This Rice Cake Has Excellent Initial Elasticity

Monday morning. Over the weekend I had walked the alleys of Seongsu-dong with Da-hee and eaten pasta. I won't linger on it. The moment we stepped through the company doors, we were mentor and junior again.

"Good morning, Woo-jin."

"You too, Assistant Manager."

She passed me a stack of documents on her way by, and the face that went past was locked in perfect work mode. The air above her head was not.

The Monday blues vanished in a single breath. At nine on a Monday ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠morning she was still turning Saturday's pasta over in her mind. So was I. That ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠part was a secret.

The peace held until ten, when a team meeting was called. Team Leader Ye-won set an approval folder down with a sharp tap and swept her eyes over the team. Her gaze was unusually sharp.

"The success of this ampoule comes down to one thing. A new active the Product Development Lab holds the patent on."

She wrote it across the whiteboard in thick strokes.

It was a patented ingredient our own company had developed, drawn from deep-sea seaweed and specialized for restoring the skin barrier. The problem was that they would not hand it over to marketing.

"The lab is refusing, flat out, to release this ingredient to marketing. Brand Team 1 once ran an exaggerated ad calling it a miracle ingredient that smooths wrinkles in one second of application, and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety issued a warning. The papers the researchers had stayed up all night to write got torn apart right along with it. So now, if you are from the Marketing Division, they will not even open the door."

The team leader's face darkened. If we could not secure this ingredient, next week's presentation would be nothing but a shell, and the team would come apart in midair. That was when Manager Park scraped his chair back and thrust out his chest.

"Ah, Team Leader Kang! Handling the lab kids is my specialty. You know how many years of marketing I've got behind me. I'll go put ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠those bookworms in their place and be right back. Tech types only fall in line once you show them the big picture and clamp down with big-brother leadership."

He patted his belly and strode out of the conference room. Da-hee let out a heavy sigh. I swallowed a dry laugh. In two years I had never seen that big-brother leadership work on a single person. The owner of the karaoke room after company dinners, maybe.

Ten minutes later I was watching that same leadership through the hallway glass on the third floor. Inside the lab's clear door, the manager traced a wide circle in the air with one finger and held forth for about three minutes. I had never seen anyone draw the big picture with their actual hands.

A researcher stood opposite him—a bun, round glasses, a white lab coat. She listened the way a wall listens, then gave his chest a light shove with the binder in her hand and said exactly one thing. There was glass between us, but her mouth was so precise I read every word.

"Not a sensory evaluation. We need quantitative data."

The automatic door shut on him as if it had been waiting. Alone in the hallway, a red inner thought rose over the manager's head.

Back in the office, the manager was beading with sweat and yanking at his tie.

"Ah, those lab kids just will not cooperate! Kids these days have no social skills. None. They can't see the big picture."

The team shook their heads. The team leader let out a long sigh, then turned and looked at me.

"Woo-jin. Go down there. Don't push a proposal at them. Just confirm whether a conversation is even possible."

A request from the ice-cold team leader. I nodded. The truth was, I had a weapon. Proposal Speed-Reading, earned off last week's sandwiches. Over the weekend, with nothing better to do, I had read the eighty-page Blue Seaweed technical report the Product Development Lab had submitted to a conference. After the pasta, lying in bed. It took twenty minutes.

I was waiting for the elevator when the messenger chimed.

She seemed to think I was going to cry. A man who had not cried under Manager Park for two years was not about to cry over one researcher. Probably.

Formulation Research Team 1, Product Development Lab, third floor. The moment I opened the door, the smell of disinfectant and alcohol stabbed my nose. In a corner of a lab packed with beakers, a centrifuge, and microscopes, the same researcher was glaring at a monitor.

Researcher Moon Yu-jin. Twenty-seven, a hundred and sixty centimeters. Hair pinned into a neat bun, round gold-rimmed spectacles, an oversized gray knit under the lab coat. A bare face and a sharp look. At a glance, someone with no interest in anything but papers.

At the sense of someone there, she turned her head. A window opened above her.

Twenty-two, and a bother. A number with distrust of marketing driven all the way into the bone. She pushed her spectacles up with one index finger and spoke in a purely clerical tone.

