Gallery Shop and the 5,001 Point Chicken

Making minor galleries turned out to be simpler than I expected. You typed in a name, picked a topic, designated the account that applied as the gallery owner, and that was it.

Three applications for the same gallery. Even after I'd posted the notice.

I left a reply on the top application.

A little while later, the two applications below it disappeared. At least people could take a hint.

I worked through the other applications one by one. Games, comics, fitness, cooking. Every time a new gallery appeared, people poured in as if they'd been waiting for it.

Posts started showing up in the South Korea Gallery too.

I browsed the board, reading through them one at a time, until a freshly uploaded post made me frown. The title alone told me exactly what kind of image was about to load. My finger stopped on reflex.

The post vanished before the thumbnail even rendered.

"Huh?"

It was gone even after I refreshed. A little later, the whole wave of spam posts with the same title got wiped out in one go. When I opened the moderation log, a neat column of deletion records I hadn't touched was stacked up inside.

"So it handles this stuff on its own."

Gratitude came out of me unbidden. I'd assumed that becoming a gallery owner meant getting an early preview of every cursed image humanity could produce. Thankfully, I didn't have to click through any of it myself.

That didn't mean I could just sit on my hands, though. Fights that broke out in the comments needed context before I could judge them, and gallery applications needed reviewing one by one. When I set up the cooking gallery, an application came in asking for a separate mint chocolate gallery.

The stated reason was short.

The place didn't even have ten posts yet.

Already, huh.

I pushed that application to the back of the queue.

By the time I came up for air from hammering away at the screen, it was already afternoon. When I straightened my back, it crackled like dry kindling. The points screen I'd left open for a quick break was showing a considerably different number than it had that morning.

Without a second's hesitation, I bought another chicken.

You had chicken this morning and you're having it again?

That was the kind of thing only someone who'd never tasted this could say.

This time, when the box appeared, I didn't shove it aside. I popped the lid, fished out the gloves first, and went straight for a drumstick. It was just as delicious the second time around.

At this point I had to discard the theory that the first one had only tasted good because I'd been starving. The chicken was simply insane.

Only after finishing a whole bird did curiosity about the shop's other foods kick in. If the chicken was this good, the rest couldn't be bad, right? I scrolled down the food list.

Gimbap, tonkatsu, galbitang. And below those, some unfamiliar names.

I zoomed in on the photo, then zoomed back out. It was probably a fish. Probably. Normal fish, however, did not come with that many eyes.

The next item was bread. At least, it was filed under bread. Blue light seeped out of the cracks running through the dark violet lump, and the description said not to slice it while warm — swallow it whole.

"Swallow that?"

Even the plate displayed next to it was bigger than my fist. I had no idea which country it came from, and I honestly doubted it was food from the same world I lived in. I was mildly curious what it would taste like. Not curious enough to find out with my own mouth.

"Let's just stick with what I was eating."

Back on the chicken screen, the familiar golden bird illustration greeted me. Yes. This is what food photography should look like. Scrolling past the product description, a small option beneath the purchase button caught my eye.

Sale? I tapped it, and three input fields unfolded.

"I can sell this stuff?"

According to the instructions, I could secure items with my own points, set whatever price I liked, and sell them to users. Sale items sat in inventory and were delivered instantly to whoever bought them. In other words, I bought from the shop and put it out in my gallery.

It was not a matter of stacking ten chickens in my room and shipping them by hand. If that had been the system, the whole thing would have died at step one — there was no floor space for it, and I had no idea where or how I'd even send them.

Sale proceeds landed in my points once a purchase completed.

But what were users paying with? I opened the buyer's guide. Rewards from events and designated activities, points granted by administrators. And then: top-ups.

Real money worked too. The explanation said you entered an amount in the top-up menu on your user screen and deposited it.

"Deposited to where, exactly?"

Was there a company running this? Who collected the money? I was curious, but my screen told me nothing. I looked over at the empty chicken box sitting beside me.

This was a gallery that produced chicken out of thin air. I figured deposits would sort themselves out. It wasn't like the system would understand my worrying about that part. For now, I decided to sell a small batch.

Chicken ran five thousand points a bird. Ten birds, fifty thousand. When I set the quantity to ten, my remaining balance popped up.

"Exactly ten, huh."

I couldn't have bought more even if I'd wanted to. If I priced them above five thousand, my principal came back with every sale — at ten thousand a bird, I'd pocket five thousand points of profit each time. Purely on taste, that price was a bargain. The problem was that nobody else knew the taste.

