Became the Owner of a Poor Estate
Chapter 3
“Let’s open it.”
Standing in front of the front door, Dong-hee carefully pressed the four digits of her birthday, which no one ever remembered.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
With each repetitive beep of the digital lock, her heartbeat grew louder. She felt so nervous, as if she were doing something illicit behind everyone’s backs, that her fingertips trembled.
And finally!
Beep-click!
With that familiar sound, the tension that had gripped her chest instantly vanished.
“It’s open!”
Overjoyed, Dong-hee flung the front door wide open.
Without looking back, she quickly stepped inside. Though there was nothing fancy about the place, it was infinitely better than being trapped in a seemingly endless dream.
“Ah, thank goodness!”
The worn but familiar mattress, the musty smell of her semi-basement room.
It felt far too realistic and detailed for a way to wake up from a dream, but she didn’t care.
As a wave of relief washed over her, Dong-hee collapsed onto the mattress, only to bolt upright at the ticklish sensation of hair brushing against her ear.
Smooth, chestnut-brown hair cascaded down her shoulders.
“What the…?”
Even though she was back in her studio apartment, she didn’t have her original short, black hair. She was still wearing the same clothes, too.
Dong-hee turned her hands over, examining them closely as she let go of her hair.
Instead of hands roughened from hard part-time labor, slender, delicate fingers moved before her eyes like a lie.
She still possessed the body of the girl she had named Chloe Grace—the one who hadn’t found it awkward to be bathed by servants.
In a daze, Dong-hee stood up and walked over to the mirror hanging on the wall.
She raised her arm. The girl in the mirror raised hers as well. And she was still wearing the long, flowing bathrobe.
“What on earth is going on?”
Dong-hee decided to change her clothes first and then head outside.
Slipping off the flowing bathrobe, her fair-skinned, naked body was reflected in the mirror.
“Whoa, what a body…”
It was such a beautiful body that she briefly forgot her panic.
Dong-hee turned this way and that, admiring her naked reflection, but suddenly feeling like a pervert, she quickly threw on some underwear, jeans, and a T-shirt.
The fact that her usual jeans and T-shirt were now loose and oversized felt quite nice.
I hope this part isn’t a dream.
She managed to pull on her socks, but her sneakers were ridiculously loose. Out of options, she pulled the laces as tight as they would go to make them fit.
She was just grabbing the front door handle, wondering how she would explain her absence at her part-time job, when…
[This is an inactive area. You must complete the quest to activate it.]
The Status Window floated before her eyes once again. It was the same blue window as before, but now it felt strangely threatening.
An alarm blared in her head. Beep! Beep!
“What?!”
It’s not a dream?
Dong-hee hurriedly turned on her phone screen. She needed to check the date first.
“What is this?!”
Dong-hee threw her phone aside as if she had been electrocuted.
The screen displayed a sequence of numbers that was utterly impossible. It was a date and time she had never seen in her life. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Shuddering with goosebumps as if she had touched a cockroach, Dong-hee picked up the phone she had just thrown.
Her fingertips trembled as she woke up the screen and tapped the internet app.
Instead of her familiar portal site, a Status Window filled the screen.
[This is an inactive screen. You must complete the quest to activate it.]
“This is driving me absolutely insane!”
No matter how many times she checked, nothing changed.
Dong-hee placed her phone gently on the bed and pulled her knees to her chest.
Her eyes wide, she buried her face between her knees. Her hands were full of hair she had anxiously gripped.
Don’t tell me… has the world ended?
It wasn’t as if she had family she missed or close friends she longed to see. But the thought of being erased from the world like this terrified her.
Am I the only one left in the world?
Her head felt like it was going to explode. She had gripped her hair so tightly that her scalp stung.
“My Lord! My Lord! Where on earth did you go again?!”
It was the voice of the Nanny she had met in the world beyond the door. Her tone carried the exhaustion of a mother searching for a disobedient child.
This place, frozen in time with its bizarre numbers, versus that world beyond the door, where people were alive and moving.
Unable to find her bearings, Dong-hee paced around before flinging the refrigerator door open.
She worried everything inside might have spoiled, but thankfully, the refrigerator interior was cool.
Dong-hee stared blankly into the fridge before pulling out a bottle of orange juice. She briefly worried about the expiration date, but she twisted the cap open anyway.
“Maybe drinking something cold will wake me up.”
Dong-hee chugged the juice, which had grown ice-cold overnight. Her esophagus felt like it was freezing.
“Ugh!”
After draining the entire bottle, her head throbbed even worse.
As she grimaced and clutched her aching head, the Status Window floated up once more. Untiring, it persistently forced its way into her field of vision with a cheerful ding, ding.
[Revive the Impoverished Territory!]
[A Piece of Cake Quest! Take a look around your dirt-poor territory!]
