Chapter 9: The Golden Retriever Has Arrived

Eventually, I found a lakeside village that I really liked.

So I moved my accommodations there entirely.
Of course, Secretary Kim-hyung took care of everything from Korea.

I spent entire days painting nothing but the lake.

If I’d slept an absurd amount the day before, I’d wake up early and paint the lake at dawn in mint green.

If I’d woken up around evening, I’d buy some snacks at a café, take them to the lake, and paint the sunset lake in fluorescent pink.

Painting however I wanted, completely recklessly, gave me an incredible sense of happiness.

Heh.
As expected, art really was a hobby for the rich.

However, because I was staying in a small village without even a hotel, there weren’t any late-night services, even though I’d chosen the best accommodation available.

As a result, I became friendly with the owner of the café where I frequently bought snacks and drinks.

It was the only café in the village.

They had a wide variety of coffee beans, and it was a precious place that taught me what kind of beans I liked and what coffee was really supposed to taste like.

On top of that, the café owner’s daughter-in-law was Korean, and one of the grandchildren was half-Korean, so the owner took extra good care of me whenever she saw me.

Heh.
As expected, human warmth was something else.

Once I became somewhat close to the owner, I started complaining to her about the inconveniences of my accommodation.

I told her how inconvenient it was whenever I wanted to drink water, eat something, or get basic necessities.

Hearing that I was staying there alone, the owner felt sorry for me and recommended a vacant two-story house near the lake.

It was a house at the very end of the village, with a garden and a view of the lake.

That was the house I lived in now.

Secretary Kim-hyung seemed to have a lot of work to deal with back in Korea, so these days, all he could really do was message me every day to ask how I was doing.

And I was getting tired of constantly moving between hotels anyway, so I decided to settle down.

People really do need a home.

When I told Secretary Kim-hyung that I wanted to buy the house, he seemed startled and asked me to wait a little.

Then, before long, he flew all the way to France, took care of the contract, and even helped me with the interior repairs and decorating.

Our Secretary Kim-hyung really was the best!

So efficient!

Of course, when he said he had to go back because he had more work to do, I almost cried.

As an unemployed man living off money from home, I couldn’t exactly tell Secretary Kim to stop working.

Until the very end, Secretary Kim-hyung worried about me and repeatedly asked the café owner to please take good care of me before he returned to Korea.

I wondered if he really thought I was that unreliable, but I knew his concern came from a good place, so I simply let him be.

And so, my life as a man living alone began in this cozy little two-story house, which was spacious enough for a typical family of four.

Since I’d started taking an interest in art, I carefully coordinated the colors and filled the house with furniture and decorations exactly the way I wanted.

It truly felt like my own home, and I grew incredibly attached to it.

On the second floor, I knocked down the walls between all the rooms and turned the entire floor into a combined studio and bedroom.

On the first floor, I made a small living room with a fireplace and a simple kitchen decorated in a harmonious combination of green and white.

I even decorated both bathrooms with sky-blue accents.

This was the kind of interior design I’d never even dreamed of when I was a poor commuter student!

There had originally been roses growing wildly throughout the garden, but I cleaned everything up and made a fairly large vegetable bed where I planted vegetables for myself.

This was self-sufficient slow living.

The kind of lifestyle everyone dreamed of!

The vegetables hadn’t grown yet, and there was a high chance I’d fail, but I felt proud every day because I felt like I was spending my unemployed life in a meaningful way.

‘Am I not living an incredibly admirable life?’

After getting the house, I still ate out sometimes, but I also started buying fresh ingredients from the nearby greengrocer and making simple meals for myself.

I even started brewing my own coffee.

Thanks to the café owner, I could get coffee beans at a cheap price, too.

Doing both hobbies and housework while attending school or working would probably be annoying, but it didn’t matter to me as an unemployed man.

I had an excess of time.

So cooking, taking a long time to brew coffee, and even cleaning—the chore I’d hated the most—were all enjoyable.

Why?

Because I had time to spare, and I was living an unemployed life where I could live however I wanted!

Whether I ate my first meal at eight in the evening or ate every meal outside, a rich unemployed life without having to worry about money never got old.

This was the sweet, sweet taste of living alone while unemployed!

Today, too, I didn’t want to leave the comfort of my blankets.

Unfortunately, today was a day when I had an appointment.

I decided to postpone burrowing into my bed and lazing around until tomorrow, then slowly got up, slipped on the slippers beneath my bed, and went downstairs.

Of course, I didn’t forget to rub my face against the soft pillow one last time.

My beloved ‘high-class’ goose-down pillow.

I was an unemployed man who could lounge around in bed again tomorrow anyway, but somehow every day still felt precious.

The bed was practically the cradle of God.

And ‘rolling around’ in that bed was happiness itself.

Of course.

The bed was the best.

When I went downstairs, I found my cozy kitchen.

The green-based kitchen was obviously the work of someone who had put a lot of effort into the interior design.

Whoever decorated it had done a beautiful job.

I brewed my favorite beans, then opened the refrigerator and took out some milk, several kinds of jam, and some fruit.

Of course, the refrigerator was a massive side-by-side model.

And it was from none other than V Group.

As a result, every time I saw it, I thought of the pumpkin sweet potato.

By now, though, I’d gotten used to having those thoughts.

