The Semi-Basement Door Opens
“Let’s open it.”
Ha Dong-hee stood in front of the front door and carefully pressed the four digits of her birthday that no one ever remembered.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The more the mechanical sounds repeated, the louder her heartbeat grew. Tension made her fingertips tremble as if she were doing something bad while avoiding people’s eyes.
And finally!
Click!
With the familiar sound, the tightness in her chest completely unraveled.
“It’s open!”
Dong-hee flung the front door wide with overwhelming joy.
She stepped inside without even looking back. The place had nothing shiny or new, but it was far better than being lost in a dream.
“Haa, thank goodness!”
The worn but familiar mat, the musty smell of the semi-basement studio.
It was far too vivid and detailed for a way to escape a dream, but she didn’t care.
A wave of relief washed over her. Dong-hee flopped down onto the mat, only to bolt upright again at the ticklish sensation of hair brushing her ear.
Long, glossy chocolate-colored hair cascaded smoothly downward.
“What the—!”
Even though she had returned to her studio apartment, her original short black hair was gone. The clothes she wore were the same ones from before.
Dong-hee turned her hands back and forth, examining them closely as she touched her hair.
Instead of the rough hands worn down by endless part-time jobs, delicate, slender fingers moved before her eyes like a miracle.
It was exactly the appearance of the girl who had been named Chloe Grace, the one who had found it natural to have servants attend her bath.
In a daze, Dong-hee stood up and walked to the mirror hanging on the wall.
She raised her arm while looking in the mirror. The girl in the reflection raised her arm too—still wearing the oversized bathrobe that hung loosely around her.
“What on earth is going on?”
Dong-hee decided to change her clothes first and then step outside.
When she took off the baggy bathrobe, her pale naked body appeared in the mirror.
“Whoa, what a figure!”
It was so stunningly beautiful that she forgot her confusion for a moment.
Dong-hee turned this way and that, admiring her bare body in the mirror, but she soon felt like a pervert and quickly put on underwear, jeans, and a t-shirt.
It felt surprisingly good that her usual jeans and t-shirt were now loose on her.
I hope this isn’t a dream.
She managed to squeeze her feet into socks, but the sneakers were ridiculously large. With no choice, she tightened the laces as much as possible to make them fit.
She was wondering how she would explain this at her part-time job when she grabbed the doorknob.
This is a deactivated area. You must complete a quest to activate it.
The status window floated up in front of her eyes again. It was the same blue window as before, but this time it somehow felt threatening.
A warning siren blared inside her head—beep! beep!
“What the hell!”
This isn’t a dream?
Dong-hee hurriedly turned on her phone screen. She needed to check the date first.
“What is this?!”
She threw the phone away as if she had been electrocuted.
Impossible numbers were displayed on the screen.
It was a date and time she had never seen in her life. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
Dong-hee picked up the phone she had tossed, feeling goosebumps as if she had touched a cockroach.
Her fingertips trembled violently as she turned the screen back on and tapped the internet app.
Instead of the familiar internet portal, the status window filled the entire screen.
This is a deactivated screen. You must complete a quest to activate it.
“This is driving me insane!”
No matter how many times she checked, nothing changed.
Dong-hee quietly placed her phone on the bed, pulled her knees to her chest, and hugged them.
With her eyes wide open, she buried her face between her knees. Her tightly clenched fists were full of hair she had anxiously grabbed.
Don’t tell me… the Earth has been destroyed?
It wasn’t as if she had family or close friends she particularly wanted to see. But the thought of the world simply erasing her like this terrified her.
Am I the only one left in the world?
Her head felt like it was about to explode.
She had gripped her hair so hard that her scalp stung.
“My lady! My lady! Where on earth have you gone again?!”
It was the voice of the nanny she had met beyond the door.
Her tone carried the weary exhaustion of a mother searching for a disobedient child.
This place, frozen with its strange numbers, and the world beyond the door where someone was alive and moving.
Unable to make sense of it, Dong-hee paced around before suddenly yanking open the refrigerator door.
She had worried everything inside might have spoiled, but fortunately the fridge was still cool.
With hollow eyes, Dong-hee stared into the refrigerator and took out an orange juice. She briefly wondered about the expiration date but simply twisted the cap off.
“Drinking something cold might wake me up.”
Dong-hee gulped down the juice that had turned ice-cold overnight.
It felt like her esophagus was freezing.
“Ugh!”
After finishing the entire bottle, her headache grew even worse.
She clutched her throbbing head, grimacing, when the status window floated up again.
As if it never tired, it cheerfully chimed—ding, ding—and persistently entered her field of vision.
Revive the Impoverished Estate!
📍 Description: A super easy quest! Go take a look at the ridiculously poor estate you’ve been given!
