Kim Soyeon Harem
I threw on the hoodie hanging from the rack and left the naming office without a second's delay.
Now that the landlord had given her permission, there was no time to hesitate.
Presumably so she could come running the moment anything happened to her building, the landlord lived surprisingly close to the naming office.
At my usual pace the walk took about fourteen minutes, but I hurried along to escape the cold night wind, and in less than ten minutes her house came into view.
A two-story detached house with its own yard. The lights on the first floor were off, while on the second floor the silhouette of a woman showed faintly through the curtains, bustling about as if preparing something.
This is touching. Going to the trouble of preparing something for me at this hour….
I would have been grateful for breadcrumbs tossed my way, so being treated like an actual guest nearly moved me to tears.
"⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼." (Sob.)
Wiping away the tears welling in my eyes, I walked toward the front gate.
The gate was a massive slab of steel, shut fast. To the eye it looked like ordinary metal, but it had probably been through some magical treatment or other — the kind of metal that refuses to break.
I'd read on the internet that people who live in detached houses end up found as cold corpses by morning if they don't get their homes magically reinforced.
Really. Did you see me lie just now?
I ignored the creeping goosebumps and examined the gate. I was hunting for an intercom or a doorbell, anything to announce that I'd arrived.
Aha. Thank you, thank you.
With Yumin's help, I found the bell mounted on the wall beside the gate. There was a streetlight, sure, but it was nighttime and hard to see. Anyway, my eyes are not going bad from old age!
Ding-dooooong!!
The moment I pressed the bell, a chime worthy of a wealthy household rang out, and I watched the second-floor silhouette descend to the first.
[The door's open. Come in.]
The landlord's voice drifted from a small speaker beside the bell.
Creak.
At her word I gave the gate a gentle push, and the enormous steel door — for all its intimidating looks — swung open with surprising smoothness.
As I walked from the gate toward the entrance, something occurred to me.
Did I hear a door opening just now?
Normally there'd be a heavy clunk or an electronic beep when a door unlocked, but there had been no sound at all. Which meant the landlord had left the door open before I ever arrived.
What kind of confidence lets a person live with their door standing open?
A thief could slip right in, shashashak, and make off with everything, you know. And this is a woman living alone — wasn't that a shocking lack of crisis awareness?
Hm. She must have known I was coming and opened it in advance.
Right. That had to be it.
No matter how strong the landlord was, she wouldn't go about daily life with her front gate flung wide. And however good public safety in Korea might be, "good" only meant relatively good.
You never know when something might happen.
I was just beginning to seriously ponder the landlord's safety blindness when I reached the front door. The instant I brought my hand toward the handle —
BANG!
The door burst open and smashed straight into my forehead.
"Uwaaaahhh!"
"Huh?"
It hurt. I was fairly sure two hundred million brain cells had just perished. As I clutched my forehead and groaned in agony, the landlord hurried over and gently stroked it. Then she murmured a short incantation, and with a sparkle of light the pain simply flew away.
[Owww. It really, really hurts.]
"Sorry. I didn't know you'd be standing right at the door."
After that brief apology, the landlord offered an awkward little smile. Perhaps because she was dressed far more casually than usual, that small smile alone was enough to soothe me, body and soul.
Then, following her beckoning hand, I stepped inside her home.
"Is it tasty?"
Nod-nod-nod!
What the landlord had been preparing before I arrived was mini hamburgers — the kind where you split a dinner roll in half and pack it full of fillings.
In truth, apart from the hamburger personally blessed by the Hamburger God today, I hadn't eaten a thing. I was pretty sure I'd said I'd buy a hamburger after checking out that window shop, and then I'd simply gone straight back to the naming office.
Given Yumin's terrible fuel economy, I'd expected to be starving — but I wasn't. It was only the sort of hunger you get after going roughly thirty-six hours without food.
There was a time when I genuinely had no money and lived on nothing but water for three days straight, so I knew the difference all too well.
South Korea is a country steeped in capitalism and individualism. If you have no money, you starve. What can you do about it?
Thanks to those old memories, I rarely felt hungry anymore. Call it my threshold for hunger rising higher than other people's.
Which raised the question — just how much did Yumin eat, to leave me starving like that? I narrowed my eyes and glared at her. Yumin had no physical form, so I simply glared at the spot where she would plausibly be.
"Is it bad, maybe? Why that face?"
[N-no, nooo. It's delishious. Just some unpleasant memories came back….]
"Is that so."
Munch munch munch.
The landlord sat quietly and watched me the whole time it took me to finish the mini hamburgers. Normally that kind of attention would have felt pressuring and I'd have said something, but somehow, with her, it didn't bother me at all. It felt as if she were using some magic I didn't know about.
Magic that puts the heart at ease — I might actually be a little jealous of that.
"⎼⎼⎼⎼." (Ahem.)
Once I'd polished off the mini hamburgers, I studied the landlord's expression. She was smiling as ever, but I read her true feelings within that smile. She was clearly waiting for me to speak first.
