It's Not a Review Bribe, Okay?
"Park Blank-jin? You mean me?"
Hup. Did I just say that out loud?
"Ah— ahem. Come to think of it, I never even told you my name. I'm Park Sang-jin."
"Ah, right—"
Park Blank-jin… no, no, Park Sang-jin kept talking, and I stood there fidgeting, feeling weirdly awkward for some reason.
Meanwhile, he pressed on.
"'Park Sang-jin, customer' is a bit of a mouthful, so just call me Mister. Nice and easy."
Still awkward, though… why?
"Well then… may I come in?"
Ah! I'd figured out what felt off.
"You can come in, but… why are you talking so formally?"
Mister lifted the shutter I'd been grunting and straining to pull down as if it were a sheet of paper, folding it up with ease as he answered.
"You're a Master, after all."
Khuhk.
The straight-line compliment hit so hard my breath stopped cold.
And before I could even catch it again, the next pitch came flying in.
"Those patches worked incredibly well. Truly the best I've ever used in my life."
KYAAAAAAAH!!!
Master.
He called me Master!
Because of this body that never grew past nine years old, I'd never even once been called "Pharmacist" during my pharmacy internships—but Mister Sang-jin, for all that he was burly and bearded, was a genuinely, truly good person!
"The day before yesterday I bought them thinking I was just giving pocket money to my daughter's friend, but it turns out I completely misjudged you, Master."
"Ehehe… it's fine…."
He'd told me to just call him Mister, so I knew I ought to match that casual tone—but hearing the honorific "Master" for the first time in my life felt so good I couldn't stop smiling.
While I grinned, Mister Sang-jin thanked me for healing his back and started telling me about himself.
"I haven't gotten a full workup yet, but the disc pain is dramatically better. Thanks to you, I think I can finally try for a rank-up exam. It's been a long-held dream of mine…"
"Hehe, it was nothing."
The conversation rolled along until he was showing me pictures of his kid.
He'd met his older wife through hunter work, had a daughter at twenty, and gotten married. His wife was apparently somewhat famous—someone even I would know, he claimed.
"Huk, who is it? Can't you tell me?"
"Haha. I'll bring her next time."
And his daughter, Hye-ju, was ten years old.
One year older than my physical age.
"Lately my daughter won't even give me kisses… it's been worrying me something fierce. They say kids get distant from their dads around this age, but did you go through that too, Master?"
What was I like back then… Dad was always off at the gates, so on the days he came home I think I played with him all day long.
…But hang on. Back then I wasn't even a daughter?
"Aha ha…"
I had nothing to say, so I just laughed. While I was laughing, Mister checked his watch and smoothly changed the subject for me.
"Ah, you need to close up and here I am rambling. I came to buy more patches. Last time you said those were for the lower back—could I see the lower-back ones and the ones for other areas as well?"
"Oh, no problem! Yes! Just a moment!"
Yahoo! Buzzing with excitement, I brought out the Yongyong Patches from the compounding room.
"These are for the shoulders, these for the lower back, these for the knees, and these for the soles of the feet. The knee and sole ones come two to a pack!"
"Is this everything?"
"Yes!"
"I'll take them all."
I flapped my hands in a panic.
"Huh?… Buying everything will be expensive. There's no buy-one-get-one this time…."
"Haha. How could I take something like this as a freebie?"
Mister Sang-jin even asked me to charge him for the extra pack I'd thrown in last time as a buy-one-get-one.
I had to wave my hands all over again.
"That was a free service gift…!"
We finally finished ringing everything up.
One million won…!
Seeing the total on the register made me ridiculously, fabulously happy.
And right in the middle of that pure joy—
"If you have any other medicines, could I take a look?"
"Yes!!"
Even happier at the question, I dashed into the compounding room.
In the compounding-room fridge sat two bottles of Red Potion left over from what I'd given Aunt.
"Oh, is that a red potion?"
"That's right!"
As a fairly experienced Awakened, Mister Sang-jin seemed to have a good eye for products—even if he didn't have an appraisal skill like mine.
But when he heard it was a low-grade potion, he looked puzzled.
"That's an awful lot of volume for a low-grade potion… low-grade, you said?"
"It's fifty milliliters' worth of troll blood, so yes, it's low-grade!"
A potion's grade wasn't determined by the volume of liquid.
Back in the early days right after the gates first opened, that had apparently been the case—but nowadays, potion grades were set by the quantity of the core ingredient used.
Sellers had to charge the fixed price corresponding to each grade.
It was a consumer-protection measure against vendors who padded potions with mana fluid and food coloring, since not everyone had an appraisal skill.
Of course, for some reason my potions still had more volume than the industry average, but…
"Still, though—"
I shook my head and finger firmly.
And then I rang him up.
The official price of a low-grade Red Potion was three million won.
Two bottles made six million!
…But as I pulled the card from the reader, a serious dilemma hit me.
"……"
"Master?"
Mister Sang-jin's total came to seven million won.
…If I ask him to write a review on top of that, when we're not even close like Aunt and I are—wouldn't that be completely shameless?
But……
I thought of the review I'd been staring at for the past two days like a miser counting coins.
Those letters that made me happy no matter how many times I read them—that felt exactly like when Aunt stroked my hair.
Still, I didn't want to be a bad kid. No—a bad adult.
Still.
Still…
…Ah!
"Miss Sia, is something the matter…?"
"Just a second!"
