142. Pretty People Have Pretty Hearts Too
142. Pretty People Have Pretty Hearts Too
***
After leaving the house, Serin wandered the streets for a while before heading to a PC bang with a rather unusual name.
—PC Bang with a Pretty Part-Timer.
Who names a PC bang that? she thought, but the name did pique her curiosity.
Proof of that was the fact that Serin was now walking into the PC bang, wondering just how pretty the part-timer would be.
...
Ding-a-ling.
"Welcome~"
"Yeah."
She answered the cheerful greeting without thinking, and the first part-timer she laid eyes on definitely lived up to the PC bang's name.
A woman in her early twenties with a calm impression and a blue-black bob that reached her shoulders—even by Serin's standards, she was flawlessly, unremarkably pretty.
If there was one distinctive feature, it was the beauty mark under her right eye, which gave her a strangely alluring air.
Serin glanced at the part-timer for barely an instant before casually surveying the inside of the PC bang.
'...It's really changed a lot.'
The PC bang looked quite different from the ones Serin remembered from the past. The modern black interior design, the individual seats spaced far apart, and what looked like group seating all coexisting together—even the layout was completely different.
Unlike the PC bangs in her memory with seats crammed side by side, here even the single seats were spaced apart from each other, which was surprising. And the group of high school students in what looked like the group seating area, chatting over their ordered food rather than gaming, was surprising too.
The scene called to mind a cafe or restaurant rather than a PC bang.
She'd thought PC bangs might be empty now that virtual reality existed, but unexpectedly, there really were a lot of customers—most of the seats were occupied.
"Excuse me."
After looking around the interior for a moment, she approached the counter to ask if there was anything else she needed to know.
"Y-yes?"
"It's my first time at a PC bang, so how do I use it?"
"Ah, if it's your first time at a PC bang, you see that big red machine over there? You can reserve a seat at the kiosk and then go to your seat. You can order food, desserts, and drinks directly from your seat."
Serin felt oddly pressured by the part-timer's gaze, so she nodded, figuring that was enough.
"Ah, thanks."
"No problem. By the way, you're really so... pretty."
She'd come to the PC bang out of curiosity about who the pretty part-timer was, but instead being called pretty by that very part-timer felt genuinely... strange.
After that, she went to the kiosk the part-timer had pointed out, paid, and took a seat in the corner.
Slide.
She sat down at her assigned seat and set down her things—there wasn't much. If she had to list it, there was the wallet Eunha had bought her and the beret she was currently wearing. She considered taking it off but decided to keep it on.
Part of it was wearing it as a fashion statement, but the bigger reason was to change her appearance right now.
People's impressions changed dramatically depending on how they styled their bangs. Just with her current bangs and the black beret, she definitely looked quite different from her in-game self, Rin.
Click.
She turned on the elaborately customized PC, and within just a few seconds, the boot-up screen appeared—and the first thing that caught her eye was the ordering menu.
Click.
Thinking she'd order food first, she clicked on the order menu and was momentarily startled by the menu board that seemed to fill the entire screen.
'Is this... really a PC bang?'
She blankly scrolled down the endlessly long menu.
From the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese food categories to the dishes within those categories, everything was surprising.
From dishes you'd never expect a PC bang to sell—like sundubu-jjigae, braised cutlassfish, and cube steak—to even sushi on the Japanese menu.
On top of that, there were dozens of options in the dessert and drink sections alone. Without realizing it, she found herself thinking she might as well have dinner here.
With this many menu items, she was curious how the food would turn out.
Click. Click. Click.
She added items to her order one by one, loading up on this and that.
'Did I add too much?'
She'd added nearly ten items. She trimmed the menu down, deciding to just order as much as she could eat.
After that.
With the PC on but untouched, she spent twenty minutes deliberating over the food menu alone before finally settling on everything.
—Sushi set 12pc, kimchi fried rice, sausage and vegetable stir-fry, sundubu-jjigae, 2 hot chicken skewers.
For drinks, she added two each of the grapefruit and kiwi smoothies.
"This seems about right."
Considering she'd be at the PC bang for about three hours, she figured she could finish this much.
With that, she pressed the order button.
Click.
—Order complete.
Along with the mechanical sound, a notification popped up saying estimated cooking time: 30 minutes. Even something like this was oddly fascinating.
After finishing her food order, Serin thought for a moment about what to do to pass the time. There were no PC games that interested her, so her thoughts gradually drifted toward just browsing communities and NewTube.
Ding!
While browsing various sites, a PC bang notification suddenly popped up on one side of the screen.
[Pretty Part-Timer]
—Um, excuse me, customer. You didn't make a mistake with your order, did you? Just checking.
The words "Pretty Part-Timer" displayed above the notification message seemed blatant, but she replied simply.
—Everything I ordered is correct.
[Pretty Part-Timer]
—Ah, okay!
"...Did I order too much?"
Maybe because my appetite had grown lately, even objectively, it looked like a lot of food for me to eat alone... but whatever.
My body barely changed anyway.
......
About twenty minutes after Serin had started passing the time by checking the Another World community and NewTube, a message popped up saying her food was ready.
***
Yeji, moving with the prepared food loaded onto a serving cart, wasn't sure what to think.
'Is she really going to eat all this?'
She wasn't a mukbang NewTuber or anything—could such a slender person really eat all that food?
Pulling the serving cart through the PC bang, Yeji delivered other customers' orders along the way before finally reaching the silver-haired woman's seat.
The silver-haired woman, wearing a beret while using the PC, was clearly not just eye-catching to Yeji—she could feel several nearby customers sneaking glances at her.
"Um, your food has arrived."
