Did We Get It...? - 1
Monday morning.
Aki woke up in the convenience store break room.
“Mm….”
Still wrapped in her blanket, she reached for the phone she had left beside her. It was a little after five in the morning. Outside the window, where the river breeze drifted in, sparrows were chirping.
Aki sat up.
…
After sleeping deeply through the night, her head felt a little foggy.
So she just scratched her cheek and sat there on the bed.
I fell asleep at ten last night. And still, not a single customer came in.... Are we really going with the manager to make donations again this week? Honestly, I do enjoy the charity stuff, since it feels like going out on a little trip... but...
Is this convenience store of ours really okay?
The thought left her uneasy.
It was a little lonely to think that the space that was ours might disappear.
…
But the worry faded almost at once.
To be honest, Seonwoo Taek was not the kind of person she needed to worry about.
If he’s as diligent as the manager seems, he must already have a plan. Or maybe he’s been doing well on the stock market the whole time...
Ever since he had returned to the convenience store, Seonwoo Taek spent any spare moment looking at stock charts on his phone. Red and blue numbers flickered and swung across the screen, but his eyes stayed calm.
- Manager, how’s the stock going?
- More or less well. Still within the margin of error.
- I see....
…
She didn’t know much about stocks or investing.
But she could not sense the desperate panic that usually belonged to people losing money.
I’m still the kind of person who worries about losing even a single won whenever money comes up. But the manager is always calm, always listening to what others have to say, always sharing whatever’s left over...
He gave to people in need.
He built a lovely room like this.
And always, with the same unruffled expression,
he seemed like a giant quietly standing guard behind everyone else.
He was the first person like that she had ever met.
Someone she could not help but respect,
someone she wanted to lean on....
…
How should she put it?
“He’s grown-up.”
She murmured it blankly.
“Even though he’s not that much older than me.”
And then, without meaning to, another thought surfaced.
“...Just like Bigman.”
That last part,
was really only in the realm of imagination.
It was something Aki found herself thinking about from time to time.
…
-Whatever you do, wherever you are.
[Whatever you do, wherever you are.]
-I’m rooting for you.
[I’m rooting for you.]
It would be nice if he and he were the same person.
From the standpoint of ordinary cause and effect, it was complete nonsense, and yet every now and then she indulged the thought anyway. So many extraordinary things had happened in succession that she felt like her brain had gone a little soft.
Even so....
If that were true, it would be so easy to repay that kindness.
“…”
Huh?
Repay it?
“With what...?”
Aki quietly covered her face with both hands. From her palms came a pleasant, warm heat.
“What a stupid fantasy.”
It seemed she still wasn’t fully awake.
Was she being influenced by what the church sister and the monk had said yesterday?
-Your boyfriend?
-You’ve already found your match.
And Seonwoo Taek had been right there beside her.
What expression had he worn when he heard that?
No....
What had she even felt herself, in the first place?
…
Once the fantasy began, it would not stop.
Me? And the manager?
Mm.
Mm....
Maybe not
so bad.
Then would I just keep living in the convenience store?
Mm.
Mm....
That, too, might not be
so bad.
“Mm.”
Aki let out a low groan.
Because of her ridiculous thoughts, she was now fully awake. And at the same time, a tide of self-loathing came washing in.
“Haa.”
...Honestly, that was just a joke from the adults. I’m not some middle schooler, swooning and spinning fantasies off a line like that. Besides, the manager is kind by nature.
Aki lightly slapped her own cheeks.
Smack.
Smack.
Then her inner self began to nag at her.
- Child, what are you doing at twenty-three years old?
- Your job is not to be the little troublemaker making the manager’s life difficult. You’re a VTuber, not some immature middle school brat. Go wash up, eat breakfast, and get to the company.
…
It was an oddly high-resolution scolding.
I can’t argue with that...
Following the voice in her head,
Aki quietly nodded and got up.
Then she went into the bathroom and washed up.
…
But before she left,
she looked in the mirror one more time.
…
It was just,
just her imagination.
*
Aki left the break room.
She packed up her bag and closed the door. Between the slowly narrowing gap, the cozy little space disappeared from view.
It was a secret base nobody else in the world knew about.
Creak—
A special secret base
only we knew.
A small smile surfaced at the corner of her mouth.
“I’ll come again.”
She went down the stairs without hesitation.
Out into the convenience store, where the morning sunlight glittered.
There was a blue sky above,
and beyond it, the gently swaying view of the Han River.
And there he was, seated at the outdoor table.
“!”
Seonwoo Taek had already come out and was drinking his coffee absentmindedly. He looked up at Aki with slightly dazed eyes. Always as though his gaze were fixed somewhere beyond her.
…
…
She did not ask if he had rested well,
or if he had slept properly,
or if he wanted a cup of coffee.
Neither of them said a word.
…
…
With a snicker, Aki suddenly charged at him.
Like a rhinoceros,
she attacked Seonwoo Taek’s back with the brim of her baseball cap.
“Yah!”
Tok—
His back twitched. He looked at her in confusion, wearing the same face a chicken might make if it got hit on the head while eating.
“?”
“Hehe…!”
Aki broke into a mischievous grin and ran off. As she put distance between them, she waved her arms and called back, “I’ll come again!”
