The Great Air Conditioner Purchase
Not long after the six monsters made their noble sacrifice, Earth returned to something resembling normal.
In the middle of that restored everyday life, Mari lay sprawled across her bed in broad daylight on a weekend afternoon.
She had taught Siyeon how to use the delivery app just in case the little girl got hungry while she was asleep. For once, Mari was sleeping peacefully, looking every bit her actual age—free of the usual worries and calculations that normally clung to her even in rest.
Of course, the smartphone that had briefly passed into Siyeon’s hands was now firmly in the possession of Gomtaeng, who had skillfully coaxed it away from her.
Former monster, current mascot: Gomtaeng.
By now he had grown thoroughly comfortable with the device. Beyond simply browsing the photo gallery, he had built up enough proficiency to roam various online communities with practiced ease.
Wonder what kind of train-wreck news they’ve got today.
With that thought, he began tapping the phone with his soft, plush paws.
Aside from their role as monster-detection radar, mascots didn’t have much going on in their daily lives. The fact that something other than watching TV had finally appeared was, without question, a blessing on par with rain in a drought.
The moment he opened a search engine, headlines filled the screen. Swipe, swipe—Gomtaeng pushed his palm upward in broad strokes, scrolling down the page.
Day after day of the same noise and the same headlines. Gomtaeng’s face twisted in irritation as he scrolled all the way back up.
Even wall-to-wall coverage of the same story gets old after a day or two.
The thought drifted through his mind as he flopped onto a cushion and muttered without thinking.
“Nothin’ but the same damn talk, day in and day out.”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Huh?”
Siyeon’s mascot tilted her head.
Gaze long enough into the abyss, and the abyss gazes also into you—or so they said. Without even realizing it, Gomtaeng had been slowly colonized by the communities he browsed, his speech patterns quietly rewritten from the inside out.
His fellow mascot’s remark finally made him notice.
“If you keep talking like that, you’re gonna get hit again, you know?”
“Whoa… I’m screwed— I mean, yeah.”
The moment that particular verbal tic tried to slip out again, Gomtaeng consciously caught it, swallowed the habit, and forced a correction. Even just saying “yo” that one time had earned him a terrifying reaction; if he started dropping speech patterns like this, he genuinely might not survive the aftermath.
Unexpected new worry in hand, Gomtaeng swallowed imaginary dry spit and endured the rest of the day.
The next day, at school.
Mari had woken up feeling refreshed, fully escaped from the demon known as drowsiness, and sat at her desk with a thoroughly clear expression. The reason she looked so invigorated wasn’t only because she had escaped the horror of sleep deprivation.
Vacation. Summer vacation!
That sweetest of words for any student had drawn right up to their doorstep. The day every enrolled kid always longed for—closing ceremony day—had finally dawned.
“Everyone, today’s the closing ceremony, right?”
“Yeeeees—!”
The children answered their teacher’s question with full-throated energy. Those young voices gathered into a single piercing racket that scraped straight across the eardrums.
First-grade elementary school kids were already at peak volume age; add the buff of closing ceremony day, and the roar felt even louder than usual—probably not just her imagination.
“All right, pass these back from the front.”
Suffering the misfortune of the very first seat, Mari stretched out her hands and took the stack of papers. Assorted notices announcing the start of vacation: the library would still be open during break, classroom operation guidelines, and so on. She shoved all the useless chatter aside and skimmed the things that actually needed advance attention.
Where there was vacation, there was homework. Still, they were only first-graders, so there wasn’t much to do.
Write one picture diary entry per week
Complete at least one reading workbook
Exercise regularly
Engage in various expressive activities (origami, crafts, drawing, etc.)
Try various experiences (travel, etc.)
Age-appropriate stuff—more than half of it didn’t even require anyone to verify you’d actually done it. In other words: four diary entries and one book report. Fudge those and she could spend the entire month sleeping in and playing around!
Exercise, origami, travel?
Yeah, no.
“All right, then shall we fill out our vacation planners?”
While she was still mocking the list inwardly, the teacher’s voice arrived along with a heap of paper dropped onto the desks. A big circle with a tiny dot for the hour hand, plus the grandiose words “Vacation Planner” printed across the top.
This is nostalgia too, she thought, taking only one sheet and not even glancing at the rest as she passed them back. With lazy, crooked lines she scribbled out grand plans she had zero intention of keeping: 'Sleep,' 'Breakfast,' 'Lunch,' 'Exercise,' and so on.
