####
— Bzz, bzzzz.
My phone vibrated.
Usually, a short vibration like that meant I’d gotten a text or some notification.
So I casually turned on the screen, and there was a text.
[Dear customer, the item you ordered is scheduled to be delivered today between 12:00 and 16:00. We will notify you again 30 minutes before delivery……]
That was roughly around checkout time.
It seemed like I’d still have plenty of time even if I ate before leaving.
But when I thought about what happened at the restaurant yesterday, I hesitated to go.
“Should I skip breakfast……”
The moment that thought crossed my mind, I immediately sent a text canceling the reservation.
Breakfast was included in the room fee, so I wouldn’t be getting a refund, but money wasn’t exactly an issue, so it didn’t really matter.
After sending the text, I lay on the bed fiddling with my phone, and suddenly noticed the stack of payment confirmation messages piling up.
Texts saying I’d paid millions of won at once. Sometimes even tens of millions.
The contents were so absurd that I let out a small laugh.
“Maybe I should’ve done things in moderation.”
Here I was, spending money like this, then complaining that it felt burdensome when people around me kept paying attention to me.
“…What am I doing? I’m not an idiot.”
Spending money lavishly ultimately meant buying an enormous amount of someone’s services or goods.
So it was only natural that they treated me this way.
I’d splurged because I wanted that kind of treatment, only to get scared all by myself afterward. Seeing myself like this was honestly pathetic.
“My liver must be the size of a bean.”
With a liver like this, there was no way I’d be able to hold my liquor properly.
I let out a long sigh and sat up.
“This is hard. Really hard.”
They say that even if you have a lot of money, you shouldn’t show it.
People even say you shouldn’t tell your family if you win the lottery.
That’s why truly rich people live quietly.
Even when they spend money, they do it calmly. Even when they go around looking wealthy, they do it quietly.
And yet, everyone can still tell they’re rich.
They don’t go around spending recklessly like I did yesterday.
‘……Even if they treated me well on the outside, I wonder if they were thinking I was some nouveau riche upstart on the inside.’
My behavior was no different from that of a nouveau riche.
I wasn’t saying there was anything bad about being nouveau riche or suddenly coming into money.
It was just… I felt uneasy, wondering if they’d thought of me not as a VIP, but as a goose that laid golden eggs.
A sense of reality was important.
Even if my situation didn’t feel real, the place I was living in was still reality.
Yesterday, my sense of reality had definitely dulled.
It was my money, so I could spend it however I wanted, and even if I spent it like that, there was no problem at all—but other people’s gazes were a problem.
‘Who knows? I might end up like that goose.’
Old stories always contained lessons.
Of course, the story of the goose that laid golden eggs was about not getting greedy over short-term profit, so it was a little different from my situation.
Still, it was true that I kept thinking of myself as being in the goose’s position.
‘Well, it was fun, so let’s not beat myself up too much.’
Besides, it let me regain at least a little bit of my sense of reality, so I could think of it as taking a beating early that I would’ve gotten someday anyway.
It was much better to realize this now than to keep spending lavishly later and run into a big problem.
“Let’s just go home.”
I tilted my head left and right to stretch, then headed straight to the bathroom.
After quickly washing up and coming out, it was around 7 in the morning.
Drying my hair took a bit of time, but in any case, I quickly arrived at the lobby.
When I said I’d be leaving without eating breakfast, the manager looked a little flustered and asked, “Was there anything inconvenient during your stay?”
I told him that wasn’t the case and gave a light farewell, but he kept asking one thing after another, so I ended up practically fleeing.
‘Well, I guess it is a little funny to say I won’t be eating after enjoying it that much yesterday.’
I roughly recalled the food I ate yesterday.
For an ordinary woman, I had eaten quite a lot.
‘Is that why my stomach feels heavy?’
In any case, after telling the manager that everything had truly been fine, I drove my compact car out of the hotel at a leisurely pace.
“Phew……”
Only now did I feel like I could breathe a little.
It felt as if that uncomfortable, sticky feeling had finally cleared away.
And I decided I would think carefully about spending money from now on.
Even if I spent recklessly like yesterday, there wouldn’t be any financial problem, but I felt like there would be problems in my relationships with people.
‘Rather than jealousy or anything like that… it’d be a more complicated problem……’
I’d once seen a rich person who used to do Neotube get flooded with reports for tax evasion and violating this and that law, then get washed away.
They hadn’t actually evaded taxes, and they hadn’t broken any terribly serious laws either, but because so many reports came in, they ended up quitting Neotube. That kind of common story.
People’s attention and goodwill came with jealousy.
Especially when they thought that person wasn’t much of anything, yet lived better than they did.
‘It’ll be worse for me, since I don’t have any proper business I’m running, and it’s not money I honestly earned.’
This was a world where life became difficult if you received too much jealousy, even when you had nothing to be ashamed of. But I couldn’t openly reveal the source of my money.
‘I was browsing communities, went to sleep, and woke up like this.’
It wasn’t like I could say that.
“This is seriously hard. Really hard.”
From now on, I’d act a little more carefully.
The me from yesterday had been far too fearless.
That didn’t mean I absolutely wasn’t going to spend money, though.
