The Vinyl Greenhouse
Flash!
Sunlight stabbed my eyes, and I opened them. The room was already being licked by sunshine in every corner. I didn't have school today, so I'd stayed up late watching movies, and now I was paying for it—I'd slept in. I pushed myself up in bed and stretched long and hard. The thought that this enormous bed was mine alone left me with a strange feeling.
I was small in height and small in frame, and yet the bed was absurdly huge, practically a princess's chamber. Even if Bora or Haru slept beside me, there would still be room to spare. I shoved the blanket aside and climbed down. Perhaps because the interior had only recently been finished, the room glittered.
"Yaaawn!"
After a great big yawn, I stepped outside still wearing my dinosaur pajamas. While I'd been asleep, the world beyond my door had filled with people hard at work. Even now, as I came out of my room, quite a few of them were walking the hall.
Seeing me up, the employees tossed me greetings in the manner of a joke.
"Hana, you're awake?"
"Sleep too much and you'll turn into a sleepyhead, you know."
Looking at faces I'd grown used to, I waved—proof that I was glad to see them—and the employees returned the greeting. I stole a glance at the office. Inside, plenty of people were working hard. Maybe that was why I felt a little too sheepish to barge in and raise a ruckus. Everyone else was diligently at work, and I was the only one playing.
"I should get to work too!"
With that thought, I charged back into my room. I peeled off the dinosaur pajamas, enshrined them neatly, and changed into a T-shirt and shorts fit for going outside. The weather out there was as hot as midsummer now, so short sleeves and shorts were essential. I was absolutely not going to wear a skirt. The school uniform was a skirt, of course, so that one I had to put on whether I liked it or not.
With the straw hat from the rack settled on my head, I looked like a farmer with an outrageous amount of experience. Today I meant to go to the backyard garden, pull weeds, and water. The hair was mine anyway, so whether I watered with water my hair had gone into was entirely up to me.
Were the research institute or the company really going to threaten me just because I used my hair? I toddled outside. I'd told the office I was heading to the backyard, of course. The moment I said so, Maru started frantically changing clothes, trying to come after me. I blithely ignored the sight and took the elevator down first.
"Hehe!"
When I reached the vegetable patch, the scene before me left me no choice but to be horrified. Birds had gathered and were pecking away at my strawberries!
"You little thieves! If you're going to eat, you pay!"
I snatched up something like a wooden stick and swung it at them. The birds fluttered off in a rush. I pulled a tearful face over the ruined strawberries. They must have tasted wonderful—everything had been pecked away, leaving only the stems. And growing a single strawberry took so much work...
Bugs hadn't come, fortunately, but the birds often visited my garden, pecked the strawberries, and fled. I was furious.
"Hana. Are the strawberries okay?"
Maru, who had followed behind me, asked. I shook my head from side to side. The strawberries were already done for.
"No... The bad birds ate them and ran off."
If they'd at least paid, I might have granted them a measure of recognition, but there was no way birds carried money. In the end, they'd dined and dashed. These were strawberries already bursting with nutrients and flavor; they must have thought they'd hit the jackpot and pecked with everything they had. I couldn't sit still any longer before the birds' tyranny.
"Maru! Let's build a greenhouse!"
The answer was a vinyl greenhouse. The plot where I grew my crops wasn't all that large, so if I built a greenhouse of sorts and covered it the way you'd clap a lid on something, wouldn't it be safe from the birds? That was my thinking. No matter how hard they pecked with those beaks, they wouldn't be able to break through.
Using vinyl that was a little stronger and tougher would be even better. Maru heard me out, nodded, and answered. She granted nearly anything I wanted, so telling Maru was always best.
"Right. Just like you said, a greenhouse right here would be perfect!"
And so a vinyl greenhouse was going up behind our research institute building. A plastic greenhouse, installed in the very realm of cutting-edge science. Nothing could have been more thrilling.
Once I'd said we should build one, there was no way this place was getting anything but a vinyl greenhouse.
Maru returned to the office and reported what Hana wanted: a greenhouse over the vegetable patch. So long as it wasn't strange, or harmful to Hana, the request was put into action at once.
It had been a while since a job this big, and the employees bustled about to get the greenhouse built. The office staff often ate the vegetables and fruit from Hana's garden themselves, so there was hardly any resistance. If anything, they were itching to help however they could.
Without Hana, the people in this office would have been unemployed on the spot. They wouldn't necessarily be fired just because she was gone, of course, but it was a department that would scatter to the four winds and vanish. Sometimes they handled work related to the research institute, but for the most part they managed the companies tied to Hana—distributing the beneficial things she created all across the country without her having to spare them a thought, or opening separate routes to sell them.
In a sense, it was easiest to think of the place as a general trading house. The employees themselves stood in the role of the prime contractor, so the work wasn't particularly grueling. When they gave instructions or signed contracts, they were almost always the party holding the advantage. They never threw that weight around on Hana's say-so, of course. Contracts went forward only on reasonable terms.
And so the work of raising a vinyl greenhouse over Hana's garden began. The plot was larger than anyone had expected, large enough that heavy equipment rolled in for the construction. Office employees in straw hats stepped out to the garden now and then to watch how the work was going.
Among them was Hana, small as she was. She was the protagonist of the whole affair, so of course she watched a greenhouse go up over her garden. Not long after the job was handed to a construction company, the greenhouse built for her was finished. The supports had been driven in strong enough not to budge in a typhoon, and it would not so much as blink at any ordinary disaster.
It was a state-of-the-art vinyl greenhouse, able to hold a comfortable temperature, so there was no need to worry about Hana farming through the steaming heat of summer. Even if she worked the garden in midsummer, she would not collapse from heatstroke or the heat. Machinery had been installed inside to keep the temperature where it belonged.
Maintaining it cost a great deal, but from the research institute's point of view it was pocket change—the sort of sum that only made them laugh. No. If anything, the office employees, who owed a great deal to Hana's garden, were delighted to see the greenhouse finished.
They came out now and then to help her, so even without Hana there was no trouble keeping the garden going. When she went to school, the office staff already looked after it.
Looking over the finished greenhouses, I smiled, thoroughly pleased. The birds would not be pecking my strawberries anymore. And with an eye toward expanding the garden later, there were stretches where nothing had been planted yet, and a greenhouse had gone up first all the same.
It was only my hobby, and yet it seemed to have grown into something. The employees didn't mind this sort of construction, though, so I could do as I pleased.
They'd already been enslaved by my strawberries! The moment a batch went up to the office, it vanished. I packed more than enough for every person to eat their fill, and even that disappeared. That was how popular they were.
"The conditions look better than what most people who actually farm get, don't they?"
"They really do."
Looking at my greenhouse, Bora and Haru breathed out in admiration. Even to my eyes, it seemed a little overbuilt. The equipment mounted on it was enormous! Still, when I remembered that putting it up hadn't cost even one percent of my money, it also seemed rather small.
Starting today, I meant to try growing other plants as well. There was far too much ground left over to plant nothing but strawberries.