In reality it would be: sleep, eat, irregular monster beatdowns, stare at her phone until she passed out. Even so, because she was told to, she whipped up a “normal” planner in no time.
The core of a vacation planner was that it had to look like the schedule of a properly well-behaved child. It absolutely could not look like the timetable of a lazy kid who went to bed at midnight—twelve o’clock—and woke up at eleven in the morning.
Write anything realistic and it would get rejected on the spot. So: lights out around eight or nine p.m., even if that never actually happened. Wake-up around seven a.m., even if that never actually happened either. Writing it with her own hand still couldn’t stop her from finding it hilarious.
We’re not even going to school—why would I get up at that hour?
If anything ever forced her awake that early, it would almost certainly be monsters. After finishing that internal mockery, she presented the vacation planner—pure fiction from top to bottom—to the teacher.
A truly textbook schedule. A perfect planner that even squeezed the homework in without missing a single item. It sailed through on the first try.
Its duty complete, the planner was carelessly stuffed into her bag. Crumple or not—she wasn’t going to live by it anyway, so who cared.
With the teacher’s final words to have a good vacation, the walk home began. Still only first-grade elementary school age. Some parents, still operating on kindergarten instincts, came to pick their kids up every single day whether from the front or back gate. Of course, some kids found that less than delightful.
“Why’d you come! I can go by myself!”
“I came because I worry.”
Today, too, the conversation mixed together: a parent fretting over their child, and a child embarrassed that said parent had shown up while they were hanging out with friends.
They attended the same school, but unless Siyeon specifically said she was walking with a friend, that escort role belonged to Mari. One more month of goodbye to this scenery. She was far too happy about it.
Even the sidewalk blocks were baking in the heat by the time they climbed the stairs back to their front door. And once they got home, a single recent problem awaited them.
“It’s hot…”
The absence of that essential summer companion: the air conditioner. Until now they had somehow scraped by with a fan, but after tasting the glory of air conditioning at school and the supermarket, its absence had become painfully urgent. Watching Siyeon melt in front of the fan as the weather grew hotter made further delay impossible.
Installing an AC meant running new pipes, and she had been putting it off and putting it off because she hated the idea of letting strangers into a house with only two elementary school kids…
I can’t take this either.
She muttered the stifled complaint only inside her head and let a nightmare scenario play out in her imagination. Coming home right after a monster fight to a house that felt like a midsummer steam bath? Just picturing it was horrifying. Leaving the veranda door open wasn’t an option either—the irregular wafts of nicotine from outside would be bad for Siyeon.
In the end she looked up installation information, went to the official site for a genuine product, and navigated to the non-member checkout screen.
XX.com restricts use by customers under 14 years of age and requires identity verification to confirm age. Please select one of the verification methods below to complete identity verification.
What appeared before her eyes was a non-member age-verification window specifically designed to ruin a person’s mood.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
She cursed inwardly and raged against a world where anyone under fourteen couldn’t do a single damn thing. The exact moment she realized she couldn’t buy the thing she had finally steeled herself to purchase—
A person, inevitably, goes a little insane.
Longing became spite. Spite became obsession.
I am going to buy this thing and get it installed no matter what.
Obsession became action.
Hand in hand with the Siyeon she had dragged along, the place they headed was none other than the department store. More specifically, the basement, reached by escalator.
Down there waited countless appliances, posed at flattering angles, showing themselves off and waiting for the caress of a paying customer’s hand. Families of adults strolled past now and then; a little kid kicked their feet from the seat of a shopping cart. Amid that perfectly ordinary scenery stood something out of place: two little girls holding only each other’s hand.
“We’re buying an air conditioner!”
“An air conditioner!?”
It was Mari and Siyeon.
When Mari planted her free hand on her hip and announced it with pride, Siyeon’s face lit up as she echoed the word. That’s right—their house was finally getting an air conditioner too.
“When I’m talking with the big brother or big sister, you stay quiet. Got it? Otherwise we can’t buy the air conditioner.”
“Okay…!”
They had money, but they had no adults. When it came to purchasing something, no store employee in their right mind would just say “Yes, of course” and run a card for a million-won transaction casually presented by a little kid.
So what did two brats alone need?
A scenario.
From this moment on, Mari and Siyeon had imaginary parents. Two kids who had only just become first-graders, left to buy a major appliance while their parents went upstairs to the second floor to shop for clothes…
In other words: completely clueless parents who had no sense of responsibility—but plenty of money.