As she spoke carefully and approached, the silver-haired woman turned around with a small nod.
Yeji's gaze drifted to the woman's face again despite herself as she cleared space for the food and began setting the dishes down one by one.
"It's a bit much, isn't it? Ordering this much."
At Serin's slightly apologetic tone, Yeji froze mid-motion while setting down the kimchi fried rice and quickly shook her head.
"Oh, no. I was just thinking you have quite an appetite despite how slender you look."
Flustered by the sudden question, Yeji had been nosy. She realized her mistake right away and was about to speak again when Serin said,
"Well, I do eat quite a bit. Oh, and I guess PC bangs normally get this many orders? You've seemed busy running around serving since earlier."
When Serin spoke as if she'd noticed Yeji without Yeji realizing, Yeji nodded, a little surprised.
"There are a lot of customers today, so orders are on the higher side."
Slide.
Serin picked up the grapefruit smoothie from her seat and placed it on the serving cart with a small smile.
"You seem to be working hard, so at least have this."
"...Oh, then I'll gladly accept it."
Yeji thanked her with a dazed expression and looked at the grapefruit smoothie.
Then, without realizing it, Yeji's gaze briefly flickered to Serin's screen.
"Huh?"
Yeji let out a sound as if startled.
On the screen, along with a very familiar cat logo, she saw videos she recognized too.
"Do you... watch BigCatTube?"
When Yeji looked at Serin and carefully spoke, Serin nodded.
"Yeah, I guess. The video content is interesting."
She'd come across it by chance through some unknown algorithm, but Serin kept watching because the videos were interesting.
"I enjoy BigCatTube too."
"Oh, do you?"
"Yes. I watch it regularly. Ah, well then, have a good time."
Feeling like she was talking to Serin too much, Yeji quickly said goodbye and left.
Serin stared quietly at Yeji for a moment before turning her head back to the screen. The NewTuber Big Cat on the screen was clearly popular enough for the part-timer to recognize him. He was a major NewTuber with 1.15 million subscribers on NewTube, after all.
Maybe because Serin had recently hired editors herself, the video quality of the NewTube channel called Big Cat had caught her eye.
And while the videos from a few months ago had definitely been pretty entertaining, what stood out to Serin more than anything was that the video quality had gotten strange recently and the view counts had "plummeted."
......
Back at the counter, Yeji blankly fiddled with the grapefruit smoothie on the cart.
"Seriously. Pretty people have pretty hearts too."
Recalling Serin handing her the grapefruit smoothie and saying she'd worked hard, Yeji let out a small laugh.
Thinking that her personality was as pretty as her appearance, Yeji quietly took the straw of the grapefruit smoothie between her lips.
Slurp.
Maybe because it was free, it tasted better than usual.
Clatter.
Seulgi, who had just set down a freshly made sundubu-jjigae on the serving cart, looked at Yeji and let out a small laugh.
"Some people are working their butts off the moment they arrive, and some people are just sipping a nice cold grapefruit smoothie~ Must be nice~ right?"
A playful woman with striking bright red dyed hair and a tall 170cm frame. It was Kwon Seulgi.
"Hey, Seulgi? I worked like a dog and I'm just taking a short break."
"Sure, sure~ I bet. Anyway, Yeji, why are there so many orders today, seriously?"
"I don't know either. There are days when customers suddenly flood in, you know? Today must be one of those days, I guess."
"...Ugh, maybe I'll have a smoothie too. What kind of smoothie are you drinking that's so good?"
Slurp.
Yeji blinked with the straw still in her mouth and let out a small laugh.
"Well... you know. It tastes better because it's free? Seulgi, if you're jealous, get a customer to give you one too."
"Did you get hit on by another customer? No, wait—we agreed not to accept things from customers, didn't we?"
The unspoken rule of the so-called "PC Bang with a Pretty Part-Timer."
—Do not accept gifts from customers of the opposite sex.
The customer gender ratio at the PC bang was overwhelmingly male, and accordingly, there were a lot of people who showed interest in the part-timers.
The PC bang's name itself drew heavy attention, and the part-timers really were all quite pretty.
There were occasionally customers who did suspicious things, so they'd decided not to accept anything at all. But with Yeji bragging so openly, Seulgi looked at her like she was being weird.
Yeji stared quietly at Seulgi and laughed as if in disbelief.
"Seulgi, if it were someone hitting on me, would I have accepted it?"
"Then what was it?"
"Nothing. She said I'd worked hard... A pretty female customer gave it to me."
"Seriously, you're so lucky. You get smoothies just for being pretty?"
"Seulgi~ Jealousy is so ugly! You know that, right?"
When Yeji retorted nonchalantly, Seulgi shook her head and looked over at Minseok.
"Minseok, make me a kiwi smoothie too~~"
"Seulgi, you can make that yourself."
"Hey, a pretty girl like me is asking you. Can't you just make one?"
"Wow, calling yourself pretty with your own mouth..."
Watching the two bicker as they did every day, Yeji quietly took the straw out of her mouth.
The NewTube channel the customer had been watching suddenly came to mind, and she felt uneasy.
—BigCatTube.
Cha Yeji. The name of the NewTube channel run by her biological older brother, "Cha Dohyeon."
Just a few months ago, he'd sent her allowance every month without fail, but that had suddenly stopped, and with contact becoming sparse, something seemed to have happened. But Yeji had been busy herself.
'Still, he'll manage on his own.'
She figured he'd handle it himself, but Yeji couldn't help letting out a sigh.
"Huu..."
"Yeji, why are you suddenly sighing?"
Seulgi looked at Yeji quizzically.
"No, it's nothing."
"...Whenever someone says that, there's always something."
"I said it's really nothing."