The Other Side of the Coin
Highball.
A cocktail of whiskey mixed with carbonated soft drink.
Glug, glug, glug~!
In other words, any whiskey would do.
But the customers wanted Suntory Kakubin.
Brand power is just that overwhelming.
Highball equals Suntory. The marketing had already done its work.
In the food-and-drink business, you have to meet the customer’s demand.
“Suntory highball, coming right up!”
“I’ll take a Suntory too!”
“Two more over here!”
“Three Suntory highballs, order received~.”
So he had brought it in.
All roads lead to Rome—he had airlifted Suntory whiskey in bulk.
“Isn’t this a scam?”
“Why are you so hypersensitive? You act like you’ve been defrauded.”
“There’s a professional con artist standing right next to me.”
Sora clearly wasn’t pleased.
As for him, he had lived his life without a single lie under heaven.
Suntory Royal
Suntory Old
Suntory Excellence
Suntory Special Reserve
Suntory Crest 12 Year
“What is all this?”
“What do you mean, what? It’s Suntory.”
“It’s weird Suntory!”
It was unmistakably Suntory.
He had never told a lie.
Someone who didn’t know better might think it was Chinese counterfeit liquor.
It was genuine product.
Japanese whiskey produced by the Suntory company itself.
“I hate to say this, but…”
“Mm.”
“The bottles look cheap.”
“…….”
If there was a flaw, it was only that they were a little old.
Hye-ri delivered a rather sharp observation.
She just doesn’t know that old is gold.
Especially in the world of whiskey.
Older bottles often tasted far better.
“This Suntory Royal is the higher lineup above Suntory Kakubin.”
“Really?”
“Sounds like bullshit.”
“Kakubin literally means ‘square bottle’—that’s how the name came about.”
“Ohhh~!”
It wasn’t the official name, but that was how it was known in Japan.
Suntory Royal sat above Kakubin in the lineup.
The taste lived up to it as well.
The aroma was far richer, smooth without the harsh alcoholic bite.
Especially these older bottles.
Pre-1995 bottlings.
Before the Japanese whiskey bubble.
They had used excellent-quality base spirit.
These days the same liquid would contain Yamazaki 12 and Hakushu 12 that retailed for three hundred thousand won a bottle.
“Do you serve at night too? If you do, I’ll come back!”
“We’ll keep going.”
“Wow~ this highball is actually better than the ones I drank in Japan!”
“The highball is so good!”
“Haha, it would be.”
It couldn’t possibly taste bad.
Most of the customers who tried the highball heaped on praise.
Suntory Kakubin is basically Japanese soju.
In Korea it had been needlessly elevated by premium marketing.
People paid four times the price for Japanese soju and drank it happily.
“So, who’s the con artist now?”
“Both of you.”
“Mm.”
If they were going to get scammed either way, better to get scammed by him.
He provided quality product at a reasonable price.
Suntory Highball — 4,000 won
Johnnie Walker Black Highball — 4,000 won
Sherbet Soju — 5,000 won
Asahi Super Dry — 5,000 won
Infused with atmosphere.
They sold izakaya-style drinks.
Two kinds of highball were on offer.
“This Johnnie Walker Black looks weird too.”
“Why? What’s wrong with this famous whiskey?”
“It feels like it rode a time machine here.”
“It is actually old.”
Johnnie Walker was another whiskey you couldn’t leave out of a highball conversation.
It ranked number one in worldwide sales.
Johnnie Walker Black is genuinely delicious liquor.
Each production year had its own character.
Bottles from before the 1990s were highly regarded among enthusiasts.
He had brought in those precious whiskeys.
They left ordinary Kakubin highballs in the dust.
“Irasshaimase!”
“Irasshaimase~!”
“Did the medic open shop here?”
The food was good.
The drinks went down smooth.
With the elevated concept, the booth was packed to the rafters.
As the club grew, the booth itself had expanded.
They could handle the crowds without trouble.
“Oppa, at this rate we’re going to run out of liquor.”
“It’s fine.”
“More coming?”
“Yeah.”
That was why the concept differed from last year.
To overcome the limits of a narrow plot, they had sold cube steak you could walk around eating.
For a real food business, location is everything.
People drew people.
That held true in reality and on the internet alike.
Customers who ate well would voluntarily promote them on social media.
“Well… I get it, I guess……”.
The difference in class.
Sora felt it clearly too.
If it had been a snack stall, it never would have thrived like this.
You only really understand the food business once you run it yourself.
Sitting in a room spinning armchair theories taught you nothing.
It would have been a good experience for her.
“How do you even get liquor delivered? Hard liquor, no less.”
“Right. Suspicious……”.
“They won’t even do it for us when we ask!”
The club members as well.
They only knew the front side of how the world worked—the version that appeared on TV and in the news.
“Simply put.”
“What?”
“We don’t want to haul heavy stuff either! Especially beer!”
“It’s just plain illegal.”
“…….”
A coin has two sides.
Beyond imagination.
Gulp! Gulp!
