Chewing over those words, though he seemed to be grumbling on the surface, in the end it was words that considered my situation.
Don’t tell me saving me from the demon forest, giving me porridge—it was all groundwork to offer me a part-time position that included room and board?
Why? Because he thought I’d consider it charity if he just asked me to work outright? So he went in a roundabout way, feeding me a meal first and naturally creating a pretext to use me?
……I didn’t dislike it. Rather than charity without compensation, valuable labor was better.
I pondered over Gilbert’s words, lost in thought. I had nowhere to stay right away, and though it was called an inn, as he said, it was no different from a ruin. There was no food left worth mentioning and nothing that could be turned into money.
Moreover, it was a situation where I didn’t know when I’d return to my original world. If so, Gilbert’s proposal was not a bad choice, at least for the time being. No, it was the most realistic proposal given my current circumstances. As if knowing I was wavering, Gilbert spoke again.
“I’ll give you 3 silver a month.”
At those words, I hesitated for a moment, then asked quietly.
“Could you possibly give me today’s daily wage first? I have somewhere I need to go briefly.”
Gilbert seemed momentarily surprised, as if he’d expected me to accept the proposal right away, but eventually he rummaged through his pocket and held out a coin.
“Here, 7 pennies.”
Receiving the money with both hands, I immediately put my mind to work. Living a life crawling from the bottom for so long, when you see money, you instinctively calculate ‘how efficiently can I use this’ first.
That’s why I’d been stealing glances at Gilbert’s face all along. Emotions are bound to show in expressions, and if you can read emotions, you can know the other person’s weaknesses. It was a habit deeply ingrained during the years I’d survived on quick wits.
Though Gilbert’s face was half-covered with hair and couldn’t be read properly, judging by his casual attitude, he at least wasn’t the type to blatantly rip people off. Well, you never know with people though.
Anyway. I stopped looking at Gilbert and lowered my gaze back to the coins. Considering the cost of the porridge I ate earlier as calculated by the hourly wage I’d worked, if I worked the entire month, it would be 3 silver. Converted, that was money amounting to 300 pennies.
Clutching the coin tightly, I immediately went outside. The sky had already darkened, and lanterns were being lit one by one on the street. Just as a restaurant was lighting up, I didn’t hesitate and entered inside.
“Hello, please give me soup and a loaf of bread.”
The shop owner seemed to have seen me cleaning at the inn, sending a briefly puzzled look, but still soon handed over warm soup and bread.
Glancing at the menu, bread and soup were 2 pennies. Recalling the day’s wages, my stomach felt slightly bitter. When I bit into the tough bread, it stuck in my throat, but when I soaked it in soup and forced it down, it barely went down.
My stomach, hungry from the rather hard labor, clamored for more. I mechanically chewed and swallowed the bread while starting realistic calculations in my head.
When can I leave here? If I open my eyes tomorrow morning, will it be reality again? Or… will this place become my world until the end?
If so, I couldn’t miss Gilbert’s proposal. Room and board provided, daily wage guaranteed. It could definitely be a trap. Still, given my current situation, that was the only hill to lean on. But what if it was a scheme to rip off me who’d lost my memory even more?
“…That won’t do.”
As I twisted my lips, bread crumbs trickled down. Roughly wiping the corners of my mouth with my sleeve, I thought.
Still, who am I? I’m a miserly scrooge with the grit to survive trampling through every ugly sight and dirty situation.
Having quietly finished my judgment, I raised my head and examined the shop owner’s expression. Then, lightly adjusting my breathing, I casually struck up a conversation.
“Your complexion looks good—your wife must take good care of you. Your family is harmonious, right?”
The shop owner’s gaze, which had been somewhat guarded, immediately softened. As expected, praise was universal, perfect for melting wariness. Besides, I’d often been told my impression was affable originally. …Ah, or not? Here I’m covering even my eyes with bangs.
I was about to sweep back my hair to at least show my face when the shop owner’s warm voice made me lower my hand.
“Haha, my wife is like that. My daughter resembles my wife and is lovely. My two sons are a bit mischievous though.”
“What a happy household. You run a restaurant too, so you must be well-off financially.”
“Well-off my foot. Just because you run a restaurant, does that mean eating and living are the same? With five mouths to feed, we’re barely scraping by. When you earn for a day, it’s tight just setting a table for five people to eat from.”
