The doorbell rang, and when I opened the door, there were two enormous boxes waiting for me. One was smaller than the other, but still larger than a normal package. The delivery person had already taken the elevator downstairs.
It wasn’t anything too unusual. Most of my money was still in my bank account, but the others living with me had used it together.
Back when I lived in the villa, I splurged only a little to save up extra money whenever I got cash, but ever since I won the lottery, I didn’t feel the need to do that anymore.
It’s not like they were buying hundreds of thousands of won worth of luxury goods at once, and besides, even if they did, I had enough money to handle it for a while, so I wasn’t too concerned.
But this delivery today—
…is pretty big.
One of the boxes was almost as tall as my thighs. In fact, it was slightly shorter than my height.
Thanking the delivery person for bringing it this far, I lifted the box.
It wasn’t unliftable by myself, but it was still quite heavy. As I lifted it, I heard something moving around inside with a rustle rustle sound.
“Oooh, did the package arrive?”
Claire came running to help me after seeing me open the door.
“Did you buy this, Claire?”
“Yep, it’s mine!”
Claire said with a big smile.
Could it be something like a teddy bear the size of a person? I tried to imagine what kind of large item Claire would buy, but I couldn’t really picture it. In fact, since it was Claire, it wouldn’t be weird no matter what it was.
After placing one box in the entrance, Claire returned with a smaller box than the one we’d brought in.
“Hmmm~”
She thought for a moment and then said, “I think we should take both to the living room and open them.”
“What’s going on?”
Alice must have heard the sound of us moving heavy objects because she dashed out and widened her eyes when she saw the box that was almost the same height as mine.
“Oh, perfect! Could you help me move this to the living room? I can lift it by myself, but the size is just too awkward.”
“What’s up?”
Once one person came out, others began to follow. The temperature was starting to drop, making us spend more time indoors. Still, we usually went out for meals about half the week before returning home.
But the idea of bringing the table into the warm living room and having a hot pot or shabu-shabu sounded pretty nice.
In the end, Charlotte and Mia also came out to help move the box.
“Phew.”
Alice sighed quietly, resting her hands on her hips as she gazed at the box.
The presence of the two boxes taking up the center of the living room was quite significant.
“So, what is this? It doesn’t look like an appliance inside.”
If it were a home appliance of that size, it would definitely be heavier. And if I pressed down on the box, it probably wouldn’t have caved in like that.
Was it something square like the box itself? During the moving process, the corners had already been bent. It was probably some evidence of it getting banged around during the delivery.
“Fufu. This is—”
Claire hurriedly went inside, grabbed a cutter knife, and pulled out just the tip of the blade.
Then she started slicing along the edges of the box from top to bottom.
As she cut through the lengthwise tape on each corner, the box opened in four directions, as though that was how it was supposed to be opened.
“……”
And we were left speechless when we saw what was inside the box.
“Tada~!”
Claire spread her arms wide towards the box, announcing it.
I turned my gaze outside the window without saying a word. The days had been getting shorter lately, but it was still daylight, and the outside scenery was very visible.
The weather had gotten quite dry and chilly, but it hadn’t started snowing yet.
Wait, didn’t they say it had already snowed for the first time in Gangwon-do? Well, at least here in Seoul, I hadn’t seen any snow yet.
But I hadn’t thought about that; it was only the second week of November.
…Isn’t it a bit early to be seeing Christmas trees?
“Oh, you don’t have to worry. It’s fake. You won’t have to water it or change the soil. Plus, after this Christmas, I can just stash it away in storage to take out next year!”
Considering that Claire, who came from Azernar, where the religious beliefs are clearly different from this world, was going to celebrate the day honoring the birth of the saint from this world’s religion indicates quite a remarkable adaptability.
Still, it felt a bit unsettling to assume I would be here this time next year, but I decided to set that aside.
“There’s still over a month until Christmas, though.”
