Danggeun and Donation
Danggeun and Donation
"Hmm..."
Lately, quite a lot of items had piled up that I no longer used.
There were low-quality pots with the packaging still unopened, and electronics I'd used once and never touched again.
When I bought them, I'd planned to use them frugally, but they didn't end up getting much use,
and the number of things that got used once before being thrown into storage had grown.
"Noona, you're not using this Bluetooth speaker, right?"
"Yeah, connecting it was more annoying than it was worth."
Far from serving as a speaker, that Bluetooth speaker had been reduced to a mere piece of interior decoration,
and it had gathered a bit of dust.
Poor thing...
I picked up the items that had been sitting there all alone, sat down on the sofa,
and started wiping the dust off with a wet wipe.
"Are you going to use it?"
"No, I was thinking of sending them off on Carrot."
"Carrot? What's that?"
"It's like a secondhand trading cafe that's focused on direct transactions."
"Hmm... so there's something like that. You're pretty knowledgeable about that kind of thing—are you a househusband or something?"
As she said that, A-ra, who had been stroking my hair, suddenly remembered something
and ran into the collection room.
That was the room where things like the racing simulator, cards,
and items A-ra treasured were kept.
Not long ago, she'd even bought a humidity-controlled display case and started storing the cards inside.
Well, considering a single card was worth several times the price of the display case,
I thought it was a rational and natural purchase.
"How about stuff like this?"
A-ra came out carrying a bunch of things
and held them out to me.
A VR headset, an unopened smartphone, a hi-fi DAC...
There were far more expensive items I was seeing for the first time than I'd expected.
"Where did all this stuff come from?"
"I got them from a company a while back, but they weren't any use to me."
"Given that, they seem like incredibly expensive things..."
They were all unopened, so they were brand new.
Anyway, if I'd known I'd get an unopened smartphone,
I wouldn't have needed to replace my phone.
"Will stuff like this sell?"
"Well... if you sell it cheap enough. But why are you selling these?"
"No particular reason?"
"......"
Well, it wasn't like we were selling things because we needed money.
A-ra just seemed to think of it as a 'game' and was going along with it.
"But is it okay to sell this? Didn't you say they were gifts?"
"Hmm... but they're things Noona doesn't need?"
"Then what should we do with the money from selling them?"
"You keep it."
"Got it."
Now, even if A-ra said she was burying a few million won in the ground, I wouldn't let out an exclamation.
To the point where I might believe it if someone said the 80 billion won buried under a ginseng field was A-ra's money?
"The weather's getting colder, so how about we use the money from this and a little of my own to make a donation?"
"If you're going to donate, do it with goods, not money."
"I know that. I might not look it, but I'm from an orphanage."
"That's right... sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry about. You're right, goods are better than cash."
Year after year, A-ra consistently sponsored and donated hundreds of millions of won to orphanages, nursing homes, and emergency centers,
making her something of an expert in the donation world.
There were absolutely no bad rumors or anything of the sort from the places A-ra sponsored,
and she always made the usage history of donated goods and the amounts completely public.
So, she sponsored orphanages and nursing homes with goods,
and donated cash to places like emergency centers.
In the latter case, the kinds of goods you could support them with were too limited,
so supporting them with cash was much better.
"How much does Noona donate per year?"
"A billion won?"
"That's really incredible."
"It's because Noona has a lot of income."
Yearly dividends and monthly rent from buildings scattered here and there...
Music copyright royalties and... ugh... it was so much it was hard to even think about.
They say the husband is supposed to manage the wife's money,
but if I had to imagine managing all that, my head would split open from a headache.
I should express my gratitude to the tax accountant and the asset manager.
"Then how much would be appropriate for me?"
"What was your total income this year?"
Most of it was Qtube income, and since the company took a large portion of the ad revenue, not much was left.
Since they managed all of that from the start,
it felt like free money falling into my lap, so I didn't really have any feelings about it.
The manager Noona had been happy, saying her incentives had increased like crazy.
"If you include all the ads... two billion won?"
Even I laughed as I said it, finding it absurd—a twenty-year-old just starting out in society, with an annual income of two billion won.
This was all because of Qtube, which was experiencing a boom for reasons I couldn't understand.
I didn't even upload two videos a month,
so why did people enjoy watching them so much?
"Then how about doing something around 50 million?
And, it's not good to just hoard everything without spending it, you know?"
"Isn't saving just a good thing?"
