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CHAPTER 05
‘Here. Keep the change.’
‘That’s your errand fee.’
‘What?’
‘I’m telling you to keep it.’
‘You don’t need the change? Are you sure? I’ll really keep it.’
‘Yeah. Keep it.’
It was already unexpected that he gave me his own money to go buy things for him. But giving me the change as an “errand fee” was even more unexpected.
Actually, I had prepared two or three 10,000-won bills in my wallet in advance, just in case he asked me to buy various things from the school store.
Now they were completely useless.
‘My wallet is about to burst.’
My previously thin wallet had only gone to school with me twice, yet it was now stuffed with 10,000-won and 50,000-won bills.
I hardly did anything, yet I was getting paid more than minimum wage.
At this point, I should actually be grateful to him.
Ever since I became Kim Dohwan’s personal errand girl, he had consistently contacted me during every break.
Just like now.
I had only just finished carrying Kim Dohwan’s empty messenger bag all the way to our classroom after running into him on the way to school.
I was hoping to finally have some personal time, but my phone started buzzing with a message from my “employer.”
[8:04 AM │ Hey, Kang]
[8:04 AM │ Get a variety of drinks, one of each kind, and one lollipop.]
[8:04 AM │ Buy them and come to the stairs leading to the rooftop.]
[Yes, sir. Your order has been received ^^ │ 8:04 AM]
[8:05 AM │ Hey, wait]
[8:05 AM │ Lollipops are only sold in the annex.]
[8:06 AM │ I know.]
[8:06 AM │ Then you’d better hurry.]
“Wait, I have to go to the first floor of the annex and then come all the way up to the fifth floor of the main building? Ah, seriously!”
I had been running errands for him for a week now, and Kim Dohwan had never once given me an errand that I could do leisurely.
It was a good thing my body in this life was physically fit.
If I had been weak too, I probably would have collapsed from exhaustion by now.
Thanks to the troublesome customer who had ordered a lollipop, I had to go all the way to the annex across the school, so I was breathing a little heavily.
At the sound of my footsteps on the rooftop stairs, Kim Dohwan, who had been sitting against the stairway wall, shifted his gaze from his phone to me.
“You’re here?”
“Haaah. Yeah. I’m here.”
I dropped down beside him with an exhausted expression.
Kim Dohwan rummaged through the black plastic bag and pulled out a canned drink.
It was the Cherry Coke I had just bought from the vending machine.
‘Where did I put the tangerine drink?’
While I was looking for the tangerine drink I had bought for myself, Kim Dohwan suddenly spat out the drink he was drinking.
I looked at him with an expression that clearly said, What the hell are you doing?
But instead, Kim Dohwan looked at me accusingly, as if I were the one at fault.
“Ugh… What is this? It tastes weird! Did you buy me something spoiled?”
“It isn’t spoiled. That’s just how it tastes. Look at the expiration date on the bottom. It’s fine.”
“There is no way it’s supposed to taste like this. It’s artificially sweet too…”
Kim Dohwan frowned and quickly examined the side of the can.
“Cherry flavor 5%? Not even real cherry pieces, just flavoring? Are you kidding me?!”
“Well, it has cherry flavor in it, so it’s a cherry drink.”
I smiled brightly and clapped in admiration.
Kim Dohwan’s face became even more twisted.
After taking one look at his expression, which clearly said he hated it, I peeled the wrapper off my lollipop and thought,
‘Honestly, isn’t 5% actually a pretty large amount?’
The taste seemed to have shocked him.
He repeatedly rinsed his mouth with the bottled water beside him.
In an instant, the full bottle of water was half empty.
Kim Dohwan smacked his lips slightly and then put more water into his mouth.
Apparently, he had remembered the taste from earlier.
“Ah. Don’t tell me you’ve never had a carbonated drink before?”
“Carbonated? That strange feeling on my tongue is because of carbonation?”
I had seen people who drank a lot of soda before, but watching someone experience it for the first time was more than just interesting.
It was almost fascinating.
‘Wow. So this must be how Lee Segye felt when she introduced ramen to Kim Dohwan for the first time.’
Kim Dohwan had grown up like a sheltered flower in a greenhouse, so he was different from ordinary people.
Because of that gap, things that were completely normal to us always felt new to him.
‘No wonder Lee Segye kept making him try all kinds of food.’
Watching his genuine reactions was more fun than I expected.
“Your tongue and the inside of your mouth feel like they’re popping, right? That’s carbonation.”
“Why would anyone drink something like this?”
“Because it’s delicious.”
Kim Dohwan looked at me with hollow, exhausted eyes after hearing my completely natural answer.
He looked strangely drained.
‘Can drinking one sip of soda really change someone’s condition that much?’
He picked up the empty water bottle and lightly tapped its bottom against the ground.
“Haaah. Don’t ever buy this again. Just get a regular drink.”
“You told me to buy flavors you hadn’t tried before. They didn’t have regular cherry, so I bought Cherry Coke…”
“Then don’t buy cherry anymore.”
He firmly cut me off.
‘But it’s delicious.’
Feeling disappointed, I bit down hard on the lollipop in my mouth.