"I already told that manager, but the Blue Seaweed ingredient cannot be allocated. It is not a material meant for marketing's exaggerated claims."

An iron wall, exactly as expected. But I had not come to draw anyone a big picture the way the manager had. I spread the technical report I had brought across the desk.

"Researcher Moon, I didn't come to make a marketing pitch. May I ask a single question about the report?"

"…The report?"

"Yes. On page twenty-three, it says the improvement in transepidermal water loss still holds at eighty-four percent even after seventy-two hours. That's 3.8 times higher than commercial hyaluronic acid. So why are you keeping persistence data like this only for conferences?"

Her eyebrow twitched. Behind the round spectacles, her eyes went wide.

"…You read every figure on page twenty-three?"

"Yes. And on page forty-eight, the low-molecular fermentation process makes the absorption rate 2.4 times faster than a standard extract. Numbers like these sell on the figures alone. You don't need a tacky word like miracle."

The lab went quiet. She stared up at me, blank. Then the number above her head moved.

The moment it cleared thirty, one layer of her inner thoughts peeled away. The hard line of her mouth loosened, just barely. She cleared her throat, then picked up a brown glass bottle from the bench.

"…Choi Woo-jin, you are the first person from marketing to have read my report down to the numbers."

Dropper in hand, she came toward me.

"If you mean to persuade a consumer, you must know this ingredient yourself first. Roll up your sleeve."

"Sorry?"

"This is an application-feel measurement. Do not move."

She flicked my left sleeve up and let a single drop of ampoule fall on the inside of my wrist, right where the pulse jumped. Cool. Then the cold, slender tip of her index finger began to work the spot in a slow circle, soft and then softer. The ampoule sank into my skin as if it had never been there. She drew my wrist up to the tip of her nose, smelled it, and brushed the skin a few more times with her finger. Her breath touched my wrist. A loose strand slipped from her bun and tickled my forearm.

She was deadpan and grave, a woman verifying a paper. I was the problem. Pinned by the wrist and rubbed over in a narrow lab, I thought I was going to die from how hard my pulse was working.

Chagall… why are her fingers this soft.

When the measurement ended, she let go. She slid her spectacles up, opened a desk drawer, and set a rice cake wrapped in white plastic film into my palm.

"Eat this."

"…Sorry? A rice cake?"

"This is baekseolgi, a plain steamed rice cake, blended from non-glutinous and glutinous rice at a ratio of seven to three. This rice cake has excellent initial elasticity."

A person complimenting elasticity instead of taste. My jaw nearly came unhinged. While I stared blankly down at the rice cake, she had already turned back to her monitor.

"Come again at the same time tomorrow. We will look together at how marketing intends to verify that persistence data."

She still had not said she would give us the ingredient. But a door that never opened for marketing people had opened halfway. And the rice cake's elasticity really was excellent. I ate half of it in the elevator on the way back up.

The moment I stepped off on the twelfth floor, the team leader opened her office door and beckoned. I went in, and she asked, pen still in hand.

"How did it go?"

"The door opened. She told me to come back tomorrow."

"…Truly? Manager Park was out in three minutes."

"The manager drew the big picture. I read page twenty-three."

She stopped her pen and looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at the plastic wrap in my hand.

"What is that?"

"A rice cake. The researcher gave it to me. She says the initial elasticity is excellent."

For a long moment she stared at the rice cake with a face that did not understand a word of it, then nodded without speaking. She wrote something on the memo pad on her desk. I read it upside down.

So she was the type who recorded even this.

When I got back to my seat, Da-hee spotted the remaining half in my hand.

"Hey. What's that."

"I got it from the lab."

"Moon Yu-jin gave you a rice cake? Her? The one who made the Team 1 manager cry?"

"Yes. Baekseolgi."

She glared at the rice cake for a long time, then snatched it out of my hand and ate it in one bite.

"…It's good. Annoying."

All afternoon she muttered "She gave you a rice cake?" to herself two more times. The third was on her way out the door.

At eleven that night, washed and lying down, a name I had never seen lit up the company messenger.

I lifted my wrist. The spot where the ampoule had gone on was still a little smoother. I smelled it. Nothing. All I could remember was the feel of her fingers.

I lay there a long time, wondering whether I was supposed to send that as data.