Chapter 16 - The Internationalist II

3

First, I casually raided convenience-store distribution centers across the country.

Of course, the task wasn't nearly as simple as that one-line summary made it sound. The National Assembly had been blown away, leaving the country half-paralyzed. Quick-witted people were already trying to entrench themselves in the distribution centers.

"Who's there!"

"Stop! Stay back!"

But who was I? A regressor who, at this point, had lived ninety lives.

Screams rang out at the barricaded entrances to the distribution centers. Before long, the people in charge and I were calling each other brothers.

"Do you understand? If those trucks don't arrive by this Friday, we're going to spend some very meaningful time together."

"Y-yes! Understood!"

Soon, convoys of trucks poured out of distribution centers in northern and eastern Gyeonggi Province. Their destination, naturally, was our store: the Sixth International convenience store.

Military units and police tried to interfere along the way, but I brushed them aside with ease.

I'd worked with the National Intelligence Service and the government in previous runs. One of the first things Old Man Scho and I had done while traveling together was collect the personal weaknesses of senior government officials.

In the end, our store became a black hole, sucking in convenience-store supplies in the blink of an eye.

"Waaah... Comrade Manager! The boxes are piled up like mountains! It makes me so sad to think that all of this is the product of physical capital built on the workers' blood and sweat!"

"It's ours now."

"I can't stop laughing...!"

The classic signs of a revolutionary's corruption were starting to show.

Construction began on an enormous warehouse beneath the convenience store. It was such a massive undertaking that, had we relied on human labor, we couldn't even have guaranteed a completion date. But fairy power made many things possible.

After finishing the gigantic underground warehouse, the fairies arranged the goods neatly.

"Hmm?"

That's right. Not a fairy. Fairies.

Their number had somehow grown to three, and they were flitting busily about, moving products.

I summoned Fairy No. 264.

"No. 264."

"Yes! Comrade Manager!"

The fairy stood at attention.

"Explain yourself. Why have the fairies suddenly multiplied?"

"Yes! I requested support from the [Fairy Revolution Club]! Inspired by your great revolutionary line, Comrade Manager, our club comrades are joining the front one after another to participate in our cause!"

What.

"Don't tell me there are going to be even more fairies here?"

"Probably? The revolutionary cause is like a river that swells as it flows downstream. Except for those filthy, vile royalist reactionaries, of course!"

"Hmm..."

This was a development I hadn't anticipated. I'd only kept No. 264 around because I needed one competent slave I could work without paying.

But it wasn't a problem. No, it was better this way.

The more unforeseen events cropped up in a vacation run, the more fun it was.

"H-have my unilateral actions produced excessively adventurist consequences?"

"No. Well done."

I looked around. Was there anything handy?

As it happened, a shipping box was piled high with green Saemaul caps. I tore off the plastic wrapping and put one on Fairy No. 264.

Wearing a cap wider than its own head, the fairy tilted its head.

"What is this?"

"All fairies are equal, but some fairies are more equal than others! Comrade No. 264's pure and ardent passion for the revolution has moved me. I hereby appoint you leader of every fairy who joins the Sixth International henceforth."

"...! Comrade Manageeer...!"

Store staff secured.

Fairies could use magic, and they even possessed the ability to separate a designated area from reality. That was how the waiting hall at Busan Station had been isolated from the outside world.

"Deploy that isolated area over the underground warehouse."

"Yes!"

By combining that ability with freezing magic, we extended the shelf life of the products stored underground indefinitely.

Once I'd procured generators and finished the wiring and installation work, we had a convenience store with lights blazing twenty-four hours a day.

Now all that remained was to welcome customers.

On the sixth day after opening, our very first customer finally arrived.

"Welcome!"

"..."

The glass door opened with a jingle.

A woman in thick clothing, her hair in a ponytail.

Why keep it a secret? Our momentous first customer was none other than the Saintess. She lived nearby to begin with, and she would have spied on my eccentric behavior through [Clairvoyance], so naturally she was bound to visit.

She glanced at me standing behind the register.

"... Are you open?"

"Yes. We're open for business as usual, twenty-four hours a day."

"What's that?"

The Saintess pointed behind me.

A poster labeled [Store Rules] hung there.

