A PC Bang Runs on Ramen
If you had to sum up Park Heungguk’s life in one line, it would be this: some people just weren’t meant to make it. After quitting his job and boldly opening his first fried chicken shop, the place had gone dead quiet the moment the grand opening buzz wore off, and he had shut the shutters for good before he’d even managed a full year. His next attempt, a noraebang, had been crushed when a competitor twice as large and twice as flashy opened in the building right next door. His third business, a snack shop, had flopped so badly he could barely explain why; he’d ended up closing it after six months of being besieged by nothing but flies.
In short, everything he touched turned into a disaster.
If this one fails too, then marriage can wait until the next life!
This was his last chance. His final chance. That was what he kept telling himself as he faced his fourth attempt: this PC bang.
Nero PC Bang
The idea had started over drinks, when an acquaintance mentioned that this was the hot industry these days.
IT, internet, games, and all that.
He had been seduced by the fancy-sounding terms.
In truth, Park Heungguk knew almost nothing about online games, and he had no idea opening a place like this would require so much money.
He’d only heard that “a PC bang lives and dies by its machines.”
So he had brought in dozens of state-of-the-art towers.
And because he had resolved to bite his tongue and swallow his pride if he failed, he scraped together every penny he didn’t have and took out a mountain of loans for the rest.
When the PC bang opened, the sight of those rows of gleaming new computers was impressive enough to make a man feel like he was looking at something grand.
Reality, however, was far less forgiving.
He had taken in the investment money like he was about to launch some enormous enterprise, but the cash actually landing in his account was pathetic.
He needed every seat filled solid just to cover the loan interest.
And this wasn’t the only PC bang in the neighborhood.
Customers drifted from place to place like migratory birds, flocking to whichever shop was even one hundred won cheaper, even if the hardware was worse.
Lowering the hourly price wasn’t exactly a solution, either. He didn’t even need to run the numbers to see the future.
Time passed in a blur, and three months had gone by since opening.
“Should I sell everything now?”
He had been sighing so heavily at the counter that the thought slipped right out of his mouth.
Maybe it would be better to dump everything while the computers were still in decent shape, then use the money to look into some other business.
Maybe he could at least preserve a small sliver of his capital that way.
He had just reached the point where he was seriously weighing a fourth shutdown when it happened.
“Two hours for us, please.”
He looked down over the counter at the bright, clear voice and found a doll-like little girl holding out coins and bills.
She was unmistakably an elementary schooler.
Women rarely came into PC bangs to begin with, and an elementary school girl was an absolute first in the three months since opening.
More than that, she had an aura all her own. In a shop otherwise packed with dull, smoky, grown-ass men, she looked like a single flower had bloomed in the middle of a graveyard.
A tiny young lady in a PC bang had seemed odd, sure, but if she wanted to pay her own money and play games, what of it?
Well, that’s a strange sight.
But that was less important than his own future, so the thought vanished almost immediately.
And then.
“Three hours for us, please.”
The next day, and the day after that, the girl kept showing up at the shop as if it were part of her routine.
He got curious about what on earth she could possibly be doing in a place like this, so on one of his passes by her station he looked at the screen.
Bang-bang! Ratatatatatat!
She was playing a shooting game with a surprising amount of skill, the kind of game he’d assumed only boys would like.
The friend beside her, meanwhile, was suddenly pulling out knitting supplies and working away at them, which was strange enough to make him blink in confusion.
Still, the two of them stayed close together so warmly that simply watching them made the shop feel a little cozier.
They were so noticeable that other customers even held back their curses around them, which was a sight in itself.
Unlike ordinary noisy elementary school kids, they were quiet, and the adults liked that too.
For about two weeks, the pair kept coming regularly.
Before long, he’d started to think of them as the shop’s little mascots.
Then, one day, Lee Chaewon, the elementary school girl, trotted up to Park Heungguk at the counter.
“Huh? What is it? Want a drink?”
He had grown used to buying drinks for Chaewon and her friend Siyeon, so the question came naturally.
But what came out of Chaewon’s mouth was something entirely different.
