"Why don’t you tell him your father is a multimillionaire? He would happily come running to you like a little puppy. Then we can bring him to the US. There’s no need for you to stay in Asia."
"Mommy, you don’t understand. He’s not like that... He doesn’t care about anything at all."
"If you want to study in Korea, that’s fine. But Mommy and Daddy have work here in the US, so you’ll have to live on your own."
"Fine... I’ll beat him next time, and once I do, I’ll come back."
— A faded memory of Elizabeth’s conversation with her mother, right after her loss in the Olympiad.
......
Beside it was another door leading to his private bathroom. He leaned forward to look inside and saw a glass shower partition, a wide mirror with lights around its edges, and several drawers beneath the sink.
All of this would be for him alone. As Suho looked into the mirror, however, he suddenly noticed Elizabeth standing behind him through the reflection. She was still staring directly at him, and when their eyes met through the mirror, she suddenly smiled for some reason.
"Are you a ghost? Why are you even in this room?"
"I was just looking to see if the one you will have is bigger than mine."
Elizabeth simply shrugged her shoulders and continued following Suho. Jihwan finally opened the door to the smaller room connected to the bedroom and gestured for Suho to step inside. Suho took his eyes off Elizabeth and walked into the room.
A reading desk stood beside the window, with an adjustable chair, a lamp, and empty bookshelves along the wall. Suho walked over and rested his hand on the desk. It was wide enough for him to leave several books open at the same time and still have plenty of room to write.
This place is perfect. If I had this during my school years...
"Jihwan, remind him not to bring girls or have parties inside the apartment."
Elizabeth suddenly said it out loud while looking at the satisfied smile on Suho’s face, almost as if she wanted to dampen his mood. Jihwan smiled awkwardly, nodded his head, and looked toward Suho. Suho simply rolled his eyes.
"Miss Elizabeth, Mr. Kim here doesn’t like parties, but you can’t just ban him from bringing friends or relatives over. He’ll be paying rent here too, so that’s not something you can decide for him."
"Fine... Just tell him to keep it quiet. Humph."
With that said, Elizabeth finally left the small room, seemingly satisfied after staring at Suho for long enough. Jihwan looked toward Suho, who nodded for him to continue, so Jihwan pointed toward the sockets beneath the desk, showing him where he could connect a computer and other equipment before stepping back to give him some space.
Suho pulled out the chair and sat down for a moment, looking from the empty shelves toward the city outside the window. He could close the door here and study for hours without anyone knocking on his door and asking if he had milk or instant noodles. Out of everything Jihwan had shown him so far, this little room was the one he liked the most.
This bastard system... did it know I would take this apartment? Even though there’s a weirdo living here, I really like this place. But what is her deal anyway? Is she a serial killer?
"So, what do you think?"
Jihwan looked excited. If he managed to get this apartment rented out, he would receive twenty-five percent of the deposit as commission, which would be a fat bonus on top of his five percent commission from the rent every month.
"I think I’ll take it. How much are two months of rent and the deposit?"
"Two months? Wait, let me pull out my phone and calculate it."
Suho smiled and looked outside the window again. Winter was just starting, and he would definitely need to buy more clothes soon. He already knew that two months of rent would be ₩4,860,000 ($3,400). For someone like Suho, this kind of calculation was nothing.
His mind could multiply one nine-digit number by another nine-digit number in a fraction of a second, so adding two months of rent together barely required any thought. Still, he let Jihwan pull out his phone and calculate it himself. If Suho told him the answer first, Jihwan would probably check it with his calculator afterward anyway just to make sure it was correct. It was easier to let him calculate it first and make the amount feel settled in his own mind.
"It’s ₩4,860,000 ($3,400) for two months of rent and ₩10,000,000 ($7,000) as the deposit. So the total would be... wait a minute..."
"Total would be ₩14,860,000 ($10,400). Is there any psychopath discount?"
Jihwan was about to add the numbers together on his phone again, but this time Suho simply said the answer out loud. The calculation was so easy for him that the number slipped out of his mouth before he even thought about hiding it.
Jihwan paused for a moment, then slowly entered the numbers into his calculator anyway, and ₩14,860,000—the exact same number—appeared on the screen. Jihwan looked at the phone, then at Suho, before looking back at the phone once again.
"Psychopath?"
"That girl. The American. There is clearly something wrong with her."
Jihwan’s face froze. The smile he had been wearing while calculating the money disappeared in an instant. He had never considered Elizabeth a psychopath or even one of the weird tenants he could use as an excuse to give Suho a discount.
With the musicians or the nude models, he could legitimately raise their rent because of the problems they caused and lower Suho’s share in return. But Elizabeth? She paid on time, kept the apartment quiet, and had never caused him any trouble before today. There was absolutely nothing he could use.
"I’m just joking with you. Do you take bank transfers?"
"Oh! Yes, yes... Of course. Let’s go back to my office. I’ll prepare all the paperwork, sort out the payment, and give you the keys and everything you need."
Damn it, I forgot about the mission. Wait... I should probably wait until I’m actually her flatmate, right?
Suho had completely forgotten about the side mission where the system told him to greet Elizabeth with a smile. After the way she had behaved, smiling at her was actually the last thing he wanted to do. But at the same time, he also wanted to get rich, and ignoring a system mission just because someone annoyed him didn’t seem very smart.