Let's Go Have Fun! (4)
The event had begun. People came pouring into the venue in a rush, and every face I saw was bright with excitement. Most of what was on offer had to be animation made for children, and yet, somehow, there were more adults than kids. What reason did grown-ups have to love children's cartoons?
Did they come with their kids? I looked around to check, but plenty of people were on their own. Anime really did draw fans of every age. You only had to see adults turning up like this to know it.
People set off at a quick pace for the booths of whichever series they loved, and before long the hall was packed. The booths were calling out through loudspeakers, promotion in full swing, when a familiar melody reached my ears.
They were playing an anime theme song. As if under a spell, I walked toward the booth the music was coming from—though I didn't forget to keep a tight hold on Bora's hand and Haru's. The crowd had grown so thick that letting go felt like a sure way to get lost.
I didn't see anyone else in a Rumi hoodie and hat, magic wand in hand. I seemed to be the first. Delighted, I bounced along as I went.
I went back to the Rumi booth I'd visited earlier. The setup looked completely finished now, a world apart from when I'd first come by. All kinds of merchandise were laid out on the display stands—stands that had been entirely empty the first time.
The goods were selling at a furious pace. If I hadn't been among the very first through the door, I never would have gotten any. Even this early they were flying off the shelves; by the time my turn came around, there clearly wouldn't have been anything left.
Rumi really was popular. I spotted a few kids around my own age, but it was the adults doing most of the buying. Were they picking things up to take home to their children? They looked a little old for that, though.
"Ah!"
That was when I spotted something.
"What's wrong, Hana?"
"Over there! Over there!!!"
I said it while jabbing a finger in that direction. Haru and Bora, asking what was going on, followed where I pointed. A life-size standee of Rumi stood there, and people were using it as a backdrop for photos. A line waited beside it.
"I wanna take a picture too!!!"
"All right, all right."
Dressed in the exact same outfit as the standee, I planted myself neatly at the side of the line and waited. Fortunately, the event was still in its early hours, and not many people were queued up. After only a short wait, my turn arrived.
I stood beside the Rumi standee and threw up a V-sign. Bora captured that magnificent pose on camera. Then, wand in hand, I struck the very same pose as Rumi and had that shot taken too.
"You're getting good ones, right, Bora?"
"Yeah. Yeah, they're perfect!"
Bora was shooting me dozens of times. A single photo would have been plenty, but there was nothing wrong with having more.
Tapping the floor with light little steps, I circled the Rumi standee. The photos were done before I knew it, and I checked how I looked in the ones Bora had taken.
The girl on the phone screen was unbelievably cool. Hat on my head, magic wand swinging—I was an Amazon warrior, plain and simple.
"Next I wanna do that! And that!!!"
"Slow down, Hana."
I tore through the venue as if it were my own house. Arms flung out to either side, I took off with a whoosh, like an airplane in flight. Running like that made me feel faster, and I liked it.
Once I'd left the booth behind, I drifted without thinking toward wherever the people were thickest. When a crowd gathered, didn't you go have a look at least once, if only out of curiosity?
"Whoa!"
Someone had set up a stall and was running a little game. Knock a doll over with a toy gun, and the doll was yours.
The moment I saw the Rumi doll, my eyes sparkled. The other prizes caught my eye too, but none of them was Rumi.
"Bora! Haru! I wanna do this one!"
I grabbed their sleeves and whined like a little kid. Fortunately, Bora and Haru were good about listening to me. They'd followed close enough behind that I hadn't lost my way.
"You want to play this?"
"Yeah!"
"If our Hana wants it, then that's what we do!"
With that, Bora took out her wallet and paid. I closed my hand around the toy gun, heavy in my grip. To me, who had served, the cool weight of metal was familiar.
Cold... A distinguished marksman like me ought to handle a toy like this with ease. That was what I expected.
I seated the gun against my shoulder as naturally as breathing. Seeing the way I held it, Haru and Bora were startled.
"Oh my. Hana's shooting stance is no joke."
"Did she pick that up online...?"
An ordinary person wouldn't shoulder a gun at all; they'd just lift it clumsily in both hands. And since it was a toy, with no recoil to speak of, holding it that way wouldn't have mattered.
But a veteran couldn't stand a sloppy shoulder. So I began to fire with movements crisp enough to belong in a military training video. The target was the Rumi doll.
Pew! Pew!
All that came out was a cute little sound that didn't resemble a gun at all. Contrary to my expectations, the Rumi doll did not go down easily. Real bullets would have blown it to pieces, but the gun in my hands was a toy. The rounds were shaped like corks and had no killing power whatsoever.
"Hah! Hah!"
I put my fighting spirit into it and kept shooting, trying to topple the doll. After I didn't know how many shots—by which point the cost of firing had almost certainly outstripped the cost of simply buying the thing—I finally got to have the Rumi doll.
Hitting the same spot again and again, I watched the doll tip slowly backward, and I kept firing. At last it toppled all the way back and dropped into the basket set up below.
"Here you are, little miss."
The stall owner handed me the Rumi doll. I took it with delight and thrust it high into the air. Seeing me like that, Bora and Haru clapped and congratulated me.
"Yay!"
I had gained so much by coming to the venue today. A transformation set, and now a doll on top of it. It was nothing short of striking gold.
And so we stayed until the sun went down.
Starlight Coffee was selling at a pace that defied belief. Anyone watching from the side would have said it simply couldn't be real.
Starlight Food was scattering so much product across every region that the people moving the stock were sick of it, and still the volume was enough to spark suspicions of hoarding. Fortunately, once internet delivery was added, the hoarding rumors that had been flaring up nationwide died down.
Thirty-six thousand won for ten cans. Set beside convenience-store coffee, you could call it expensive; set beside café coffee, you could call it cheap. But the moment you actually tasted Starlight Coffee, that calculation changed.
It was as if someone had swapped out your brain. The flavor was astonishing enough to make you wonder whether coffee like this had ever existed. Coffee reviewers, to a one, left near-rave write-ups on their blogs. Even on the blog of a user famous for harsh criticism, Starlight Coffee earned praise.
"Hmm..."
Kim Sehee drank the coffee sitting on her desk. She endured, with everything she had, the way her back wanted to arch like a bow, and let her eyes travel down a report that put her in an excellent mood.
The domestic beverage market ran to ten trillion won a year. Ordinary food markets couldn't begin to compare.
Green tea accounted for about ten percent of that. Put bluntly, even if you captured one hundred percent of the green tea market, you'd only make a trillion won a year. And people's tastes were varied, so a total takeover was out of the question.
Right now Starlight Green Tea held roughly a seventy percent share. That meant nearly sixty billion won a month from green tea alone.
The coffee market was wider still. Even counting the figures that included coffee sold in cafés, it came close to three trillion.
Seize the coffee market alone, and you held thirty percent of the country's beverage market. That was why Kim Sehee's push into coffee drinks was not chance, but necessity.
She had wanted to move into carbonated drinks and the like, but that side of the industry had patents locked down from the concentrate itself, and it was difficult to crack.
This early in the launch, things were running smoothly. She had already heard, until she was tired of hearing it, that the cans sold the moment they hit convenience stores. And yet no matter how many times she heard it, it felt good. Where was the executive who disliked a report that her own company's products were selling well?
Unless she was the sort of eccentric who prayed for her company to go under, ten out of ten would be pleased.
Looking at the pleasant report, Kim Sehee broke into a bright, irrepressible smile. There had been attempts at what the other side doubtless considered a check—sudden discounts on their own products—but they were already no match for Starlight Coffee. All they managed was to shave away their own sales.