Devoted to Hana
Starlight Food's overwhelming run of success was anything but good news for its rivals. For Seodong Food in particular, whose products overlapped with Starlight's, it was nothing short of a disaster.
Seodong sold green tea in tea bags, and in instant coffee it held a crushing share of the Korean market—more than eighty percent. Leave Seodong out of any conversation about instant coffee and you weren't merely being rude. The conversation simply ceased to make sense.
But once Starlight Food followed Starlight Green Tea with Starlight Coffee, the company had no choice but to take a heavy blow. Things had already soured the moment Starlight entered the green tea market, and when it pushed into coffee as well, the two companies' product lines overlapped completely. Seodong was forced to suffer far more, on the sales floor, than any of its peers.
The one mercy was that supply still seemed short. Starlight wasn't churning out green tea and coffee in explosive quantities. Reports said green tea production was capped, and that at least let him breathe a sigh of relief. Coffee was another matter entirely.
Starlight Farm had begun cultivating coffee in earnest, and Seodong's share of the coffee-drink market was being gnawed away bite by bite. Taste, packaging—there wasn't a single front they were winning. Had the rival been a smaller firm than Seodong, they might have tried a little backroom sabotage and muddled through somehow. But the power standing behind Starlight Food was the Starlight Guild, the number-one corporation in the country. In the usual sense of weight class, Seodong wasn't even in the fight. Interfere, and the backlash was obvious.
CEO Gusungtaek of Seodong Food had gathered his executives again today. Seated at the table, scanning the business figures, he had no choice but to raise his voice.
"Why is our coffee-drink share like this? Does it make any sense for Seodong Food's coffee share to fall to thirty percent?"
"Th-that's because consumers would rather pay more and drink Starlight Coffee than ours. The preference is that strong... But next month the share should recover to the high forties..."
"Sir! The other coffee-drink companies are howling about Starlight's drinks too. They're saying there was never any real competition to begin with. If Starlight Coffee had been priced any lower, we would have been smashed to pieces."
The small comfort was that Starlight Food still didn't seem to have secured proper volume. Output was low, and in exchange the price sat higher than other coffee drinks. As the executive said, if Starlight's drink had been priced like the ordinary coffee on the market, there wouldn't have been a fight at all.
Carbonated drinks, and beverages of other flavors, were getting off comparatively lightly. Coffee drinks, though, were being torn apart. Starlight Food hadn't even been on the shelves for long, and at this pace he didn't want to imagine what came next.
Still, he had to admit it. This was not a fight between equals. On his way in that morning, Gusungtaek had watched Seodong employees arrive with Starlight coffee drinks in hand. If he had followed his heart, he would have stood in front of them and hurled those drinks into the street. Drinking a competitor's coffee was one thing. He only wished they would drink it somewhere he couldn't see—the feeling, surely, of a president watching an employee use a rival company's phone. Of course, it was awkward to scold someone over what they personally chose to drink. This was a democracy, after all.
Gusungtaek spoke through a scowl.
"Honestly. Coldly speaking, coffee drinks are a lost cause now. Is that it?"
The executive squeezed his eyes shut.
"We can only pray Starlight Food never enters instant coffee. If they do, it's obvious the market share of our flagship instant coffee will collapse. We can't even compete on taste."
Gusungtaek felt as if he were trapped aboard the sinking Titanic. There wasn't a single piece of good news. He wished someone would lower him a lifeline.
And so, while Starlight Food ground the coffee market steadily under its heel, it turned out that good fortune never arrived entirely unmixed. A small obstacle appeared.
The trouble was choosing a proper site for Starlight Food's new factories. The plan was to build one on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province and another in Daejeon, where the transport links were convenient. But word must have leaked somewhere, because provincial governors came flocking with all the gestures of courtship.
"I hear Starlight Food is building a factory. How would Yongin suit you?"
That was a municipal council member. They offered a pleasant, noncommittal yes and sent him on his way. The trouble was that they had already decided to build in Anyang, and the visit had become a snag in that decision.
No politician who lived and died by votes was going to stay home while a factory worth hundreds of millions of dollars went up. Job creation in the district alone would win more than enough ballots to get someone elected. Even a dying city or province came back to life once a proper major-corporation factory moved in. It wouldn't be only the conglomerate's plant, either. Subcontractors would follow in droves, and the factory would need a fresh workforce besides. Two birds with one stone.
Kim Sehee tapped her fingers on the desk.
"If we turn this down and build in Anyang..."
They hadn't even promised extraordinary incentives, but politics was like that. Make an enemy, and the headache followed. A politician had come in bowing, and now they were supposed to wipe the welcome off their faces and build in Anyang anyway. Honestly, wherever the factory went was Starlight Food's decision. There was no need whatsoever to watch a mayor's mood.
Starlight held all the leverage. The problem was the awkward residue it would leave behind. If power changed hands, the mayor of Yongin might become an obstacle. He wouldn't land a truly heavy blow, but a degree of petty, grating interference was well within his reach.
"What's the mayor of Yongin's temperament?"
At Kim Sehee's question, one of the executives answered.
"On the surface they say he's generous and doesn't hold grudges. But judging by what he does behind the scenes, he may forget a kindness. An enemy, he never forgets."
"......"
Kim Sehee was briefly at a loss for words. Then she spoke again.
"It's our decision regardless, so let's not concern ourselves with outside affairs. We'll build the factory in Anyang, as planned."
The executives nodded. They disliked the notion of politicians trying to snatch the fruit when it was Starlight Food putting up the factory. Kim Sehee, though, slipped in one more line, the way a person takes out insurance.
"Hint to Yongin that the next factory will be theirs. And leave us room to cancel the moment things turn sour. If they mean to use us politically, then we ought to get something out of it too."
Starlight Food was expanding anyway. There was no prospect of shrinking ahead. That was why the promise of a factory could be used as a card to apply pressure.
When the meeting ended and Kim Sehee returned to the president's office, she dropped into her chair with a deep sigh. She couldn't help being far busier than before. She was, after all, the president of Starlight Food, the company riding highest these days.
Whether it was the crushing workload or not, she needed something to soothe her. Today, too, she finished getting ready for the Starlight Research Institute. To see Hana, she looked prepared to follow her all the way to the gates of hell.
When Kim Sehee arrived at the institute, she realized Hana wasn't there. She had come up to the tenth floor with a surprise gift, arms full of snacks, only to find the person in question absent. Nothing could have been more absurd. The guest of honor, missing from her own birthday party!
She soon learned where Hana had gone, thanks to someone in the office.
"Hana went out to play in the garden plot."
She knew the plot. Wasn't that where they grew the strawberries Hana gifted her every week? Kim Sehee had been scattering those strawberries all over the place, gifts that doubled as bribes. Everyone who tasted them had nothing but praise. Even people who disliked strawberries raved that the ones Hana had grown tasted like heaven. Kim Sehee had eaten them herself, so she knew perfectly well how good they were.
She hurried to the garden and found Hana looking every bit the farmer's daughter. Dirt on her clothes be damned—Kim Sehee pulled her into an embrace.
"Ack! I can't breathe!"
She paid Hana's little complaint no mind at all and only hugged her tighter, just to breathe in her scent.
As expected, nothing eased the stress like Hana.