“Mister, don’t you sell ramen here?”
“Ramen...?”
“You’d sell a lot of ramen at a PC bang. You play games for so long, you get hungry.”
...Huh?
He let out a faint laugh at her words.
Looks like this kid’s hungry.
All he had at the counter were some dried fish snacks and a few bags of chips for easy munching.
Of course, some PC bangs did sell cup ramen.
But this was a premium PC bang.
What kind of trouble would come of letting people eat in front of expensive computers like these?
So Park Heungguk had decisively cut cup ramen from the menu.
Besides, there was a widespread belief that cup ramen only sold if you marked it up too much, and the margin wasn’t even that great to begin with.
Still, the kid looked hungry.
He had been planning to give her a Choco Pie at the very least when he remembered something.
“Ah, right.”
He had bought a cup ramen earlier to eat for lunch instead.
Given the uncertain future of the shop, even his appetite had gone missing.
“Want this instead? It’s not for sale, so I’ll just give it to you. It’s hot, so I’ll make it for you, okay?”
“Oh, I’ll pay you for it.”
“No need. Off you go, now.”
If he had married early instead of going into business, would he have had a daughter that age?
He gave Chaewon back to her seat and poured hot water into the cup ramen, smiling bitterly to himself.
Sales were slipping away by the day.
If this month ended in the red too, then it would be a real emergency.
Behind the small routine of daily life lurked a mountain of debt.
I wonder how much I’d get if I sold all the computers...
It was ridiculous, really, to be making cup ramen for an elementary schooler while seriously considering shutting the place down.
With a dry laugh, Park Heungguk carried the finished cup ramen over to Lee Chaewon’s seat himself.
Noodles in front of those expensive computers and monitors?
He would never have imagined it when the shop first opened.
But for a man who had long since given up, it was more important that the kids didn’t go hungry than anything else.
Lee Chaewon took the cup ramen, and exactly three minutes later.
“Hyaa, that smells good.”
She made a bowl from the lid.
“Hoo-hoo.”
Carefully, she blew on the noodles to cool them.
Then she went.
“Slurp-!”
She had clearly eaten quietly, and yet somehow the sound rang out through the PC bang.
The reason was simple.
“What’s that smell?”
“Ramen?”
People nearby began turning their heads toward the irresistible scent of broth drifting from Chaewon’s table.
At the center of it all sat Chaewon, lifting a hearty first bite with great purpose.
“Mmm~! This is tasty. Hehe.”
She pushed the noodles into her mouth one strand at a time, her cheeks puffing out like a squirrel’s.
Her tiny mouth worked and worked, and when she finally swallowed.
“Mmm, this is nice.”
A radiant smile bloomed across her face, and her eyes sparkled like jewels.
Even in the dark atmosphere of the PC bang, that harmless smile looked as if sunlight itself had spilled in.
The customers who watched her.
Gulp-!
I want some too.
Now I’m hungry.
One by one, they rose and headed for the counter.
Park Heungguk, wearing a bewildered expression, hurriedly waved them off and said it wasn’t for sale.
But it wasn’t easy to refuse every request as they kept coming.
Fine, whatever.
He sprinted to a nearby mart, bought up a stack of cup ramen, and cooked them according to order.
“Boss, how much is the cup ramen?”
“Uh... well.”
It came from the mart, so it’s expensive...
But he couldn’t exactly sell it at a loss.
“1,500 won.”
Even though it was an absurd price by ordinary PC bang standards.
“Here you go.”
“...?”
He watched, stunned, as wallets opened without the slightest resistance.
Huh...?
He roughly understood how the situation had turned out.
Can this really be okay?
Food had never been part of the plan.
He only made about 500 won profit off each cup ramen, but once one person bought it, everyone else followed suit.
It was surprisingly lucrative.
Park Heungguk found himself turning to look at Chaewon’s seat again.
He had visited plenty of competing shops while researching the PC bang business, but none of them were crammed full of people eating cup ramen like this.
Just how delicious did you make it look... Thank you!
