won if purchased as a set with the bookcase. Mattress sold separately.
‘Were beds always this expensive?’
I’d never bought a bed frame myself before, so I wasn’t sure.
Still, there was one thing I knew for certain.
You should never save money on chairs and beds.
Health was important.
Because in order to spend your whole life lazing around and eating well, you first had to be healthy.
‘Well, in the first place, I can buy everything I want.’
If someone saw me, they might ask why I was being so frugal when I had five hundred billion won.
I understood. If I’d seen someone like me, I would’ve told them to spend some money freely, too.
But now that I was actually in this situation, spending recklessly was harder than I’d expected.
‘No, wait, haven’t I already been spending pretty recklessly?’
A car, a luxury apartment. And now, ten million won worth of furniture.
‘Should I be saving more?’
After listing them out one by one, that thought suddenly occurred to me.
At this rate, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to live extravagantly in my life.
####
“That customer has been loading new items onto her carts for a while now.”
“……Is she going to buy all that?”
The furniture store employees had gathered in one place and were murmuring among themselves.
What they were looking at was a young woman.
A young woman who had come in wearing a casual tracksuit was grunting as she loaded furniture onto a cart.
“How much would all that even be?”
“This is my first time seeing someone use multiple carts by themselves.”
Each of them offered their own impressions while simply watching.
The reason none of them stepped forward was simple.
‘What does she do?’
They had never seen a customer like that in their lives.
“Shouldn’t we help her?”
“Should we…?”
As the employees murmured and quietly watched her, a man wearing clothes that made him look fairly high-ranking slowly walked over from behind.
“What are you all gathered here doing?”
“Ah, Manager. That customer over there is loading an incredible amount of items onto her carts….”
After listening to the neatly ponytailed female employee, he turned his head slightly.
In the place the employee pointed to, there really was a young woman laboriously dragging a cart piled high with goods.
The manager was startled when he saw the scene.
‘How much is all that?’
Of course, even as the manager, he couldn’t calculate the total price of the furniture the customer had picked just by looking at the boxes containing the products.
However, some of the expensive furniture had different boxes, so he judged based on those.
Especially the table and chair boxes.
Those two alone were nearly one million won.
That meant that if all the other furniture was included, even a rough estimate would put it in the several million won range. Or possibly more.
The manager glared at the employees who had left such a VIP customer struggling all this time while they simply stood by.
Then he spoke in a voice that seemed to be holding back anger.
“Go over there immediately, each of you take a cart, and help her. Also, take her somewhere spacious and ring her up there separately. Have you all just been standing here watching until now?”
Startled by the manager’s rebuke, the employees quickly answered and hurried over to the customer almost at a run.
“Tsk…… How can they have so little sense at work?”
The manager clicked his tongue quietly as he watched the employees rush over in a fluster.
Then, thinking that they needed training on the VIP response manual or employee service, he took out his phone and sent a text to the staff training team.
“No, we’ll move it for you. Is there anything else you need?”
“Uh…… Thank you. Um… I’m looking for furniture that looks like this….”
“If you go to C16, it should be there. I’ll take it out for you.”
And so, the three of them began talking to the mysterious customer.
Each of them took hold of a cart and began responding kindly.
The customer walked around with an awkward expression, slightly lowering her head.
She did not look used to this kind of treatment.
“……Did she come to replace all her furniture?”
It wasn’t as if there were no customers who bought that much at once.
There were always one or two every quarter.
Feeling a little envious, the manager watched for a moment as the customer moved around, surrounded by the employees.
“An idol……?”
Her clothes looked as if she had thrown them on casually, but to the manager’s eyes, she looked incredibly stylish.
The clothes she was wearing were definitely a tracksuit.
However, with the slightly long pant legs lightly covering her sneakers, she was creating a streetwear look.
On top of that, the jersey she wore was about one size too large, preventing her figure from standing out, but whenever she moved, it subtly revealed glimpses of her shape.
‘Her looks are completely unreal, too.’
Even her face was enough to put celebrities to shame.
No, he felt she was beyond most decent actors.
Someone with enough wealth to buy that much furniture, and enough fashion sense to pull off a look like that with a tracksuit.
And a beautiful appearance he had never seen anywhere before.
‘Should I at least get her autograph…….’
The manager, who really liked idols, became convinced that she was an idol trainee preparing to debut under a major agency and began to seriously ponder it.
####
Focused marking.
They say that in sports like basketball or soccer, players who are intensely marked by the opposing team secretly feel proud.
Because it means they are the player the other side considers the most dangerous.
But I just realized that when you experience that in everyday life, rather than feeling proud, it feels embarrassing.
“Customer, is there anything else you’re looking for?”
“I’ll bring another cart.”
“This is sold out… but just in case, I’ll go ask the team leader.”
I was truly grateful that they were pushing the carts for me, but having a whole three people glued to my side and intensely marking me like this was extremely burdensome.
They say that if there are three people, they can make one tiger.
Maybe that was why everyone around me was looking at me as if they were looking at a tiger.
“Wow…….”
“She must be a VIP customer.”
“Mom! That lady must be rich!”
“You, come here!”
I could feel my face turning red.
If I could, I wanted to cover my face with my hands.
Gratitude was gratitude, but having everyone around me look at me like this was still burdensome.
Actually, if I thought about it, it was only natural.
No matter how little attention people paid to others, it made no sense to ignore and walk past someone buying this much furniture.
‘Even an elementary schooler would know that.’
Inwardly, I kept chanting, “I’m an idiot,” trying hard to erase my embarrassment.
Only after the number of carts the employees were pulling for me reached five did my shopping finally come to an end.
“Customer, we’ll help you with payment separately over this way.”
No, it hadn’t ended.
One employee guided me not to the self-checkout area or the staffed registers, but to the wide open area beside them.
On top of that, another employee holding a barcode scanner and a calculator was running over here.
‘……I’m an idiot.’
I shouted that inwardly one more time and closed my eyes slightly.