Let's Feast on Strawberries
The engine purred, smooth and low, and the car slipped easily along the road. In the front seat Hana yawned enormously, fighting sleep, while Maru stole a glance at the children through the rearview mirror. Were the friends Hana had made the sort who might tug her down a bad road?
Watching them talk, though, she couldn't see it. They didn't seem like those kinds of children at all. Relieved, Maru spoke up.
"What do you feel like doing once we're there?"
"I want to see the garden Hana told us about!"
"Me too, me too!"
Hana had told them the place she lived was unusual, and perhaps that was why the children didn't find it particularly strange that she lived in a building. Then again, anyone who spent five minutes with Hana could tell she operated on an entirely different wavelength. She had a habit of taking whatever she had picked up on the internet as established fact.
Maybe that was precisely why the internet had helped her settle into life among people as well as she had. Maru had worried, back when school was still ahead of them, whether Hana would adapt at all. Even ordinary children struggled when they were dropped without warning into a new school, and Hana had never been of this world to begin with, so the worry had weighed twice as heavy.
Listening to the children now, though, it seemed Hana was managing school just fine. She was sharp, too; they said she had never once surrendered the top rank in the whole school. And so, carried along on the children's laughter, they arrived at the Starlight Research Institute.
A security officer came out and ran them through the usual check. The moment he heard they were Hana's friends, though, he waved them through without any further questions.
The Starlight Research Institute was famous for security strict enough to make visitors sweat, yet where Hana was concerned there was a great deal people were willing to overlook. The institute ran, after all, on the money she brought in. The prevailing attitude was simple: if you don't like it, go earn more yourself.
The children spilled out into the parking lot and tore around in every direction, drinking in their freedom.
Maru clapped her hands, pulling their attention back to her. When it came to handling elementary schoolers, she had confidence to spare these days. Looking after Hana had built that skill in her, layer by layer, and perhaps that was why she was certain that if she married someday and had a child of her own, she would raise that child extraordinarily well.
Most people were clumsy the first time they became parents, simply because it was new. Maru, having put in so much practice ahead of time, carried more confidence than most.
"All right, kids! Let's go see the garden!"
The moment they were out of the car, she gathered them up and set her mind on the garden. They could play there first, and once their stomachs started to growl she would show them the building and take them to the cafeteria on the first floor. The Starlight Research Institute's cafeteria had reached a point where no other company's could hope to compare.
There was even a rumor that the food was good enough to earn a Michelin star. Plenty of people scoffed at the idea—how good could a mere company cafeteria possibly be, to have Michelin mentioned in the same breath? Those people, of course, tended to change their minds the moment a business trip brought them through the doors and they sat down to a single meal. The food at the Starlight Research Institute's cafeteria was that good.
"Whoa!"
The children bunched together and set off toward the garden behind the building. It was a bit of a walk, but not so far that it mattered, and they arrived before they knew it, chattering the whole way.
"Wow! This is a garden? This is a whole farm!"
Yumi took in the scale of the place and went pale with astonishment. It was nothing like the size she associated with the word garden. In her head, a garden was a snug little plot—family gathered close, maybe a thousand square feet—where you tended plants and watched them grow.
The garden Hana had described, spread out before her eyes, was nearly the size of a soccer field. It might have been larger. And the greenhouses, laid out in one long gleaming sweep, were a spectacle all their own.
"Ta-da!"
Hana was showing off the plants she raised. Jiyu and Yumi pressed in at her sides, gawking without pause. The moment they stepped into a greenhouse, a temperature and humidity so pleasant it didn't feel like summer at all came out to greet them. Inside, a system held the air at just the right warmth and moisture for the plants to thrive.
Modern agriculture—like this? Jiyu dashed around the greenhouse without a thought in her head, but Yumi, now that she understood the garden Hana had mentioned was on this scale, could not keep the shock off her face. Set beside Hana's plot, any ordinary garden was nothing but a speck.
