Touring a Rich Family's Home
"Seoha! Show us around your house!"
Thankfully, Yeoncheong's anger seemed to have cooled, because Suyeon — who had said she was going to wash up — walked right past the two friends sitting shoulder-to-shoulder without a word of complaint.
After all, Seoha had said the tour could wait. Between the washing and the drying, there was plenty of time left before they'd have to return the clothes.
"I suppose we could."
Seoha rose from the bed and made to leave the room, but Suyeon blocked her path. Then, wagging her index finger, she shut the door again.
"Obviously you start the tour with your own room!"
So the teary moment the two of them shared earlier had been an act, was it?
Yeoncheong marveled at her friend's rapid recovery, while Seoha smiled awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable.
"Hmm... there's not really much to see in my room."
"That's not yours to decide, is it?"
The first place Suyeon headed was the desk.
"If there's anything naughty in here, you might want to hide it right ab—"
Grinning as she said it, she ended up reacting exactly the same way Yeoncheong had when she first laid eyes on the desk.
"Whoa... Seoha, do you do nothing but study at home?"
Reference books and workbooks packed in tight rows. Sticky notes clinging everywhere a hand could reach. And in one corner of the desk, the traces of the studying she'd been doing moments ago sat piled high.
It would have been strange to expect any other reaction.
Realizing at a glance that there was nothing fun here, Suyeon quietly looked around instead.
The expansive walls were spotless, without so much as a single nail hole, and the lone stuffed animal in the room was one Yeoncheong had won for her from a claw machine long ago.
Unlike Yeoncheong, who had ended her search there, Suyeon asked permission (it was really more of a notification) and rifled through the closet and drawers — only to come up empty-handed yet again.
"Hng... there's seriously nothing here."
With nothing to hide, Seoha simply waited until her friend had gotten it out of her system before speaking up.
"See? I told you there wasn't. I'll show you somewhere else. Let's go."
"...Yeah."
And so the owner of the room shooed her two friends out, and for two girls of modest means, the grand house tour began.
The tour started on the second floor, where Seoha's room was.
"Ahh~ so this was the bathroom you two washed up in."
As Suyeon looked around the bathroom, she pointed at the wall off to the side.
"Then what's that place for?"
"Is that a room too?"
With no door handle, neither of them had noticed it at all.
"Yeah. That's a sliding door, see?"
Only then did the small groove that served as a handle catch their eyes, and Yeoncheong knocked on the wall to check if it really was a door.
Thud, thud.
A hollow sound. Meaning there was space behind it.
"It's something like a storage room. There's nothing worth seeing."
"What do you mean, 'something like'? Don't tell me it's a safe or some... Huhhh!?"
Suyeon sensed something off about the way the owner was glossing over the explanation.
She seized the tiny gap and slid the door open — revealing a vast array of clothes and bags.
On behalf of her bug-eyed friend, Yeoncheong gestured at the room, and Seoha nodded sheepishly.
"...It's my walk-in closet."
A walk-in closet.
A dedicated space for storing and organizing clothes, bags, shoes, and the like.
In a house this enormous, it wouldn't have been strange to have one at all... except this was the walk-in closet of one girl, and that was the shocking part.
Suyeon wandered inside as if entranced, looking over the clothes filling every direction.
"Th-then your parents have their own closet too?"
"Yeah. Their room has an ensuite bathroom, and next to it is one about... twice this size?"
"Hnnngh..."
Was it the freshly renewed sense of wealth? Or was it simply that every girl on earth dreamed of a closet like this?
Leaving her friend swaying as if drunk on pure concentration, Yeoncheong measured the space with her hands and let out a sigh of awe.
Even if I put every single piece of clothing I own in here, it wouldn't fill half of it.
It struck her anew — girls really do have so many clothes.
"There's not much to see here either. Let's go."
But just as Seoha said, the walk-in closet was ultimately nothing more than a slightly oversized private wardrobe.
Thanks to her friends, Yeoncheong had developed an interest in wearing pretty clothes, but browsing clothing itself was something she never took to, so she stepped out of the room first.