──────────

1. Please be kind to our employees. Even if they look different from humans, they are all our store's valuable human capital and private property.

2. Our store accepts foreign currencies, including yen and dollars, as well as Korean won.

3. Smoking inside the store or under the parasols is strictly prohibited.

4. Our store limits purchase quantities. The number of items one person may purchase is limited to what one person could "reasonably" consume in a day. What is reasonable is determined by the store manager. (Example: You may not purchase 100 sandwiches at once.)

5. All physical altercations within 300 meters of our store are prohibited.

6. Violations of these rules may result in unrestricted sanctions. Thank you for your understanding.

7. Happy shopping!

──────────

I put on my customer-service smile.

"They're the rules, just as it says, ma'am. As long as you follow them, our store will always extend a heartfelt welcome to you."

"..."

The expression on the Saintess's face was, well... difficult to describe.

She prowled around the store like a cat on high alert. She kept watching me for a reaction until, upon reaching a certain section, she stopped short.

It was the pet-supply section.

"Oh. Fish food..."

"Our store maintains a special pet-supply section for customers who refuse to abandon their pets even as the world comes to an end."

"... Aquariums, driftwood, filter media, aquarium soil, glue, aquatic plants, surface skimmers, even filters..."

The Saintess murmured dazedly.

"Specialist supplies... With these, maintaining my tanks would be so much..."

"Do you like what you see, ma'am?"

"... Please wait a moment."

The Saintess left the convenience store.

A little while later, she returned laden with bundles of 50,000-won notes. As though entranced, she began piling aquarium maintenance supplies into her basket.

I faced the Saintess across the counter.

Her eyes shone with the spirit of an impulse shopper.

"I'll take all of this..."

"Thank you, ma'am! This coffee is on the house. We've only just opened, so please spread the word."

"... Yes. I'll come often."

Regular customer acquired.

With every proper means of marketing gone, winning the Saintess over as a regular had enormous advantages. The constellations would serve as advertising agents all on their own.

Sure enough, before long, the number of customers visiting the convenience store began to rise in earnest.

"Can't I buy a carton of cigarettes? Huh? Please!"

"I came all the way up from Chungju to visit this store."

"Sir, I'll pay you as much as you want. If you'll just cooperate with our unit..."

Business was positively booming.

Of course, as the customers increased, so did the customer bastards. The laws by which the world maintained its balance were always inexorable.

"Fuck! Get the bastard who owns this place out here!"

"Yes. Here I am, you customer bastard."

"Huh?"

Without a single exception, I beat every one of those bastards like a dog.

There were greedy bastards who insisted on buying excessive quantities all at once, bastards who stubbornly sat under the parasols puffing cigarette smoke, and bastards who went beyond opening soju bottles and having a drinking party—which I didn't mind—to starting fights. And so on and so forth.

Every one of them was punished.

"Spies planted by the imperialists to bring down the International! You shall be granted not a shred of mercy! It's the gulag for all of you!"

"Fuck... Why is a fairy..."

"Silence, reactionaries!"

Under No. 264's supervision, the customer bastards were put to work cleaning the banks of the Han River. Thanks to them, the area around our convenience store was so clean that it seemed to have escaped the end of the world all by itself.

By this point, reactions were appearing online too.

-Anonymous: Seriously, why is the International's owner so strong?

-Anonymous: I saw him yesterday. Six awakened rushed him at once, and they all went flying in seconds. Even our guild leader got wrecked in one shot. Is this guy a convenience-store owner or a Swordmaster? Isn't he just the strongest guy around?

-Anonymous: He's seriously strong.

-Anonymous: People are still causing trouble at the International? Absolute lunatics.

-Anonymous: That place is a fairy den...

-Anonymous: But why do the fairies there wear Che Guevara T-shirts?

-Anonymous: No idea.

-Anonymous: I asked last time, and they said those were their staff uniforms.

-Anonymous: No, why the hell are fairies working in Che Guevara T-shirts as their staff uniforms?

-Anonymous: Seriously, no idea.

Oh, right. This site wasn't SG Net. The name SG Net itself had been my idea, after all.

