Hangang Market

It had been a while since I'd last slept at home, and the old bed felt far too soft.

"This is bad. My tastes are turning to shit."

On my map in Farming World, by the late game, I'd grown so used to living inside the game that I simply slept there and logged out to get through daily life. Expensive beds. Plush mattresses. Soft comforters. I'd thought my standards had climbed high enough that I'd flipped reality and the game, living as if I wished the luxury were the real thing. Guess my roots don't go anywhere after all.

We weren't poor. Dad earned enough to live on, which is the only reason I could spend all twenty-six years of my life as a complete NEET, never getting my head on straight, doing nothing but game. That didn't make me rich, though, so the bed was nothing to brag about. We'd been using one bought ages ago for more than ten years—a mattress long past any claim to plush. I needed to swap it out and haul a proper one back with me.

I slept well enough, got up, and stepped out of my room, and I could feel the mood of the house aimed squarely at me. Nobody said it, but the son who'd vanished for seven days and come back was clearly still on their minds.

"You didn't go to a dungeon today, son?"

"Yeah. I'm going with Sujeong tomorrow."

"Good. Just stick close behind Sujeong."

"She's a weakling too. What's the point of sticking to her, Mom."

"Aigoo. Let's not talk about it."

I hadn't even meant it that way. But seeing even Kim Sujeong hold her tongue—like one careless poke and I'd turn back into some runaway delinquent—my rebel streak tried to activate. I didn't want to worry Mom and Dad, obviously. Watching that brat of a sister practically vibrate with irritation, though, felt excellent. Older-brother privilege. Not that I could pull another stunt with both of them watching. And I didn't have time for stunts anyway. I hadn't come home to play. Even while I loafed around like this, time in the Rift Dimension kept moving.

I was throwing on some clothes, getting ready to head out, when Mom slipped in a question. The worry in her voice was really a wish that I wouldn't leave at all.

I set her at ease.

"I'm not going to a dungeon, so don't worry. I've got some things to sell at the market."

"What things. Mom will go buy them for you."

"No. I've got things to sell. To sell."

"Is there something you want to eat?"

"Mom. Your son is twenty-six."

As if I'd go anywhere worth worrying over.

Mom went straight to Kim Sujeong.

"Sujeong. Your brother says he's going to the market."

"Then let him."

"Just in case, maybe you could..."

"No, Mom. Unless he's a complete idiot, he's not gonna stupidly walk into a dungeon alone again, is he?"

At this rate Kim Sujeong really would tail me, so I got out of the house fast.

"I'll be back before dinner!"

"Hey. Hey! Why are you going into my room! You're stealing my money, aren't you! Hey!"

On the way out I grabbed the cash left sitting in Kim Sujeong's room. I didn't have a single coin on me. Nothing else for it. I took the subway toward the Han River.

Once, the Han River had been a place where people boiled what they called Hangang ramyeon while watching the water, ate fried chicken, and couples came to date. Now it was a flea market.

Not one thrown up illegally. The city of Seoul had built it itself, so individual hunters could sell and buy the resources each of them had brought out of a dungeon. A long stretch of bank had been turned into market ground where you could spread a spot and sell as you pleased, and so Hangang Market served a great many hunters—and ordinary people too—as a place to buy and sell.

Of course, a market like that also had people doing business in ways that ignored its purpose entirely. Hoarders, for one, and company men out to buy everything cheap. People who grabbed a spot only to sell the spot, and every other kind of operator besides. Even those, when they went too far, got sanctioned by the Hunter Association, so while the place was hardly perfect, hunters' private trade ran pretty well.

I'd heard of it. Plenty of people who weren't hunters at all came to Hangang Market on dates, and there was no way I—at an age when women drove me out of my mind—could have missed it. On top of that, the Farming World community was identical to reality where the hunter system was concerned, and the place those people always brought up, whining about how they'd eaten something in the game and what it cost out here, was always Hangang Market. Thanks to that, I didn't have to spare a thought for where to sell what I'd farmed.

"Whoa. Lot of people."

