The Bread That Never Runs Out

Somehow it was scarier that the status window could announce there was nothing alive here as though it were no big deal. Dong-hui felt like she had walked straight into a scene from a horror movie.

On top of that, the window kept dropping words into its sentences that made no sense at all. Thinking she might have misheard, she stared hard at the screen, but the text hanging there was just as full of characters she couldn’t make out.

“It doesn’t look like a code… What on earth is it supposed to mean?”

The window only repeated itself. She wanted to grill it on every last word, but the fear hadn’t drained out of her yet, so she let it go for now.

“…So it’s… safe, then?”

Dong-hui scraped together a bean’s worth of courage and started slowly toward the convenience store up ahead. Fog lined both sides of the road like a row of street trees, brushing against her skin, and none of it felt damp. If anything it was warm and downy, and the knot of tension in her loosened a little in spite of everything. She stole a look to the side as she went, just in case, and found nothing but fog. The line about there being no other living thing here kept echoing in her ears, raising goosebumps every time it came around.

The wall of fog climbed and spread past anywhere her eyes could follow, so dizzyingly high and so long that there was no telling where it ended.

This really is scary.

Dong-hui’s steps quickened, her eyes darting to either side. The store was near enough that she only had to lift her head to see it, and still it felt strangely far away.

She finally reached the front of the store, jabbed the open button, and looked around her. Any second now something alien would come lunging out of the murk, exactly like a scene from a horror movie, to tear into the back of her neck and lay eggs in her belly.

“Come on, come on!”

She had been braced for the door not to open at all, but it gave a low whirr and slid smoothly apart. In a place with no sound in it whatsoever, that whirr came out extraordinarily loud. It was a sight she had seen a thousand times, and it still startled her; she took a step back without meaning to. While she hesitated, the door started sliding shut again.

“No, no!”

Dong-hui snapped back to her senses, pressed the button again, and got safely inside. Anyone at all could have opened that door, and still, just being inside a building was an enormous relief.

Everything was exactly as it had been when she used to work her shifts here. The lights blazed, the chilled cases stood packed without a gap, every sort of instant meal and drink lined up in tidy rows and columns, and the shelves were full of snacks and ramyeon.

“Boss?”

Dong-hui went over to the counter, poked her head around it just in case, and called for the boss, carefully.

The window had come back and floated the sentences up without a sound. The last one, the one with the question mark on it, was noticeably smaller than the rest.

What’s that?
That tiny writing?
Don’t tell me it’s doing that because it thinks I won’t be able to see it?

“I am not slow, thank you very much. I only called out on the off chance!”

The instant she said it, the tiny writing got hastily wiped away. She was talking a big game, but the moment it landed on her that there was nobody here except herself, the fear she thought she had shaken came creeping back.

Still, she hadn’t come all this way to leave empty-handed, so she summoned her Inventory. She had emptied it out before setting off, and it hung there completely bare. Part of her had expected the bag shape again; it hadn’t come back that way.

Dong-hui picked a chocolate roll off the shelf and held it up to an empty slot. With a whoosh the bread was gone from her hand and there inside the Inventory instead, sitting solid and opaque.

“No matter how many times I see it, it’s amazing. But is this really all right?”

Guilt over the first theft of her life was just welling up when the roll she had stowed a moment ago reappeared on the shelf, as though none of it had ever happened.

“Huh? Did I not put it in?”

Figuring nerves had muddled her, Dong-hui picked the chocolate roll up again.

“It’s in there, though?”

The roll was already sitting inside the Inventory.

“Ack! Wh-what! Why is it still there!”

The one she had taken off the shelf was back in its place, not a single crease in the wrapper, as though nobody had ever laid a hand on it.

“No way. That’s insane!”

She was looking straight at it and still couldn’t believe it, so she fed that same roll into the Inventory again.

The bread came back.

She stowed it again, faster than before, and this time held her eyes wide, staring at the empty spot. Nothing came back.

“What’s going on? Is there a limit on how many times it can come back?”

Her eyes stung from being held open so long. She blinked, quick and sharp, and the bread was there again.

The whole thing worked like a staring contest. Nothing appeared while she held her eyes wide and watched, and in the split second she closed them the gap filled itself right back in.

