The Copycat's Bitter Defeat
It was a common sight at university festivals. When one stall began doing well, copycat shops would sprout up like mushrooms all around it. This happened quite frequently in Korea. If it looks like it's working for someone else, everyone jumps in without any preparation. For example, since our cafe was successful, several cafes with similar concepts had opened nearby. At first they seemed to be doing decent business. But once customers visited, tasted the food, and realized it couldn't even compare to ours, they turned away disappointed. After about three months, half of those cafes had closed down, following in Tinos' footsteps, while the remaining half were doing so poorly they could barely pay their rent. In short, simply copying the look without any real preparation only scored an own goal. And if the product was as impossibly delicious as the ones I made—something no one else could replicate—the existence of a superior comparison made failure even more inevitable.
Choi Seungah, who had been listening to my explanation, tilted her head. "Are you sure it's really okay? I see a few customers heading over there."
Our line was indeed so long that some people grew tired of waiting and wandered toward the rival stall. They must have assumed the menu was the same, so the taste would be similar. Seeing this, Choi Seungah grew visibly anxious.
To reassure her, I asked one of the first-year male students to go buy a tanghulu from the other side. Before long he returned with one in hand.
But even the color was off—a dull brownish-yellow. It looked nothing like our tanghulu, which gleamed like silver and evoked the image of precious gems. The visual difference was night and day.
I picked one up and took a bite. The sugar flavor was so overpoweringly strong that it felt like a waste of the strawberry inside. It would honestly have been tastier to just sell plain strawberries on a stick.
I handed the rest to Choi Seungah. She took a generous bite and immediately frowned. "Is this really tanghulu?"
Since the only tanghulu she had ever eaten was mine, the taste was so strange to her that she genuinely wondered if it was even the same food.
Making tanghulu might look simple, but a single mistake in heat control or sugar ratio could produce disastrous results. If they had simply followed a YouTube recipe exactly, they might have made something passable. Instead, in their attempt to steal our method perfectly, they had recorded me making it and copied every move. There was no way people without Sex Power could produce the same result. The end product was the worst possible tanghulu—one that tasted of nothing but sugar.
"What do you think?"
"If they serve this, customers are going to eat it and start cursing, aren't they?"
No one was going to happily pay four thousand won for a lump of sugar. And with an overwhelmingly superior option right next door? If they had sold items that paired well after something sweet, they might have generated decent sales. But because they saw our success, they assumed it was simply because it was tanghulu rather than because we had made it exceptionally well. On top of that, jealousy drove them to try stealing our customers.
If they take our customers and theirs increase, the gap in profit doubles.
They had made a bet on who could generate more net profit. If our sales flowed over to them, it benefited them far more than selling their other menu items. It was a one-dimensional, petty idea, but it must have looked like a solid plan to them.
At least until they get punched in the face for it.
It was time for them to pay the price for launching a cheap scheme without any preparation.
Female students who had bought tanghulu from the International Trade Department stall emerged. One of them had tried ours before. She must have wanted to buy it again but gave up on our endless line and went to the copycats instead.
She took a bite and immediately grimaced, as if something was wrong. The expressions of her friends changed the same way, and complaints began spilling out.
"You said their tanghulu was supposed to be amazing. Is this even edible?"
"This tastes completely different from the one you ate earlier. That one was actually delicious..."
"This is just a sugar brick!"
"Ah, no, that's not—"
The girl who had dragged her friends over after praising the tanghulu now looked like she wanted to cry. From her perspective it was utterly unfair. Who could have guessed that two items with the same name could taste so drastically different? If it had merely been mediocre she could have forced it down, but this was on another level of bad. They should have waited in the Business Administration Department's line no matter how long it took. Instead she had brought her friends to a supposed hidden gem and earned nothing but complaints.
The angry girls began furiously typing. They spread the word across SNS and to every friend and acquaintance they had. At first the message was simply that the International Trade Department's tanghulu tasted terrible, so people should avoid it and come to the Business Administration stall instead. But as the rumor spread, it mutated into the claim that everything sold by the International Trade Department was disgusting. Eventually even their remaining customers began to dwindle.
"See?"
What had been a reasonably successful stall had lost half its customers in an instant. They had tried a cheap trick without any countermeasures, only to fall victim to their own scheme and score a spectacular own goal. As an added bonus, our stall gained even more fame by comparison. The line grew longer than ever.
Choi Seungah beamed and squealed, "Kyaaak! Senior, you're the best! The absolute best! Is there anything else I can help with? Want me to massage your shoulders?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Yes! Loyalty, loyalty!"
She seemed genuinely delighted as she began diligently kneading my shoulders. Her delicate hands were like tiny fern fronds; there was no way they could have any real effect on a body harder than steel. Still, the thought of a beautiful girl in a maid outfit giving me a sincere massage felt incredible regardless of actual results. It was a luxury I had never enjoyed even during my days as a hero.
While Choi Seungah worked diligently on my shoulders, I felt a gaze from somewhere. Once again it was Kim Eunha, sneaking glances while pretending not to stare. She clearly disliked seeing me alone with another woman.