[Chloe Grace, please take a look around the territory assigned to you and see for yourself just how dirt-poor it is. Haha]
“What’s with the ‘haha’?”
[It is nothing. Please do not pay it any mind. Would you like to look around your dirt-poor territory?]
[If you accept the quest, the number of areas you can activate will increase!]
She was surprised that the Status Window responded to her words, but the last sentence was even more shocking.
“Activate? Does that mean I can open that front door and leave?”
Dong-hee’s eyes drifted to the tightly shut front door, then away. When she thought she was trapped here, she had felt as gloomy as if the world had ended, but now, there was hope.
[Bingo! Hurry up and take a look around your dirt-poor territory!]
Dong-hee recalled the spacious, luxurious room beyond the wall. There was the Nanny who had cared for her so devotedly, and the maid who had assisted with her bath.
“Isn’t that rich enough?”
Dong-hee tilted her head, carefully comparing that environment with her semi-basement studio apartment.
Right now, she couldn’t open the door of her studio apartment. There were no people here, but there were people over there. Ha Dong-hee’s body was gone, and only Chloe Grace existed.
If so, Dong-hee’s choice was practically made for her.
Without any lingering regrets, Dong-hee stood up and opened her closet door.
The closet, which held only a few clothes, had more empty space than filled. Dong-hee pulled out a bag from the bottom of the closet. It was the largest one she owned.
The rectangular, waterproof bag was something she had obtained as a leftover giveaway from a supermarket where she used to work part-time. Made of a material similar to a picnic mat, it was quite spacious and could hold a lot of items.
As she looked around for things to pack, the Status Window appeared again.
[Would you like to designate ‘Bag 1’ as ‘Inventory (Level 1)’?]
[Benefit of Inventory designation: You can transport items from active areas to your desired location.]
[- Level 1 Storage: (0/50)]
It seemed to mean that only items placed in this bag could be transported to the other side.
“But an Inventory? So 50 slots is the default capacity?”
Dong-hee peered into the empty bag and tossed a bottle of juice and a lighter inside.
However, as if a transparent barrier had been installed over the bag’s opening, the items bounced right back out.
[Items can only be placed in a designated Inventory.]
It seemed she had to officially designate it as an Inventory before she could store anything inside. In that case, there was no reason to hesitate.
“I’ll designate Bag 1 as Inventory 1.”
[’Bag 1’ has been designated as user Chloe Grace’s Inventory (Level 1).]
After confirming that the information on the Status Window had updated, Dong-hee put the items into the bag again. This time, they didn’t bounce out, sliding smoothly into the bag.
And as she placed more items inside, the remaining count in her storage updated.
[- Level 1 Storage: (2/50)]
This confirmed that the base capacity referred to the number of items she could carry.
“If this is Bag 1, does that mean I can designate Bag 2 and Bag 3 too?”
[An upgrade is not possible at your current level.]
“So it is possible.”
Dong-hee packed the food from the fridge, the lighter, a paring knife, and a gas gun she kept for self-defense. She had made up her mind to buy the gas gun secondhand online the day after loan sharks had barged into her home, feeling she needed something to put her mind at ease.
It felt strangely like fleeing in the middle of the night. She hadn’t even packed that much, but she quickly filled all fifty slots.
“Let’s go see just how dirt-poor it is. It’s got to be better than my life!”
Dong-hee slung the bag over one shoulder, took a deep breath, and pulled the front door handle with all her might. The damp air of her semi-basement studio apartment seemed to tug at her from behind.
The moment the ground beneath her feet changed, the bag she was holding vanished without a trace.
“Huh? Where did it go? You said I could bring it! You said it was an Inventory I could use!”
The moment the word ‘Inventory’ left Dong-hee’s mouth, the image of the bag materialized in the air like a Status Window.
Inside the bag-shaped Status Window, fifty square slots were partitioned out, and each slot neatly held the items Dong-hee had brought from her apartment.
“Whoa!”
Dong-hee lightly tapped the slot containing the leftover juice with her fingertip. The bottle of juice dropped right out of the semi-translucent Inventory screen and into her palm.
“Incredible!”
As her jaw hung open, unable to hide her astonishment at the scene unfolding before her eyes, she heard the Nanny’s voice.
“My Lord! Where on earth have you been? And what is that strange outfit?!”
The Nanny, who had been searching for the missing Chloe, spotted her in the room and rushed over with a look of immense relief.
She was only wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but to the Nanny, Dong-hee had suddenly become someone dressed in bizarre attire.
As she was debating how to respond, the Nanny’s fussing continued.
“Oh dear! You didn’t walk around outside in such a hideous outfit, did you? You’ll be the death of me!”
Grimacing in horror, the Nanny began to quickly strip off the clothes Dong-hee was wearing.
