The Negotiation
"This... this is..."
The first place she went was the cherry tomato farm, and outside she found the vines still standing, stubborn as ever. The wind had knocked the fruit to the ground, but the plants themselves were unharmed.
The typhoon had blown hard enough that not everything had come through intact. Even so, she had been certain the whole crop would be dead, and finding more than half of the plants still alive was enough to let her breathe again.
Kim Sehee checked the coffee, and then the rice fields last of all, and the plants there had survived in much the same way. At the sheer impossibility of it, her mouth fell open. This went far beyond anything that ought to happen to a thing that could still be called a plant.
"Ma'am, I think we can have the farm running again in about two weeks."
"That's a relief. Truly a relief."
Kim Sehee was looking at Hana's plants with something close to awe. When she heard that the greenhouses at other farms had been torn away and every crop inside them killed, she had been sure her own fields would meet the same end, and yet they had slipped free of that death.
Everywhere that was not Kim Sehee's land, the situation was wretched. It was not only that the existing fields had been swept away by the water. The harvest was ruined, and so was everything a farm needed in order to exist: warehouses, machinery, all of it smashed to pieces by the typhoon. In the worst cases, nothing remained but a bare plot of ground.
Before anyone could even worry about next year's crop, this year's had been wiped out completely. And it was not one region's farming that had suffered. It was every region's. Output could not even meet ten percent of the usual shipments.
That was how far beyond imagining the typhoon's power had been. No farmer who had prepared for it could have predicted damage on this scale. This had not been the sort of storm you endured for half a day and then watched pass.
Typhoon Nabi had raged for two full days, flinging fierce wind and rain without pause.
There was no way any farmland could have remained wholly intact. None, that is, except the land Kim Sehee owned. Rain had poured down without end, and yet no water stood in the fields, as if the soil itself had drunk every drop.
They had cut proper drainage channels, but the rain had fallen in such excess of them that she had been worried all the same. It was a mercy.
She was walking the fields with her staff, going over the plans ahead, when a secretary came running up to her.
"Ma'am. There's a call from the government."
"The government? What could they want with us?"
"It's the Food Policy Division at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. They say they absolutely must see you..."
"Aha."
Kim Sehee had a fair idea why the Food Policy Division would be calling her, and she smiled.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the agriculture ministry for short, was the department that oversaw farming across the Republic of Korea. A call to Kim Sehee meant that something had gone wrong with the nation's agriculture.
Until not long ago she had been in and out of their offices constantly over farming matters, so she knew them well. And the ministry, for its part, knew the plants Kim Sehee grew just as well.
The day after the call, she set the meeting at her own office. The one who needs the well is the one who digs it. As the appointed hour drew near, people filed into Kim Sehee's office.
They had probably raced all the way up from Sejong City. Few government agencies remained in Seoul anymore. Each of the ones that had stayed could offer some plausible excuse, though there was one government department among them that was entirely useless.
A benign-looking man who seemed to be in his late forties came in, dressed in a comfortably cut suit, with aides who looked to be in their early thirties flanking him. His hair was thinning badly enough to suggest that the work on his desk had long since overflowed it. Excessive stress, after all, was one of the causes of hair loss.
"Good day, President. I'm Lee Hangyu, director of the Food Policy Division at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs."
When Lee Hangyu offered the greeting, Kim Sehee returned it with a bright smile.
"Hello, Director Lee. I'm Kim Sehee, president of Starlight Food."
Once the introductions were done, they moved straight into business.
"So, Director Lee. What brings you to me?"
Starlight Food had never had much to do with them. The company had only recently begun farming for itself, so a connection existed now, but it was a very new one.
"Uwaaaah~"
I let out a meaningless wail and slung my bag onto my back. Today was a school day. Classes had been canceled for the typhoon, and the damage had been worse than expected, so we had gotten two extra days off. But even a holiday comes to an end.
I was lying face-down on the bed when Maru came in and took my hand.
"Hana, time for school!"
"Okaaay..."
I held on to Maru's hand and rode the elevator down. It had been so long since I had gone out that my heart was pounding. The typhoon had kept me shut indoors.
Down in the parking lot, traces of the storm still lingered. Fortunately the company car was fine, so we could take it to school. Maru's driving had improved enough that I could trust it now. Of course, every time she still made a mistake, my heart dropped straight through the floor.
I climbed in, and with the familiar sound of the engine the car glided smoothly forward. A smile tugged at my mouth at how much softer her driving had become. Set beside the old days, when the car had jolted and lurched at every opportunity, it was a world of difference.
"Hana, how's it feel, heading to school after so long?"
"Great!"
Just the thought of seeing Jiyu and Yumi made my heart leap on its own. Looking out at the scenery, though, I could tell how fierce this typhoon had been. Three days had passed since it moved on, and still there were places that had not been put back together.
Cleanup had clearly started with the crowded neighborhoods, so out here, a little removed from the city proper, the grass lay flattened. The street trees, at least, had not been uprooted. They stood their ground. If one of them had fallen across the road, traffic would probably have been impossible.
However deep the wounds Nabi had left behind, people were still here, and so the recovery came. The closer we got to the city, the more things had already returned to normal. Police, firefighters, civil servants, and volunteers had put their strength together, and the nearer we drew to school, the more the old scenery reappeared.
When we arrived, I got out of the car.
"Hyah!"
The ground near school, under my feet for the first time in ages, felt wonderfully fresh. I waved goodbye to Maru and started for the main gate.
They say the ground hardens after rain, and there was not a trace of worry on the faces of the children coming to school. If anything, they looked brighter than they had before the typhoon ever arrived.
It seemed as if only kids like me had gathered here, the ones who had been cooped up at home the whole time the storm lasted and were now itching to move. I went into my classroom and sat down. Yumi and Jiyu were not here yet.
"Hmm..."
While I waited for my friends, I played at standing pens upright on the desk. It was a game that demanded a surprising amount of precision. The slightest mistake, and a pen toppled over. I had gotten one to stand and was setting up the second when a familiar voice reached me. Jiyu and Yumi had arrived.
"Hana!!!"
"Hana, I missed you so much!"
Yumi and Jiyu rushed over and started rubbing their cheeks against mine. The sudden contact left me stammering.
"What are you doing all of a sudden, Jiyu, Yumi!"
At that, the two of them put on faces as if they had been mortally wounded.
"You didn't miss us?"
With Yumi and Jiyu looking at me like that, eyes sparkling, I gave them the answer they wanted to hear.
"I missed you."
"See? I knew it!"
We were still squabbling when the teacher came in. She looked exhausted. The dark circles had sunk all the way beneath her eyes. They definitely had not been that bad when I saw her last week.
She stood at the podium and spoke in a voice with no strength left in it.
"I spent the whole time worrying what kind of sudden accident might happen to all of you. You got through without any trouble, didn't you?"
She looked as if she had been through an ordeal while the typhoon passed. She had probably spent every minute and every second fretting that one of her students might be hurt, or caught up in something dangerous. Fortunately, no child had been injured or badly hurt by the storm.
"Yes!"
The children answered brightly. Maybe it was because kids simply were not tied up in a typhoon the way adults were. Putting the damage back together was mostly grown-up work, was it not?
I, of course, had picked up a broom myself and cleaned around the research institute, so I could say with perfect confidence that I had stood up to the typhoon.