The Launch of Starlight Green Tea
I had no choice but to lie limp and face-down on the bed. Whether it was the burning heat still radiating from my backside or something else entirely, tears welled up and slipped free before I could stop them.
I hadn't looked in a mirror, so I couldn't say exactly what state my rear was in, but I was certain Bora's handprint was stamped across it. She'd only struck me twice, yet her palm had been fierce enough—and the blows painful enough—to leave a mark like that.
"Hiiing..."
I looked up at Bora through tear-filled eyes. Sensing my gaze, she turned her head, glanced at me, and promptly looked away again.
She seemed to be trying to bring the laptop back to life. Taking an interest in that thing for no good reason, only to earn myself a spanking—people really weren't kidding when they said curiosity killed the cat. It fit me perfectly.
I kept staring at her. Between the whimpering and the way I sniffled, all but begging her to look at me, Bora finally let out a sigh, got up, and came over.
"Hana, I'm sorry. I think I went too far."
She pulled me into her arms and patted my back. So she'd known she'd hit me too hard after all.
Buried against her chest, I let myself be comforted for a while. It was consolation enough to forgive the spanking from earlier. Her chest was that big, and that soft.
But forgiving her here and now was something my pride simply wouldn't allow. So I cut the embrace short, turned away from her, and faced the other direction.
I'm mad!
I declared it with my whole body, as emphatically as I could. I knew that if I turned my back on Bora and said nothing, she would start to fidget—so I fully intended to poke at her weak spot.
Sure enough, the sight of me left her restless, until at last she came out with the words I'd been waiting for.
"Hana, want to go outside? We could take a walk."
My mood lifted at once, and the corners of my mouth twitched. But showing it now was something only amateurs did. I turned my head, put on a grave expression, and took the hand she offered.
I was sulking, but merciful me has decided to forgive you just this once!
I conveyed all of that with my body. Bora smiled as she watched me, took my hand, and headed for the door.
Stay shut up in a room forever and you stop looking like a person at all. Getting out and wandering around now and then was good for the health, and good for the mood besides.
Rubbing the backside that had taken those two hits, I held Bora's hand and stepped outside.
Two smacks on the rear in exchange for an outing—looked at that way, it was an absolute steal.
The Starlight Otherworld Creature Research Institute had a separate exhibition hall in the building next door, something like an aquarium, where otherworldly life-forms were put on display. Hunters dropped by now and then, but most of the visitors were ordinary people who couldn't enter the gates and so had no way of seeing a monster with their own eyes.
Of course, if a gate went berserk and monsters spilled out into reality, you could see them then—but by that point the whole surrounding district would already be a wasteland. And as time passed, humanity's ability to manage the gates kept improving, until these days a rampage caused by failing to contain the monsters inside was about as astronomically rare as a plane crash. Minor incursions still happened, but they were so weak they didn't even make the news.
Which was why so many ordinary families came here, to the exhibition hall beside the Starlight Research Institute, to see monsters that otherwise existed only in books. It was a vivid, living place, where the Starlight Guild—after successful hunts inside the gates—put on display the most spectacular and least aggressive of the countless monsters it had obtained.
This hall was the only place in South Korea where you could see living monsters, and so an endless stream of every sort of person came to visit. Even so, you couldn't do any of the things you might at a zoo, like reaching out to touch the creatures inside or offering them food. No matter how little aggression they showed, getting too close was simply too dangerous.
Reinforced glass kept visitors safe even if the monsters went wild, and because you could watch living monsters in vivid detail through that glass, promising young hunters and students came often as well. The people managing them weren't ordinary civilians, either, but hunters, so if something unexpected happened they were more than capable of handling it themselves.
It was into that place that Hana and Kim Bora stepped.
Kim Sejin was a full-time employee at a major corporation—which, looked at another way, meant he had spent decades living like a slave—and he had been waiting for this day alone. Starlight Food was finally unveiling its long-awaited masterpiece, and as a promotional gesture the company had already handed out green tea to the big corporations in advance.
Kim Sejin was a fervent devotee of that Starlight Green Tea. He had been a hardcore coffee drinker who touched nothing else, but when a coworker suggested he try the green tea just once, the feeling defied words. The fatigue piled up from grueling labor seemed to vanish completely, and his head cleared as if he had just woken from a deep sleep. The other effects were staggering in number as well.
In the old days he might have mistaken it for some kind of drug, but ever since the gates appeared, plenty of monster byproducts had carried effects like these, so it was understandable enough.
Throwing on his clothes, Kim Sejin made for the neighborhood convenience store. He had taken a day off and slept in, but Starlight Green Tea had never been released to the public before, so he figured he could afford to take his time. Today was its first day on the market.
"Starlight Green Tea came in, right? Where is it?"
"We don't have any. It's already sold out."
"What? Didn't it just ship today? That's what I heard."
"The stock did come in today, but the second we put it on the shelf it was gone. Green tea's all pretty much the same anyway. Just grab one from over there, where the rest of them are."
The part-timer had clearly never tasted Starlight Green Tea. Otherwise there was no reason to recommend some other green tea with that blank look on their face.
He would rather drink nothing at all than drink a different green tea. Leaving the convenience store that had tried to push a substitute on him, Kim Sejin headed for another mart. The launch was nationwide today, so if this place didn't have it, he could simply buy it somewhere else.
But after a full loop of the neighborhood, his expression turned grave. Everywhere he went, it was the same story. The moment it hit the shelves it had sold out—and then they tried to talk him into some other green tea.
"Starlight Green Tea..."
"Already sold out. Counting you, dozens of people have come in asking about it today."
The moment he stepped through a door, the owner seemed to know exactly what he had come to buy. Meet anyone's eyes and they all said the same thing: no Starlight Green Tea.
Kim Sejin refused to give up, and in the end he managed to buy some at a mart tucked away on a corner. He had nearly lost it to the person behind him—a little later, and it would have been gone. The competition was that fierce.
Having barely succeeded in securing a single box, he headed home. Then, together with his daughter, who was deep in her studies, he pulled out a tea bag and steeped it in hot water.
"Whoa... it even smells amazing, and the color is gorgeous. How did you even find something like this, Dad?"
"Your dad's drunk plenty of it, that's how I know. You can't buy this stuff even if you want to. You remember that promise we talked about, right?"
"Yeah, yeah. You mean making the top ten in the whole school?"
"Drink this, and studying'll go way better."
"Still, isn't this way too dark to be called green tea? Was green tea always this strong?"
Father and daughter, having steeped the tea, were appraising how it looked. Set beside the green teas sold on the market, the difference was enormous.
Once they had finished judging it with their eyes, they each took a cup and began to drink. A single sip entered the mouth, slid down the throat—and both of them went wide-eyed, staring at each other.
Kim Sejin already knew what the tea could do, so he had meant to take one mouthful and drink the rest slowly. His daughter was different. Hot as it was, she blew on it and gulped it down in a rush, as if someone might snatch it away.
"Sweetheart. You don't have to drink it like you're starving. Nobody's taking it from you."
"No, Dad, this is seriously amazing. If even I react like this, and I don't even like green tea, the kids who actually like it are going to lose their minds."
"They already have. You know how many stores your dad had to hit just to buy this?"
"Yeah. This is definitely green tea worth running all over town for."
As his daughter kept praising it, a thought settled over Kim Sejin.
I'm going to have to ration this tea...
At his company it had been selling like wildfire, gone before he could even get a sip, and at home it was obvious the family would end up competing to drink it. So as a backup plan he tried to buy more online—but on the internet, Starlight Green Tea was already sold out.