Kwaang!
Maru stepped into the interview room drawn tight with nerves. She had sat through more interviews than she could count on both hands by now, and still the tension that seized her beforehand was something she could never quite shake.
No matter how she tried to grow used to it, the thing refused to become familiar. And really, it shouldn't have. A long record of interviews was only proof of an equally long record of rejections.
At first it proceeded normally enough. A question she had drilled on the bus came up, and she quietly blessed her luck. But the closer they drew to the end, the further the questions drifted from anything that belonged in a research institute.
"Do you happen to like children?"
"You've been looking after your younger siblings and your nieces and nephews since you were little, you said?"
"If a child were caught in a situation like this, how would you respond..."
It didn't feel like an interview for a laboratory at all. It felt like they were hiring a teacher for a daycare. Maru herself had picked up odd jobs minding small children back in university, so she handled the questions with easy confidence.
If anything, she was relieved they had come up. Questions she could actually answer were far better than the specialized ones that left her stuck.
The interview ended on a warm note, and for the first time in a long while Maru walked out with a good feeling—the feeling that she might actually have passed.
A week later, the acceptance notice arrived.
"Heh heh heh..."
Today was the day the new hire arrived, and I went to prepare a proper welcome. I wanted to see the face of the employee who would be assisting me, so I got up first thing in the morning, washed until I was spotless, and put on my dinosaur pajamas.
How should I greet her? A cold, appraising stare? Or something warm? I was still turning it over when the chime announced that the elevator had arrived. I scurried down the hall and planted myself in front of the doors.
I meant to seize the initiative with a tremendous dinosaur roar.
"Kraang!"
The instant the doors opened, I flung my arms high and roared with everything I had. I had made it frightening enough that anyone standing nearby would have fled in terror.
But the new employee, looking at me, was not frightened in the slightest. If anything, her eyes went bright and sparkling. I was thrown by the fact that she wasn't surprised at all. In that same moment my view lurched upward—she had scooped me into her arms. I dangled from her hold, swinging, and was carried straight into the office.
I wanted to thrash the tail trailing beneath me this way and that, but I had no power to move a tail, so the dinosaur tail hung pitifully limp.
"Why... why aren't you scared?"
I had been certain she would take one look at my dinosaur roar and run. Instead she bounced me along, and I asked out of pure bewilderment. This new hire seemed absurdly resistant to fear.
"You're too cute. Why would I be scared?"
She answered my question with a question of her own. Then, just outside the office, she set me gently down and put on a grim, resolute face, like someone about to walk into battle. I copied the expression and followed her in.
"Good morning! I'm Maru, the new employee starting today!"
I crept along behind her on quiet feet. I didn't get far. Maru had gone into the conference room inside the office, and then someone caught me around the waist and lifted me up.
The one who had picked me up was Haru.
"Hana, you need to get ready for school."
Right. I was a student. Reminded once again of the occupation I kept forgetting, I got ready for school. Haru had already pressed my uniform with the iron, so all I had to do was put it on.
"Hello, Ms. Maru."
The HR manager addressed Maru as she came into the conference room. Maru sat down in a chair, frozen stiff.
A confidentiality agreement lay on the table in front of her. Just how sensitive did a job have to be before they set a pledge like that in front of you?
Scenes from every office drama she had ever watched flickered through her mind like a panorama: exacting superiors, a company life that wrung you dry, and a workload so heavy that overtime was simply assumed.
The HR manager walked her through the details. The salary and the benefits were good enough to slap a major corporation across the face. But the moment she heard what the work itself would be, a small question stirred.
The child she had just seen, they said, was a life-form named Hana. Was a life-form like that really allowed to wander around so freely? Every monster that had come out of a Gate on television had been threatening, and to Maru's ordinary eyes, that was exactly what this looked like.
And looking after that Hana, they told her, would be her primary duty. The wind went out of her a little. She had joined a major company, and this was not the work she had been expecting.
That line of thought did not survive her first week. Looking after a child was not easy.
"Hana!!!"
Once again Maru was running the halls in search of her. Hana had eaten lunch and then vanished somewhere. Maru found her in the lounge, settled into a massage chair.
"Hana, it's time to go get your massage."
Calling the name that had already grown familiar, Maru fished her out of the chair. She still couldn't quite understand it—Hana was on her way to a massage, and yet here she sat in a massage chair, getting a massage. Maybe it was because she was a child who hadn't been steeped in the ways of the world for long.
Down on the first floor, Hana received her massage and went utterly limp. Maru gathered the floppy little body into her arms and headed back up to the tenth floor. She settled Hana in her room, then stepped outside again. The child loved mischief far more than any of Maru's nieces or nephews, enough to leave her sweating.
"Ms. Maru, Hana really loves her mischief, doesn't she?"
Bora had appeared at her side before she noticed. In one hand she held a coffee from the building cafe, and she passed it to Maru.
"It's all right. Children her age love to play."
"Even so, I'm glad you joined. Hana really seems to like you."
"Hehe..."
Maru had brought every bit of skill she had accumulated to bear on taming Hana. Even Hana, who would not be won over by any half-hearted attempt, had come to acknowledge her. The beginning had been hard, but a week on, things had settled enough that the situation was better.
Night came, and Maru, standing her first overnight duty, looked over the work the seniors had stacked up by morning. She wasn't doing it herself—only reviewing what they had already done—but even tracking how things were progressing was a help.
It had only been a week, so they hadn't entrusted her with proper work yet. Then again, she had been looking after Hana, so it wasn't as if she had done nothing. And looking after Hana was harder than most jobs. Hana listened well enough, but with small children, one brief moment of looking away could turn into a serious accident.
She was deep in a wrestling match with the computer when the air suddenly grew fresh. That scent could only mean Hana...
"Rawr!"
Hana appeared behind her in dinosaur pajamas. Maru put on a show of being startled by the roar. She had already known from the scent, but children liked it when you reacted.
"Hehe!"
Pleased with the reaction, Hana laughed and burrowed into Maru's arms. Maru gathered her up and stroked her head. Hana's hair was so soft that touching it felt wonderful—like petting a cat.
In a way, Maru might have found her true calling. She had always liked children, and now she was being paid to look after one this cute.
Back when she was hunting for a job, she could never have imagined it.
"Maru! Let's watch a movie! A movie!"
Hana said it while perched on Maru's thigh. Maru nodded and pulled up a streaming service on the computer. The institute's position was that if Hana wanted something, you gave it to her whenever you could, which meant Maru could pull off a perfectly legal paycheck heist.
Hana took the mouse and clicked a children's cartoon.
Cute animal friends filled the screen, but the story was anything but ordinary.
Just as South and North Korea seemed on the verge of reunification, the animals living in the DMZ joined forces and blew up Panmunjom to stop it. They were trying to protect the ecosystem of the DMZ where they lived.
"Th-this is really the plot?"
The story looked as if someone had made it while on something, and Maru's head spun. But Hana was enjoying it, so she didn't say anything more. And the longer she watched, the more secretly entertaining it became.