…
Seonwoo Taek took another sip of coffee and answered, “Yes. Take care. I’ll see you on Friday.”
“Hehe.”
“?”
Aki smiled with quiet triumph.
I didn’t say what day I’d come.
What if she showed up on Tuesday and caught him off guard?
- No, Miss A-yeong, why on earrrrth—?!
- Fufufu! You’ve been had—! In fact, I had a free slot in my schedule on Tuesday all along—!
- Eeeh?! Naniii—?!
Hahaha.
All frolicsome and theatrical.
The two of them would put on a little sketch.
“Pfft. Maybe he’d actually go along with it...”
That tiny fantasy alone
made it feel like a win to catch Seonwoo Taek off guard.
It was a pleasant way to begin the week.
*
Before going to the company,
she came for her final pronunciation lesson.
The pronunciation coach told Aki, smiling with obvious satisfaction, “You’ve improved incredibly in just one month. Did you live in Korea for several years originally?”
“R-really? It doesn’t sound strange anymore?”
“No. The vowel sounds that are usually difficult for people who come to Korea for the first time from Japan, like ui and eo, and the final consonants, you were already handling well from the beginning. You’ve just become fully used to them over time.”
…
Mm....
In truth, that had been the painful result of relentless practice for Aki. During her trainee days, she had endured plenty of humiliation because her pronunciation had screamed “Japanese person” to anyone who heard it.
According to Mom, around last year I sounded like a foreign exchange student who’d lived abroad for a long time...
Just as she was thinking that, the pronunciation coach continued.
“The problem wasn’t pronunciation itself so much as something else.”
“!”
“Because you were so focused on the final consonants and the intonation, there were places where your tongue lifted a little too high. You know, palatalization? The issue was that you repeatedly stretched the sentence out while trying to correct that pronunciation. That was what made it sound like your pronunciation was awkward.”
“...Yes.”
Oof....
The coach replayed the lesson recordings again and again.
The files contained Aki’s pronunciation lesson content. One had been recorded on the first day, and the other on the last.
- And then she said, to me, to me... the thing he gave me was, um... a gift, full of lov...
- And then she said, the thing he gave me was a bouquet full of love and a jewel inside a box tha...
“But after you’d taken the lessons a few times, you started speaking much more smoothly, and that part improved a great deal. Compared to the beginning, your vocalization has also become much clearer.”
“!”
“I’m sure people around you have been telling you that your pronunciation is much better now. From here on, when you read long sentences, I’d recommend practicing how to break your breathing up as you speak. At this point, I’d call it the final stage.”
“Yes!”
Truthfully, only DoDam had been the one worrying about it, but...
- Oh, Aki-chan’s pronunciation really sounds like a local now.
- Reaally?
- Yeah, like a local who doesn’t care that her pronunciation slips a little.
- ...
Anyway,
it was nice to feel more confident!
Aki smiled brightly.
*
When she arrived at the company,
CEO Baek Su-cheol delivered some good news.
“The record label said they’d handle all the cover work themselves. They’ll bill the costs to the Big Plan side. If we set a date and bring it over, they said they can finish the follow-up work that same day.”
“!”
“!”
“!”
“!”
Personal cover song production.
The ABCD members each liked it in their own way.
Aki was simply happy to be starting cover work at last.
I’ve been doing song streams for ages, and if we go in the order of the songs that got the most requests, then the very first one we should work on is...
The financial aspect was what appealed to Choi Ye-seo.
“Haa, I’d been thinking about when to do this. I couldn’t get around to it because I was still calculating the money. This is really good news.”
“!”
The one who raised an objection was Kang Do-dam.
“A grievous wrong—!! And yet Lord Bigman has been with us all along!! How could you dare forget the glory of his benevolent carerrr—!!”
The one who stopped her was Kim Ae-ri.
“DoDam, we’re in a meeting right now...”
“Ah, sorry.”
And then DoDam apologized to CEO Baek Su-cheol as well.
“Sorry for making a racket.”
…
He raised his hand in response.
“Okay. Thank you!”
“!”
Kang Do-dam grinned.
“Four dollars?”
“Four dollars, thank you!”
“Damn it! He’s completely insane!”
Choi Ye-seo let out a small sigh.
“CEO-nim... you don’t have to play along with DoDam’s bits.”
“Huh? Ah, I’m in a good mood today.”
“Pardon?”
Baek Su-cheol laughed heartily. “Did I tell you my older sister is a shaman?”
…
Choi Ye-seo flinched.
This was bad.
The scent of secondhand stupidity was already in the air....
“My sister’s always had a sharp sense for these things. When she suddenly got possessed at twenty, she just holed up in the mountains and became a shaman. She still comes over to our place to eat now and then, though. Sometimes she even plays with my son...”
“Ah, yes....”
“Anyway, she came by yesterday too, and the first thing she told me was, ‘Your luck has finally opened up.’ That was the first time she’d ever said anything like that to me. My sister is the kind of person who’s strict to a national-level degree.”
“Ah.... I see.”
“And I was in such a good mood that as soon as I got to the company, I looked up the keywords from our PC cafe special stream last week. And I uncovered an astonishing fact.”
“An astonishing fact?”
Rustle—
Baek Su-cheol pulled out an A4 sheet and smiled.
“We beat Romantic Drive completely in average concurrent viewers over the whole weekend.”
“!”