I made a worried face and chimed in.
“Business must not be good these days.”
The shop owner shrugged and said.
“Well, it’s not subjugation season now, so there are many times when I can’t even sell twenty bowls of soup a day. Only when you add liquor and meat can we barely hang on.”
I quickly tapped a calculator in my head. Bread and soup are 2 pennies. Twenty bowls a day means only 40 pennies. Even adding meat and other menu items, generously estimating, daily sales would be around 1 to 2 silver.
Having finished calculating in my head, I scraped the soup clean to the bottom and stood up from my seat.
“That was a good meal.”
“You finished already? Now that I think about it, I’ve never seen your face before.”
“I’ll be coming often from now on. I think I’ll be working at that inn over there.”
“At Gilbert’s? I heard workers have been running away lately….”
I didn’t respond further to those words, just smiled and bowed my head. After confirming the shop owner was smiling contentedly one last time, I quietly opened the door and left the shop.
When I returned to the inn, Gilbert sprang up from his seat as if he’d been waiting.
“Kid, where did you go…”
“It’s Sion.”
After correcting him as if cutting off Gilbert’s words, I spoke clearly and distinctly.
“Boss, 3 silver seems too little. As you can see, I clean well and I’m quick in my movements. For reference, I’m a kitchen assistant who even knows how to cook. Isn’t 3 silver insufficient for using someone with my skills?”
As I poured out words like recited lines, Gilbert looked at me with an expression like he’d been hit.
“I’m doing the work of several people alone. That’s all labor cost savings. Besides, you said the previous workers ran away because of monsters too, right? That means hazard pay should be attached. And you said you’d provide room and board, but I have my own inn so I don’t need lodging.”
Gilbert’s eyes narrowed for a moment. Not wanting to lose momentum, I adjusted my breath and pushed harder.
“So. 3 silver is too little. I think it should be at least 5 silver.”
As the words ended, a brief silence flowed. I could feel the energy that Gilbert was calculating something inside.
Isn’t that too bold?
I didn’t have such useless worries.
Bosses all know. Whether bosses who only manage or bosses who work on-site, they quickly recognize who’s a useful talent. And they inevitably prefer part-timers who are quick-witted and work well together over slow, unmotivated ones. If such talent says they’ll quit? It’s natural to hold onto them even by paying more money. Moreover, isn’t this a situation where such talent rolled in on their own?
So this was, at the same time, self-PR that I was this useful and wage negotiation.
Gilbert burst into a hollow laugh as if dumbfounded by my brazenly confident demand.
“I thought you were a pitiful kid, but you’re an impudent kid?”
“I hear that a lot.”
What can I do? All that Baek Sion, a twenty-four-year-old orphan with no relatives, learned from the world was guts alone.
Gilbert scratched his beard roughly. His hand went back and forth through the coarse hair several times, then the movement stopped abruptly as if he’d made up his mind. After looking me up and down for a moment, he spoke briefly as if reaching a conclusion.
“The cup you broke earlier gets deducted from your daily wage.”
“…Evil boss.”
“Isn’t an employee who squeezes the liver out of a flea also evil?”
“How is the boss a flea? If there’s a flea that big, that’s a monster.”
At those words, Gilbert laughed heartily, then tousled my hair again. Though my hair became a mess from his rough touch, strangely it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Anyway, that’s how my first start in this world was decided as an inn part-timer.
***
Two months had passed since I came to this world—no, since I possessed into it. And I still hadn’t returned to my original world. Wiping the table with a dishcloth, I fell into deep thought.
How can I get out of here? I worried about it every day, but no clear answer came to mind.
That said, I wasn’t anxious or impatient. When you think about it, I didn’t have any great job in Korea either, nor did I have parents or close friends. So there wasn’t much difference between here and there. Moreover—for reasons I didn’t know—the language worked, and the work I did was part-time anyway. Rather, here I even had a house, so it was a bit better? The inconvenience was just that there were no smartphones and spicy food was rare.
“Kid, you said you know how to cook, right?”
“Boss, why do you always call me kid?”
When I shot back sullenly, Gilbert tousled my hair again.
Is it because we both have curly hair? It didn’t tangle, and he handled it skillfully as if dealing with his own hair. Even when I washed my hair, my hands caught constantly and curses came out, so what made him touch it so easily?
