Chapter 7: Prize won.
" I will! I promise!"She nodded vigorously.
" Now why don't you run along home. It's getting late, I'm sure you're dear old mom must be worried about you by now."
"T-That's right! You're right!" Her eyes widened, sparkling with a sudden, panicked realization that completely overshadowed the lingering fear from my bizarre gangster act.
My simple, practical statement about her mother had struck a more immediate chord than all my philosophical talk about loneliness.
"I didn't even tell mom I left!" she blurted out in a rush, the words tumbling over each other. She turned on her heel in a hurried manner, with new urgency, and rushed towards the now-unlocked door.
She grabbed the handle, then paused, spinning back to face me. Her expression was a jumble of gratitude, residual embarrassment, and that fresh, electric excitement.
" Oppa... Thanks for everything, bye!" The words were bright and sincere, hanging in the air for a second before she was pushing the door open, the bell above it giving a cheerful, incongruous jingle.
"Yeah, yeah," I called after her retreating back, struggling to hold back the laugh that was bubbling up in my chest, a laugh of pure, unadulterated relief and the sheer absurdity of the last fifteen minutes.
I waved a dismissive hand. "Just make sure you never try that again. Next time, the boss's guys might actually be waiting!"
It was clear she didn't hear the last part because she gave a final, quick wave without looking back and then she was gone, disappearing into the deepening blue of the evening, her form swallowed by the shadows between the pools of light from the streetlamps.
The door sighed shut on its hydraulic hinge, leaving me in the familiar, fluorescent-buzzing silence of the convenience store.
I leaned back against the counter, letting out a long, slow breath that seemed to come from the soles of my feet.
The tension drained from my shoulders, leaving a weird, hollow feeling in its wake. I'd done it. I'd completed the first inexplicable prompt from the universe's worst game designer without getting arrested or causing a nervous breakdown.
A weird sense of accomplishment, completely disconnected from the mundane reality of my minimum-wage job, settled over me. It was then, in that quiet moment of post-adrenaline calm, that the world glitched.
Two lines of crisp, blue-white text materialized directly in the center of my vision, as clear and solid as if they were painted on the air.
[Congratulations on clearing the system mission]
[Mission clear assessment: S rank]
I blinked, startled. The text didn't waver. It just hung there, politely waiting for my attention like a notification on a phone screen.
Before I could even process what an "S rank" might mean, more lines swiftly appeared beneath, scrolling into view.
[Assigning reward…]
There was a brief, half-second pause. Then.
[Congratulations! You've won: $1,000.00]
"Huh?!!!" The sound ripped from my throat, a loud, strangled shout of pure disbelief that shattered the store's quiet.
I immediately slapped a hand over my mouth, my eyes darting wildly around the empty aisles. My heart hammered against my ribs, never did I expect something like this to happen.
This was $1000 out of thing air, not 1000 won! To some it might've been small but to someone like me, it was practically... You know what, I'd rather not diminish myself by explaining.
It was a great thing I was the only one still in the shop, I thought, thank God I didn't scare off any customers.
Plus, my boss wasn't around today. If he had been, my startled yell would have brought her running from the back office, and how would I explain that? 'Sorry, Noona, I just got a thousand-dollar pop-up ad in my eyeballs.' rather than being out of a job, I'm more certain she'd have me set up for a psych evaluation.
I stood there frozen for a long moment, hand still clamped over my mouth, staring at the words. They remained, impassive and glowing. $1,000.00. The number was specific. It even had a decimal point. like a god-damned real credit alert.
'There's no way this is actually possible…' I tried to reassure myself, the voice in my head small and skeptical.
This had to be an elaborate hallucination, a stress-induced fantasy. Maybe I'd hit my head on a cooler door and didn't remember. Maybe that burrito last night had been laced with something truly exotic.
And yet… I couldn't resist. The pull was too strong for me to do so.
With trembling fingers that felt thick and clumsy, I reached into the pocket of my red vest and pulled out my phone, a cheap, battered smartphone with a cracked screen protector. Not high end but that didn't matter right now.
I fumbled with the power button, my thumb slipping twice before the screen lit up. It buzzed softly in my hand as it finished booting, which was a routine vibration for loading messages. But this time, the buzz felt portentous, like a judge's gavel.
I swiped to unlock it, my breath held. The home screen loaded, then the notification bar. And there, sitting at the top of the list from my banking app, an app I mostly used to stare at depressing numbers, was a new alert. Not the usual "Your statement is ready" or "Low balance warning." This was different.
My thumb hovered over it for a second, a strange superstitious fear holding me back. Then I tapped.
The app opened, and a recent transaction filled the screen. The details were strangely anonymous, which I didn't understand how it was even possible but the alert was brutally clear:
Txn: CR
Ac: 1XX..56X
Amt: USD 1,000.00
Des:Transfer from *******
Date:******* (today's date)
Bal: USD 2,050.37
Basically, I'd just gotten 1,444,640.00 won!!!!
The numbers didn't lie. My balance, which had been hovering just above a thousand dollars,
my precarious buffer against total disaster, had just doubled. By One thousand dollars.
'Holy shit! It's actually real?!' I gasped, sucking in a sharp, cold lungful of air-conditioned air that did nothing to calm the sudden, dizzying heat rushing to
my face. My knees felt weak. I braced a hand against the cool formica of the counter to steady myself.