Lee Chaewon’s standing in Park Heungguk’s heart, the owner of Nero PC Bang, rose sharply that day.
And then, a few days later.
“Boss, boss.”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“You see...”
After hesitating for a moment, Lee Chaewon made a bizarre proposal.
Chaewon had been saving every scrap of money she could because she needed to keep going to the PC bang.
On top of her pitiful allowance, she had also managed to squeeze out 4,000 won by telling her parents she was buying snacks after school with her friends.
Grrrrowl-
Should I sell a few cards...?
If she sold part of the Duel King card collection she had been gathering since kindergarten, she could probably afford enough visits to the PC bang to go every day.
Gasp!
No, no, what am I even thinking?
She shook her head hard and rejected the thought.
If she kept holding onto them, who knew how many times their value would multiply in the future?
Cutting open the belly of the goose that lays golden eggs just because she needed money right now would be the height of stupidity.
Fine. I’ll just starve.
Her philosophy was simple: use the money for games instead of meals.
Whenever Siyeon, who often came along, asked if she was hungry, Chaewon lied and said no.
I’ve got pride. I’m not eating off other people!
Anyway, once she got into a game, hunger was nothing.
She had actually gone through plenty of meals-less gaming sessions when she used to live in a goshiwon.
...Was that why I died?
Jiggle, jiggle, she shook her head side to side again.
Anyway, a little hunger wasn’t a big deal. She kept playing, telling herself it was nothing.
Grroooowl-
“Eek.”
A child’s body was painfully honest.
She really couldn’t take it anymore, so she went to the counter and ordered ramen.
“Ramen...?”
No, wait, are you kidding me? They don’t sell ramen?
Come to think of it, she had never once smelled ramen in this PC bang.
Maybe they just weren’t at the stage of selling it yet?
Still, surely they should at least have cup ramen?
She had wanted bagged ramen, but they didn’t have that, and not even cup ramen either.
Only then did she look more closely around Nero PC Bang.
Clean interior, computers with absurdly high specs for no reason, and a lonely-looking boss.
...Is this place going under?
The regular old men were nice, and the boss sometimes gave her free drinks.
The place was much cleaner than others too.
No wonder he always looked so glum.
Business must be rough.
...
Should she say something or not?
A PC bang that had abandoned food sales was something she had never even heard of.
In the future, that kind of thing would become obvious, but apparently not right now.
“Mister, you’d sell a lot of ramen here. You play games for so long, you get hungry.”
After some thought, she offered her advice.
What she got in return was the boss’s lunch.
More precisely, cup ramen.
He really was kind. Seriously kind.
Ugh.
She could feel his worried glances from the register side, as if he was afraid she might spill it, but she ignored them with difficulty.
Clack.
She split apart the wooden chopsticks.
I’ll show you the power of ramen.
Maybe a little theatrically, she blew on it the way celebrities in ramen commercials did, sending the smell everywhere as she ate.
After putting on a ridiculous one-girl performance for the benefit of a camera that didn’t even exist.
Before long, the front of the counter was crowded with people.
The boss ended up adding cup ramen to the official menu.
And she delayed the closure of her favorite PC bang, even if only a little, which made her feel oddly proud.
But then there was a problem with her continued attendance at the PC bang.
“I’m out o-of money...”
That was what her mother asked after wondering what on earth she had been eating all this time to keep asking for allowance.
Chaewon had blown up and escaped by saying it was rude to ask a girl that age such a thing, but still.
“Hmph.”
There was no way she could go in for just one hour and then leave. It was far too short.
And she didn’t want to use her laggy dad laptop again now that she had tasted something better.
She had been pressed all the way to the point of selling her Duel King cards when—
Ah!
A good idea struck her.
She sprinted straight to the PC bang.
“Mister! Boss! Boss!”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“You know...”
How was she supposed to convince him?
She had the idea.
“You should sell ramen, right?”
“Huh? We already do.”
“No, not that.”
Not cup ramen. Bagged ramen, served in a bowl.
“I’ll make you money, so just give me one seat for free.”