The Midterm Exam
Deoksugung was utterly bewildered by its sudden explosion in popularity.
It was a restaurant that sold the finest Korean beef, and the prices showed it. Unless it was the weekend, weekdays brought almost no one through the door, and this wasn't even the season for year-end company dinners.
And yet sales had shot up as if the year-end banquet calendar were packed solid. No—they'd climbed even higher than that. Things got so frantic that the shop had to ask the Choi ranch to slaughter more cattle.
Two cows yielded nearly sixteen hundred servings of beef, and the whole lot sold out in under a week. At no less than forty dollars a serving, this little restaurant's weekly take approached sixty thousand dollars. Even two cows weren't enough to last the week.
There wasn't an empty table to be found. The moment one party finished and stood, the next customer who'd been waiting sat down, and every guest who came to Deoksugung spilled over with praise.
"This is insane. The price isn't any different from anywhere else, but the taste is night and day. It doesn't even make sense that you can eat meat this good."
"I think this is the best beef I've ever had. I'm not just saying that."
"Beef like this, famous food critics from overseas would come looking for it themselves. If even an ordinary person like me can taste it this clearly, it must be a blessing for gourmets with ridiculously sensitive palates."
Kim Ho-cheol, the owner of Deoksugung, let out a scream at the boom that had come from nowhere. A happy scream, of course. The part-timers and staff groaned under the crush of customers, but from the owner's seat a packed house was pure joy. He even pitched in with the work, grinning the whole time.
Lately, with so many people flooding the shop, he'd also started paying the part-timers bonuses. Help was hard to come by these days, so you had to look after the people you had.
A boom like this was hardly common for an ordinary restaurant that wasn't some famous franchise. Even so, Owner Kim Ho-cheol couldn't shake his doubts about the sudden surge.
What on earth had set all these people rushing in?
The ranch that supplied the beef hadn't changed since opening day. He'd been running the place for three years already, so it was unlikely the flavor had shifted and drawn a crowd. Had it blown up on social media without his knowing? Granted, it had been a little while since he'd tasted the beef coming in. Two weeks, maybe?
He did eat beef once a month for inspections, but three years of it had left him sick of the stuff. He still tasted it regularly, though, just to check the flavor. Or had some wildly glowing review gone up somewhere on social media or YouTube?
There was no chance a famous influencer would hype a shop like this for free. People of that caliber got paid to promote.
Turning the mystery over behind the counter, Kim Ho-cheol kept greeting customers as busily as ever. It was Thursday, and still the reservations poured in like a weekend. So many tables were booked that anyone who showed up without one had to turn around and leave for lack of a seat.
"Jinsu! You got any idea why we've got this many customers?"
Kim Ho-cheol called on his longest-serving employee, the one he was closest to, and asked. Kim Jinsu only cocked his head, looking just as lost.
"No idea, hyung. I figured it was trending online and looked it up, but there wasn't really anything."
As he spoke, Kim Jinsu rolled his wrists the way you do when they're stiff and need a stretch.
"I'm seriously dying. There are way too many customers."
"You rascal. I'll stuff your bonus nice and fat this month."
"Now that's what I like to hear!"
With that, Kim Jinsu headed back to work, and Kim Ho-cheol kept receiving guests. Maybe it was the week of unbroken prosperity, but the world looked beautiful. Then someone finished at a table and came up to pay.
"That was delicious, sir."
"Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it."
Kim Ho-cheol took the card, ran the payment, and then noticed the customer take it back and just stand there, staring blankly. Had something gone wrong? Was the man about to complain over some mistake?
But the customer only hesitated a moment before speaking to him, almost gently.
"Sir. Where on earth do you get beef like this?"
"Sorry?"
"It's just—I'm a beef fanatic. I've been to every beef place around my house, and I've never had beef as good as yours!"
The customer went on.
"Actually, I ate here a while back, and back then it was just ordinary. Did you switch ranches or something? It's really incredible! It's been ages since my palate got hit this hard."
That couldn't be. He'd been supplied by the same place for three straight years, and this was the first time customers had raved like this. Most people only said it tasted good. No one had ever come to the counter, brought up the ranch itself, and gushed.
Still doubtful, Kim Ho-cheol tasted the beef they were selling right now. And with that, he understood exactly why it had suddenly started flying off the plates.
"Haaah—yaaawn!"
I got out of bed. Today was an important day. I climbed down to the floor and headed for the bathroom to wash up. In the mirror, my face looked drunk on sleep, so I splashed cold water over it to wake myself.
"Ack!"
It was so cold I nearly screamed. I hurriedly twisted the faucet toward the hot side, and only then did lukewarm water come out, settling into a temperature that suited me perfectly.
By the time I'd washed my hair and come out, Maru was in the room, diligently ironing my school uniform. I'd told her she didn't have to bother, that crisp creases on a uniform weren't that important, but she kept pressing those sharp lines anyway. I watched her work. Maru really was the diligent type! I waited for her to finish. I was hungry, and I meant to go eat breakfast with her.
Out of boredom, I tried wagging my dinosaur tail from side to side. In my head, that thick tail swished left and right exactly the way I wanted. If only I could steer it myself, like a puppy. But I didn't actually have a tail, so there was nothing to move.
And so, holding Maru's hand, I managed to go eat breakfast and come back. I put on the uniform she'd pressed into razor-sharp creases. If only I could just commute in my dinosaur pajamas! Then I could go to school without ever changing clothes. It would have been heaven.
Entertaining that ridiculous thought, I took Maru's hand and got ready for school. Today was the midterm. The whole exam was packed into a single day, so I needed to pace myself. A bad stretch of condition could ruin the test, and I did my best to act as ordinary as possible.
"Hana, today's the midterm, isn't it?"
"Yeah!"
I said it as I got into the car, my eyes fixed on the world outside. The scenery always looked fresh, no matter how many times I saw it.
Maru spoke to me.
"Didn't I say I'd give you something if you did well on this midterm?"
"You said if I got first place, you'd buy me Rumi's transformation outfit!"
She'd told me it was a limited edition you couldn't simply buy with money. Feeling motivation surge, I'd poured everything I had into studying—a whole three hours a day. For someone who normally didn't study even one hour, that was a staggering amount of pure study time.
Keeping the book open and prepping for the exam without goofing off even once was hard. But it was a hardship I had to endure if I wanted Rumi's transformation costume.
So I was determined to take first, no matter what. This wasn't a gifted class stuffed with prodigies, or some specialized high school. It was an ordinary elementary school, so the outlook was bright. The difficulty was about on par with twisting a little kid's wrist. I wasn't some college student who'd slacked off, and there was simply no elementary schooler alive who could beat a college student who'd actually studied hard.
If a third-grader ever managed to beat me, that kid was a regressor or a reincarnator, no question. That's how locked-in this was.
The moment we arrived at the elementary school, I got out of the car. I was too worked up; I had to let it out. I didn't think I'd ever been this nervous before a test. It was time to show off the results of all that effort, for the sake of Rumi's transformation outfit set.
"I'll come pick you up at lunch!"
"Okay!"
There was also the perk of getting out early during exam period. Wearing a grim, resolute expression, I walked into the school to take the midterm.
"Hana!"
But that resolute face soon melted into a goofy grin. I'd run into Jiyu and Yumi. I waved and greeted my friends.
"Uuuugh..."
Unlike usual, Jiyu was sunk in gloom. She hated tests, after all.