The Sinnam Halmang Foundation
Nu-na was deeply absorbed in a game until I finished bringing dinner over.
It was a soccer simulation game, and one of its core mechanics revolved around assembling a roster of players boasting top-tier stats.
"So what you're saying is that this player is currently at plus-four, while that one over there is plus-seven?"
"Yeah. Ah, hey, I told you I hate carrots! Why did you put them in?"
"What was that? You don't want to eat?"
"No... that's not what I meant. Yeah, sorry. I'll eat every bite."
Whether to put carrots into curry or leave them out—that was a monumental fork in the road of domestic life. But at this precise moment, the mission alert pinned to the top left of her livestream was far more pressing.
"Why are you telling me not to take it? If we succeed, they're handing over five hundred thousand won. We can split it down the middle."
"The split isn't the problem! Do you have any idea how atrocious the enhancement odds are? You actually have to succeed to see a single dime."
"You said hitting plus-five is a fifty percent chance. Sounds plenty doable to me."
"Ugh... that's just... phew. It's because you don't play games, Jeongseo. Fifty percent isn't really fifty percent."
The mission stipulated that she enhance one of the soccer players in her squad. If the attempt succeeded, she would pocket a bounty of five hundred thousand won. Even if it blew up in failure, the viewer promised a consolation fee of one hundred thousand won as a token of sympathy. From my perspective, there was zero reason to pass up the offer.
"I said no! If Sonia-unni blows up, my account is completely ruined!"
"Can't you just upgrade her again?"
"Aargh, you're driving me crazy! It's because you've never touched this game. It's brutal. Do you know how much money I've poured into this...? I don't have the cash to do that anymore."
Evidently, there was some gamer heartache at play that eluded my comprehension. Since I had never played it myself, I couldn't press the argument.
Just as Nu-na's stubborn refusal was about to make me abandon the idea, the viewer who had put up the bounty proposed an alternative.
"Of course. But I've got total crap hands, so I'm not sure if you're really okay with that..."
It was casual banter, yet this viewer faithfully dropped ten thousand won with every single sentence. After I agreed, she provided her account credentials. Nu-na promptly abandoned her dinner mid-bite to configure the stream overlay.
"SeojeongSeojeong? How do you want to handle the fodder card?"
The viewer replied to every question Nu-na posed through donations. Just conversing with this person was churning out ten thousand won at a time. I considered engaging her in further conversation to keep the cash rolling in, but exercised restraint.
Ding.
The moment Nu-na finished setting up the screen, the new mission notification chimed into view. The conditions were roughly the same. The viewer's account also contained both a plus-four player and a plus-seven player. All I had to do was push the plus-four player up to plus-five. The only difference was that there was no consolation payout for failure.
"What are you going to do about the sacrifice?"
"What do you mean by sacrifice?"
Since the gaming context for the word seemed entirely distinct from the religious rite I knew, I turned to Nu-na for clarification.
"Well... before enhancing your main card, you blow up a junk card first to bleed off the bad luck."
"Huh? Does that actually do anything? Isn't it just pure probability?"
"Technically, yeah... but, you know. It's a gamer superstition. Still, pretty much everyone burns fodder cards. You can't just brush it off as meaningless superstition either."
It sounded needlessly complicated.
"I'll just click it straight away. All I have to do is press this, right?"
"Yeah, that's true, but... wouldn't you want to burn at least one fodder card first?"
"Nope. We're going straight in. Didn't she tell me to trust my gut?"
"Fine, fine. Phew... my palms are sweating. Well, before you press it—"
Click.
Just as Nu-na was gearing up for another lecture, I depressed the enhancement button.
"Aaaaargh! Why did you just slam it without warning?!"
"Then how else was I supposed to press it? Was I supposed to say a prayer first?"
"Obviously!"
Right on cue, a brilliant burst of visual effects flashed across the monitor, heralding a successful upgrade. The dull bronze card transformed into shimmering silver.
"It turned into a five. That's a success, isn't it?"
"Holy shit. Are you insane?!"
The chat window scroll accelerated into an illegible blur. Everyone began showering me with adoration, hailing my divine Blessed Hands.
"Ah... damn dwoel-nom-dwoel. The chosen one really is just built different. I'll hit mission success now."
"Thank you very much, SeojeongSeojeong! Nu-na, this isn't a fifty-fifty split. This is entirely mine."
"Yeah, yeah... fine."
With a single click of the mouse, I had earned five hundred thousand won. In one stroke, I had nearly recovered all the funds that had been automatically siphoned off by the Sinnam Halmang Foundation.
The viewer was far from done. Another mission instantly took its place on screen. This time, the reward for a successful upgrade was a staggering one million won.
"Whoa. That's heavy."
"I'll do it. Thank you kindly."
Nu-na quickly piped up, warning that going from plus-seven to plus-eight was saddled with microscopic odds and pleading with me to reconsider. Personally, I couldn't fathom why this called for such agonizing deliberation. The viewer who put up the bounty wasn't a fool; surely she had factored the high likelihood of failure into the equation from the very start.
"This time, you seriously have to use a sacrifice!"
"Mm... fine. Just once, then."
The sacrificial card belonging to another player shattered into digital dust. The fodder card had also sported the number seven, but after the failure, it degraded all the way down to a five.
"Aaaaargh! My heart's in my throat! One more sacrifice?"
Watching the sacrificial card crumble made Yeoeun-nu-na far more frantic than the actual account owner.
"No. Right now."
Click. Click.
