Why Are You Coming Out of There?
"Oooh..."
I couldn't hold back my awe at the sheer majesty of the enormous screen filling my entire view. By size alone it looked nearly as big as a soccer field—though of course it wasn't quite that big.
Traveling while cradled in Haru's arms was wonderfully comfortable. Now I understood why people staked their lives on self-driving cars. If it felt this good, it was absolutely worth risking your life for.
Once I'd had my fill of self-driving Haru and we reached the seats I wanted, I felt her hands set me down ever so gently, and I settled into the chair in perfect comfort. The cushion was luxuriously soft. The ticketing must have gone just right, too, because the screen filled the view dead ahead, and my spirits lifted.
Catch a seat in the very front or off to either side, and watching the screen became such a chore it was almost painful. Planted squarely in the middle like this, though, I could watch in complete ease. Before the movie started, I shoveled popcorn into my mouth as if I were inhaling it, and the sweet-salty caramel popcorn spread all through my mouth.
Whenever my throat went dry, a sip of cola was nothing short of heaven. I watched the advertisements roll past, then stole a glance at Haru. Maybe because it was still the commercial block, she was sending a text to someone on her phone.
Seeing her like that, I thought being an office worker must be tough. Or was this actually a good thing, from Haru's point of view? She was skipping the company dinner and watching a movie alone with me. And it wasn't some animation only kids would watch, either. It was a rousing action movie, full of scenes where everything got smashed to pieces.
"Haru! It's starting, it's starting!"
I told her as the ads came to an end. Haru must have seen them finish on the screen too, because she hurriedly slipped her phone into her pocket.
And with that, I sank into the movements of the actors shifting inside the screen.
"This is fun, so fun!"
I was talking to the completely empty popcorn bucket. The lights had come back on inside the darkened theater, and the ending credits were climbing the screen. Aside from one trip to the bathroom in the middle—I'd drunk too much cola—I hadn't left my seat once. Beside me, Haru spoke as if she'd enjoyed herself just as much.
"Movies these days all come out so entertaining!"
I'd heard that some movie had slid into a decline after its hero in iron armor died, but the one I'd just watched was so pulse-pounding and fun that comparing the two would have been an insult. A film like this was more than worth ticket prices that had gotten so expensive.
When it ended, I got up and reached toward Haru. I'd planned to leave holding her hand. And maybe because I'd eaten nothing but caramel popcorn, my stomach felt empty. The grilled squid hadn't even registered. I caught her hand and said,
"Haru, I'm hungry."
I told her while rubbing my belly with my free hand. Seeing me like that, Haru nodded, took my hand, and headed for the restaurants. There were plenty of places to eat outside the theater—more than enough to fill me up.
"Want to get this, Hana?"
It was bibimbap, loaded with every kind of vegetable. The sight of those fresh vegetables, brutally slain and all mixed together in one bowl, drained the color from my face. I shook my head back and forth.
"Haru. Not bibimbap. I want meat. Meat!"
Meat was always delicious—soul food you could eat with a peaceful heart—so I made my wishes known. Hearing me, Haru nodded.
"Then how about this?"
It was a tonkatsu, fried crisp in delicious batter. A pork cutlet that size looked like it could fill my stomach just fine. And there didn't seem to be many vegetables, either. The perfect food. I nodded hard, up and down.
"I want it, I want it!"
"Let's go~"
Haru and I went into the tonkatsu shop. Today, I was planning a massacre of pork cutlets. I was curious whether they'd turn out tastier than the ones in our company cafeteria, or whether they'd just be ordinary.
Starlight Rice's advance into Japan was showing a green light. Advertising and the rest of the promotion hadn't gone in yet, so it was only spreading quietly, by word of mouth—but time would take care of that.
If anything, seeping in without a word like this was the best method of all. Once the Japanese public was steeped in Starlight Rice, the Japanese government would scramble to slap regulations on it. By then, though, the Japanese people themselves would be standing on Starlight Rice's side.
Ordinary citizens didn't farm. They would fixate on delicious rice and pay no mind to their own food self-sufficiency. People had a way of turning unnaturally rational the moment something wasn't their own problem.
But something even Danaka hadn't anticipated was already unfolding.
Inquiries kept pouring onto Starlight Food's website. With all the different foods they sold, that was only natural.
The staff Starlight Food had hired answered kindly. Ever since Kim Sehee had raked in money with Hana's hair and her crops, the company had been hiring on a massive scale. There was even a joke that, frankly speaking, Starlight Food swept up half of every year's agricultural graduates.
It was only natural. From the perspective of Starlight Food, which was already making plenty of money, there was no reason to take a risk and sell rice. Of course, if they hadn't already cracked the Japanese market, they might have had to stake everything on domestic distribution—greasing politicians with those infamous boxes of apples, or pouring enormous budgets into advertising and the press. It hadn't come to that.
Consumers complained, demanding that Starlight Rice be released to the market at once. Only those who had tasted it were that fervent, though, so the government treated the outcry as a minority voice and pointedly ignored it. It was undeniably rice of extraordinary quality and flavor, but entrusting an entire nation's rice supply to a single company was far too dangerous.
The old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket didn't exist for nothing. If Starlight Rice were put on the open market, every other rice would obviously be driven out. And once the rest had been expelled, the remainder of the script was plain to see. They would weaponize rice, raise the price, and take consumers for suckers.
And so there were people left wondering whether they simply had to give up on Starlight Rice. The number of citizens who had actually eaten it was probably small. It had been released as public rice, but in some cases it had been mixed with ordinary rice, and not everyone had gotten the chance to try it.
By the time that chance might have come for the whole country, the imported rice had already arrived.
But Starlight Rice found its way to consumers by another route.
"Haa..."
Kim Minseong, who had once tasted Starlight Rice, let out a long sigh. A single taste had made ordinary rice feel flavorless. Only relatively recently had he barely grown used to regular rice again. Before that, he hadn't even wanted it near his mouth, and had been eating other things instead.
Browsing the internet as usual, he found something strange. Starlight Rice was listed on a shopping site. Looking at the outside of the sack, though, it was identical to ordinary Japanese rice. The exterior was covered in Japanese writing, and there wasn't a word of Korean to be found.
When he saw the price, he couldn't help but be shocked. Compared with regular rice, they were gouging him at fully twice the cost. Even so, Kim Minseong couldn't stop his hand from guiding the mouse toward the purchase button.
The product description said it was domestically produced Starlight Rice. He hadn't forgotten the taste of what he'd eaten back then. If he could have it again, even three times the price wouldn't have mattered. And since he lived alone and cooked for himself, a single sack would last him a good half a year.
He steadied his trembling hand and pressed the purchase button without hesitation.