It was still daytime, and the crowd seethed from the entrance on. Both gates, and the exits that led out of the market here and there, were packed solid with stalls. Business anywhere lives and dies on foot traffic, so the people who'd arrived first had simply taken the ground. Once you claimed a spot you could keep it spread for up to forty-eight hours and trade, provided an owner was assumed to be there. Camp long enough, and if luck was with you, a spot opened up.

I didn't particularly care. I went in a little farther. Sitting down wherever and waiting for someone who actually wanted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my goods was easier than killing time for a good patch. A corner where the people ran thin—not empty, only sparsely taken. I spread my mat and sat. My goods were the kind that would sell out even if I hawked them somewhere other than Hangang Market.

Recovery Herb.

University hospitals, the Hunter Association—they all kept a set price and bought it year-round. I'd brought ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it here anyway, to get a little more for it. To get paid in cash. And, since I'd come, to do some shopping while I was at it.

I gave the dirty ground a rough brush, spread the clean cloth I'd brought from home, and on top of it pulled the Recovery Herb berries from a fruit basket, then laid the leaves out beside them in a long row. I had no gift for pretty displays. Neat was enough: berries with berries, leaves with leaves. Even without any art to it, a hundred berries and three hundred leaves sat tidy enough to draw a sigh.

For the finish, I wrote the prices on the cheap whiteboard set out at every stall.

In my memory, berry and leaf together at a hundred thousand won had been the price of a few years back. I'd looked it up last night and settled on that. No—I wasn't even sure the price from a few years ago had been that. It was only ever Farming World hearsay. Might have been someone's private delusion.

Either way, there was a site that standardized dungeon-resource prices by country and posted them. The numbers moved every day with the going rate, but Recovery Herb berries and leaves together usually ran close to a hundred and fifty thousand won. And that was the E-rank to E+ baseline. Recovery Herb out of a high-grade dungeon turned up only rarely, which meant the D+ I'd harvested went for nearly double an ordinary one. The effect was better, too, as a matter of course.

Make a potion from higher-grade berries and you could brew a Low-grade Potion, restoring more vitality than an ordinary potion. C- grade was even used as material for a Mid-grade Potion, so the price jumped two and a half times. Berries being potion stock, that much I could grant. The leaves were expensive as well. As I'd said, hunters without much money used them to treat external wounds, or to erase the scars of surgery, and that was why the price sat where it did. The leaves worked the same way: the higher the grade, the less of them an ointment required, and the better it worked.

So the prices I'd written ran about ten percent above the standard posted rates. If I'd meant to sell at the standard rate, why haul them all the way ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠here? Recovery Herb was popular. Wait, and buyers would come on their own. I was sure of that.

Corner or not, less than three minutes after I spread the spot, a middle-aged woman came up wearing a startled face.

"This is Recovery Herb, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Wow. You harvested a ton."

"Yes."

"Mind if I take a look?"

"Eyes only."

"Solid stuff... These are really D+?"

Hunters can read item information. Asking like that meant she was a civilian. I flicked a hand at her suspicious face.

"If you're not buying, go."

"Come on. Awful prickly for a young bachelor. This is a bit over market—can't you shave it down a little?"

And there it was, the inevitable haggle. That was a market's charm, and in a way the natural shape of a deal. Trade between people. Feeling got into it. Someone soft about that kind of feeling, like me, is dangerous this way.

"Buy the whole lot and I'll knock five percent off."

"...Come on, don't be like that. Thirty million won for everything. I'll pay cash, right here."

"Thirty million?"

"Right now. On the spot."

Had I misheard? I dug a finger in my ear. Liberal arts or not, a hundred berries at two hundred thousand won apiece and three hundred leaves at a hundred thousand, every last one of them D+, still came to fifty million. Did this woman only have one eye?

She looked every bit the peddler who'd been rolling through markets for years. She knew the way a market worked, had cheek to spare, and had no doubt been eating well off a face as thick as boiler plate. But if there was one thing she'd failed to account for, it was that I—twenty-six years of nothing but games in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠room, a shut-in with zero social skills—did not particularly care what anyone thought of me.

Least of all the fuckers who acted like assholes.

The moment I drew the Sewer Sword from belt slot one, she startled hard and abandoned the spot.

"What the— I'm not buying. I'm not!"

No need to feel a moment's regret. In less than ten minutes, people were jammed to bursting in front of my out-of-the-way mat.