Chapter 45
The story continues off the page
Floaties for Everyone
Swim lesson at the water park, and she's demonstrating on you
Busy, busy.
Exactly a week had passed since Christmas, since we’d returned to the 3rd Floor.
New Year came, we got a year older, and our days off drifted by lazily enough.
Back to everyday life.
Right now Meracle was packed with customers and busier than ever.
“We’ll find your miracle for you. Welcome to Meracle. Do you have a reservation?”
Kim Yang’s greeting let me know another customer had arrived.
Back then I trained her so she could say just that part clearly, but now she recites it by heart like a tape recorder.
That must mean she’s that tired.
‘Should I cut the greeting down a bit?’
When we didn’t have any customers, a greeting that long was fine. It even felt like we were serving each guest with careful attention.
‘Now that we’re getting more and more customers, I guess we need to shorten the greeting. Or should we just put up a sign?’
Make it big enough to see the moment you enter Meracle.
‘That’s fucking awesome.’
It was the first time I’d ever felt so vividly that my Meracle was growing.
With a deep sense of pride, I asked the customer in front of me again.
“Yes, you work as a financial trader?”
“That’s right. I’m active in Cyber City.”
He had a plain but neat face and a crisp suit. On the surface he looked perfectly respectable, and his manner was relaxed.
“May I ask for the company name?”
“Pardon?”
When you run a matchmaking agency, customers often try to hide their own information.
The so-called landmines.
In times like this, what I need to do is check without making the customer feel too bad about it.
“Ah, don’t worry. We don’t leak anything separately. We just need to know so we can adjust your rating, after all.”
“Ahem. I was working at a company, but... I quit.”
“So you’re a freelancer now. In other words, a full-time investor?”
“Right.”
Look at that—such a nasty feeling.
Should I probe a little more?
“Haha, no need to worry, sir. Who doesn’t invest in stocks these days? Everyone does. Full-time investors are viewed without prejudice in the marriage market nowadays too.”
“Right? I couldn’t quite accept it either. Only people who don’t know better call it unstable—”
“Yes, exactly. So, sir, what assets have you accumulated so far?”
“One Belokan coin, two Alodelum—”
“You invest in coins?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Ahem, sir? We don’t treat anything below 6th Floor coins as assets. They fluctuate far too much.”
“......”
“Besides that, do you have anything like cash, real estate, or a vehicle—”
“No.”
“......”
When I fell silent and stared at him, the man quickly tried to explain himself, looking flustered.
“I think you’re misunderstanding something. That’s how coins are supposed to work. I put the money I’d use for a house or a car into coins and made even more money, you know?”
“But it could crash tomorrow, couldn’t it? Especially in Cyber City, the swings are severe. In that case, we can’t treat it as assets. We still have to measure your rating.”
“Ha...”
Today he had 500 million won in coins, so I gave him an A rating.
If the coins crash tomorrow and drop to 100 million, the rating has to be adjusted then too.
Since it’s hard for a matchmaking agency to adjust ratings in real time, coins are treated as assets, but not ones with much weight.
The man sighed and rubbed his face.
“This is why you can’t have a conversation with these uncivilized 3rd Floor bastards.”
Cyber City has people with a uniquely disgusting sense of superiority.
Just because they’re technologically ahead, they’re these ridiculous bigots who think they’re above everyone else.
People like that can’t be convinced with words.
“Then let’s take a look, sir.”
I’d already installed the 6th Floor stock app for this, you bastard.
“You said Belokan coin and Alodelum, right? Let me check now.”
“Wait! Just a second!”
When I checked, the blue indicators were dropping fast. Because of the gap between floors, it wasn’t real time and there was about a 30-minute lag, but I could still see the trend.
“You came to the 3rd Floor because things looked hopeless on the 6th Floor, right? Since we’re uncivilized, just like you said, you thought we wouldn’t realize your investment had crashed?”
“Fuck, fuck! Just help me land some rich bitch! Buying now while the price is down is the really smart move!”
While he puffed angrily and shouted at me, I held out the phone that had just been refreshed.
“It dropped even more.”
“Fuck—!”
Bang!
After leaving the consultation room, he kept spewing curses.
We saw every customer, but the ones with real issues would usually get hit where it hurt like that and storm out on their own.
And that one wasn’t a customer; he was a scammer.
The real problem customer, Renea, peeked her head into the room.
“Boss? May I bring in the next customer?”
“Please do.”
“Understood!”
Last Christmas.
She’d grumbled for days about being left alone to work part-time at a convenience store.
When New Year came and she turned 1,902, we were able to cheer her up by eating together at our place and watching the New Year bell ring.
And now she was working part-time at Meracle.
Reservations were fine since we could prepare for them, but we hired her to handle walk-ins.
Anyway, she used to wander around Meracle out of boredom after her convenience-store shifts, so it worked out, didn’t it?
‘But now that I think about it, I seem to remember that under senior welfare policy, companies get government subsidies for hiring people over 60.’
Renea was from the 4th Floor’s Rageshta Continent, so maybe that didn’t apply to her?
Still, she was 1,902 years old...
* * *
No matter how many customers poured in, we had to break things off because there was a legally mandated lunch break.
If it were my heart’s desire, I’d become a nasty employer right away and squeeze the two foreign workers dry, but I should hold back.
Ding-dong!
“Kim Yang, the food’s at the door.”
“M-maknae.”
“Y-yes! The maknae is going!”
“......”
