Browsing the Mart
Maru was a newbie among newbies, only just stepping into her second week at Byeolbit Research Institute. Fresh out of university and somewhere in her early-to-mid twenties, she was, by the world's reckoning, a newly hatched chick among chicks.
Turned loose on society with no shield at all, she would have been naive enough for the wandering wolves to swallow her whole. But Maru had found a sturdy backer in Byeolbit Research Institute. If anything, she was the one in a position to throw her weight around.
Maru, of course, hadn't the faintest idea. Today, as always, she was running herself ragged.
"Hana, where are you!"
Once again she was tearing down the halls after a Hana who had vanished. Hana had a way of disappearing without a trace, as if she could tuck her very presence out of sight. She was certainly still somewhere on this floor of the building, though, so today, too, Maru spent her hours dashing about in one long game of hide-and-seek.
"Hana!"
She found her hiding in front of the bathroom door. Hide-and-seek, first thing in the morning! Even so, she had grown used to it enough by now that tracking Hana down came easily. The places she hid were painfully predictable.
A quick circuit of a few key spots was all it took. Maru tucked Hana under her arm and stepped into the bathroom. It was a weekend morning, so she kept the wash simple.
"Hana, hmph!"
"Hmph!"
Maru was bathing her with painstaking care, but something about Hana was a little off. The moment Maru tried to wash her body, she refused with every inch of herself. They were both girls, and yet Hana seemed terribly shy. Then again, around the age of a third-grader, showing your bare body to someone else could be a little embarrassing.
Hana still in her dinosaur pajamas, Maru took her by the hand and started down toward the cafeteria. Out in the hallway, people who had only just arrived for work were beginning to file into the offices. Hana offered them a simple raised hand, but to Maru every last one of them was a senior, so she bowed with her head lowered and her waist nearly folded in half. Sometimes Hana, watching her, would copy the gesture and bow along. Hana greeting people with those deep, doubled-over bows was unbearably cute.
They rode the elevator down. Hana still hadn't shaken off her sleepiness, and now and then she yawned.
They reached the first floor and stepped into the cafeteria. Maru had seen it several times already, but the sight was so grand she couldn't close her mouth.
Just like a franchise buffet out in the city, Byeolbit Research Institute's cafeteria had been remade into a buffet of its own. Some ten chefs were turning out food.
Whether it was the lights hanging from the ceiling or something else entirely, the dishes on display glittered. There was seafood you rarely saw outside, king crab among it; meat that made the mouth water at a glance; and, to finish, an array of desserts that closed the meal out neatly.
It was far too much money to sink into anything that still called itself a company cafeteria, but next to the fortune Hana brought in, people said it wasn't even a drop in the bucket. Fair enough. Hana earned on the order of trillions of won a year. Would they even spend two billion putting up a cafeteria like this?
It had improved so much that plenty of employees had taken to eating breakfast and dinner at the company before heading home. No — nearly everyone who worked at Byeolbit Research Institute probably came here to eat. Set against the cafeteria of only a year ago, the one people swore even a dog would turn its nose up at, the change was a leap of miles. Maru had joined so recently that she assumed every big company's cafeteria was like this. She hadn't expected it to be quite this extraordinary, of course.
Every time she ate, she felt her loyalty to the company shoot straight up into the sky. Surely no other company served meals like these. Thinking that, she trailed after Hana and filled a tray for her. Hana could have served herself, but Maru was easier in her heart doing it herself. What if Hana spilled the tray while scooping side dishes and got hurt?
"I want this! This one!"
Hana loved meat especially, and perhaps that was why the tray ended up loaded with all kinds of it. They carried it over to the seat reserved for Hana alone.
Hana was small, and the tables ordinary people used sat too high for her to manage. Maybe that was why a seat made just for her had popped into existence, custom-built by the cafeteria itself. Maru set down the tray of everything Hana had wanted.
Fortunately, the place beside it was a table built for a normal person's frame, comfortable enough for Maru. The moment Hana sat, she seized her utensils and started in on the meal. Watching her, Maru picked up her own chopsticks. Maybe because looking after Hana was moving into its second week, she felt herself settling into it more easily with each passing day.
"Hana, you can't go off on your own and get lost, all right?"
"I'm not a little kid, and I'm certainly not going to get lost like one, Maru!"
Maru was starting to seem hopeless to me. If she had been looking after me for more than two weeks, shouldn't she have quietly caught on by now that I wasn't a child? She still thought I was a little kid. Today I was going to show her the dignity of an adult.
But the place we were headed was far too special for that. The moment I climbed out of the car, I was ready to take off at a dead run. And where was this? A giant supermarket, delicious things crowded onto every display!
"Hana, let's go look around the mart! And don't let go of my hand."
Maru got out, took my hand, and said it. Honestly, I wasn't the one who was going to get lost. Maru was the one who needed to be careful she didn't wander off and end up a missing person. Just imagining myself later paging a lost Maru over the store broadcast made my head ache.
Still, I supposed I could answer her for now.
"Okay!"
And with that, we went into the big mart. It was Saturday afternoon, and the place was packed.
"Maru, there are so many people in here!"
"It's the weekend, so it looks like a lot of people with the day off came. You've got your phone, right?"
"Yeah."
There weren't many contacts saved in my phone. A few people from the company, and Jiyu and Yumi. That was the whole list. I could only lament how paper-thin my network was, but it was a circumstance beyond my control. After I changed into this body, I'd never had the chance to build any connections.
Of course, my original body hadn't had much of a network either, so I was in no position to complain. The only things that ever arrived in my messages were advertisements. Or the occasional spam mail.
At any rate, I gave my head a hard shake and flung off my past as a loner. Nothing to gain by dwelling on it.
"Waaaaah!"
I shouted and tried to pull free one of the carts lined up outside. The shopping cart, however, was locked.
"Huh?"
"Hana, you have to put a coin in!"
Maru came over and fished a hundred-won coin from her pocket. She slipped it into the slot on the cart's lock and popped the lock open.
"Ooh!"
I watched her release it, eyes shining. The crisp, precise motion was cool, like a secret agent. Then I giggled and climbed up onto the cart. There was a separate seat for a small child, a space that fit my body perfectly.
"Maru, let's go!"
I said it from inside the cart. Maru pushed slowly and rolled us into the mart. The moment we were inside, even the air seemed to change — the burble of voices, endless rows of delicious food, and the faint mechanical hum at the edge of my hearing.
Feeling this kind of liveliness, I understood all over again why people came to a big mart. A place full of people handed you this bright, positive energy.
"Over there, over there!"
Once we were a fair way inside, I pointed at the corner heaped with meat and told Maru. She didn't listen to a word of it. Her feet turned toward a different aisle.
"Nooo!!!"
I could only scream as the meat corner pulled away. So meat and I simply aren't fated...
Where Maru finally stopped the cart was the vegetable section. The color drained from my face. I did eat vegetables, but something about that space repulsed me. Fruit would have been fine. That wasn't eating the plant itself — only a byproduct dangling from the tree, wasn't it?
Running a kitchen garden lately had softened my aversion to vegetables, but a corner with nothing but vegetables in it left my head swimming.
It was the feeling The Little Mermaid might have had, walking into a seafood counter crammed with fish. Friends she had been close with under the sea, displayed out here after being miserably taken apart. Would she have eaten those friends with gusto, or would she have screamed? I couldn't say. Either way, it was no normal situation.
"Waaah!"
I did my best to stop Maru as she moved to load vegetables into the cart. She put on a face that said there was nothing to be done and left the vegetable corner behind. From where I stood, that was a true relief.
The cart set off for its next destination.