Side Story: Valley Pension (2)
Side Story: Valley Pension (2)
".....Hey, Lee Min-ho."
"Huh?"
Lee Min-ho was lying on the sofa, cuddling Pipsqueak.
His little sister was supposed to arrive soon, but there he was, just rolling around lazily.
Sure, some people prefer being indoors to playing in the valley...
But isn't that kind of freedom only granted when you've finished all your work?
"We don't have any charcoal?"
"Charcoal...? Now that you mention it, did I not buy any?"
"....Do you want to die?"
"That's seriously violent. You'd kill a friend just because of some charcoal?"
I had been organizing our supplies when I noticed there wasn't any charcoal to be found, so I asked Lee Min-ho, who had been in charge of buying it.
But the bastard who was supposed to buy it couldn't even remember whether he'd bought it or not.
The mistake was mine for asking a guy to do it.
Even if I'd instructed him to get charcoal, he'd be the type to show up with a single, lonely quick-light briquette.
What had I been thinking, trusting that guy to buy charcoal?
I had the flaw of trusting people too easily; that was my problem.
But without charcoal, we couldn't grill the meat...
Did we really need to make a trip to the store already?
"Hey. Stop playing with Pipsqueak and you guys try thinking of something too."
"We can just go buy some. Right, Jjomul? Why does your dad never leave his big brothers alone?"
"Mung."
"That's right, that's right. Our Pipsqueak."
"Pipsqueak is male. Lil' One, the one playing in the valley, is female."
"Ah. So he's the big brother then."
As expected of someone who raises dogs, his skill at cradling them was no joke.
If only he had used those skills to buy the charcoal properly, who would have said anything?
Actually, seeing how he got their sexes mixed up, maybe he was just an idiot?
I let out a sigh, opened the veranda door, and went back down to the valley.
A-ra and Minji were moving stones from the bottom of the stream to build a dam.
That's a fun activity.
It gets even more fun when you can actually feel the water level slowly rising.
But this wasn't the time for that.
We needed to eat soon, and we couldn't do that without charcoal.
"Noona~"
"Seong-hwan-ah~ Come on in!"
She was swimming in the valley in her swimsuit.
She'd said she was fine playing in just pants, but I didn't like the idea of showing my woman's body in front of other men.
Wasn't that just how it was?
I carried memories from the other world alongside these ones.
"Noona, this is no time for that! We don't have any charcoal at all."
"Charcoal? Wasn't Lee Min-ho-ssi supposed to take care of that?"
"That bastard said he forgot and didn't bring any."
"Aha~"
She nodded in easy understanding, then lay back in the water, lost in thought.
Just then, Arini, who was heading this way on her tube, launched a water assault.
Attacking her own mother with water—our Arini had more guts than I thought, huh?
Her dad had tried that once before and paid for it horribly.
"Seong-hwan-ah. Actually, I don't think we'll need charcoal."
"Huh? How are we supposed to grill meat without charcoal?"
"Well, I saw over there that they had a bunch of dried firewood. Honestly, that might even be better."
Dried firewood?
Well, it was a pension, so it made sense they would have collected dry firewood.
I went over to where A-ra had pointed, and there was a big pile of thick pieces of wood stacked up.
It was a bit disappointing that they weren't chopped into smaller pieces, but the inside looked like it had all dried properly.
When you knock on a log, if you hear a bouncy, resonant sound, it's well-dried; if you hear a dull thud, there's still moisture left, so it's not quite ready to use as firewood just yet.
Camping season was coming up soon, so I needed to make another firewood-related video. Since I'd discovered this oak firewood, maybe I should shift the direction toward oak wood grilling.
"What do you think? Pretty good?"
"It's good... with this, we might not even need charcoal."
"So, does noona get to play in the water more?"
"Yes. Have fun."
She didn't get to go on vacation very often, so she deserved to have fun.
But what had that Jeong Hwan-yi been doing with Hojun for a while now?
Hojun and Jeong Hwan-yi were strangely close.
They'd become friends partly because they ended up running the business Hojun had started together...
But the way they were, they were more like actual older and younger brothers.
Who would ever look at them and see business partners?
"Hyung~ Come on in and play too~"
"Did you come to the pension just to work? We're still a long way from eating, so just relax."
"Well...you're not wrong, but..."
For whatever reason, I couldn't feel at ease until I finished everything that needed to be done.
Hadn't I just discovered the missing charcoal while organizing the stuff we brought?
If I'd put it off and then suddenly realized there was no charcoal later, I'd have panicked.
"Then I'll go inside and rest for a bit too."
"You're not going to play in the water?"
"Later. Right now, I just want to lie down and soak up the cold air conditioner breeze."
"Alright then. We'll take care of organizing the supplies. Hojun-ah, let's go."