"Look at the size of these strawberries! They're as big as plums!"
Jiyu stared at the berries hanging in heavy clusters from the stems and blurted it out in pure admiration. They were enormous, as if someone had genetically modified them—far too big to pop into your mouth in a single bite. For Jiyu, whose mouth was on the small side, one berry would have to be eaten in two.
"And the color is so pretty!"
Yumi was just as dazzled. She was certain that no matter how fine a strawberry you found anywhere else, none of them could match the color of the ones Hana grew. A red as deep as blood, the berries seemed to glow on their own. They shone so brightly she almost believed someone had brushed them with polish.
Hana plucked one as she spoke.
"You two, try the strawberries in here. They're really, really good!"
Tempted, Jiyu picked one with her own hands and ate it. Eating a berry straight off the plant usually came with a few reservations, but the strawberries Hana grew were different. The moment it hit her tongue, Jiyu cried out. It was the kind of flavor that snapped your eyes wide open.
"Whoa! It's actually delicious!"
Watching that reaction, Yumi picked a berry of her own and popped it into her mouth. She had to know what could make Jiyu react like that. Jiyu exaggerated now and then, but she wasn't the sort to carry on to this degree.
One bite, and Yumi's eyes went round. The flavor reduced every strawberry she had ever eaten to something utterly ordinary. Those old berries had been fakes wearing strawberry masks. The one in her mouth now was what you could finally call a true strawberry.
"Wow, Hana! How did you grow these? I've never eaten strawberries this good!"
One taste, and Yumi too had converted on the spot. The strawberries Hana raised were already spreading quietly through the entertainment world, because Kim Sehee handed them out to the celebrities she usually cast in advertisements. Every so often one of those celebrities got to eat a berry and asked where it had come from, only to be met with silence.
Trying to buy them on the market at a premium was no use either. They had never been grown for sale in the first place. The celebrities didn't know it, but unless you worked at the Starlight Research Institute, you had no chance of tasting what Hana grew. In that sense, these two were lucky.
They had gotten to taste them, at least. The rest of the world would go on living without ever learning the berries existed.
After eating them, Jiyu and Yumi had both become true believers. They had turned so eagerly enthusiastic that it was hard to imagine just how good the fruit must have been.
"Good, right?"
"Yeah! They're so good. Can I pick a few and take them home?"
Jiyu said it while gazing at the strawberries, already looking bereft. One berry was obviously never going to be enough. She had, of course, already sneaked a second one—but either way, both she and Yumi clearly wanted more.
At that, Hana nodded.
"Sure. You can just take all of them! They'll grow back anyway!"
She was right. Give the strawberries a little time and they would be growing again. The plants Hana raised showed a growth rate that bordered on uncanny, and they were growing even now. Once the greenhouses had gone in, that pace had only quickened, and the berries themselves had swollen to a size fit for the Guinness Book of World Records.
Perhaps that was why, even with the Starlight Research Institute and Kim Sehee hauling berries away by the armful these days, plenty still remained. No matter how thoroughly the institute and Kim Sehee stripped the plants, Hana grew so many that leftovers were inevitable.
"I've never seen a garden like this in my whole life!"
Jiyu said it while she harvested. She hadn't even lived ten years, so there was a great deal she had never experienced, but a garden this enormous had to be a first. She and Yumi were city children, after all.
How much could you really grow in a city? At best, something the size of a play-kitchen garden. There was never a proper place to grow anything, either, so the difference between that and the plot Hana kept began with sheer scale.
"Take more, Yumi!"
Perhaps sensing that Yumi was holding back, Hana dumped strawberries into her basket in a tumbling heap. Yumi lit up at the sight of it.
"Really?"
Yumi wasn't the sort to impose if she could help it, but these strawberries were so delicious she couldn't restrain herself.
Jiyu and Yumi filled their baskets with enough berries to last them days. Maru even went and found boxes so she could pack the fruit for them properly.