An admin who'd appeared out of nowhere, selling chicken of unknown origin — how many people were going to hand over money up front? I typed a number into the price field.

One point of profit per bird. Calling it a business would have been embarrassing. But it wasn't a loss — as long as the principal came back, I could restock, and if someone who'd tried it wrote a review, that was one more post in the gallery. Then comments asking whether it was really that good underneath, then skeptics and believers trading jabs. That was activity too. The margin might be pocket change, but if the chicken got the gallery buzzing, the points would flow.

I stocked ten for sale.

No box appeared in my room this time. Instead, the number 10 registered in the sale inventory. I left the listing open and wrote up a notice.

The comments rolled in.

I'd expected disbelief. What I hadn't expected was how many people were actually clicking into the product page. A little while later, a notification popped up.

"Oh."

Someone actually bought it. Money had gone in, an order had been placed, and points had landed in my account. I flipped between the sales log and the board, and before long a new post appeared.

I zoomed in on the photo. It was the exact same box I'd received, and the contents matched too. So it really did appear for other people.

It felt completely different from when I'd been eating it alone. Watching chicken sitting on a stranger's desk drove home, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all over again, just how bizarre the thing I had was.

Meanwhile the comments kept growing. One camp insisted the admin had paid a friend to write an ad; the other asked who on earth would go to these lengths to sell a five-thousand-won chicken. Under a comment about how scammers always said exactly that kind of thing, yet more replies piled up.

Another sale notification appeared. Then another.

The reviews after that got even shorter.

Chicken photos multiplied across the board. Bedroom floor, desk, kitchen table — every background different, every box identical. The people who'd first claimed one guy was posting with multiple accounts gradually moved on to other questions, asking the buyers where they lived or where the order button was. Eventually someone even uploaded a video shot from the moment they placed the order.

And still, one holdout swore to the very end that it was all an ad. He'd written three posts about it by himself at that point.

From where I sat, I was grateful.

The last bird had gone. Fifty thousand points spent, fifty thousand and ten returned. My profit from the entire enterprise: ten points.

And yet my balance was sitting far higher than it had been before I stocked anything. Someone wrote a review, someone asked about the taste. Right beside the comments screaming "scam" were comments grumbling that it had already sold out. While the crowd jostled and chattered, activity points kept pouring in.

I immediately stocked ten more. The moment the inventory filled, the people who'd been waiting snapped them up. This time I didn't even have to wait for the first sale.

Ten sold, then another ten. Then ten more. I wanted to load up a bigger inventory, but my money was tied up — while fifty thousand points sat on the shelf as ten birds, I couldn't touch them until someone bought them and the proceeds came back.

A post went up asking why I only released a little at a time, and reading a comment accusing the admin of deliberately stringing people along, I let out a hollow laugh. I was the one being strung along here. No starting capital, hello?

The one silver lining was that it wasn't just chicken buyers multiplying. People who'd posted photos of their chicken appearing out of nowhere on other sites drew in onlookers, and those onlookers arrived and started reading from the very first review. Comments demanded to know where the footage had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠doctored; people determined to verify it for themselves went hunting through the top-up menu.

The gallery was unmistakably louder than it had been an hour ago, and the activity points were stacking up just as fast.

After a few more rounds of selling ten at a time, I checked my balance.

Past the hundred-thousand mark.

"Twenty at a time now, then."

I changed the stock quantity to 20.

I hit confirm. The number 20 appeared in inventory. I thought I might finally get a moment to breathe — then a single refresh shaved the count down.

I couldn't just sit here staring at it, though. Minor gallery applications were still piling up, and I needed to find out whether there was any way to restore the old posts.

I dug back into the sale settings. Below the quantity field, there it was: auto-restock.

"Should've looked for this first."

I could set it to refill whenever inventory sold out. The restock interval was adjustable, and the cost came straight out of my points. Twenty birds sold meant 100,020 points came back; twenty thousand of those — no, a hundred thousand — bought the next twenty. I picked through the conditions one by one.

Every hour it would check; if it was sold out, twenty more birds. If stock remained, it waited until the next hour. At this level, there was no need for me to sit there mashing the purchase button myself.

I saved the settings and appended two lines to the chicken notice.

Only after posting did I finally set the phone down. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Notifications rang again in the seconds that followed.

The chicken was selling.

Even without me pressing anything.