The Grand Festival
The largest club in the Economics Department.
It was also another way of saying the popular kids' hangout.
Creak—!
One of the club members opened the door and stepped inside.
A freshman girl, dressed up prettily to the nines.
Yet somehow she looked completely deflated.
It might have just been imagination, but—
"I'm back……."
"What took you so long?"
"Oh, sorry."
She couldn't help it.
For a girl only 158 centimeters tall, the club room of the department's biggest club felt enormous.
There were plenty of seniors too.
As an old club, returnees and seniors who'd taken a few years off were common sights.
"Did you find out what I told you to look into?"
"Yeah! For now."
"Not 'for now'—just spit it out already~ You trying to drive me crazy?"
"Oh, sorry."
The person the girl watched most carefully was someone else entirely.
Ironically, a fellow freshman—her own classmate.
What a twisted personality…….
She swallowed the anger down inside.
Ever since she started dating the club president, the girl had been trying to play full-on queen.
Riding borrowed power.
But as a freshman who still had to read the seniors' faces, there was nothing she could do about it.
"I asked a friend in the Stock Club."
"And?"
"……They were going to do makgeolli and pajeon, but figured it wouldn't stand a chance against our club, so they switched to cube steak. You know the one? The thing that's been all over TV lately."
She couldn't quit the club either.
Fail to stay active in the department club and you went straight to outcast status.
So she gritted her teeth and laid out everything she'd heard.
Cheon Jong-won's Food Truck.
A popular variety show currently riding high on the trends.
The cube steak episode had aired recently.
Ah, that one?
Juha had heard of it too.
She was more of a regular viewer of I Live Alone, which ran in the same time slot, but still.
"Cube steak!"
"I watched that episode—it was fun."
"Isn't the beef cost a little high?"
Everyone around was buzzing about it nonstop.
It was stealing viewership right out from under I Live Alone.
Impossible not to notice.
Well.
Cheon Jong-won.
Pretty much no one didn't know the name.
A professional who would feel personally insulted if ranked second in the food business.
He spilled his own secrets on the show.
Seemed plenty of the seniors had watched with real interest too.
"Should we change our menu too?"
"We're always just frying pajeon……."
"The oil splashing on your arm really hurts. I've still got burn marks right here."
"That's the same with meat."
A sudden idea flashed through her mind.
Juha put on her nicest, most people-pleasing smile.
When the prettiest girl in the club said so—
"Of course."
"Hm?"
"Juha, you have something to say?"
"Yes. How about we try something trendy instead of just pajeon for once?
She pushed it.
No senior was going to refuse her.
Still, a few complaints bubbled up.
"Our club tradition is seafood pajeon……."
"I only watch seafood pajeon on YouTube too."
"What tradition?! Number-one sales is what matters most!"
Power.
When the club president stepped in, there weren't many people who could pick a fight over wording.
Of course, they couldn't let actual discord break out.
Juha pretended to offer a reasonable compromise.
"Then how about this~?"
"Oh? What?"
"We sell pajeon like usual, and cube steak too. You're all so good at cooking, adding one more menu item shouldn't be a problem, right?"
"W-well, yeah."
"Juha's a genius!"
And she slipped her real agenda right in.
Cube steak.
That had been the goal from the very start.
"But then won't the menus overlap with the other club?"
"I just really enjoyed the Food Truck show. Is that not okay?"
"If you enjoyed it that much, can't be helped."
"Our Juha can do whatever she wants!"
Selling the exact same menu right next door.
It would deal a massive blow to the Stock Club's sales.
She smiled in quiet triumph.
A club's activity funds were proportional to sales during the university festival period.
Those bitches could only look so smug in front of her for now.
Absolutely.
Hankuk University Festival.
The festival curtain rose with the MC's booming cry.
Every corner of campus was already packed shoulder-to-shoulder with no room to step.
Lies, lies, lies~!
Music clubs put on concerts.
People listened to the amateurs while looking forward to the invited singers who would take the stage at night.
Waaaaaah~!!
Sports booth.
On the artificial-turf field, a soccer league was underway.
It would run across all three days of the festival.
The winning team received a modest prize.
"I already used my ult on Ez."
"Kill him! Kill that bastard!"
Esports booth.
Tournaments were running there too.
Given the nature of the games, some pretty heated shouting could be heard.
As befitting a university with deep history, everything was grand and high-quality.
Just walking the full circuit of Hankuk University's sprawling grounds would take two full days.
"Our son shouldn't play games like that."
"What's wrong with League?!"
"It ruins your personality. You just saw those older guys cursing, right?"
"Come on, it's not like a pro gamer was the one swearing. You're overreacting."
Nearby residents came every year to enjoy themselves.
Family groups of visitors were a common sight.
No matter where you went, you at least broke even.
That was the usual verdict on Hankuk University's Grand Festival.
Sizzle……!
But there was always one place that drew the most attention.
This year, it was the food court.
"Whoa! They're selling steak too?"
"Where? Where?"
"Over there!"
Broadcast effect.
Lately it had gone hot across every age and gender.
"Food trucks" themselves had become a kind of hot place.
All because of the show built around them.