"I wanna look around a little longer, though..."
With two of the three already out the door, the reluctant Suyeon drank in the sight of the closet until the very last moment before following.
And then...
Phew... she didn't notice, right? If she'd caught it just now, Yeoncheong would have definitely made me return it.
Seoha stole a glance at the box hidden in the corner of the closet and let out a sigh of relief.
On the half-torn shipping label, the product name read: "Maid Outfit."
As mentioned before, the second floor held Seoha's room, her parents' room, the study, and a number of other private spaces — the kind of places that felt a bit awkward to ask to see, however curious they were.
So once they finished with the closet, the two of them followed Seoha downstairs.
"You're telling me this is the junk storage? It's a treasure vault, not a junk room!"
They got a look at the storeroom from which Seoha had brought supplies back when decorating the club room.
"Wow... I've only ever seen a TV like this in a showroom."
"At this size, I wouldn't even notice something walking across the edge of the screen..."
Their jaws dropped at the colossal TV that claimed an entire wall of the living room.
They rolled around on the sofa, declaring it nicer than the beds back home — then collapsed in shock upon learning its price.
"This is a room my mom built as a hobby. It's got such a nice atmosphere that I sometimes come here to relax."
They went numb hearing that an entire room had been gutted and remodeled for the sole purpose of listening to music.
They cackled at the strange painting on the wall — even I could paint that — then fell dead silent when they learned what it actually was. The surprises just kept coming.
Seoha never volunteered the prices, but one had to wonder what kind of furniture a truly rich family kept. Unable to restrain her curiosity, Suyeon enlisted the power of the internet, and Yeoncheong found herself gasping at every turn. Eventually, Seoha confiscated her friend's phone, ordering her to stop looking up prices.
Suyeon grumbled about having her phone taken, but thanks to that, she was at least able to gaze upon the Seoha household with unclouded eyes for the rest of the tour.
After a trip to see the yard visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the three of them stopped by the spacious kitchen, where the housekeeper was busy preparing dinner.
"Holy... crap. This is insane."
They'd been stunned by the giant TV, the priceless paintings, and the "junk" storeroom that was anything but — but nothing compared to Yeoncheong's reaction at this very moment.
"Oh my god... ma'am. What is this used for?"
Yeoncheong looked positively giddy as she explored the kitchen.
She'd been in charge of the household since living alone with her father, so she'd always had a keen interest in cooking, and with all the free time her independent life afforded, she'd taken to experimenting with new recipes as well.
Cooking had become half a hobby for her, so the reaction was only natural.
Suyeon, meanwhile, watched her friend and couldn't suppress an inward snort.
So that was the friend who had so firmly comforted her — the one who supposedly was a man until just a year and a half ago.
Just as Yeoncheong had marveled at Suyeon's quick recovery, Suyeon too clicked her tongue at the sight of a friend who flipped between man and woman, heaven-born girl, at will.
"Yeoncheong, you'd honestly suit going down the culinary path, you know."
"Right? So I'm not the only one who thinks so."
Even Seoha chimed in in agreement, but Yeoncheong shook her head.
"Hmm... I think it's best to leave hobbies as hobbies. When something you love becomes your job, sometimes it just stops being fun."
She'd had that thought herself more than once, so the answer came without a moment's hesitation.
Still, perhaps she found her friend's talent a shame to waste.
Suyeon stuck out her lips and muttered.
"But... the food you make is delicious, Yeoncheong."
Maybe it was because she heard her own name — who knows how, but Yeoncheong caught even that tiny murmur.
She asked the housekeeper if she could peek inside the refrigerator, then licked her lips admiring the ingredients within.
"Hearing that from you two is more than enough for me."
More valuable than any acclaim from the world — a single word of praise from these two...
The casually tossed remark might as well have been a bomb.
The once-tranquil lake of their hearts lurched violently, and without needing to decide who went first, both of them busied themselves looking anywhere else. Meanwhile Daengcheongi, blissfully unaware of what she'd just done, closed the refrigerator and asked,
"By the way, Seoha — are your parents coming home today?"