I had to buy a car.
“If possible, something like a Mustang.”
It was a car I’d completely fallen for after first seeing it in a racing game.
I could buy an even more expensive car, but first, a Mustang.
A person wasn’t rich because they could buy expensive things.
They were rich because they could buy everything they wanted.
“That’s enough to make anyone jealous.”
Thinking that, I drove toward the apartment building so tall it could be seen even from far away.
####
A little past noon.
A box truck with a furniture store logo stamped largely on it, followed by a small passenger car, passed through the entrance of Allstate.
The box truck, loaded full of furniture, arrived at the parking lot.
Usually, box trucks were packed with items to be delivered to several different places.
If things had gone as usual, this box truck would have had to make its rounds and empty out the cargo area bit by bit.
But every item loaded inside this truck was headed to one place.
When the two delivery workers riding in the box truck got out first, the people in the passenger car beside them also poured out.
“How convenient is this, having it all go into one house?”
The delivery worker was wearing a yellow uniform with the furniture store logo printed prominently on it. Perhaps because he was somewhat older, deep wrinkles formed when he smiled.
Smiling like that, he opened the cargo hold.
With a heavy metallic sound, the cargo door slowly opened.
“Whew, it’s nice and all, but there’s got to be a limit to how much there is.”
The other, younger delivery worker standing beside him laughed as he flung the door wide open.
“Still, isn’t this better than running around to all sorts of places?”
“That’s true, but… just thinking about carrying this up with the cart multiple times is already exhausting.”
The young delivery worker spoke with a laugh, shaking his head as if he was sick of the amount of stuff inside.
When he took off the cap he was wearing, his dyed brown hair stood out.
“Still, it’s not just the two of us here.”
Saying that, the older delivery worker pointed to the passenger car beside them.
Over there, employees wearing clothes comfortable to move in were gathering their equipment and finishing preparations to assemble the furniture.
“……Aren’t those people normally only in charge of assembly?”
“I asked them. Told them to help carry a little.”
He said that while giving the younger employee a thumbs-up.
Seeing the kindly delivery worker, the younger man laughed and took out a green handcart.
####
Allstate’s doorbell didn’t make a sound.
Instead of sound, it notified you with light.
Seeing the doorbell glow green, I hurried over and opened the communal entrance door.
When someone called from the communal entrance, it lit up green once like this, but at the front door of the apartment itself, it blinked several times.
In any case, it seemed they’d arrived.
“They’re here.”
I’d barely made it home in time.
If I’d lazed around and come later, the furniture would have arrived before me.
Thinking it was a relief I hadn’t caused any trouble, I looked at the empty living room.
“I can finally rest at home.”
The hotel had been nice too, but no matter what, people had to live in their own homes.
“I requested assembly service too… so there shouldn’t be anything I have to build separately….”
There wasn’t anything in particular for me to do.
Delivery, assembly, placement, and so on. The workers would do it all.
This was what money was meant to be used for.
After putting all the luxury goods I’d struggled to carry up while riding the elevator over and over into the small room, I lightly began tidying up the living room.
I folded up the camping gear that ruined the look of the place and put it all into the room too, then gathered the cup-rice meals and cup-rice trash in one place and cleaned them up.
I also dragged the computer I’d left in the living room with difficulty and moved it toward the kitchen.
I’d thought there was nothing here, but now that I looked, there was quite a lot.
“What was the opposite of minimalist again?”
The opposite of mini was big, so bigsimalist?
I suddenly became curious and was searching the word on my phone when the doorbell began blinking green this time.
“Ah.”
I put my phone down and hurriedly opened the front door.
“Hello~”
When I opened the door, a friendly-looking middle-aged man smiled and held the door.
He looked a little older, but his body seemed extremely healthy.
“We’re here for the delivery. We’ll probably have to go back and forth with the cart more than four times, so we’d like to leave the front door open. Would that be all right?”
The younger delivery worker behind the man poked his face out slightly and brought that up.
I certainly had bought a lot.
‘I really did get carried away when I bought all this.’
Remembering the resolution I’d made today made me feel a little uncomfortable, but I decided to make furniture an exception since I would have had to buy it someday anyway.
“Ah… please come in.”
“Excuse us~ Ah, the assembly staff are coming up from downstairs, so they’ll take care of everything. You just need to tell them where to place the furniture.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
After hearing me, they opened the front door wide.
Then the young delivery worker began carefully carrying the large cardboard boxes on the cart inside.
Since it was assembly furniture, it seemed they were able to bring it in like this.
Wouldn’t larger furniture be unable to come in this way and have to be brought in with a ladder truck?
‘Appliances should be able to come in through the front door, right?’
Thinking of the refrigerator I needed to buy quickly, I watched the boxes barely make it through the entrance.
— Thump, thump.
‘Is it time for the kids to be home?’
Then I glanced up at the ceiling where the faint sound had come from.
‘This makes me uneasy for no reason.’
Hoping nothing would happen to make things awkward with the upstairs neighbors, I watched the furniture boxes stack up neatly in the living room.
‘Well, this comes first for now.’
Then, one after another.
“We’re here for the assembly.”
“Wow, it’s a new home, a new home~”
The other workers also came pouring in.