Cheon Jong-won's Food Truck had presented a cooking program with a completely different concept from the usual fare, and—
"Can college kids even make it properly?"
"Heat control is everything. The Maillard reaction!"
—it had raised the standards of ordinary consumers by a huge margin.
People no longer spent money on mediocre food.
Vendors felt the pressure too.
They worked harder to put out food that matched the price.
Chomp!
Whether they could meet that bar or not.
University festival food courts were run by students.
A few licensed independent vendors came in, but the majority had to be students.
A visitor who took a first bite—
"Oh~."
"Is it good?"
"Not bad. Looking at how the salt's soaked in evenly, they used fine salt?"
—nodded along.
They still remembered Cheon Jong-won's recent commentary.
And the taste.
There was nothing stopping a rough evaluation of the flavor.
By their own standards it passed, but—
"Go over there instead."
"Huh?"
"If you're getting cube steak, that side's tastier and cheaper. Right next door."
"Oh, really? Thanks."
Relative evaluation.
If a better place existed, consumers simply changed direction.
Knowing that still made it hard to accept.
Especially from the perspective of young students.
"Ugh……."
"Our steak's good too though."
"Isn't that guy one of our own students? He's touting for the other side."
The Stock Club.
As agreed internally, they were selling steak.
Cube steak—lower difficulty, and they even had a clear reference to follow.
Under the guidance of a senior who had rewatched Cheon Jong-won's Food Truck three times, they had put together a pretty solid setup.
They had even sacrificed a bit on cost ratio to price it cheaply, yet—
Pajeon & Makgeolli & Cube Steak ♡
Seafood Pajeon — 5,000 won
Cheese Kimchi Jeon — 5,000 won
Cube Steak — 5,000 won
Chamisul — 4,000 won
Makgeolli — 4,000 won
Canned Beer — 4,000 won
The booth right next door was selling it far cheaper.
From ETSD, the club everyone had thought only sold pajeon varieties.
"Why are those guys selling cube steak……."
"And the touting too."
"I know I shouldn't think this, but are they doing it on purpose?"
Same menu.
Cheaper price.
Plus the wind-catching touts.
It was impossible not to get suspicious.
Sora, who had been watching quietly, furrowed her brow.
"I'll go over there!"
"Sora?"
"Yeah. I'm going to give them a piece of my mind!"
She already had a guess.
Juha belonged to ETSD.
She and that girl did not get along well at all.
I already heard she acts like a total brat over there too.
It was a personality thing.
Someone she never wanted to keep close.
Sure enough, it seemed she was the same even after joining ETSD.
Sora had even heard stories of Juha bad-mouthing her behind her back.
Until now she had let the girl do whatever she wanted, but—
"Hey!"
If it harmed the club, that was a different story.
Sora strode straight into the ETSD booth.
"Uh, what brings you……."
"Who's the club president? Where is he?"
"Well, he stepped out for a moment. If you have a message you can just tell me."
Most of the people inside were seniors.
Freshmen were out working alone, the seasoned second- and third-years were in the kitchen, and the even more distant seniors were just shooting the breeze.
They were at least three years senior, yet they still found themselves flustered.
She carried that much presence and overwhelming force of personality.
Whoa, I'd heard the rumors, but—
She's seriously huge.
So this is Sora. Wish I could save this view as a photo.
The female seniors had gone off to enjoy the festival.
Only the male seniors left behind to keep an eye on the juniors were left to suffer.
"Our menus are overlapping with yours."
"Y-yeah. Looks that way."
"Is that something that can just happen by coincidence? Out of all the possible menus?"
It was a shame the topic of conversation was a controversy.
They really didn't want to get on the bad side of such a rare pretty underclassman.
"Actually, we heard about it."
"Hey, wait—!"
"Stay quiet. What did you say?"
"We heard you guys were doing cube steak, so talk came up about maybe adding it to our menu too. Uh, and that's how it ended up."
There was an element of full confession in it.
Looking into her eyes felt like standing there completely stripped bare.
"So you admit you copied our menu?"
"Y-yeah."
"You knew selling the same menu could hurt our side, and you still did it?"
"Th-that's a little……."
They completely lost the initiative.
Couldn't even make a peep.
In that hair-trigger moment—
"I thought some random peddler had shown up, but it's just Sora, isn't it?"
Juha appeared.
She had been working out on the floor and heard from a classmate that Sora had come by.
As a freshman she still had to at least pretend to work.
Bossing around the other freshmen was fun too, after all.
"I already heard the whole story."
"Did you?"
"I won't drag this out. You guys already prepped the ingredients, so it's hard to just throw them away now, right? Either change the menu a little, or if you can't do that, at least match the price to the same level."
Only Sora grated on her nerves.
Sure enough, even here with only seniors around, she was calmly stating her case point by point.
Grit!
There were times you needed to bow your head, yet somehow she stayed that stiff.
But in this place, at least—
"Why?"
"Considering the cost, five thousand won is a ridiculously aggressive price. I can only assume there's an intention behind it."
"Hmm~ Intention? What kind of intention?"
In this club, at least, things were different.
This was not a place where that bitch got to throw her weight around.