“So, what did you think of trying carbonation for the first time?”
“Terrible.”
“That’s harsh.”
Kim Dohwan was the first person I’d ever met who called the one and only thing that helped cut through the heaviness of food “terrible.”
With no other choice, I handed him the tangerine drink I had intended to drink myself.
It was the only non-carbonated drink among everything I had bought, so I generously decided to give it to him.
As soon as Kim Dohwan opened the can, he suspiciously smelled it once before taking a sip.
When I asked him what he thought, he swallowed the drink in his mouth and immediately gave his verdict.
“Artificially sweet.”
“…Then don’t drink it.”
The generous feeling I had barely managed to develop dried up the moment it appeared.
I reached out to take the tangerine drink from his hand, but Kim Dohwan was faster and poured the drink into his mouth.
“If it’s artificial, why are you drinking it?”
“It’s strange too, but it’s better than the carbonated one from earlier.”
“Well, I guess. Someone who only drank fresh fruit juice at home would find a 700-won canned drink strange if it were their first time.”
“What are you? My stalker? How do you know that?!”
“Why are you looking at me like that? I just took a guess. That’s how things always work in dramas about chaebols, isn’t it?”
Of course, that was a completely shameless lie.
The story about Kim Dohwan’s fresh fruit juice was one of the episodes described in The World of Those Guys.
I couldn’t even describe how shocked I had been when I read it.
‘What? He had never eaten bread from a chain store? He didn’t even know about popsicles? He thought drinks only came in bottles? What kind of life has this guy been living?!’
Kim Dohwan had lived the textbook life of a third-generation chaebol.
He only ate bread made by world-famous bakers, and he thought ice cream only came in tubs that you scooped out with a spoon.
And even these things were apparently things he only learned because Lee Segye patiently taught him about them one by one.
‘I feel so sorry for you because you don’t even know what ramen tastes like!’
Maybe Kim Dohwan disliked the pitying look I was giving him.
He slapped the can in his hand against the ground.
Some of the yellow tangerine drink splashed onto his white school shirt, but he didn’t seem to care.
“The drink is cold! Go buy another one!”
That was all he said while glaring at me.
‘Of course it’s cold! I took it out of a refrigerator! I swear, before that drink gets warm, I’m going to grab this guy by the neck!’
The moment I had that thought, Kim Dohwan looked up at me and raised one eyebrow.
“Oh? You’re raising your eyes at me? Got something to say?”
My gaze naturally dropped.
“…No.”
“Then hurry up and go buy another drink.”
Apparently, he liked my weak voice, which sounded like I wanted to disappear into the ground.
Kim Dohwan smiled brightly and waved a yellowish piece of paper.
The paper held between his index and middle fingers was none other than a 50,000-won bill.
Why did he keep giving me money when a single drink from the school store barely cost anything?
“Don’t you want it?”
“Are you showing off how much money you have? That’s not even your money. It’s your parents’.”
If that money had been something he earned himself from a part-time job rather than his allowance, I would have taken at least three bills instead of one.
‘Not that someone like him would ever work a part-time job.’
I placed the orange Fanta I had just bought beside Kim Dohwan and glanced at my wristwatch.
Only three minutes remained until the next class.
If I hurried, I could still make it to class without being late.
I was about to leave when I noticed Kim Dohwan was still holding the 50,000-won bill.
“Put that away. I still have plenty of change left from the drinks earlier. I’ll use that to buy it.”
I wasn’t in any urgent need of money anyway.
I left those words behind and started walking down the stairs.
For some reason, I felt a strange burning sensation on the back of my head, as if someone were staring at me.
“I thought double-event bonuses only applied to games.”
Because I had spent the entire day running errands at school, several different workbooks were piled up like a tower on the desk in the corner of my room.
They were all the studying I should have done at school.
And I had finally finished all of it.
I put down the Korean workbook I had just been solving and placed two copies of the Mathematics I textbook on the desk.
“Yay. More studying. I’m so excited. So excited.”
Even I could hear how completely unexcited my voice sounded.
What I had been doing until just now was studying for the sake of my relationship with Nam Juyeon.
What I was about to do now was homework assigned by the school.
The reason there were two math textbooks was simple.
My generous employer, who paid me a lot of money, had asked me to do it.
“Fine. If he tells me to do it, I have to do it.”
Still, Kim Dohwan was somewhat considerate in his own way.
He had declared that if I did his homework for him, he wouldn’t make me run drink errands for an entire day.
‘Ah. If he were actually kind, wouldn’t he just not make me do these things in the first place?’
Still, from my perspective, although I was suffering through this situation, I was also enjoying it in my own strange way.
So I couldn’t say it was completely bad.
Our math teacher moved through the material quickly, so even though we hadn’t taken the midterm exam yet, more than half of the textbook already had notes written in it.
After finishing all the problem-solving homework, I opened Kim Dohwan’s math textbook.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day I was looking at the male protagonist’s textbook.”
I admired the stiff cover, which looked as though it had never even been opened, and began flipping through the pages.
‘…What is this?’
I had wondered if the protagonist’s textbook had some special effect that made it look brand-new compared to everyone else’s.
But no.
It really was brand-new.