Chloe Grace, please inspect the territory assigned to you and see with your own eyes just how devastatingly poor it is. lololol
🎁 Reward: Increased number of activatable locations upon quest acceptance!
“What’s with the lololol?”
It is nothing. Please pay no attention. Would you like to inspect the devastatingly poor estate?
Accepting the quest will increase the number of locations you can activate!
Dong-hee was surprised that the status window reacted to what she said. But what shocked her even more was the last sentence.
“Activate? So that means I can open the front door and go out?”
Her eyes slowly moved to the tightly closed front door and then away. When she had thought she was trapped here, the world had seemed bleak and hopeless, but now a spark of hope had appeared.
Bingo! Hurry, hurry and inspect the devastatingly poor estate!
Dong-hee recalled the spacious, luxurious room beyond the wall.
There had been the nanny who cared for her with utmost devotion and the maid who had attended her bath.
“Isn’t that enough to make someone rich?”
She tilted her head and carefully compared the environment there with her semi-basement studio.
Right now, she couldn’t open the door to the semi-basement studio. There were no people here, but there were people there. Ha Dong-hee’s body had disappeared, and only Chloe Grace remained.
In that case, her choice was practically decided.
Without hesitation, Dong-hee stood up and opened the closet door.
The closet, which held only a few clothes, had far more empty space. She pulled out the largest bag she owned from the bottom of the closet.
The square bag made of waterproof material was a leftover promotional gift from the supermarket where she had once worked part-time. Made from a material similar to a picnic mat, it had quite a lot of space and could hold many items.
She looked around for things to put in the bag when the status window appeared once again.
Would you like to designate 'Bag 1' as 'Inventory (Level 1)'?
Benefit of Inventory designation: You can move items from activated areas to any desired location.
— Level 1 Storage: (0/50)
It seemed that only the items placed inside this bag could be transported to the other side.
“It’s called an inventory? So does that mean the base capacity is fifty slots?”
Dong-hee peered into the empty bag and tossed in a bottle of juice and a lighter.
But the items bounced right back out as if an invisible barrier had been installed at the bag’s opening.
Items can only be placed inside a designated inventory container.
It looked like she had to officially designate it as an inventory before she could store things inside the bag.
In that case, there was no need to hesitate.
“Designate Bag 1 as Inventory 1.”
'Bag 1' has been designated as User Chloe Grace's Inventory (Level 1).
After confirming that the status window information had been updated, Dong-hee put the items back into the bag.
This time they didn’t bounce out and settled neatly inside.
And as she added more items, the remaining number in storage changed accordingly.
Level 1 Storage: (2/50)
This confirmed that the base capacity referred to the number of items she could bring.
“If there’s a Bag 1, does that mean I can also designate Bag 2 and 3?”
Upgrades are not possible with your current level.
“So it means it’s possible later.”
Dong-hee packed the food from the refrigerator, the lighter, a kitchen knife, and the self-defense gas gun she had been carrying into the bag. The gas gun was something she had bought secondhand after a loan shark had burst into her home; she had searched the internet, feeling that she needed something to feel safe, and had made the big purchase.
It felt strange, like she was running away in the middle of the night. Even though she hadn’t packed many things, she quickly filled all fifty slots.
“Let’s go see just how devastatingly poor it is. It has to be better than my situation!”
Dong-hee slung the bag over one shoulder, took a deep breath, and pulled the front door handle with all her strength.
The damp air of the semi-basement studio seemed to tug at her from behind.
The moment her feet touched a different floor, the bag she was holding vanished without a trace.
“Huh? Where did it go? You said I could bring it! You said it was a usable inventory!”
The instant the word “inventory” left Dong-hee’s mouth, the bag appeared in mid-air like a status window.
Inside the bag-shaped status window, fifty square slots were neatly divided, and each slot contained the items she had taken from her studio apartment.
“Whoa!”
She lightly tapped the slot containing the half-drunk juice with her fingertip.
The juice bottle popped out of the translucent inventory screen and fell neatly into her palm.
“This is amazing!”
She stood there with her mouth wide open in astonishment at the scene unfolding before her when the nanny’s voice rang out.
“My lady! Where in the world have you been? And what on earth are you wearing?!”
The nanny, who had been searching for the missing Chloe, spotted her inside the room, let out a huge sigh of relief, and hurried over.
Just by wearing jeans and a t-shirt, Dong-hee had become someone dressed in bizarre clothing.
While she was wondering how to answer, the nanny’s frantic questions continued.
“Good heavens! You didn’t walk around in such a hideous outfit, did you? I can’t bear it!”
The nanny looked horrified and began quickly stripping off the clothes Dong-hee was wearing.