Why Is There Nothing Here!

It probably meant the other villages she had not yet been to.

Rasen, where they said the tomatoes were grown, must be one of them.

The status window had said favorability would drop straight back into negative numbers the moment she opened the next village, and Dong-hui agreed with it.

It would be strange if it didn’t.

She had been lost in thought a moment, but the instant the status window vanished she came back to the kitchen, where Delma and the head cook were still working their way through the Dural fries.

“Delma, I shall be up in my room a while, so the head cook is to steam the Dural we left outside, and fry it.”
“M-me?”

Scrooge, who looked as though he could not manage another bite, had sat down beside the two of them and was rubbing his bulging belly with a satisfied look on his face. The basket that had been heaped high with Dural fries was very nearly down to the bottom.

“Am I to do it, then? You watched me do the whole of it just now, did you not? You have a quick head and fine hands, so you will make far better pota— far better Dural dishes than I ever could. I shall look forward to it. Once all of this Dural is cooked, share it out among the servants.”

Hurriedly patching over the word that had almost jumped out of her, Dong-hui dashed up to her room. She could not wait to go and see the places newly opened up around Borimdang.

Walking out of an ownerless shop with things in her hands had felt deeply uncomfortable at first, but by now it felt far more natural.

Something like the feeling of plucking fruit off a wild tree that belongs to nobody, maybe?

Above all, no matter how much she carried out, everything went back to exactly as it had been, and that made her conscience prick her a great deal less.

Passing through the front door and changing into comfortable clothes at the studio had both grown a little familiar by now. To move even slightly more easily inside the activated areas, she had taken to leaving the trailing dresses behind there some time ago, and in their place she pulled on an old, worn pair of pajama bottoms and a hoodie, like a set of combat fatigues.

“First I’ll go into Borimdang, use up the ten minutes, and then try somewhere else.”

When she stepped out of the studio and stood in front of Borimdang, the figure 10:00 came floating up on the status window.

Quite apart from that, Dong-hui set the timer she had brought out of the studio to eight minutes. She had no wish to come rushing out in a panic and make some mistake.

“All right!”

Steeling herself like an athlete going out to compete, Dong-hui opened the door of Borimdang.

The moment the glass door swung open, the numbers on the status window’s timer began to fall. She had been here often enough by now to know where everything was as well as the owner would have, and since she still had the other shops to get through, she filled only a hundred slots of the Inventory for the time being.

Rather than sweeping things up at random she picked out the most expensive-looking pieces, and the time went by before she knew it. Thanks to that eight-minute timer of her own, she was out of Borimdang before it ran down.

The instant she stepped outside, shops that had not been visible until now revealed themselves out of the fog.

At the same time the status window’s timer went back to 10:00, and Dong-hui started the timer in her hand again. Everything had to be finished inside eight minutes, and her nerves were in a dreadful state.

To the right of Borimdang stood a gold exchange and a clothes shop; to the left, another jeweler’s by the name of Gold Diamant, and a corn dog stand.¹ One more jeweler’s was in sight as well, though the fog hid it so that only half of it showed. The look of the place was dark and out of the way, and on the whole she thought it was better not to go in there.

“Awesome.”

Dong-hui decided to go into the gold exchange first.

Say what you will, gold is the best of the lot.

With a gold exchange secured, it was as good as owning a gold mine. Restoring the Grace estate was child’s play from here.

“Heh heh heh heh heh.”

A sly laugh came out of her all by itself as she stood in front of the gold exchange. She grinned all over her face a moment longer, checked the timer belatedly, and scurried inside with her heart thumping like mad.

Just as at Borimdang, there was not a sign of anyone in the shop.

But there was a problem.

“Why is there nothing here!”

The gold exchange stood empty of everything. There was not a person in it, and not so much as a scrap of gold either. A pale film of dust had even settled over the display cases.

Horrified, Dong-hui dragged a finger in a long stroke across a case gone gray with it, and where her finger swept the dust away, the empty glass showed through.

Ugh!

“This place has closed down!”

Swallowing down the irritation surging up in her, Dong-hui shook her hands out crossly and ran back outside. What with all that panicking indoors, three minutes had already gone by.

That left about seven minutes. The timer in her hand had a little over five.

“Gold Diamant!”

In her haste Dong-hui dashed into Gold Diamant on the opposite side. She had been worrying about what she would do if this one had shut down too, but happily the inside was packed with as wide a range of jewelry as Borimdang’s, and the sight of the full display cases set her mind at rest.

“Thank goodness!”

Dong-hui all but hurled the pieces she pulled out of the cases into the Inventory. However carelessly she threw them, the clever Inventory stowed each one away neatly in its own slot.

Nice catch!

If the jewels in Borimdang had leaned a little toward older tastes, the ones here ran to a lot of unique designs that younger people would like better. In sheer gold content there were plenty of pieces below Borimdang’s, but for design this lot appealed to her more.

Dong-hui worked busily, her eyes going back and forth between the watch she had set as a timer and the cases. The place was new to her and strange, and her mind was in such a rush that she had been tearing about wildly, until her heart felt as though it might leap out of her chest.

She felt like a thief with an awful lot of nerve.

