The Delivery Nation
A little scooter eased to a stop in the parking lot of an apartment complex. Fixed to the back was a silver delivery tin, and across it the name Jjawang was written large.
The security guard watching the scene sank into a thoroughly trivial line of thought. These days, with delivery orders surging, most places used dedicated courier companies—and yet a few shops still ran their own. Then again, Chinese food was supposed to arrive packed in a tin like that. That was the proper way.
At last the courier climbed off the scooter and pulled off the helmet, and he startled despite himself. It was not what he had expected. A woman—and one whose looks sat at a genuinely remarkable level.
She lifted the delivery tin as if it weighed nothing and came striding toward the guard booth. He snatched his gaze aside and pretended he hadn't been looking. A beauty with a haughty cast to her face rapped on the booth window.
"Excuse me, where's Complex 3?"
"L-left. If you go left."
"Thank you."
The moment her errand was finished, she left. He watched her retreating back and let out a breath of relief—and yet, underneath it, a faint regret lingered. Why was that?
He called her face back to mind. Up close, it had been beyond words. Set aside an impression that ran a little fierce, and there wasn't a single flaw to be found. He gaped, slack-jawed with admiration, then muttered under his breath.
"With a face like that, why's she delivering food?"
That was a face made for modeling, not for delivery.
"Unit 402, was it?"
I stepped out of the elevator, reading the note on my phone.
The first time I started this work, I went to the wrong address, and I still don't know how I lived through the embarrassment. Fortunately the resident's reaction tipped me off at once, and nothing serious came of it. I'd been so mortified that from then on I checked the address two or three times, carefully.
I pressed the doorbell. The door opened almost immediately, and the resident appeared.
"...Huh?"
An awkward, strangled little sound, and a stare that didn't even try to hide itself. I was already used to it. It wasn't a strange reaction, really. If the person delivering Chinese food was a beauty you hardly ever saw in real life, anyone would stare. I answered as flatly as I could manage.
"Jajangmyeon delivery."
"Ah—ah, yes! Thank you!"
"I'll just step in for a second."
"...What? Y-you're coming in?"
This customer's reaction was unusually fervent. Whatever impure little scenario had seized his head, his eyes were shaking and his face had gone bright red. Before the misunderstanding could get any worse, I spelled it out.
"I need to set the food down, so I'll only be a moment."
"...Oh. The food. Right. Of course. That's what you meant."
Yeah. Buddy. Setting everything else aside, who comes on that strong to a complete stranger at the door?
Anyway, I stepped into the entryway and took the orders out of the delivery tin one by one. Even then, the man who lived there kept sneaking glances at me, looking utterly dazed.
"That's twenty thousand won."
"H-here."
"Oppa! Is the jajangmyeon here? Nice!"
They must have ordered it for a family lunch.
"When you're finished, please leave the dishes outside the door."
"Huh? Oh, you collect them. Right."
"Enjoy your meal."
I was about to say goodbye and go when the man caught me.
"W-wait...!"
"Yes?"
"...No. It's nothing."
I could tell at a glance. Without a doubt, he'd been about to ask for my number, or otherwise let his interest show. It might have been confidence with nothing behind it, but this wasn't the first time, or the second. I'd even considered never taking the helmet off, and I'd actually tried it—but keeping it on after I got off the scooter was so stifling that I quit almost immediately.
I made my escape in a hurry and sighed inside the elevator.
Sorry, but I have no interest in men. No—more precisely, setting men and women aside, I'm in no position to be dating. Of course I'm not. I used to be a man, and now I'm a woman. Dating a man? Five years have passed, sure, and I'm completely used to this changed body. Even so, I still don't feel the slightest desire to go out with one.
I'd already been living this way for three months. Three months ago, I had returned to the real Earth I had longed for so badly. I had spent a full five years on a battlefield where blood flew. Call it a game's world if you like—in the end, it had been no different from vivid reality. Sixty-six people entered a single battlefield and killed, and killed again, until only one remained. Only after winning a hundred of those battlefields did I finally seize an ordinary life.
And right now, I was thoroughly satisfied with it. The work was harder than I'd expected, yes. Still, delivering jajangmyeon was a hundred million times easier than surviving that godforsaken game.