Brushing aside Nu-na's anxious pleas, I swiftly dragged the requisite material players into their enhancement slots. Having observed how the interface operated earlier, I initiated the attempt entirely on my own.
Fwaaaash!
The silver plus-seven card was reborn as an awe-inspiring, gold-plated plus-eight card.
"Holy shit!"
"Oh. It worked."
Yeoeun-nu-na literally leaped straight out of her chair.
"This is crazy! Do you have any idea how much this card just boosted the club's total value?!"
Even though it wasn't remotely her account, Nu-na was bouncing around in manic excitement. I remained comfortably seated, calmly perusing the reactions exploding across the live chat.
Gauging the viewers' hysteria, it was evident that an extraordinary stroke of luck had just occurred. Could it be that my body harbored some lingering aura of divine favor? I was hardly the type to put stock in superstitions, but having genuinely stood face-to-face with a deity in my past life, I couldn't entirely discount the idea either.
"Congratulations! I will gladly accept the mission completion reward."
"Thank you very much. And congratulations to you too. It must be a truly wonderful card."
"*Pfft*, haha! Wow, you look at a gold-tier Chacha and just casually say 'it must be a truly wonderful card'? Man, this is an astronomical jackpot!"
After her initial bout of euphoria subsided, Yeoeun-nu-na began looking visibly envious. Sure enough, only moments later, she slyly brought forward her own account again.
"Hmm. I don't think it'll work anymore."
"Come on! Of course it will! I bet my life it's going to succeed."
"No. I'd rather stop here for today."
The moment Yeoeun-nu-na presented her own account, an unsettling reluctance seized my fingers, keeping me from touching the mouse.
"Aw, whyyy? Just push my Sonia-unni up to plus-five too!"
"If you want it that badly, pay up like the others. Show a little sincerity."
"What do you mean, sincerity?! Can't you even do this much for your own sister?!"
It wasn't that I genuinely craved compensation from my sister; it was purely an instinctual premonition. A distinct gut feeling that trying it casually without any stakes would fail miserably.
No matter how many times I insisted that my gut was telling me not to do it, Yeoeun-nu-na whined and pestered without end. Ultimately overwhelmed by her sheer stubbornness, I had no choice but to rest my fingers back over the mouse.
"Let's gooooo~!"
Click.
And just like that, Yeoeun-nu-na's plus-four Sonia gracefully degraded straight down to a plus-two Sonia.
With barely an hour's worth of streaming yesterday, I had completely replenished all the lost funds. Even after anticipating the thirty percent deduction automatically forfeited to the Sinnam Halmang Foundation, a comfortable surplus remained. Luck had certainly smiled upon me.
"Jeongseo. I'm going to step out to the bank for a quick errand."
"Yes, Boss. Take care."
It was a quiet, languid afternoon with hardly any foot traffic. After stepping out of the restroom, Boss left the premises. Now, the cafe housed only myself and a single customer seated in the main seating area.
It was the very same customer Boss had pointed out yesterday. She had a black ball cap pulled firmly down over her eyes. Today, she wasn't wearing glasses, and since she was in the middle of drinking her iced coffee, she had removed her mask.
She's certainly preoccupied with her smartphone.
Judging by her demeanor, she looked firmly planted for the foreseeable future, so I decided to head toward the restroom. Our cafe featured a compact, single-room restroom nestled inside. It was a unisex stall shared by everyone. Because the vast majority of our patrons were women, having only one restroom rarely presented any major inconvenience. I simply had to remain cautious myself.
Screeech, clatter.
Stepping inside, I turned the latch and locked the door behind me. Even though Boss cleaned the facilities thoroughly every evening, there were always subtle nuisances that caught my eye.
Sigh. The trash bin is literally right next to them, so why...?
By the time afternoon rolled around, the restroom inevitably ended up in disarray. Particularly on days like this, stray wads of toilet paper tumbled across the tile surrounding the wastebasket. Did people attempt to toss their trash from halfway across the room? Early on, finding blood-stained sanitary pads discarded carelessly had left me utterly dumbfounded in this woman-centric society.
Huh? Why is this sitting out?
Before attending to my business, I gathered the scattered paper from the floor. Since I already had cleaning gloves on, I pressed down on the contents of the bin to compact them. That was when I noticed the bin's alignment looked slightly irregular.
Didn't I square this flush against the corner this morning?
Every time I used the restroom, I made a conscious point of tucking the wastebasket snugly into the corner seam of the wall. I had already stopped by the restroom once this morning and distinctly remembered realigning it. Yet right now, the bin sat visibly askew, parted from the wall.
Clatter, rattle.
Even when I nudged it, the bin refused to settle flat against the baseboard. An unstable rocking sound emerged from beneath its base.
"What's this?"
I hoisted the trash bin up.
Resting flat against the tile underneath was an ordinary-looking lighter. I genuinely couldn't comprehend why someone couldn't manage to toss such an item inside the bin. Moreover, finding a lighter in a cafe restroom made very little sense to begin with.
This entire building is non-smoking.
Lowering my posture, I scooped up the lighter. It didn't quite match the dimensions of any standard lighter I was familiar with. While the general silhouette appeared identical, it felt noticeably bulkier and carried unexpected heft. Perhaps it had simply slipped loose from a customer's pocket.
Should I hold onto it for the lost-and-found?
Thinking a customer might return searching for it later, I examined the device more closely to see if it was an expensive designer brand.
That was when an unsettling anomaly seized my attention.
The nozzle where a flame ought to ignite was completely obstructed. Embedded deep inside the recessed aperture sat a smooth, glass-like circular lens.