"Huh...? No."
Seoha, who had been awkwardly fidgeting with random objects nearby, shook her head.
Her parents, who apparently couldn't rest until they'd verified everything with their own two eyes, were away on a business trip abroad. There was no reason at all for them to suddenly come back.
"Then why did the housekeeper make dinner for three?"
Even assuming a truly enormous appetite, two servings should have covered it. At the mention of food clearly portioned for three, the housekeeper licked her lips.
"Ah. Well, I assumed the Young Miss's friends would be staying for dinner."
This was yet another situation no one had anticipated.
Apparently, by the time the laundry finished drying it would be dinnertime, so she had prepared portions for the two friends as well.
Fortunately, Yeoncheong, who lived independently, had no one to ask permission from, and Suyeon got her parents' blessing too — so no food would go to waste.
The two of them, changed into their own now perfectly dry clothes, sat down at the table and snickered.
"What a relief. I always felt bad hearing that Seoha's here all alone. Right?"
"Exactly. She's got such a kind housekeeper and chauffeur looking after her, after all."
The reason they were carrying on like this was the housekeeper, who, apologizing profusely, had rattled off the reason for her misunderstanding.
It had been years since the Young Miss last brought a friend home, she'd said — and weren't these the close friends she talked about all the time?
It offered a glimpse of just what Seoha had said about the two of them in everyday conversation.
And the sight of Seoha, her face blazing red as a boiled beet, waving her hands and begging them to stop — it was a spectacle to behold.
Rarely — or perhaps for nearly the first time ever — Suyeon and Yeoncheong joined forces to tease her, and Seoha carried on eating with her reddened face half-hidden behind her hand.
"J-just hurry up and eat, then go home. The sun's setting."
"Not sooooon~ it's summer, sooo~ it's got hours left before it sets~"
At Suyeon's deliberately drawn-out teasing, Seoha's red eyes shot them a fearsome glare. But her even redder face made it decidedly less than scary.
Yeoncheong, too, with Suyeon as her solid ally at her back, licked her lips.
"You'd really prefer we rush off? When do you think we'd be able to come back?"
"If you don't come, I'll just kidnap you or something. Whatever."
The joke, which somehow didn't sound like a joke at all, made her flinch for a second — all the more so because she'd said something similar herself back at the sports festival, to Seoha pretending to be asleep.
Still, she couldn't let a rare opportunity like this slip by, so Yeoncheong pressed on, undaunted.
"You act all cold, but you're actually such a softie. It's thanks to having an adult looking out for you, isn't it?"
"......I won't deny it."
Seeming unable to muster any retort to that, Seoha buried her head low and kept eating.
Yeoncheong finished her dinner while committing her friend's adorable state to memory, and just as Suyeon had predicted, they made it home before the sun went down.
After spending the last weekend of May on the river cleanup, the calendar page turned once more, and June announced itself.
The June Mock Evaluation — open to high school seniors and repeat test-takers alike, sometimes called a preview of the college admissions results — had come to an end.
While her classmates laughed and cried over the released answer key, Hasol noticed Yeoncheong sitting in a daze, having finished recording the score to submit to the school. Even as Nayun brazenly peeked at the results right beside her, she made no move to stop her.
"What's wrong? Didn't the score turn out like you hoped?"
"...Huh? Wha?"
Whatever she was thinking about, her friend was several beats late to respond.
Could it be that her score wasn't just below expectations, but an outright disaster?
Hasol was about to offer comfort, saying that a mock exam wasn't everything...
"Hey, this isn't bad at all."
"Oh? Huh, you're right."
The score Nayun checked left a little to be desired, but it was a fair reward for all the effort Yeoncheong had put in.
Her score wouldn't keep climbing at this pace forever, but it was enough to suggest that betting everything on regular admissions hadn't been the wrong call.
"Oh. It's not about the score."
"Then why is half your brain on vacation?"
Whatever the reason, why was she dragging this out?
Yeoncheong turned her gaze pointlessly toward the window and licked her lips.
"There's a big... a big problem I need to take care of."