Next she slotted in a strawberry bread and a cream roll as well, one after the other, and in the blink of an eye both empty spaces were filled exactly as they had been at the start.

“Whoaa…”

She was still marveling at the bizarre system when the window turned up in front of her eyes again.

The information had been updated.

“The Activity Radius changed to two.”

The convenience store must have been added to the one basement studio to push it up to two. She wondered how high each of those numbers could go. Reading calmly down the panel in case she had missed something, she caught a line in the Traits field that had turned up with a star clamped onto it.

“Somewhat obsessed with chocolate rolls? Me?”

She must have earned that one by grabbing the same thing over and over, all because the way the vanished bread kept reappearing had fascinated her.

No, that’s a misunderstanding.
I am not obsessed with chocolate rolls.

Dong-hui shook her head hard, then decided the gesture was pointless and walked out of the store.

“Well, at least I won’t be going hungry.”

Walking off with food that still had ages left on its expiration date felt strange.

And leaving without even paying for it, no less.

Her conscience pricked, and she glanced back at the counter. It was as empty as ever, nothing on it but the garish blue, tacky store vest she used to wear, hanging there all by itself.

“My lady, what on earth is all this?”

Delma had come back into the room, and her eyes went round at the breads tossed across the bed.

“Hm? Ah… It’s nothing much. Want to try one?”

Before Delma could start wondering where the bread had come from, Dong-hui tore a chocolate roll open and thrust it out in front of her face. The wrapper split and a sweet smell rushed out into the air.

Delma swallowed without meaning to and reached out a hand, then hastily took a step back.

“To give something so precious to me — I couldn’t possibly.”

Even shaking her head, Delma was so bewitched by that sugary smell she couldn’t take her eyes off the dark little chocolate roll.

“Precious, my foot, when there are that many. And precious or not, of course Delma gets one!”

Delma’s sparse, pale eyebrows drooped right down as though the words had overcome her, and her eyes filled with tears.

“My lady…”
“Go on, eat it. Hm?”

She pushed the bread a little closer. Delma hesitated a moment, then took it respectfully in both hands and looked up at Dong-hui once more, as though asking permission.

Only when Dong-hui grinned and nodded did Delma finally take a bite.

The moment the chocolate roll was in her mouth, Delma’s eyes doubled in size.

“This is the most delicious bread I have eaten in my life. So soft—!”

Having got that far, Delma took another bite out of it. Her cheeks bulged and worked as she chewed. Once they had settled back to normal, she went on in a voice thick with feeling.

“And so sweet—!”

She took one more bite, and her eyes actually welled up.

Watching Delma come apart over one measly 2,000-won roll, as though she had been handed the whole world, left Dong-hui feeling strange. She felt as though she had turned into someone remarkable.

“It is the taste of heaven!”

Delma, who had polished the whole roll off in four bites, squeezed her eyes shut and said it like a prayer.

Something about it tugged at her, so she pressed a chocolate roll, a strawberry roll and a cream roll into Delma’s hands, one of each.

“Have these too.”

The look on Delma’s face as she took the bread was pure happiness.

That was when it happened.

A red heart the size of a 500-won coin rose up over Delma’s head, then burst with a pop, the way a soap bubble does.

Huh?
What was that?

Dong-hui hurriedly called up the status window and checked the estate residents’ favorability.

The favorability had gone up by ten points. The whole thing had happened so fast that she had half assumed she’d seen it wrong, but apparently not. That dainty little heart over Delma’s head must be the marker that showed up whenever favorability rose.

She had worked out how to raise favorability, but the road ahead was still impossibly long.

So giving people something tasty really is the best way?
Four pieces of bread for ten favorability, though.
Isn’t that terrible value for money?

“My lady.”

She was mulling over how to raise favorability faster when Delma’s cautious voice reached her.

“Hm?”
“Would it be all right if I shared this bread with the others?”
“Of course. It’s Delma’s. Oh! Here, take these along and share them out too.”

Dong-hui pulled a few more breads out of the Inventory and held them out. A heart rose up over Delma’s head and burst with a pop.

This one was twice the size of the last.