The Height-Growing Routine
Not long after, Kim Sehee led her people out to the land that would soon become their coffee farm.
"Wow... this is really..."
Only a few days had passed, and yet the young coffee trees were already heavy with fruit. She couldn't hold back her amazement.
"Is this whole area nothing but coffee trees?"
The cherry tomatoes had already prompted Kim Sehee to create an entire department devoted solely to farming, so they had been able to build an environment capable of cultivating the coffee trees that came from Hana with real skill.
"Yes. From here on, we intend to grow nothing but coffee trees across this entire region."
"Excellent."
Spring had arrived, and the air had turned mild. They also planned to put up state-of-the-art greenhouses so the trees could be grown through the winter. The profit would easily outstrip the operating costs, and once you factored in harvest after harvest stretching into the future, the margin only grew sweeter.
Kim Sehee had seen them before, but the coffee cherries hanging in thick, heavy clusters still forced a gasp out of her.
"I'm sorry—does it even make sense for a single coffee tree to bear this much fruit?"
"I was shocked as well. Between the cherry tomatoes and the coffee trees, I can't help thinking they possess some kind of special ability."
"I see."
The cherries were shaped so perfectly that Kim Sehee couldn't keep from smiling. To think there was a whole grove of trees bearing fruit of the very highest grade...
"At this volume, we could more than cover domestic demand, couldn't we?"
She said it while counting the cherries on a single tree. If one lone tree could produce this much, then tens of thousands of them would yield a harvest beyond imagining.
Kim Sehee let her imagination take happy flight over just how much coffee they would sell. A drink of this quality simply could not be imitated. In time, only Starlight Food's coffee would be spoken of as the finest there was.
For now she was sketching a plan: coffee picked straight from the trees would go to market as the standard line, while coffee infused with a strand of Hana's hair would be sold as a premium product. Coffee with Hana's hair in it had an aroma and a flavor so extraordinary that no coffee in the world could hope to beat it.
They could slap an outrageous markup on the price and it wouldn't matter. People who lived and died for coffee wouldn't blink at the cost. And even if they did, so what? She intended to sell it in limited quantities anyway. Later, if the chance came, they could scale production up—but for the moment, that was the plan.
"One, two! One, two!"
I had the computer on and was throwing myself into the exercises. If I wanted to get taller, working out was nonnegotiable. On the screen, a woman was diligently performing a routine meant to help you grow, and I copied her every move.
For some reason Haru had said she wanted to film me like this, so she stood off to the side with a camera, earnestly recording me as I exercised. What on earth was she planning to do with all that footage?
I put it out of my mind and poured every ounce of focus I had into the height-growing routine. If I could gain even a single centimeter, I would have nothing left to wish for. I was drinking milk every day, going to bed early and getting up early, and still growing taller felt hopelessly far away.
Even so, if I kept at the exercises, wouldn't I get taller someday? Maybe heaven would notice how hard I was trying and send a height-growing fairy to visit me while I slept.
I was still in my growth years, so I refused to believe I would be stuck at four foot five forever. If I didn't get any taller, I was prepared to go as far as height-increasing surgery. Whether Bora or Haru would ever allow it was another question entirely.
"Hyah! Hyah!"
Before I knew it, the routine was nearing its end. I flung my short arms and legs around with everything I had. The woman in the video moved through the height-growing exercises with practiced ease. I hadn't been able to match her tempo at the start, but by now I knew the routine well enough to keep up with her almost move for move.
"And finish!"
When the closing pose ended, the video closed on the woman bowing and thanking everyone for their hard work. Sweat prickled on my skin as I clicked the video off. Finishing another rewarding, energetic session left me oddly proud of myself, and beside me Haru was clapping, celebrating the end of my workout.
"Hana, you're so good at this! You could be a gymnast someday!"
"Really?"
"Yeah. I was seriously amazed by how flexible you are."
"I am pretty flexible, aren't I!"
I headed for the refrigerator. Inside were all kinds of drinks and tasty things to eat, but I ignored every one of them, pulled out a brand of milk that claimed to help you grow tall, and drank it down. I was dying to finish a whole carton a day, but I'd heard that too much could actually hurt your body, so I was restraining myself and drinking only a reasonable amount.
"Ugh..."
I was so exhausted that I flopped facedown on the bed. After a workout that grueling and dangerous, you had to collapse and rest properly at least once. Even people who went to the gym didn't train every single day—they took a full rest day at least once a week, didn't they?
I was no different. Overstimulating your growth plates could actually keep you from getting taller, so I was careful and only did the routine on set days, not every day. Haru sat down beside me where I lay sprawled on the bed.
She was holding the camcorder and checking something on it. Curiosity got the better of me, and I peeked over to see what she was doing. She seemed to be saving my exercise video separately. What was so great about watching me work out...? Whenever Haru or Bora caught me doing the routine, they immediately filmed it on a phone or a camcorder.
Hadn't they said they wanted to show it to me once I'd grown up? But I was already an adult. I didn't indulge in childish notions like keeping videos around just to watch them later.
"Hana, let's go eat!"
"Okay!"
All that exercise had left my stomach growling, so at Haru's word I got ready to head for the dining hall.
Word was already circulating that Starlight Food was entering the coffee market, and that the taste was so monstrously good that, once it launched, it would sweep the industry like a massive tidal wave. Of course, there were also people calling the whole thing hot air.
Kim Dongbin, president of Notte Chilsung, had no choice but to gather his executives in the conference room. Starlight Food was already a giant of the green-tea market, and it was quietly known that the president of Seodong Foods had collapsed from high blood pressure as his sales shrank.
Even so, the mood in the room wasn't all that grim. Starlight Food had launched a coffee drink once before and flopped spectacularly, and one of the executives leaned on that very point to soothe President Kim Dongbin's nerves.
"Sir, Starlight Food cannot produce a proper coffee drink right now."
An investigation of the coffee-cherry supply chain had turned up the fact that Starlight Food still hadn't secured any usable beans. Of course, Starlight Food could grow the cherries themselves—but that information hadn't spread yet.
There were no farms in the country raising coffee cherries, so checking the import routes was simple enough. No farm in Korea was cultivating coffee trees yet.
"Green tea was a small market, and it was an easy product for meeting consumer needs. Coffee is different. The market is incomparably larger than green tea's, and winning over a consumer's palate is extraordinarily difficult."
The executives traded opinions, each backed by sound reasoning. Still, there was no harm in being careful.
"Even so, just in case, let's take separate measures."
Going after Starlight Food through the press was out of the question. When major corporations collided head-on, the damage to both sides was simply too great. And Starlight Food was a company belonging to Starlight Guild, the number-one corporation in the country.
On top of that, he'd heard it was run by Kim Sehee, known to be of the direct bloodline. Everyone had wondered why she'd been handed such a tiny operation; its structure had been worse than that of your average rising mid-size firm. But the success of the green tea had swollen the company enormously, and they could no longer afford the old habit of dismissing Starlight Food.
"When Starlight Food launches its coffee drink, we'll respond by temporarily discounting our own beverages."
It was a reasonably rational way to keep them in check, and President Kim Dongbin nodded. Producing a proper coffee drink in less than a month was all but impossible for Starlight Food.