Hyejin carefully examined the stand and found a small scan button written on the bottom.
She had tilted her head at Suho’s words, but what he said was true.
“You’re right. This stand was the scanner.”
Hyejin said to Suho with a smile.
Then, she took a deep breath with a trembling heart.
It was inevitable to already feel excited about what amazing functions the new item, the supercomputer, would have.
Based on her experience working at convenience stores and the two weeks she’d spent as manager, Hyejin had a rough grasp of the best-selling products and the ones that weren’t selling well.
The best sellers were refrigerated foods and instant foods.
Through this promotion, Hyejin had to boost sales with the convenience store’s own power, without relying on missions or quests.
She couldn’t be sure that quests would always appear.
That meant from now on, she had to seriously and cleverly arrange the products, run promotions, and actively sell.
To do that, the most important thing was ordering.
How many items, and in what quantities, to order.
No matter how much experience Hyejin had as a part-timer at convenience stores, and even though as manager she knew the popular and unpopular products, adjusting the order quantities was still difficult.
As a manager, she was still a complete novice.
Remembering all the data on the products in the convenience store was nearly impossible.
That’s why she needed the supercomputer.
It was literally a savior to help her.
Thinking that, Hyejin gripped the stand tightly with her hand.
“If you grip it that hard, it might break.”
“Ah, you’re right! Haha, thank you.”
At Suho’s words, Hyejin relaxed her hand, then lightly turned on the light.
A red light came out like a barcode scanner, and Hyejin scanned her name tag.
“Is this how you do it?”
It said scan, after all.
Hyejin stretched out the name tag pinned to her chest and placed it under the stand light.
Her body was pulled all the way forward over the desk, looking ridiculous as if basking in the stand light.
For a moment, Hyejin thought, What on earth am I doing?
Suho was about to suggest detaching the name tag and placing it on the stand base, but he chuckled softly and kept his mouth shut.
At that moment, the system window popped up again.
Manager name ‘Cha Hyejin’ correct?
YES/NO
After Hyejin clicked YES, she entered the convenience store name.
24-Hour Convenience Store Inside the Dungeon
Then the computer screen started flickering, and a window appeared.
Convenience store name: 24-Hour Convenience Store Inside the Dungeon
Manager name: Cha Hyejin
Input completed.
In 5 minutes, updates for all products will be performed.
Seeing that screen, Hyejin, Eunwoo, and Suho all nodded at the same time.
Before they knew it, everyone was focused on the newly appeared ‘supercomputer.’
Then, all three fell silent, until Hyejin, startled by how close Eunwoo and Suho were surrounding her from behind, jumped up from the chair.
Because of that, Suho’s forehead collided with the back of Hyejin’s head, and Eunwoo, seeing the scene, started laughing while holding his stomach.
“What, are you two doing comedy?”
“Is someone getting hurt funny?”
“I’m sorry, Suho-ssi.”
“It’s fine. I’ll start cleaning the store now.”
“Ah, cleaning. Suho hyung! I already cleaned outside. Come to think of it, I don’t think I emptied the trash bin outside. I’ll go empty the trash bin. But Manager, convenience store work is more fun than I thought. I used to think spending my dad’s money was the most fun thing in the world, but this is an unexpected big fun.”
“Aren’t you going home, Eunwoo-ssi?”
Hyejin said with a playful glare, and Eunwoo shook his head with pleading eyes, as if he didn’t want to go home.
In the end, Hyejin couldn’t help but chuckle and asked the two.
“Then, please take care of it. I have something to discuss with Asha while it’s updating.”
“Me? What do you want to say?”
Hyejin wanted to talk quietly alone with Asha, so once Suho and Eunwoo went outside, she closed the staff room door for a moment.
“Asha, don’t you have something to say to me?”
“What do you mean?”
“If it weren’t for these glasses, I might have failed the quest.”
Hyejin took the glasses out of her vest pocket and continued.
“I have experience with convenience store work, so I thought I could maintain a convenience store inside the dungeon for at least a year. But what is this? Forget a year—I’m in a situation where every bit of money I earn from working has to go to paying the part-timers’ salaries.”
“Well, isn’t it natural for the manager to take responsibility for the part-timers working with you?”
“But you were the one who told me to hire part-timers!”