— Beep, beep, beep, beep!

She had hardly packed anything, and the timer was clamoring to tell her only one minute was left.

“I have to get out!”

With no time even to regret the Inventory she had not managed to fill, Dong-hui shot out of the door. There was still time left on the status window’s timer, but she had to get back to the dingy little studio, so there was nothing leisurely about it. She ran for it with everything she had.

“Haah! Haah!”

She had barely run any distance at all, and still her breath came ragged, probably from the nerves.

She could not dawdle stupidly and let an area she had only just opened close up again. There would be any number of chances next time.

There was no need to hurry or to push herself, and still her greed for things, welling higher with every passing day, set her mind racing all on its own.

Happily she reached the studio before the ten minutes were up. The front door swung shut with barely a moment to spare, and Dong-hui flopped down flat on the mattress.

Lying there getting her heaving breath back, she found her eyes on the ceiling, blotched and stained where the rain had leaked through. It used to seem like a mirror of her own wretched, forlorn situation, but now it was nothing at all.

Dong-hui’s head was full of nothing but jeweler’s shops.

“I wish the time limit would come off.”

Regretful, Dong-hui looked over the things she had brought out.

I should have had a proper look before I went in.

Still, she had got to Gold Diamant at least, and that was something.

Dong-hui put her regret behind her, and once her breathing had settled she went out of the studio again and headed for the convenience store. There was no time limit there, and once again it struck her how grateful she was for that.

Walking in felt as easy as walking into the studio, and the hundred-odd Inventory slots she had left filled up with convenience-store food in no time.

Wandering the aisles at a far more leisurely pace, Dong-hui took out a bottle of Bacchus and drank it down in gulps.²

“Ohh, that’s refreshing.”

There was no saying how grateful she was that the fridges were still running. It still felt strange to find herself living inside this new reality, and she set the half-empty bottle of Bacchus down and looked around her.

That little bit of running had left her hungry. Dong-hui rose to her feet, went over to the shelves, and tore open a cup ramyeon, the spicy bibim ramyeon she always liked.³ She pulled off the sachet and the lid, poured in the hot water, and sealed it by wedging the lid, gaping open like a mouth, between a pair of wooden chopsticks.

Three minutes.

While the ramyeon cooked, Dong-hui did nothing at all but stare blankly at the lid of the cup. Two thoroughly furious chickens were glaring off at something, eyes bulging, as though they were about to start a fight. The silence pressed in so hard it left her ears ringing, and by the time she noticed, the three minutes had gone by.

— Slurp, slurp.

The ramyeon was hot and it was spicy. Her nose stung and sweat gathered in the dip above her lip, but Dong-hui kept stuffing it down without a pause until every bit of it was gone.

She had been about to throw the empty cup in the trash, but for whatever reason she left it where it was and walked out of the convenience store. Partly she was curious whether the trash would still be there next time she came, and partly a fit of spite had risen up in her out of nowhere and she did not feel like clearing it away.

Out through the front door, Dong-hui checked the Inventory and, without quite meaning to, let out a deep sigh. For all her delight at having her activated area expanded, it was a paltry result.

“I should at least have had a corn dog before I left.”

Belatedly she remembered the corn dogs that had been bubbling away in the fryer at the corn dog stand beside Borimdang. There had not been a soul in the place, and yet they had somehow gone on frying, studded all over with little cubes of potato, browning to a fine golden color.

“If you leave them like that, do they burn? Or do they just stay preserved as they are? Wouldn’t they be an awful greasy mess by then?”

She could not let the corn dogs go, and after turning them over and over in her mind there was nothing for it but to find out next time by eating one herself.

She hid the jewels she had carried back in the Inventory somewhere suitable in the dressing room, and as she came out into the bedroom there was a knock at the door.

“My lady, are you inside?”

It was Delma’s voice.

When Dong-hui opened the door she had locked, Delma was standing outside it with a thoroughly elated look on her face.

“Haaaawm. What is it?”

The yawn came out of her all by itself as she spoke. All that mad running about inside the front door had left her worn out, and it rather seemed she would have to get some sleep.

“My lady! The servants have eaten every last bit of the food made from the Dural.”

Now that was welcome news. Her tiredness seemed to vanish on the spot.

“And nothing’s the matter with any of them?”
“Yes! They said they were full and that it tasted good, and then they asked whether they could have it again tomorrow!”

Even as she said it Delma seemed to find it wonderful, and she could not hide how excited she was.

“There, you see. I told you it was good. Tomorrow let’s have all the servants of Grace Castle go out as well and harvest some Dural.”
“Beside the Black Forest?”

A slight hesitation crept into Delma’s voice, and worry had begun to gather on a face that had been all beaming smiles a moment ago.

She’s bound to be worried, of course.

A custom kept for a long time was not the sort of thing that vanished overnight.

Even I wouldn’t have the nerve to take grass that had been growing in a cemetery and plant it in my own front yard as though it were nothing.

To these people, she thought, Dural must be something even harder to stomach than graveyard grass.

“Anyone who’s frightened doesn’t have to go. But tell them the ones who do go will get a good fat daily wage. Special pay, of course, quite separate from a servant’s monthly wages.”

“Special pay?”