The cold highball slid down her throat.
A single glass that thoroughly soothed her exhausted body.
“Pwah!”
She couldn’t help the sigh of pure satisfaction.
Juha had slipped over to the stock club booth in secret.
She had thought ninety percent of it was concept fluff.
Then she ordered the food and drinks herself and tried them.
“So?”
“How was it?”
“It won’t last long, right? Right?”
“Th-that’s……”.
She returned to the ETSD booth.
The number of customers had dropped even further than daytime.
They had been stolen away.
She had thought the highball would be the lucky break that turned everything around.
How am I supposed to say it!
Part of her wanted to rant and curse.
Those guys are like this, that’s why they’ll fail, and so on.
She couldn’t.
The reality she had experienced firsthand was beyond anything she had imagined.
“Well… it was decent.”
“Really?”
“Ah~! Where the hell did they even get that stuff!”
The quality was better than most specialty ramen shops.
The side dishes weren’t anything special, but—
The highball.
It made the liquor go down effortlessly.
Even the highball itself tasted better than anything they could make.
No wonder business was booming.
She had gone over, gotten her spirit crushed, and come back empty-handed. That was the reality.
But it hadn’t been a complete waste.
She had found out how they were able to buy the liquor.
“They got liquor delivered?!”
“Isn’t that not allowed?”
“It’s definitely not allowed. That’s certain.”
A spy.
A friend of hers belonged to the stock club.
She had half-threatened her into extracting internal information.
The pressure had paid off.
Centering on a few keywords, she scoured the internet.
Rough information surfaced.
Apparently a place called “Namdaemun” delivered hard liquor.
“For real?”
“Then we went through all that for nothing.”
“Right now my house is a mountain of liquor and Mom keeps yelling at me every day about what we’re supposed to do with it……”.
The strategy of cornering the market on Suntory Kakubin.
It had been completely ineffective.
They had only bought themselves extra hardship.
No wonder the members were shaken.
They had gone that far and achieved nothing.
No. It still meant something.
Club president Yu-jun analyzed the situation coldly.
ETSD’s pajeon house was still doing solid business.
They weren’t competing with the same menu, after all.
Even overall, their sales ranked near the top.
“The older folks are actually coming more for the pajeon.”
“That’s true.”
“They’re not going to go to some izakaya place.”
“Starting tomorrow we’ll get a lot of family groups too……”.
Even if a rich man goes broke, he lasts three generations—their regulars were solid.
Pajeon suited the older palate better.
We just need to pull a few more of the young crowd.
Not many.
Just a tiny turn of their feet.
Even that much would let them pull ahead.
An izakaya.
A place where you sat and ate.
You couldn’t stamp out product like cube steak and sell it on the go.
“You’re right.”
“Our booth is way bigger.”
“There are even customers who come our way because the line over there is too long.”
The odds were good enough.
To reclaim first place in festival sales, they only needed a tiny spark.
If we make and sell highballs of the same class…
The path was visible.
The information his lovely girlfriend had worked so hard to dig up had meaning after all.
“I heard older liquor tastes better.”
“Yeah?”
“And it’s cheaper too.”
“Then let’s go to Namdaemun and find some old liquor!”
They only needed to close the gap a little.
Honestly he had no confidence in a pure food fight, but—
Highballs? Easy.
They could make highballs.
Just pour Suntory into tonic—simple as that.
If they used better-tasting Suntory?
It was easy to imagine the highball would taste better too.
“I heard they’re still ordering liquor nonstop. Their stock probably isn’t that deep.”
“Should we clean them out again?”
“Great idea. Let’s go now!”
If they could stop the other side from buying liquor, that would be the cherry on top.
Old liquor wouldn’t have huge volume anyway.
Even the Suntory we bought at the mart wasn’t that plentiful.
Yu-jun smiled in quiet triumph.
The unexpected stunt that had broken their predictions had turned into a blessing in disguise.
They could buy cheaper, better liquor.
The road to reclaiming first place in sales was opening.
Vrooom~!
His beloved car.
He took two members in the Sorento and headed for Namdaemun.
It was near Sungnyemun Gate—not far.
The moment they arrived they went straight in.
“Underground shopping arcade?”
“Yeah, this is the place. There’s even a photo.”
“Hurry up and grab everything we see!”
They had finished the online research beforehand.
All that remained was to walk into the shop and buy.
The Lovely Brothers Family Trading House
The sign appeared right on cue.
Before Yu-jun could even muster the courage to speak to the shop owner—
“Here for liquor, by any chance? You look like first-timers. Looking for something in particular~?”
The man greeted them warmly on his own.
The smiling approach looked thoroughly eager to please.
I was a little tense since it’s my first time here…
It looked like it would go smoothly.
Yu-jun and his companions honestly told the merchant what they were after.
“Ahh~ I see. Suntory! We’ve got Suntory, yes.”
“You do?”
“Give us all of it!”
“But, customers.”
“Yes?”
“How much research did you do before coming?”
“???”
They received a full baptism.