A Request That Crossed the Water (1)
Cha Hee-ju smiled at herself in the mirror, looking over her new business card.
Future Department Store Product Division Manager Cha Hee-ju
It was only a change in title, but the meaning behind it was enormous.
Some employees might whisper that she had been promoted because she was the president’s daughter, but Hee-ju herself was certain the real reason lay in what she had achieved through the GyeolBit bedding project.
“Congratulations, Manager!”
Hye-eun, who had until recently been a fellow new hire, came into the office carrying a cake. The large two-tier chocolate cake had a small card stuck into it.
[You did it, you got promoted! Next goal: romance!]
Hee-ju smiled and tucked the card lightly against her chest.
It made her happy that someone was celebrating her success so sincerely.
She immediately took a picture of the cake and posted it as her profile photo, then looked moved beyond words.
“Thank you. I don’t think I did this alone. I think I made it because all of you helped me.”
Hye-eun congratulated Hee-ju with a proud heart.
They lived in different worlds now, so there was no reason to be jealous.
Soon, she herself would become a team leader, then a division head, then an executive, and fly higher and higher.
For now, if she stayed on good terms with Hee-ju and managed to remain with the company under favorable conditions, that would be enough.
Everyone was congratulating Hee-ju with that thought in mind.
As they cut the cake into small pieces and chatted casually, a message arrived on Hee-ju’s phone.
[You got promoted? Congratulations!]
Seung-hyun had seen Hee-ju’s changed profile photo and sent her a message.
[Oh my, I was just about to brag and contact you anyway. You saw it right away?]
[It happened to come up, so I saw it. Congratulations. Please continue taking good care of GyeolBit.]
[Haha, don’t worry. I’m going to lock down the sales for real!]
After sending a flexing-arm emoticon, she finished her cake and got moving.
Her mother had called her to the president’s office.
Of course, there was the congratulations that came with a promotion, but Hee-ju suspected there would also be a storm of scolding about how she needed to be more careful and do better from now on.
Still, now that she had been promoted, she had plenty of right to endure that sort of lecture.
But then, on the eleventh-floor VIP lounge of the department store, she ran into someone she really did not want to see.
“Oh?”
“You’re here? I saw it on the internal system. Congratulations on the promotion.”
It was clearly a congratulatory remark, but because of the sour expression on his face, even Hee-ju felt awkward hearing it.
“Thanks.”
Kwang-jin tossed a small gift box toward her. One look told her it was a Chanel pair of earrings.
It was expensive and luxurious, but Hee-ju could not find a trace of sincerity in her brother’s expression.
“You didn’t have to go to this trouble.”
“I’m giving it to you because you’ve done well. But don’t get too carried away. The department store business has a lot of variables.”
Hee-ju understood what was hidden in her brother’s words.
He was congratulating her on the surface, but inwardly he hated having to acknowledge it.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. Work hard.”
After the short exchange, Kwang-jin said he was busy and left the area, and Hee-ju let out a quiet sigh as she watched his back.
At times like this, the thought that this relationship might last a lifetime sent a wave of loneliness through her.
As soon as Cha Kwang-jin returned to his office, he slammed the door hard behind him.
His younger sister’s promotion had struck directly at his pride, and what stung most was that he had never expected the GyeolBit bedding brand to succeed this much.
“Chief Seong.”
His secretary, Seong Jae-ho, quickly bowed to the vice president, whose mood was clearly foul.
“Yes, Vice President.”
“You said Royal Department Store brought in the Prette bedding line before, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I heard the sales are pretty good.”
“How good?”
“What’s been made public is that it’s about fifteen percent higher than GyeolBit.”
Vice President Cha Kwang-jin’s eyes gleamed.
“So their strategy was solid after all? They brought in the bedding customers and beat them on sales too... Come to think of it, maybe there’s no reason for Hee-ju to be putting on such a show.”
“Lagging in sales is definitely a negative. And honestly, when it comes to high-end bedding brand recognition, GyeolBit is much weaker than Prette.”
“What, so there’s not even one thing better about it?”
Seeing his mood ease a little, Seong Jae-ho hurried to flatter him further.
“To be honest, yes. The diamond-tier VIPs already prefer Prette over GyeolBit, so it’s hard to say Future Department Store gained any additional VIPs from this. If there’s anything to give them credit for, it’s only that they launched a luxury bedding brand early.”
Only then did a smile crease the corner of Cha Kwang-jin’s mouth.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. She got promoted because she did something amazing? What a racket...”
“Maybe President Cha just used it as justification to promote Miss Hee-ju. They couldn’t leave her at the staff level forever.”
“Probably so. Then what about this Prette line? Can’t we bring it in ourselves?”
“I’ll look into it, but they probably locked up exclusivity for about two years, so it won’t be easy. Honestly, it would be more realistic to bring in another high-end bedding brand instead of Prette.”
“Hmm... Look into it first.”
“Understood.”
After Seong Jae-ho left, Kwang-jin stared out the window and fell into thought.
GyeolBit had indeed succeeded, but the fact that Royal Department Store’s Prette had posted even higher sales eased his mind.
*
Samples of the Navy and Air Force combat uniforms arrived at Haesol Textile.
“Hmm... Looks good.”
Since they had stayed close to the original design and only changed the fabric, there did not seem to be much difference at a glance.
But when he touched it, the texture was clearly different. Unlike the old military uniforms, which had only ever felt stiff, this one had a living grain to it while remaining soft.
More than anything, the most obvious difference was the drastic drop in weight when he lifted it.
“This is good. How are things at Daeyang Trade’s factory?”
Factory Manager Park Han-soo, who had personally gone to Daeyang Trade to pass on the technology, spoke up.