“Then did you believe you could handle all the work alone?”
“That, that’s…….!”
Hyejin, flustered by Asha’s words, placed her hand on her forehead.
She felt strangely tricked, like heat was rising from her forehead.
Her chest even felt tight.
Honestly, Hyejin had naively thought she could do it all alone.
Asha’s words weren’t wrong.
But still!
“Do you know how much the convenience store sales are? Yeah, Yoon Eunwoo-ssi is someone I hired, but! No, from the beginning, the structure required three part-timers. The part-timer you recommended was dedicated to cooking. To pay three salaries, this isn’t nearly enough. It’s not some corporation—how am I supposed to earn tens of millions a month?”
“You worked at a convenience store, right? You must have talked with the manager back then—did you really not know what convenience store sales are like?”
“W-well, I knew roughly. That convenience stores are tough. But I didn’t know that ‘safely for a year’ meant this.”
Hyejin muttered dejectedly and sighed deeply, slumping into the chair.
“Honestly, our convenience store is doing well in business. But it’s hard to make money. Goods only come in once a week. That’s too much. The best-selling rice items sell out in 3 days, which means I can’t sell for the next 4 days.”
Asha, who had been narrowing her eyes as if about to nag, relaxed them and nodded.
“That’s true. But the agreement with Induk Trading was to supply goods only once a week.”
Why?
Why only bring in goods once a week.
Hyejin couldn’t understand this situation at all.
If it continued like this for the next year, she’d have to keep making food in the cafeteria and sell it 24 hours a day.
But this was a convenience store, not a restaurant.
A convenience store should be like a convenience store.
Even if she made a cafeteria, Hyejin judged that the convenience store came first.
She also believed that to become an SS-rank hunter, she had to run the convenience store like a proper convenience store.
Running a restaurant under the name of a convenience store would definitely be the wrong choice.
In that case, the convenience store needed to have more product varieties and quantities than now—a place truly stocked with everything.
“Why does Uncle Seungseok only come once a week?”
“That’s…….”
Asha stayed silent for a moment before speaking cautiously.
“Seungseok, that person isn’t a hunter; he’s a civilian. You know that civilians entering the dungeon have to risk their lives. Even you, who are a hunter, never entered the dungeon because your rank was low.”
“Shh, be quiet. They might hear outside.”
Hyejin placed her index finger to her lips, gesturing to be quiet.
Then Asha continued in a smaller voice than before.
“It’s to protect him.”
“I get what you mean. But at this rate, I absolutely can’t maintain the convenience store. Even if I keep coming up with promotions to sell, and cook food to sell, the popular products are always limited. The money from selling those probably won’t become pure profit for the convenience store. I have to find a way.”
“A way.”
Asha muttered with narrowed eyes, then said to Hyejin.
“It’s your greed to expect complete help from me in running the convenience store. You’re the manager here. I gave you a big quest, and you have to accomplish it. A year isn’t that long a time. You know well that even if you hunt monsters to death in the dungeon for a year, you won’t become SS-rank.”
Hyejin agreed with Asha’s words.
It wasn’t wrong at all.
She knew that much.
But.
Even so, it felt unfair.
Like she’d been tricked somehow.
It felt like being thrown into the middle of a desert with just one oasis and told to survive on her own until rescue came somehow.
Hyejin stood at a crossroads.
Give up or steel her resolve.
Soon, Hyejin made her decision.
And opened her mouth.
“Asha, instead of asking you, I’ll ask Uncle Seungseok myself. His business partner is me, not you.”
Hyejin flung open the closed staff room door and said to Asha.
“You can go.”
“Wait, you know? You’re not disappointed in me because of this, right? You have no idea how hard it was for me to get those glasses.”
Asha stuck out her red tongue, licked her nose once, and hung her head dejectedly.
Seeing that made Hyejin’s heart ache.
Honestly, it was Hyejin who had agreed without checking the conditions, just jumping in.
Asha was doing her best to support.
She had just expected too much from Asha.
“Alright, Asha. Sorry for grumbling. Thanks to you, I got a good opportunity, so I’ll work harder.”
Asha nodded, glanced sideways at Hyejin a few times, and soon disappeared.
She often disappeared and came back anyway.
Hyejin silently stared at the space where Asha had left, having to firmly steel her weakening resolve.