The Hidden Shop

The heart was twice the size of the one before, and it shone brighter, as though someone had just put fresh batteries in it. Dong-hui called up the favorability inside her head and waited, pulse fluttering, for the screen to come floating up in front of her.

It had gone up a whole forty points.

Dong-hui had braced for twenty at the outside, double the last one, and the number came in so far above that she nearly shouted “Awesome!” out loud.

I don’t think even guessing right on a test question ever felt this good.

She checked the figure over and over, forty points up from where it had started, a satisfied little smile on her face.

“So I can get points off the same person more than once, is that it?”

Delma had walked out of the room only a little while ago, cradling all five pieces of bread she had been given like treasure.

— Ding! Ding! Ding!

The alert chimed out of nowhere, ding, ding from every direction, and with a small lag between each one, the line about favorability rising kept coming back up.

There was no sign of the heart from earlier. That was hardly a surprise with nobody in the room but herself, and still Dong-hui spun in circles on the spot, trying to work out what was going on.

“What is going on here?”

She was still blinking blankly, none the wiser, when the nanny came striding into the room, face flushed red and beaming. The woman had gone out with her hands full; she came back empty-handed.

“My lady, you have no idea how pleased the servants were with the bread!”

Delma rattled it out a full octave above her usual voice, and only then did Dong-hui understand what had happened. The nanny had gone and done for her the very thing she should have done herself, and was as overjoyed about it as if the praise had been her own. Delma was so worked up that the heat pouring off her carried straight across the room.

Dong-hui could feel how deep Delma’s affection for her lord ran, and guilt came surging up. None of it had been her choice, and still it felt as though she had stolen someone else’s body and was deceiving them all.

Delma had come in with her face lit up, and seeing her lord’s expression fall, she worried that she had made a mistake.

“If my lady tells me not to hand them out, I won’t do it again.”

The nanny got the words out while stealing wary little glances at her, and Dong-hui came to herself with a start and broke into a bright smile.

“No, no — I should have been the one handing them out. Thank you. Did they really like them?”

Dong-hui’s face brightened so fast that Delma smiled along, relieved, and nodded hard.

“Yes! They said it was the first time in their lives they’d eaten bread this delicious, and they were so pleased.”

Delma had never once heard the household staff speak well of the lord, and that made today all the more special to her.

Take good care of our Chloe. There is no one but you I can trust.

The Marquess had not been able to close his eyes in peace, not with a daughter who had to inherit the lord’s seat at such a young age. He had made the request with his hand already going cold in Delma’s own.

Her heart had been heavy all this time with the feeling that she had not kept his last words properly, and only today did it lighten a little. Lady Chloe had never given a thought to anyone but herself, and today, for the first time, she had looked after someone beneath her.

Delma pressed the welling tears away with the back of her hand and smiled wide. On a day as happy as this one she could not go putting on a tearful display and inviting bad luck.

Dong-hui, meanwhile, checked the figure that had shot up in an instant, and excitement came to a boil all through her. The number climbed even when she was not the one handing the bread over.

Maybe turning that monstrous number into a 1 is going to be easier than I thought.

Now that it seemed doable, she itched to get at that score and break it. It would be a nuisance, but a few trips in and out of the convenience store ought to bring it down to 1 without much trouble. She was still vaguely working out how much bread that would take when the status window popped up in front of her, unbidden.

“Now, my lady, we can’t have your dress getting creased. Let me smooth it out nicely for you.”

The nanny patted the slightly creased hem of Dong-hui’s dress flat with her palm, taking care over it, and all the while the status window went on spilling out one line after another.

Yes.

Dong-hui answered, her heart thumping with anticipation.

“Oh, you little—! That is not okay!”

The unannounced deduction had Dong-hui shouting before she knew she was doing it.

“Pardon?”

Delma, who had been happily fussing over the dress a moment ago, blinked and asked slowly, wearing the look of someone unjustly accused.