It was impossible to completely forget the protagonist’s existence when V Group in the novel was such a globally renowned corporation.

Apparently, they’d even expanded their business further lately and were doing insanely well.

Sniff.

I should’ve been V Group’s son.

Ah, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be the protagonist.

If I imagined that I’d possessed the protagonist’s body and happened to be lying on the bed at exactly that moment……

Just thinking about it sent chills down my spine.

I probably would’ve gone completely berserk right there and lost my purity……

And then I’d have lived a happy life in captivity.

It had already been two years since I’d entered this body.

The original owner, that lunatic, didn’t seem to have any intention of returning, and I’d become far too accustomed to this body.

No!

This was my body now!

I’d gotten so used to walking around on these 183-centimeter-long legs that it felt strange if I didn’t stride forward with long steps.

And this handsome face that still shone even in France.

This toned, supple body that looked sexy even in a stretched-out shirt!

Perhaps it was the protagonist’s main-character bonus, but no matter how long the lunatic lived as an unemployed man, he never developed a potbelly, nor did his muscles disappear.

My original body had also been around 180 centimeters and relatively slim, but it had only had the modest muscle built from working part-time jobs.

It hadn’t been anything like this amazing physique.

This body really had everything.

A silver-spoon background, a handsome face, and an incredible body.

It was simply perfect.

These days, the problem was that I could barely remember what I used to look like before entering the lunatic’s body.

At first, it had been troubling because I seemed to have become almost one with this body, and even my memories from before transmigration were becoming hazy……

But so what?

I could just live well in this body!

Either way, thanks to this perfect lunatic, I was eating delicious food and lounging around to my heart’s content.

I took out some sweet fig jam and Nutella, too.

Sweet things were the best!

Living a life where I could stock my refrigerator with fig jam and Nutella—things that had once been so expensive I could barely afford to eat them……

It really was the best!

Anyway, it should be about time for him to arrive……

Knock, knock—

Right on cue, I heard someone knocking on the door.

They say if you mention a tiger, the tiger appears.

“Hyung!
I’m here!”

Knock, knock—

Yeah, yeah, I’m opening the door.
Give me a second……

“Hyung!
Get up!
Hyuung!”

I’m already up……

Knock, knock—

“Sleepyhead hyuung.
The sun is already high in the sky.”

Wait a second.
I still have jam in my hands, so I haven’t opened the door yet.

Quiet!
Just call me once!

Knock, knock—

“Hyu-u-u-ung!
I’m he—”

“Enough!
Enough!
I’m up!
I can’t live like this because of you!
Even though the villagers don’t understand Korean, they all know now that you’re the one yelling ‘wake up’ at me!”

In the end, too embarrassed to endure it any longer, I hurriedly put down the jam and ran to open the front door.

Standing there was a young man holding a bag of bread in both hands.

He looked to be in his early twenties and gave me an apologetic, shy smile.

“Ah, I thought you might still be sleeping.
Sorry, hyung.
But how many times have I knocked on your door while you were sleeping and you didn’t hear me?”

“W-Well, that is true, but…….”

It was true.

I had once made that kid wait for two whole hours.

No, seriously, if someone didn’t respond for two hours, wouldn’t you just go home?

Who actually crouched down in front of someone’s door and waited?

And that expression he’d had when I finally opened the door……

He was only about two centimeters shorter than me, but he was built like a mountain.

He’d been crouched down so his enormous body practically filled the doorway, wearing the expression of a giant dog waiting for its owner who’d gotten lost.

His naturally blond hair made him look just like a golden retriever.

Because of that, even now, whenever he brought up that incident, I had no choice but to take a step back.

After the pumpkin sweet potato, I’d somehow acquired another annoying dog.

What was even more embarrassing was that the villagers had figured out that ‘wake up’ was the Korean phrase used to wake someone from sleep.

“Still, you got up nicely today.
Is it because you had plans with Grandma?”

“Yeah, I guess.
Otherwise the owner would nag me if I were late.”

The identity of the yellow golden retriever was the café owner’s grandson.

He was mixed-race, born to a Korean mother and a French father.

His name was Han Mikael Matisse.

He had taken his Korean mother’s surname, while his light blond hair and blue eyes came from his late grandfather.

Yet his face wasn’t as distinctly foreign-looking as I had expected.

It was more like someone had mixed Eastern and Western features together in a strangely harmonious way.

He normally lived in Korea with his parents, but he’d come to stay with his grandmother during his school vacation.

I’d first met Mikael at the café during last year’s vacation season.

And he’d come again during this year’s vacation.

Then he told me that they’d recently started a bread-delivery service and began delivering bread straight to my house.

Thanks to him, these days I got to eat the café owner’s freshly baked, soft bread while it was still warm.

Somehow, the fact that he always came around the same time made me suspect it was the café owner’s scheme to try to fix my sleep schedule, but I decided to pretend I didn’t notice.

Anyway, freshly baked bread tasted better!

And I didn’t even have to bother going all the way to the café.

Everyone won.

“Grandma said I should feed you and help her out together.
You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

“Yeah.
I just woke up.”

“I knew it.
Ta-da!”

Mikael placed the bag of bread he’d brought on the kitchen table.

I’d been smelling the savory aroma of fresh bread for a while, and my empty stomach had been growling in anticipation.

It was a truly welcome sight.

To be continued in the next chapter –

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