“Their skill level is high, and they understand military uniforms well, so they’ve been turning them out fast. I checked the machines thoroughly to make sure the fabric comes out right. As long as there are no errors in the fabric itself, the quality of the uniforms will hold.”
“It’s military supply. We can’t afford to be sloppy with quality.”
“Of course. They even inspected things very carefully on their side, probably because the contract includes a clause for cancellation if quality drops below a certain level.”
“Good. I hope everything goes well. You’ve worked hard coming back and forth. Leave the combat uniform samples here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Left alone in the president’s office, Seung-hyun lined up the new Navy and Air Force combat uniforms beside the Army uniform and looked at them with satisfaction.
Rather than thinking of them as nothing more than money, he felt an almost overwhelming pride in the thought that he was handling a vital part of the nation’s defense industry with fabric his father had designed.
Then Seung-hyun suddenly tilted his head.
Three different combat uniforms...
They looked surprisingly nice.
“Why does military uniform look nice even though I’m a reservist?”
He chuckled at the absurdity of the thought, wondering if he was losing his mind for a second, and then forced himself not to keep glancing back at the uniforms.
*
Arlington, Virginia, United States.
Shortly after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1958, the United States established an organization dedicated to developing innovative, high-risk, high-reward technologies to secure a technological edge in defense.
That organization was DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Dr. Catherine Hamilton, the Office Director of the Defense Sciences Office under DARPA, was carefully reading an email that had just arrived in her office.
Dr. Hamilton, who had a distinguished record in materials science, had spent twenty-five years in military technology research and had a particular interest in technologies that improved soldiers’ combat effectiveness.
She reviewed dozens of reports and proposals every day, but this email had caught her attention in a way the others had not.
The sender was Major General John Whitney, commander of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division stationed in Korea, and the fact that a division commander in Korea had contacted DARPA directly was unusual in itself.
“New Korean combat uniforms...”
She murmured to herself and skimmed the email.
Attached was a detailed report on the Dualtex-fabric combat uniforms recently adopted by the Korean military.
It included observations from the field: light weight, excellent breathability, durability, and, above all, a dramatic reduction in soldiers’ physical fatigue.
“Interesting.”
It was hard to believe that the Korean Ministry of National Defense, that conservative institution so far removed from innovation, had improved the combat uniforms worn by service members so drastically, even though they were not weapons themselves.
So she read the contents several times, trying to find a logical flaw, but there was nothing to contradict.
Without the fabric in hand, there was no way to know whether it really worked as claimed.
Still unable to put it out of her mind, she eventually picked up the phone.
The uniforms clearly looked worth researching.
She immediately requested a meeting, saying she had something to report to DARPA Director Michael Rivers.
A few hours later, after preparing for the meeting, she went to see the director. Michael Rivers, a Black man with a heavy build and no hair at all, looked at her with clear interest when she arrived after such a long time.
“You said you had something to show me?”
She handed over the printed report and explained.
“I received an email from Major General John Whitney of the 2nd Infantry Division stationed in Korea. I was surprised that a serving division commander would send me a message, but inside it was something extremely interesting.”
Michael opened the document and widened his eyes at the photo on the first page.
“Combat uniforms?”
“Yes. This combat uniform developed by the Korean military is thirty-two percent lighter than the uniforms our troops currently use, and its breathability and durability are far superior. According to Major General Whitney’s observations, under the same training conditions, Korean soldiers showed markedly less fatigue than U.S. soldiers.”
Director Rivers adjusted his glasses and studied the material more closely.
“Dualtex... So this must be a functional fabric newly developed in Korea?”
“That’s right. It comes from a company called Haesol Textile, which apparently makes not only combat uniforms but also bedding worth over four thousand dollars and T-shirts priced at twenty dollars.”
“Bedding worth four thousand dollars and T-shirts for twenty dollars? That’s a very interesting company. This private firm is supplying combat uniforms through a military contract?”
“Yes.”
Michael frowned slightly, then nodded.
“Do you think this functional fabric could actually perform as well as the report claims? Could it really be superior to the Gore-Tex we use?”
“I can’t know that yet.”
“Exactly. We start with reports, but we can’t take them at face value. Besides, it hasn’t even been a full year since it was issued to the Korean military. There probably isn’t enough proper data yet.”
“I understand.”
“And yet you think it’s worth reporting?”
Dr. Hamilton answered calmly.
“I thought about what kind of results we might get if we supplied it to troops based on the data in the report. For example, in operations lasting more than eight hours in the Kandahar region, soldiers’ physical fatigue would probably drop by about fifteen percent. And we can’t ignore the effect on temperature regulation during daylight hours. Afternoon temperatures in Afghanistan can climb to forty-five degrees, but this fabric is said to release heat effectively while blocking sand and dust. As a result, I estimate heatstroke cases could fall by sixty-eight percent.”
Michael Rivers’ expression darkened at her explanation.
“Are you sure those calculations are right?”
“I did a quick calculation before coming to report.”
She drew a breath and emphasized the most important point.
“More than anything, this combat uniform could meaningfully extend operational endurance. That means our soldiers could carry out missions longer and more efficiently. From the standpoint of preserving combat strength, we absolutely need to verify whether this uniform matches what the report says.”
In the end, her conclusion was simple.
“So you need samples.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Director Rivers fell into thought for a moment.
As an agency devoted to researching future defense technologies, DARPA could not afford to overlook an innovative material like this.
“...All right, Catherine. I’ll report this to the Department of Defense and request samples. Depending on the test results, we’ll decide whether to pursue further research.”
“Thank you, Director.”
After Dr. Hamilton left, Director Michael Rivers reviewed the report and picked up the phone.
“I’ll need to meet with the Secretary of Defense, so could you arrange a schedule for me?”
---