But this time the stare didn't come only from her. Unlike her sneaky looks, this one was blatant. Both Choi Seungah and I noticed it and turned our heads.
A female student I had never seen before was glaring at us—at me and Choi Seungah both—as if she wanted to kill us.
Who's that?
Choi Seungah immediately answered my unspoken question. "That's Park Minji, vice president of the International Trade Department student council."
"The one you don't get along with?"
"It's more like she hates me one-sidedly... And I'm not saintly enough to be friendly with someone who dislikes me."
Her gaze revealed a truly venomous personality. Choi Seungah had once called her ugly, but that was only by comparison. With makeup she covered her flaws well enough to look ordinarily attractive.
Choi Seungah looked straight at her and flashed a wide grin. The moment she saw it, the rival vice president lost her mind as if someone had slammed her rage button.
"That bitch!"
Park Minji, vice president of the International Trade Department, completely lost it the moment the rival vice president looked at her and smiled mockingly.
"Vice President, please calm down."
"Minji, take it easy."
Everyone around her desperately held her back. Starting a fight here would only embarrass their entire department. Thanks to their efforts, Park Minji managed to regain some composure.
Why did it turn out like this?
She simply could not believe the current situation. Before the festival began she had been certain she would crush that damn Choi Seungah and flatten her nose. The source of her confidence was one student whose father owned a famous bar near campus. It wasn't that the student himself was an amazing cook. Rather, they brought half-cooked ingredients from his father's bar, reheated them like a meal kit, and simply added sauce. She had somehow coaxed that senior into supplying them at nearly cost price. With liquor sales added in, she had believed it was a fight they could not lose.
Yet the Business Administration Department's stall—which should have failed—had a line stretching forever. The possibility that they might actually lose made her head spin with rage.
"We're making tanghulu too!"
"What? Suddenly?"
"Their only menu item is tanghulu anyway! If we steal just their tanghulu sales, those bastards are finished!"
When she put it that way, it sounded reasonable. No one could offer a logical objection.
"Should we go buy strawberries from the mart?"
"We have to make it exactly like theirs. If we use the same ingredients and the same method from start to finish, we'll get the same tanghulu, right?"
They ordered strawberries from the exact same supplier the Business Administration Department used. They even recorded the rival making the product. All they had to do was copy it perfectly and they would steal half the sales.
The method seemed simple enough. After a few trial-and-error attempts they succeeded, but even the color looked wrong.
"Want to try it first?"
"Where are we going to get more to eat? Do you know how expensive these strawberries are? We copied it exactly, so the taste should be the same!"
They hadn't realized how pricey the strawberries were when ordering. They had already wasted several batches during testing. Tasting it themselves would only increase their losses, so they decided to sell it as-is.
They placed a sign in front of their stall.
Strawberry Tanghulu
Customers tired of waiting in our line began visiting them one or two at a time.
"They say this side tastes better."
"Tanghulu is tanghulu. We've been waiting forever—let's just get it here."
"Yeah, why not?"
The more tanghulu they sold, the more we lost and the more they gained. The gap would widen twofold. Perfect. It's working.
Park Minji smiled with satisfaction. Thanks to her brilliant idea, she was certain of victory.
But the customers' reactions were strange. After eating, they all began complaining. At the time she didn't take it seriously. Then the complaints started spreading across SNS and group chats, and the severity of the problem became clear.
"What the hell? Where did all the customers go?!"
Even people who had been enjoying their regular meals stopped coming. Although only the tanghulu was bad, the entire menu was now being treated as if everything tasted terrible.
"Vice President, maybe we should stop selling tanghulu and focus on making the meals properly..."
"Shut up!"
If she gave up now, she would become a laughingstock for pushing this plan. Her pride was on the line. She had to find some way to fix it.
By the end of the first day's lunch rush they had somehow sold all the ordered strawberries, but they received far more complaints than they had strawberries. They tried to use collective intelligence to solve the problem, but a group of non-experts in cooking was never going to find the right answer. In fact, they chose the wrong one.
"Maybe the strawberries are the problem?"
"That's it!"
They immediately broke open one of the Business Administration Department's tanghulu, discarding the sugar coating to taste the strawberry alone. The flavor was incomparably better than what they had received. Kim Hyunjin had infused it with Sex Power, but since they didn't know that, they shouted as if they had discovered the answer.
"It's not our fault! The strawberries are the problem!"
"Right, right! When the next delivery comes tomorrow, let's complain!"
"They must have given us the only bad batch!"
The next day the fruit truck arrived again. They blocked it from going to the Business Administration stall first and immediately complained.
"Mister, you're only giving us weird strawberries, aren't you!"
"...What nonsense is that? They're from the same box. How could they be different?"
"Then can we swap them for those?"
"Do whatever you want!"
Seeing the fruit seller's irritation, they arbitrarily decided he was angry because they had caught him. The strawberries meant for the Business Administration Department were redirected to them.
They immediately made new tanghulu with the fresh batch.
"This tastes exactly the same as yesterday's?"
"......"
The gap in net profit between the two departments only continued to widen.