Well then, no helping it. There was nothing for it but to tell the tale of how Lee Yumin magnificently defeated Goo Seoha, Korea's worst mage.
I took a sip of the milk she'd set out for me and displayed a line of text.
The landlord read my text slowly, then lifted the corner of her mouth in evident intrigue.
I winked one eye as I put up the next line of text.
"Sigh…. Goo Seoha…. How on earth did you end up crossing paths with that one?"
[It was a random encounter, Pocket Monster style. Just bad luck on my end.]
Honestly, I still had no idea why Seoha had come. What had she been trying to accomplish, spraying her mana everywhere? At first I'd simply written her off as someone angry, but the way she'd gone completely slack-jawed the moment she saw me suggested otherwise.
Hmmmmm.
Dunno. Annoying. Sleepy.
I displayed a text in front of the pensive landlord.
"Yeah, of course. That woman is practically a walking natural disaster — you coming away unscathed is a miracle in itself."
Hee hee. I asked where the bedroom was and dove straight onto the bed.
Pomf!
"⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼." (Aaaahhh.)
This is it. A person is meant to sleep in a bed, after all. Back when I lived with my parents I slept on the floor with bedding laid out, but these days the bed felt far more natural.
Taking in good aspects of Western culture is a good thing, no? For the record, I am not a cultural chauvinist.
"⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼? ⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼." (Who am I? Lee Yumin of the twelfth world.)
The Lee Yumin of the first world — the one who lived in Korea — fell into the river of the dead long ago. In effect, beds and mattresses were my native cultural heritage.
That said, I did wonder how foreign culture had ever spread as far as Korea. Mages fundamentally believed their own culture superior, yet they'd absorbed other countries' customs without the slightest resistance.
Well, they did bring in hamburgers, so that alone makes it a win. Foreign culture truly is supreme.
"⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼?" (So all logic converges on hamburgers?)
Correct. Like there's anything in this world more important.
Ah. Except my parents.
No matter how devoutly I believed in the Hamburger God, I had no intention of denying the Confucian tradition rooted deep in Korean soil. Freedom of religion must be guaranteed, after all.
Knock knock.
I was rolling around on the mattress when the landlord knocked on the bedroom door and let herself in.
"Yuna?"
But there was something strangely frigid in her voice. Like anger being forcibly held in check — anyway, this was absolutely not a good situation. I cautiously turned my head and met her eyes.
[Y-Yes?]
"You were going to get into bed without washing up?"
The instant I heard those words, I jolted upright and scrambled off the bed. And the moment my feet touched the floor, I dropped to my knees and pressed my head to the ground. It was my fault, after all.
Is my head actually broken? Yu · min · a?!
What was wrong with me! Now that I thought about it, I'd been feeling oddly foggy ever since Yumin moved in. Had gaining one more transcendent brain triggered an overflow, with intelligence leaking out the seams? Nothing else explained it.
[My sincere apologies. I was too tired to think properly.]
"⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼." (My sincere apologies. I was too tired to think properly.)
Anyway, I apologized first and foremost. At this rate, I really might get thrown out, just like Yumin said.
"Well, it happens. Go wash up quickly and get some sleep. I'll leave a change of clothes in front of the bathroom."
[Thank yooou….]
Truly, thank youuuuu….
"⎼⎼⎼⎼." (Whew.)
It felt like my first private soak in ages.
Well, technically I'd only washed at the office a single day ago, but still.
Doesn't matter!
That said, my memories of the bath were strangely blurry. Some kind of selective amnesia, I supposed. I clearly remembered going into the bathroom and taking my clothes off, and then — nothing. The next thing memory served up, I was sitting on the bench drinking banana milk.
Did I wash the whole time staring at the floor? No idea.
Hmmmmm.
I wrung the water out of my hair with a towel and went looking for the clothes the landlord had left for me. A glance around turned them up on the vanity in front of the bathroom: a white nightgown.
So airy. Fluttery and swishy.
What are you getting so worked up about?
I had absolutely zero intention of staging a protest — "A manly man like me doesn't wear this!!" She'd given me a house, food, and now clothes; fussing over it was out of the question.
And so I squeaked and squirmed my way into the nightgown. Having never worn anything of the sort, I fumbled a little at first, but once I worked out which holes were for arms and which for my head, it went on quite naturally. Though since the garment's original owner was the landlord, it did pinch a bit around the chest — wearable, more or less.
"⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼~ ⎼⎼!" (Ahem, ahem~ hyet!)
I'd meant to march straight upstairs and sleep, but it occurred to me that thanking the landlord for the bed came first. So I paused on my way to the second floor and headed for the lit living room below.
"Hm?"
"…Ah."
"Soyeon. Don't tell me you're throwing me away and trading up for that woman…?"
Who on earth was that?
Definitely not all there, from the look of her. An Upper Realm mage, probably.