I pulled out of the apartment complex and swung a leg over the scooter. It was a 50cc machine more than ten years old—in other words, an antique in all but name. Top speed? Hard to say. I'd never pushed it past fifty kilometers an hour, so I didn't really know. A thing like this deserved to be scrapped and left to rest. That would have been the polite thing.
Even so, three months of riding it had left me fond of the thing, in my own way. So I'd given it a name. It rattled like junk the whole time, so: Deoldeol. Absolutely not an insult. A pet name. Affection, put into a word.
I rode Deoldeol back to the shop. Now that I thought about it, for puttering around inside a small neighborhood, it was surprisingly all right. If someone asked whether I'd never once wanted a motorcycle with a serious engine under it—honestly, I had.
"Deoldeol. Don't worry. I can't replace you anyway. I don't have the money."
At the end of an unhurried ride, I arrived at the shop. A painfully tacky sign had the name Jjawang plastered across it, bold as anything. My guess was that they'd poured all their money into that pointlessly enormous sign and never got around to the restaurant itself. Otherwise, why open a shop this cramped in a spot so out of the way? Thanks to that, the place was always empty enough for flies. Deliveries were shrinking too, squeezed out by the franchise shops.
I carried the delivery tin inside—empty, and light because of it. The girl standing at the counter waved, glad to see me.
"Oh, unni! Good work!"
"I told you to sit down and rest. There aren't even any customers. Why are you standing?"
"I can't. A customer could walk in at any moment. What would they think if they saw me lounging around without a care?"
"They'd think business is bad."
"Exactly! That's why I have to look sharp!"
She was trying entirely too hard. I didn't find the sight unpleasant. If anything, it was admirable—or maybe it stirred something like respect. The only reason I had started delivering for this Chinese restaurant was this girl.
On a day when the rain came down in sheets, right after I returned to the present, I had been so hungry I collapsed and couldn't move. The one who happened to pass right beside me then was the girl standing in front of me now. Miss Ji Sua. Eighteen.
Why was a high school student in a Chinese restaurant in the middle of the day? Because she herself had desperately wanted to inherit her grandfather's family trade—this very restaurant. Her grandfather's cancer had come back, and he was in the hospital undergoing treatment. Until I arrived, she had been running the place alone.
Repay every kindness, without fail.
One of my two mottos. For the record, the other is I'd rather die than lose. In that spirit, I had gone to work at the Chinese restaurant of Sua, the person who saved my life. In truth, I was still receiving the favor. She was giving room and board to someone with no home and nowhere else to go.
"Unni, get some real rest! Delivering must have worn you out."
"It was nothing. There wasn't even that much."
"...Yeah. Deliveries are as dead as the dining room. I wish we had more customers, but it really isn't easy. Haha..."
"Sorry. That came out wrong."
Sua was wonderful in every way, except that once in a while a strange switch flipped and she became a completely different person. Privately, I thought of her as an airhead who only pretended to be normal.
"Once we pick the dishes up later, we're done. But wouldn't it be better if we just used disposables, like the other shops? All we're doing is wasting gas going back and forth, and time on the dishes."
"No. I'm keeping it the way Grandpa did. That way, whenever he comes back, he'll adjust faster..."
"All right. If that's what you want, then that's how it is."
I wasn't the owner of the restaurant. If the boss said that was how it would be done, then that was how it would be done.
"You hungry? Let's have lunch."
"Sure. I'll have..."
"Jjamppong, right? You really do love jjamppong."
"Nobody could dislike jjamppong this good."
I could say that with absolute certainty. I didn't know about the other dishes on the menu, but the jjamppong alone was transcendent. It was absolutely not because jjamppong happened to be the first thing I ate the moment I got back.
Sua puffed out her cheeks and grumbled.
"It's weird. The secret recipe Grandpa taught me was for jajangmyeon..."
"Sua. I'm being serious. Let's push jjamppong as the main dish. And while we're at it, drop a lame name like Jjawang and call the place Jjamppong King or something..."
"Lame?! Jjawang is a name that holds my grandfather's craftsman's spirit!"
In the end I got a thorough scolding. I let it go in one ear and out the other and decided to flee.
"I'll be up on the second floor, so call me when it's ready!"
Once I was upstairs, I went straight into the room and turned on the computer. It would easily take twenty minutes, so I could probably fit in one match. I ran the numbers and booted up the game.
Yeah. That game.