The Food That Drives Men Wild
"Haaahm~"
Another strong, beautiful morning! I opened my eyes to the feel of sunlight slipping in between the curtains. The old me never used to like being in the sun, but that was completely different now. I rolled around on the floor, soaking it in. Basking like this, tumbling lazily in the light, made it feel as if every last scrap of fatigue were flying right off me.
Once I'd had my fill of sunshine, I got up and dashed for the bathroom. Today's toothpaste: chocolate. I picked up my toothbrush and squeezed out a long ribbon of it, then stuck out my tongue for a little taste. The moment that sweet chocolate scent flooded my mouth, my mood lifted.
The old me might have just eaten the chocolate toothpaste outright, but I was different now. I absolutely did not do childish things like eating toothpaste.
Scrub, scrub.
I brushed hard, watching myself in the mirror. Every time the brush moved, chocolate fragrance spread through my whole mouth. I wanted to swallow that foam so badly it hurt. Every single brushing felt like a test of will.
When I was done, I turned on the TV. It was time for the morning rerun of Little Magician Rumi. It was only seven, so no one had come into the office yet. Now and then Bora or Haru would show up early and drop by my room to play, but today both of them must have been busy. Nobody came.
That was fine. After an episode or two of Little Magician Rumi, the office would fill up with people coming in to work anyway. I leaned in until I was practically about to fall into the screen, and that was when Haru walked in.
"Hana. Aren't you watching a little too closely?"
She'd clearly noticed how locked in I was. She gathered me into her arms and eased me back bit by bit, putting more distance between me and the TV.
"Haru! This is the important part!"
Whenever I stuck myself too close to the screen, this was her method: pick me up and make me keep my distance. Probably because sitting that close could ruin your eyes.
But Haru's arms were so warm and so nice that I didn't really argue. I watched the last villain get punched so hard he turned into a star in the sky, and then Haru and I chatted our way down to breakfast. Holding her hand, I stepped out of the room, and the hallway was already full of familiar faces.
"Hi! Hi!"
I greeted the office people as we headed down toward the cafeteria. I caught the elevator and said hello, enthusiastically, to every person I saw. Not one of them failed to greet me back. They all returned it with soft, pleased smiles.
A few of them even patted my head. As expected, it was because I was too cute. And since I knew my own cuteness better than anyone, I could live in perfect comfort. Nobody disliked cute things. Elementary schoolers really were the best!
The cafeteria was bustling when we arrived. Hardly any office workers seemed to be eating breakfast elsewhere and coming in later. I was pretty sure that when I'd first arrived here, almost nobody ate breakfast in this place...
Of course, comparing the food then to the food now was night and day. People said the meals here hadn't been very good before I showed up. This was probably just the result of improvements.
I picked up a tray. Sometimes Haru brought my food for me, but I needed to practice eating on my own, too. If I kept relying on other people forever, I might end up useless at everything. I was an adult, not a little kid.
I scanned today's menu, and the spicy pork stir-fry jumped right out at me. Wasn't that a dish that landed in the top three favorites of every man in Korea? Grinning, I headed over to get some.
"Hana... you didn't fill the whole tray with nothing but spicy pork, did you?"
Haru looked at my tray, her eyes twitching, and said it. Just as she said, instead of taking the other side dishes, I had packed spicy pork into every single compartment except the rice and soup. There were other sides, sure, but once spicy pork was on the menu, those half-hearted little dishes couldn't even enter my field of vision. A nutritionist would have wept to hear me say it, of course.
"Haru. I'm still a growing kid, so I have to eat a lot."
"That's... not really the same thing, is it?"
Even so, she didn't say anything more. For the first time in a while, I got to eat spicy pork until my stomach was ready to burst. It was a truly excellent day.
For the first time in a long while, Kim Sehee couldn't hide the way her heart was pounding. Today was the day the prototype coffee made from the coffee tree that had come from Hana would be ready.
Under the product name Starlight Coffee, they had prepared all kinds of flavors—Americano, latte, and more. Kim Sehee decided to start with the Americano. In some far-off country, people compared an Americano to Han River ramen and treated it as a bizarre drink they would never touch, but in Korea it was the best-selling coffee of all.
"Hmm..."
The design looked good, too. They'd hired so many new employees lately that the crushing workload of the old days was gone. Because of that, they could turn out all sorts of prototypes without straining the company.
She popped the lid and breathed in the aroma first. It was the same coffee scent she'd smelled before. That alone was a success. They had met her demand to preserve the fragrance as perfectly as possible. If the aroma was good, you simply could not lose. Even if the taste landed somewhere in the middle, a great scent by itself was enough to guarantee it would sell.
A picture formed in her mind all on its own: Starlight Coffee dominating a coffee market worth some 1.5 trillion won. Just imagining it felt wonderful. She lingered happily on the fantasy of Starlight Coffee claiming the number-one spot in sales, then took a sip of the Americano in her hand and held it in her mouth.
!!!
Kim Sehee's eyes flew open, huge and perfectly round. It was far more delicious than the coffee from last time—the one where they'd added a strand of Hana's hair, only to fail at securing proper beans. The flavor of coffee lingered in her mouth, and it did not fade easily. As if it were asking her not to forget it. She'd taken only a single sip, and it showed her a taste like this...
Kim Sehee realized she had created something extraordinary. A coffee drink of this caliber might have customers begging her to take their money.
She tasted the others as well. Every one of them was a success, more than capable of satisfying even her own exacting palate.
From the standpoint of someone whom ordinary coffee could never impress, she was certain that a coffee which cleared her standards would more than satisfy the tastes of most ordinary people. Hearing "coffee drink," some might assume it was the usual thing—mediocre beans dressed up with flavorings—but Starlight Coffee was different.
It was putting forward a taste that even a proper specialty café would struggle to imitate. Taste it once, and you would never climb back out. You would live as a prisoner of that flavor until the day you died.
Smiling from ear to ear, Kim Sehee finished the successful tasting, steeled herself, and brought out the premium line.
If everything she'd drunk so far had been made from pure coffee beans alone, the coffee prepared this time had been made with a strand of Hana's hair added in. She had tasted something like it before, which was exactly why she was trembling even more now. Back then, an expert barista had made it on the spot from freshly roasted beans. If a drink produced on mass-production equipment tasted identical to that, it would have been the strange outcome.
Still... it would be all right, wouldn't it? Until now, not a single food made with Hana's hair had ever disappointed her. Even that shoddy coffee drink from before had become far more delicious than most coffees the moment a strand of Hana's hair went into it.
Kim Sehee drew a deep breath and opened the lid. The instant she did, an overwhelming aroma—nothing like the coffee from a moment ago—shook the whole room. If the scent alone was this good, how good would the taste be? The first step, at least, was a success.
With a reverent heart, Kim Sehee began to drink in crisp, precise motions.