I ran to the fridge I'd set up behind the counter.
I pulled out a whole box of the more expensive Bacchus set—the one with twice the taurine of the gift-edition Bacchus D.F.
"Nnngh—"
…Right. This was so heavy Aunt had to help me put it away.
I barely managed to haul it over.
I couldn't even get it up onto the counter, so I set it on the floor.
Then I shoved it with both hands toward Mister, who was staring blankly.
And I said:
"Um, the review… could you write one again this time?"
It's not a bribe!
I-I'm just being honest!
I'm not asking you to write anything super nice or anything…
……
The storm of review-begging finally passed.
'Ahaha! I was already writing a Hunter Gallery review anyway. I came early to stock up because I was worried it'd get so popular I wouldn't be able to buy any.'
Even after my pathetic display, Mister just laughed heartily and said he was writing a Hunter Gallery review too.
A Hunter Gallery review!
I got so excited I tried to bring him another set, but he stopped me.
Instead he asked about my other medicine stock, said he'd come buy Blue Potion once the next batch was ready, asked for the completion date, and left.
And then I was alone in the pharmacy.
Once I was alone, everything I'd just done started replaying in my head like a highlight reel.
I… I just acted like a total loser….
It was a mean way to put it, but there was no other word for it.
Seriously, was it because I'd only ever studied? My social skills were completely undeveloped!
Embarrassment jabbed at my heart like little needles.
"Uuuuugh!"
I rolled around on the floor right where I stood. Then reality hit, and I scrambled back up.
"Hweeeeng… my coat got dirty…."
Spilled water couldn't be scooped back up.
…Or could it? Maybe if I used mana I could scoop it back up?
Anyway.
I trudged back behind the counter, ducking my head a little, and returned to the compounding room inside.
"Heave-ho."
Then I tidied up the compounding room.
The blanket I'd been too lazy to fold that morning, just bunched up in a heap.
The stacked square planters beside it.
The leftover patch samples from compounding the Yongyong Patches….
Finally I pulled out the handwritten ledger and picked up a pencil.
Day before yesterday, Mister Park Sang-jin: one hundred thousand won.
Today, Aunt's National Intelligence Service: thirty million won.
Aunt's pocket money gift: six hundred thousand won.
And Mister again: seven million won.
Total sales: thirty-seven million seven hundred thousand won.
Subtract material costs, last month's store electricity, water, and heating bills, plus the non-sale items that went out, and the net profit came to about six million won.
At this rate, the loan interest and even some of the principal… but how much was I supposed to pay back?
Nnngh…
In times like these…
"Jammini, help me."
Yes, how may I assist you?
"I made potions and patches and sold them, but how should I spend the money I earned? I think I can pay the loan interest and chip away at the principal a little, but I don't know how much to pay."
Ah, so you wanted to know how to allocate the profits from medicine sales across different uses. My recommended distribution is—
"Oh!"
Jammini gave me a clear answer.
Rather than paying down the principal, buy more materials and sell new medicine.
Thinking about it, that made sense.
Sold out was just another way of saying there was nothing left to sell.
My pharmacy, limited by capital, wasn't attached to a hospital. So I didn't stock prescription drugs either—aside from the hunter medicines I made myself, all I had were health supplements like Tenten and Bacchus.
"Huk. There's actually a lot I need to buy."
It was true.
Factoring in bottles for the Blue Potion, I'd already used half of them.
And I'd only bought small amounts of patch materials for testing, so I needed to place bulk orders of the final selections.
And then…
"Hmm. They've slowed down."
The square stacked planters occupying one corner of the compounding room.
Both the spiky-leaved Mana Herbs and the light-green Melania Flowers were growing slower than they had at first.
On day one they grew fully overnight….
Even after a month of watering them with mana-infused pure water, the speed had dropped.
Poke.
When I pressed a finger in, the soil was dry and crumbly.
The limits of cultivation outside a gate.
"I need to change the soil too…."
Of course, I had a month's worth of harvest stockpiled—enough to make patches and Blue Potion at least two more times—but I still needed to buy more troll blood for Red Potion.
The first time I'd bought it, I hadn't had a deposit, so even though I was growing Mana Herbs, I hadn't been able to purchase much.
And I need to buy materials for the next medicine I'm going to make, too.
Roughing out the numbers brought my floating mood back down to earth.
To buy everything, it looked like I'd even have to dip into my one-million-won emergency fund.
"Nnngh—"
But I needed all of it; I couldn't skip a single thing. And I couldn't not buy in bulk—I'd gotten the samples from the orc merchant I knew by promising I'd buy a lot next time we met.
Did I go too hard on the freebies?
I shook my head. The review had been critical, and Aunt's gift had been only natural.
"…It's fine. I still have three boxes of ramyeon."
I still had roasted eggs for protein, too.
That was one upside of a body that didn't grow. My stomach was small, so I split one pack of ramyeon and half a bowl of rice across three meals.
And if I didn't buy materials, even if I wanted to open the pharmacy, I'd have nothing to sell except Tenten and Bacchus.
They don't sell anyway—worst case, I can just eat the Tenten and Bacchus myself.
I nodded.
My mind was made up.
The day after tomorrow I'm going with Aunt to see Dad… and tomorrow's market day anyway. Might as well close the pharmacy for about three days.
Having decided, I set my alarm for five in the morning and lay down.
Tomorrow I'd get up early and go buy materials at the market!