“Sis, you really don’t get it.”
Well, telling me that, who lives in this world, isn’t exactly helpful.
“Those kinds of things are usually prepared in season. I mean, who really only brings out the tree on Christmas Day and then puts it back in storage right after?”
Well, that’s true.
When you look at stores, they usually start showing their Christmas stuff around December and slowly take it down by the end of January.
But still, don’t people generally not decorate their homes with a tree? Maybe in Europe or America, but abroad, it appears only marketing makes a big fuss over holidays. Unless they’re from really devout Christian households.
Though, looking at it, I suppose we do seem like the type to celebrate Christmas and Halloween without fail.
……
Let’s avoid the topic of Halloween. Claire would surely insist we prepare for it late. After all, she is the type to get ready for Christmas in November, so she wouldn’t care that Halloween was a little over a week ago.
“Why? Don’t wanna…?”
“…Nope, not at all.”
As we continued to remain silent, Claire spoke with a slightly more uncertain expression, prompting me to smile and reply.
“I guess we’ll just have to decorate since we bought it anyway. It’ll be a hassle to deal with it all over again in December.”
Claire’s face brightened at my words.
Alice and Charlotte couldn’t help but smile as well.
Mia, meanwhile, still looked a bit curious, glancing at the other box that hadn’t been opened yet.
Oh, right.
She probably hasn’t had much experience with things like this.
“Shall we open this one too?”
Claire eagerly cut the tape on the relatively smaller box with the cutter knife.
And what emerged from the opened box was—
“Tada!”
Huh.
I had expected it to contain little lights or wreaths for decoration, but instead, there were a bunch of items that were completely unrelated to Christmas.
Why is there a plastic pumpkin?
“I didn’t realize until after, but among the holidays, there’s something called Halloween, right?”
No, that’s not a holiday from our country.
Of course, if you think about it, according to their standards, both Korean festivals and Western festivals are all “foreign holidays.”
I’m not sure if Halloween is considered a festival abroad or not.
By the way, we didn’t have to bother with things like ancestral rites during Chuseok. Instead, we just went outside and enjoyed the emptiness of the streets of Seoul with far fewer people. Claire seemed a little disappointed we didn’t do the rites, though.
Maybe this, in some way, was a reaction to spending that holiday not feeling like a holiday?
“Oh, don’t worry! We have all the Christmas decorations prepared for sure!”
As she said that, Claire started pulling out tiny lights from deep inside the box.
“Oh, Halloween items were ridiculously cheap!”
Of course they would be. Halloween had already passed.
Well, I had enough sense to keep those thoughts to myself.
*
In the end, the decorations turned out to be quite bizarre.
There was space to put the tree. Since it was a fake tree anyway and didn’t require concerns about sunlight, I just placed it randomly between the window and the TV.
There was a star on top, and the twinkling little lights wrapped around it met the conditions for being a Christmas tree, but…
The attachments were fluorescent ghosts, jack-o’-lanterns, and all that kind of stuff.
Additionally, instead of hanging large socks for Santa to put presents in, there was a plastic jack-o’-lantern placed under the TV.
In between them were candy cane-shaped ornaments and sparkling star-shaped decorations, making it look even more like a joke.
If I really had to say, the overall atmosphere definitely screamed Halloween. Among Halloween costumes, Santa costumes exist too.
“Um, fantastic!”
Is it really fantastic?
“Are you planning to leave it like this until next January?”
“Hmm? No, I can’t just keep the Halloween decorations until Christmas or anything. By the end of this month, I’ll take down the Halloween decorations.”
…But it does feel like way too much decoration to take down. But again, I decided not to say anything this time.
So… I guess it means I’ll be stuck living with this bizarre interior state until the end of November?
Well, at least it’s cheerful, so that’s nice.
It is kind of a hassle that, after unpacking everything, some clothing-like items were stuck at the very bottom of the box, but I decided not to think too deeply about it.
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