"Yes, hyung."
What had gotten into this guy?
He told me to rest, then said he'd handle the rest of the cleanup himself.
I was momentarily touched.
***
Ji-ye, Lee Min-ho's younger sister, who had been personally driven here by her chauffeur due to personal circumstances, had arrived, and now everyone was gathered.
Ji-ye started playing with Arini as soon as she arrived, and Hojun and I got right to preparing the meat for grilling.
Just as I was about to put the oak firewood into the barbecue grill with the thought of grilling the meat properly...
It suddenly dawned on me that the oak wood wasn't actually chopped into pieces.
If I tried to put those whole chunks in, they wouldn't even catch fire.
So naturally, we'd need to split them, but... I didn't know how to split firewood.
"Should I call Minji over? I saw her before, and she really knew how to split firewood."
"Where did you see that?"
"When the two of us went on a trip."
"....Really? Where did you go?"
"A pension... but why are you asking about that?"
"No... well, I'm an oppa now, so can't I be worried and ask?"
"Hey. All of that is just you butting in, you punk."
I wasn't sure you were in any position to say that to me, Lee Min-ho.
Anyway, I sighed as I watched Lee Min-ho walk off with light steps, saying he'd bring her over.
"Jeong Hwan-ah."
"Huh?"
"Those two...they've done it, right?"
"Of course. Who in this world hasn't by this age."
"Haah...yeah, you're right."
In my case, I'd married A-ra in high school, so I'd already gotten it over with back in high school.
Minji was twenty-seven, so saying she shouldn't do it would be pure bullshit.
"Hey. Instead of worrying about Minji, worry about Hojun. He's way too popular, you know?"
"Well... with that much money, it can't be helped."
Hojun kept succeeding at his business, so he had a massive amount of money that didn't match his age at all.
It was less than mine, sure, but it had surpassed the Young and Rich level by a long shot, I guess?
So, I worried that people of poor character might approach him for the wrong reasons.
Because a guy as genuinely good as Hojun was hard to find in this world.
"A rich man... yeah, I can feel the romance there."
"Didn't you make some money being a business partner too?"
"Well, I did. I've already got enough money saved up in the bank to live on for life. Enough to live comfortably and even splurge."
Considering most people around twenty-eight usually only had about twenty or thirty million won in their bank accounts, we could honestly say we belonged to a group with a lot of money.
Because our steady monthly income was ridiculously huge.
As we were having that conversation, Minji came this way, completely soaked so that her inner layers were visible.
Maybe because she was only wearing a white running shirt and white pants, her chest and private area were completely showing through.
This was the problem with girls.
They had no sense of embarrassment.
I tossed the thick, long towel I'd hung on the railing earlier over to Minji.
She caught it, giggled, and started wrapping it tightly around her body.
"Pay a little attention in front of men."
"We're all family, so what's the big deal~"
Minji grinned bashfully, asking what was so embarrassing in front of family.
So that was why she strutted around the living room in front of her younger brothers after a shower, I supposed.
If a man had done that, an incident would have broken out long ago.
"Minji-ya. I heard you know how to split firewood?"
"Ooh? Lee Min-ho oppa told you that?"
Minji seemed to know the source of the information in pretty precise detail.
It felt like something similar had happened before.
"You two went on a trip together?"
"We went on a trip. That's when I devoured Lee Min-ho opp... wait, that's not something I should say in front of men, is it?"
"Haah... since when did our little sister become so corrupted..."
"Hehe. Look how old I am now."
Minji sheepishly scratched her head in embarrassment.
Seeing her grab my hand and plop it on top of her head, I smiled wryly and gently stroked her hair.
"You are using birth control, right?"
"I don't have plans for a baby yet, you know?"
"Okay... It feels weird talking about this kind of stuff with my little sister."
"Same here. So? What about the firewood?"
"We don't know how to split firewood. And this kind of thing is women's work anyway."
"I guess that's true. Hmm..."
Minji picked up one of the big logs and dropped it onto the ground.
Then she raised the axe that was lying beside her and brought it down hard on the firewood.
Crack!
The sound of the wood splitting was extremely loud, and the piece of wood Minji had set down split into two pieces.
The only drawback, however, was that gravel went flying everywhere, slightly messing up the look of the area.
"Hmm... I'd better do it over there. Oppa, bring some of those wood chunks over here."
"Got it."
I did as Minji said, picking up the chunks and following behind her with quick little steps.
When I followed her around to the back, I saw a support stand, used for splitting firewood, sitting there all by itself.
"What the heck. There was one of these here."
"Oppa. I'll be here splitting the wood, so go and get the other stuff ready."
"Alright. Split as much as you can."
"Got it~"
Minji waved a hand at us and then got back to splitting the wood.
As expected, women were really good at doing physical work.