When Seo Gyu operated on his own without me, he opened the site under the name Hunter Community, or HunCom for short. There was no membership system; anyone could freely access it and post anonymously.

Perhaps they'd heard of my reputation, because occasionally awakened began visiting the convenience store not to buy anything, but to see me.

"I am the Sword Marquis, a swordsman of the Mount Hua Sect. I have long heard rumors of the International Shopkeeper's formidable martial prowess. Might I request a lesson?"

"..."

For example, a deranged role-playing geezer in his sixties who'd read so many martial arts novels that he'd gone off the deep end, calling monsters demons, awakened martial artists, and store clerks serving lads.

I'll have another chance to talk about this old man someday. I traveled with him during a different vacation run, not my ninetieth.

In any case, the Sixth International was a success.

Small guilds clustered along the banks of the Han River, which had been nothing but desolation since the gates erupted. Even some awakened who'd stubbornly played lone wolf without joining a guild settled nearby.

A convenience-store neighborhood had formed, so to speak.

Things might have been different before the world ended, but now there was only one such neighborhood in Korea. Perhaps it was the only one on Earth.

About twelve years passed like that.

4

One day.

"You're quite something yourself, Mr. Manager."

A customer spoke at the register. She was a guild leader who had brought all her members along for a guild dinner in the convenience store's front yard.

Her colossal guild, Three Thousand, was regarded as one of Korea's two greatest. It was a group with which I had quite a history.

Wearing one of the pointed hats characteristic of Three Thousand, its guild leader beamed.

"In what way?"

"Whenever I come here, it feels impossible that the world has ended up like this. Nowhere else accepts paper money anymore. You know what? I was buying potato chips today, and I flinched when I saw they cost over 3,500 won. I wondered if the price was right."

She looked thoroughly delighted.

Through the slightly open glass door, I could hear awakened laughing and chatting in the distance.

"It felt good just knowing I could still worry about something like that. You're a good person. Though I have no idea who you really are."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Oh, and thanks to your store, this neighborhood is relatively safe. Do you know what we call your store among ourselves?"

"A convenience store?"

"No, a police station. Whatever dispute comes up, it more or less gets resolved if we come here. No matter how furious you are, seeing fairies in Che Guevara T-shirts and Saemaul caps would calm you down out of sheer disbelief, wouldn't it?"

"Hmm."

I didn't think that would work on Seo Gyu.

Even in the Busan Station waiting hall, the first thing out of his mouth was always, "You fucking bastard."

"Anyway... Our guild is heading out to seal the gate that opened yesterday. We move out at 1100 hours the day after tomorrow. If you're interested, let me know. I can offer you the deputy guild leader position. Our guild is a little closed off to outsiders, but talent is always welcome."

"I appreciate the offer, but I have no intention of getting directly involved in combat."

"Really? I thought as much."

"Please don't push yourself too hard out there, either."

"Oh, please."

The Three Thousand guild leader chuckled and placed a bag of money on the counter. Presumably the bill for their dinner.

When I handed the bag to Fairy No. 264, she took out one more 1,000-won note and pressed it into my hand.

Amazingly, it wasn't a blue 1,000-won note, but a red one. A banknote you couldn't get your hands on these days, no matter how much you wanted it.

"Ma'am, what's this...?"

"A tip."

The Three Thousand guild leader giggled.

"I put my autograph on the back."

I turned the note over.

[This place makes great coffee. Three Thousand Worlds, Dang Seorin]

The handwriting was beautiful, perhaps written with a brush pen. It showed signs of formal calligraphy training.

I was privately surprised, since she rarely wrote anything with a brush pen unless she was in an exceptionally good mood.

"This is a precious gift."

"You know how good restaurants hang up celebrities' autographs? If you ever feel like doing that, put my banknote on display. It's a little embarrassing, acting like I'm a celebrity... But there aren't many awakened left in Korea anyway. I suppose that makes me famous enough, doesn't it?"

The Three Thousand guild leader walked away, waving lightly behind her.

"Bye-bye! I'll be back once we've closed the gate, so have an affogato on the house for me then, Mr. Manager."

A few days later, the coffee beans and vanilla ice cream I'd gone to the trouble of preparing remained unused. Three Thousand failed to clear the gate, and all 301 guild members died.