"You have to do your year-end tax settlement. If you don't spend it, you'll just have to cough it all up in taxes."
A moment of silence passed.
Setting aside whether I'd shed blood, sweat, and tears for it, I'd already paid all the taxes on the money I earned,
and now I had to pay even more tax just because I hadn't spent it?
"Ha... really? Then should I just buy a building or something?"
"That's why they say making donations isn't a bad thing.
If you donate, there are tax reduction benefits too."
"That's the first I've heard of that. But that only applies when you donate cash, right?"
"Yeah. You know your stuff."
This time, instead of my head, she stroked my cheek.
A-ra was smiling brightly.
It seemed like A-ra felt happy every time I learned something new.
"Then first, I'll put these up on Carrot."
"Okay. Let's sell those and buy some meat to eat."
"Meat..."
Well, we'd been eating nothing but seafood lately,
so it wasn't like we weren't getting a bit sick of it.
*
"Ugh... so noisy..."
After putting the items up and getting no messages, I lay down to take a nap,
but at some point, my phone started going off non-stop with 'Carrot' notifications.
Every time it finally quieted down and I tried to sleep again, the alerts would start up again,
and my irritation hit its peak.
So, thinking I might just delete the app, I checked my phone,
and several people had sent a ton of Carrot messages saying they wanted to buy.
"Wow... so there are people who buy expensive stuff like this on Carrot..."
I mean, something like the hi-fi DAC was an item worth over 4 million won.
The phone was also unopened, so it was an item well over 1 million won.
"Is it because this is the Seoul area? There must be a lot of rich people."
Reaching a strange kind of understanding,
I read through the received Carrot messages one by one.
[Is it sold? If it's not sold, please contact me.]
[Is negotiation possible? If you sell it for 300,000 won, I'll buy it right away.]
[I'm a student, so is there any way you could give it to me for free? ㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
In addition to those, messages asking to have it for free in exchange for sleeping with me once,
and all sorts of bizarre messages flooded in.
I take back what I said earlier.
It wasn't that the capital area had a lot of rich people; it seemed to have a lot of rather strange people.
"What the hell is this bastard..."
I never expected to see a message from one guy to another saying he'd sleep with him if he got it for free.
It was disgustingly revolting.
Couldn't this be reported as cyber obscenity or something?
"Ugh, too much trouble."
I didn't even want to look at it, so I long-pressed to block him and deleted the message.
Then, I clicked on the very first person who had sent a message and wrote a reply.
[When are you free?]
Since quite a bit of time had passed since their message, I figured the reply would be late
and lay down on the bed, but the Carrot notification went off immediately.
[I'm available right now! It's unopened, right?]
[Yes, that's right. You'd have to come to the front of our house, is that okay?]
[That's fine!]
Because it was an unopened item, the transaction proceeded smoothly and without fuss.
[The address is......, and please send a Carrot message when you arrive.]
[Yes. Do you prefer cash or bank transfer?]
[Bank transfer, please.]
[Understood.]
They said it would take about 30 minutes,
so I should wash up before going out.
***
"I managed to sell everything somehow."
Now I didn't know what to do or how to do it.
I had the money and a purpose, but I couldn't think of a way to carry it out.
No matter if it was an orphanage or a nursing home,
it wouldn't be right to just suddenly send goods.
And how was I even supposed to send those goods?
Did I need to load them onto a truck or something?
"A-ra Noona, please help me out a bit."
"This is something you should try doing yourself."
"But still... I don't know anything about this."
It would be hard for a young person just starting out in society to know how to donate by delivering goods directly to a center, rather than donating online.
"Then do you want to talk to the company and proceed that way?"
"The company?"
"The company could recruit volunteers who, along with Seong-hwan, would help choose the donation items in an event-like atmosphere, and then move them by van."
"That's a great idea! Really."
"Right? Actually, Noona was going to do it, but I held off because I thought a man doing it would be better for promoting donation culture than a woman."
I didn't know how effective it would be with me doing it,
but the idea A-ra came up with seemed pretty good.
Volunteering together with the viewers—just thinking about it made me feel good.
Would it be better to do the donation not under my name, but under the subscribers' names?
"Then first, I should contact..."
"Who? For something like this, you have to tell the Director first."
"Huh? Not the PD-nim?"
"The Director does a lot of personal donations too. Wait just a moment."
A-ra took her phone from her pocket and began calling somewhere.
But if the Director and even A-ra got involved, wouldn't this become too big of a deal?