“No, not Delma.”

Embarrassed by the rough words that had leapt out of her, Dong-hui laughed it off and gave a clumsy wink.

Oh my god, this status window is a complete con artist.

They were points she had not had a moment ago, and still she could not shake the feeling that she had just been shaken down by something that was not even a person.

And then it sent a status window she had never asked for floating up in front of her eyes. The blue of it stained her whole view without warning; Dong-hui frowned at it for a moment, then went wide-eyed at a row she had never seen before.

mp?

“What is that?”
“The back of your dress was creased. There, it’s all done now.”

Delma, thinking the question had been meant for her, answered kindly and patted the back of the dress smooth.

“Th-thank you.”

She had been thanking Delma, but this time the status window answered instead, as though it were nothing at all.

Maddening as it was, she decided to let it go for now. A row appearing where none had ever been before left her uneasy, and the sense of having been ripped off had put her thoroughly out of sorts.

Then came a long riffling sound, and a screen she had never seen before unfolded across the status window. Dozens of long rectangles lay down one after another, corners shivering like dragonfly wings, then snapped into line from the bottom up, and neat lettering appeared.

“My lady, it’s time for you to be off. Today you’re to get down out of the carriage and take a proper look at where the estate’s residents live, all right?”

With the status window and the nanny both talking at once, Dong-hui could not hear herself think.

“Not now.”

The status window winked out with a pop at her words, but the nanny opened her eyes round as jawbreakers and heaved a sigh deep enough to sink the floor. The woman who a moment ago had gazed at her fit to burst with pride was nowhere to be found; the look she turned on Dong-hui now said, not this again.

“If not now, then when exactly are you going to look around the estate?”

The nanny had taken words meant for the status window as words meant for her, and she launched into her nagging. There was no real edge to her voice, though. She was coaxing, cajoling, trying to talk her lady around somehow.

“That wasn’t aimed at Delma.”

The woman’s concern was so plainly sincere that Dong-hui felt somehow sorry. The Hidden Shop, at any rate, she could open whenever she wanted.

Suspicion still filled the nanny’s eyes as she looked at Dong-hui, but perhaps because of the bread earlier, it did not last long.

“Then who were you…”

Delma let the words trail off, her eyes darting around the empty room where there was nobody at all. Her face said she was worried her lady was about to play another one of those ridiculous pranks, like before.

“I was just thinking to myself.”
“Really?”

Only then did Delma’s face clear; she opened the door and gave Dong-hui a sunny smile.

“My lady, it is time to depart.”

However she looked at it, Delma was closer to a secretary than a nanny.

Dong-hui walked out of the room that had been in chaos all morning, putting her thoughts quickly in order.

First things first — I need to focus on getting the estate residents’ favorability up.

If she raised a lot of points in a short span the way she just had, she might be able to earn more Hidden Points. She still had no idea what those points could actually do, but it had said she could buy something with them, so she reckoned things would at least end up far better off than they were now.

— Bzzt.

— Bzzzzt, tss-tss-tss…

In the empty room Dong-hui and the nanny had left behind after all their morning bustle, a quiet noise sounded. It was small enough that anyone not listening closely would have walked straight past it.

A few sparrows perched at the window made as if to come in through the open casement, then swiveled their heads about and fluttered off outside.

Above the neatly made bed, dozens of finely split squares of light rose and vanished, rose and vanished, at no regular rhythm. The light kept welling up out of nowhere and stained the white bedding a wavering blue. Three or four fragments became five or six, and the five or six split into dozens before merging into one and rippling.

At last the gathered mass of light changed into the shape of an enormous status window. It was bigger than the quilt covering the bed, and yet it held only a single line of text.

With nothing recorded on it but that flat pair of numbers, the status window crumpled and warped and stretched out long, top to bottom. It went on stretching like bread dough until it flared bright enough to stain everything around it with light, and then it spat out a single person.