Is it really okay to call a 1,902-year-old grandmother the maknae and send her on errands?
But seeing how delighted she was by the title of maknae, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her not to.
“Uh, Kim Yang.”
“W-what do you need?”
“...Never mind.”
If she’s happy, that’s enough.
Honestly, I didn’t want to take away even one of the few joys from someone who could die at any time without anyone batting an eye.
Isn’t that filial piety?
If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve ordered side dishes too.
“I brought it, seniors!”
What Renea brought with a bright grin was none other than hwe-deopbap.
It was a meal for Renea, who had grown to like raw fish ever since we went out for sushi together last time.
“R-right. S-set it up.”
“Yes! Understood! Hehe, it’s been almost fifteen hundred years since I was called a junior.”
I’m glad she seems happy.
When I opened the package, the slices of raw fish were arranged neatly like jewels in a jewelry box.
“You’ve worked hard today, and we’ve got lots of reservations this afternoon too, so I specially got an expensive—”
“Th-thank you for the meal.”
“I shall eat well!”
The employees started eating, completely ignoring the boss.
Where else would you find such a horizontal organization, seriously?
“Might as well be the boss themselves.”
Lunch began with everyone huddled around my office desk.
We already didn’t have enough chairs, and after borrowing plastic ones from the convenience store so customers could wait, the place was packed tight.
“I didn’t realize it because I’d only been in the consultation room all day, but was it always this cramped here?”
At my words, the two of them stuck their necks out as if they’d been waiting for it and shouted,
“C-cramped! Super c-cramped!”
“More than that, the space is used terribly! What a wasteful thing!”
“Is it that bad?”
Wasn’t that a bit exaggerated?
“I-it is that bad. C-customers get anxious.”
“They came here after seeing all that advertising, but once they saw it was basically a back-alley office, how could they trust us?! There were some customers who just turned around and left!”
“What?”
No matter how shabby our exterior looks, we do one hell of a job.
“...I was planning to put the money coming in this time into stocks.”
Looks like that’s not going to work.
“I’ll have to stop by the wholesale furniture mall after work today.”
There was a place I’d visited when the office first opened. It was run by an orc, and the furniture was stacked there like in a warehouse.
“I-I want to go too!”
“Oh! I shall go as well! That sounds fun!”
“We’re not going there to have fun, okay? And I’m not paying extra either.”
“B-but. Y-your taste is bad.”
“Mm-hmm, it really is!”
What the hell...?
I can accept Kim Yang being an influencer.
But a 1,902-year-old elf who sleeps on leaves and wakes up with dew on her face is saying my taste is bad?
“I’m definitely coming with you. Let’s see just how great your picks are.”
“I’ll show you the power of experience! I’m an elf who’s spent 1,900 years keeping up with trends!”
She made it sound kind of convincing.
She does dress a little hip, too.
While I ate in guarded silence, Kim Yang gave a light clap and brought a letter from her seat.
“M-mail. I picked it up this morning.”
“Thanks.”
It’s not like mail usually amounts to much. Most of it is bills telling us to pay up.
I checked them one by one while chewing the hwe-deopbap.
One utility bill, one insurance ad, one sale flyer from a nearby mart, and three letters from Baek Yeonhwa in the old Murim...
“I told her to stop sending them.”
I’d been told it was okay not to reply, but letters still came whenever she got bored.
“I-I’ve been writing back.”
“You? Pretending to be me?”
“A-are you crazy? L-letter friend.”
“Oh...”
“I’m writing along with her too!”
We’ve ended up with quite the unusual little friend group.
“So that’s why three arrived at once.”
One for me.
One for Kim Yang.
One for Renea.
After handing them out one by one like distributing mail, I checked the next one—
“Huh?”
It was a familiar name, though not a welcome one.
More precisely, one of Meracle’s chief enemies.
[Tophon New Year’s ‘White Rose Banquet’ Invitation]
Tophon, the biggest and best-known matchmaking agency on the 3rd Floor.
An invitation sent to us from there.
“A White Rose Banquet? What is that?”
I gave a brief answer to Renea, who had been peeking in from the side to watch.
“It’s like a party. They pick a few people registered with the agency and have everyone spend time getting to know each other.”
“Ooh...? That sounds fun!”
Fun?
I suppose it could be.
You could basically call it a spouse-viewing party, or a selection event for marriage candidates.
A dating show without cameras.
In a way, you could say dating shows originated there.
“But why invite me?”
I’m not even a Tophon customer.
Why invite the CEO of a rival company to their New Year’s party?
“B-boss. A-are you going?”
“Of course I’ll go. They invited us like this, after all. And it might be a chance to learn something.”
Actually, I’d wanted to push this kind of ‘meeting party’ concept myself.
But Meracle didn’t have the spare capacity for it right now, and our finances weren’t exactly abundant, so I figured it was a story for the distant future—
“They’ve given us this chance, so we should go and see it properly.”
I was curious how a big company ran things and kept the flow going.
That brazen move must have a reason behind it too.
“W-well then.”
Kim Yang nodded, and flames suddenly flared in her once-lazy eyes.
“S-styling. Get it done before you go.”
“......”
“Get the upper hand. O-our arch-enemy.”
Kim Yang was all fired up.
In the meantime, Renea’s chopsticks tried to steal my salmon, so I immediately glared at her.
“G-grandma likes salmon.”
“......”
“I’m sorry, so stop staring at me!”
You only call me grandma when it suits you, huh.