Pink Dinosaur Pajamas
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the dinosaur pajamas. With Jiyu and Yumi chattering behind me, though, I soon had no choice but to sneak a look at the other sleepwear.
"Isn't this pajama dress pretty?"
Yumi said it while eyeing a dress printed all over with strawberries.
"So pretty! The pajamas look cute too."
"Hana, get over here! Quit staring at babyish stuff like dinosaur pajamas!"
"Ugh... okay! Got it!"
Still throwing the dinosaur pajamas a wistful glance, I turned to the ones Jiyu and Yumi were holding. They all looked the same to me, but from the look in their eyes, Jiyu and Yumi clearly disagreed.
"What kind of pajamas are you gonna buy, Hana?"
"I think pink pajamas would suit Hana!"
I looked over what the two of them had brought. They were all comfortable things for lounging around the house, and yet I couldn't shake my lingering attachment. These were perfectly good pajamas, but...
"I'm going with these. The yellow is so pretty!"
Jiyu held up a pair that called a baby chick to mind. The deep yellow suited her so well you could fairly have called them pajamas made for Jiyu.
"I'll take these..."
Yumi shyly chose a pink pair trimmed with frills, and they suited her just as perfectly. People say girls love pink by instinct, and when it looked this good on someone, pink pajamas seemed more than enough.
"So what are you buying, Hana?"
Eyes trembling, I snatched up a random pair. Jiyu and Yumi regarded me with distinctly unsatisfied looks. I'd chosen in a hurry, and they seemed to think the pajamas didn't suit me at all.
"Hana, how about different pajamas? These really don't suit you!"
"I agree with Jiyu!"
I had no choice but to pick again. Ordinary pajamas, though, I simply didn't want to wear. In the end I went back to the pink dinosaur pajamas I'd seen at the very start. I was certain nothing else would suit me better.
"That's so you, Hana!"
"These actually suit you way better! The ones you grabbed earlier were seriously awful!"
I'm pretty sure they called these childish just a minute ago... Maybe the pajamas I'd hauled over were so lousy that these looked heavenly by comparison. Either way, once we'd all chosen, we managed to check out without a hitch.
"I wanna see Hana in the dinosaur pajamas!"
"Me too, me too!"
Jiyu and Yumi seemed desperate to see me wearing them. I couldn't betray that expectation, so I decided I'd put the dinosaur pajamas on later and take a picture. I could just post it in the group chat with the two of them.
"Hana, what did you buy?"
Maru asked when she saw me in the passenger seat, hugging the shopping bag tight. To wind her anticipation even higher, I smiled a little.
"Secret!"
"Oh, come on~"
She looked unbearably curious, but there was no mercy for Maru either. I meant to show her after we got home and I put them on. I had to be the first to see myself in the dinosaur pajamas, and with a mirror in my room, I'd get the first look.
The moment we arrived, I changed into the new dinosaur pajamas as fast as I could. A pink dinosaur couldn't possibly exist—and yet here one was.
I wiggled my hips, and the tail attached at my backside swayed from side to side. Maru stared at me with her mouth hanging open.
"They suit you so well, Hana!"
To think she'd love them enough to clap... I should have bought more dinosaur pajamas ages ago. I'd worried all that pink-on-pink would be too much, but they suited me far better than I'd expected. Was some femininity that had been hiding inside me finally surfacing? Now that I'd become a girl, there was no escaping the influence of hormones.
The way a woman who gets testosterone injections starts to change in a more masculine direction—maybe I was changing like that, too.
"Take some pictures for me, Maru!"
I'd promised to send Jiyu and Yumi a photo of me in the dinosaur pajamas, so I asked her. Maru took my phone and started shooting, the shutter clicking again and again. In the photos was me, beaming in my dinosaur pajamas.
With the contract successfully concluded, James and Layla left the building to see the state of the farm with their own eyes. Starlight Food's building stood downtown, so reaching the farm meant a long drive. Tangle didn't grow here, after all.
"To think I'd see Tangle growing with my own eyes..."
Overflowing with joy, James sat in the back seat, drunk on excitement. Layla found it deeply awkward. This was nothing like her boss's usual self. James was witty and energetic, yes, but he had never been this giddy—this much like a child. Having found a cure for baldness, he looked like a kid who had just discovered the most exciting toy in the world.
Layla, who didn't suffer from hair loss, couldn't understand what was moving him. Anyone with severe baldness would have understood James perfectly. The mere fact that baldness—something modern science could never cure—could be cured was reason enough for a transformation this extreme. Hair loss upheaved everyday life so completely that it might as well have been a curse handed down by the gods, a heavenly punishment.
The moment an ordinary person started going bald, the eyes of everyone around them changed, as if they were looking at a zombie. The instant you felt those altered gazes, you realized you had gone bald—and the moment you were told there was no solution at all, a bald person could only scream.
Watching James so carried away he could barely keep still, Layla drew her eyes off him and looked out at the scenery. Somewhere after they left the city, people working the fields began to appear in numbers. Farmers employed by Starlight Food, most likely.
The car drove on for a long while before it finally stopped.
"Is this the Tangle farm?"
James stepped out and took in the surroundings. There was no strict security, nothing of the sort. Taking Tangle seeds away wouldn't make them grow in any case.
James, Layla, and the party of Walmart staff working in Korea began a preliminary tour of the farm.
One of the Walmart officials spoke.
"The farmland does seem rather small, though. Will that be all right? I'm not sure we can produce the quantity America needs."
The acreage was indeed small. America ran farms far larger than the country of Korea itself, and next to that, the scale of Korean agriculture was child's play. To a nation that farmed at the size of a respectable country, farming in Korea was enough to draw a snort.
Announce that you were putting a plane in the air to farm in Korea, and the numbers wouldn't add up; people would stare at you as if you'd lost your mind. You're flying a plane over a plot that small? America was different. Without aircraft, you simply could not cover farmland that vast.
There were even cases of outsiders losing their way in fields so enormous that they starved to death. No one in Korea had ever starved because they couldn't find their way home from the crops. They didn't have farms that size to begin with.
But once the party drew closer and looked at the plants bearing Tangle, they had no choice but to say something else entirely.
"Wait—this many fruits on a single branch?"
The branches were bent under the weight of the fruit. When they picked one and split it open, the inside was packed solid with Tangle. A single fruit held enough for dozens of people with hair loss to eat for about a month.
"With yield like this, if we fill this whole farm, we'd have more than enough volume, wouldn't we?"
Kim Sehee spoke with a look of quiet pride.
"Our employees are working hard all day long. We plan to fill this farmland with Tangle by the end of this year at the latest."
"Would it be possible to transfer some seeds to us in America so we could cultivate them there? Korean farming methods are excellent, of course, but with all that land, wouldn't America be better?"
James, who knew the secret of how Tangle grew, addressed the Walmart employee who had spoken. Already sharing the same boat, he had heard about Tangle from Kim Sehee.
"Tangle will grow in other places, but the Tangle that grows there has a fatal flaw. You'll understand soon enough."
No subordinate kept arguing once the boss said no. If he said it wouldn't work, it wouldn't work.
His inspection satisfactorily complete, James took his leave of Kim Sehee in high spirits. He would return to America now and spread this miracle among the American people. He was bald himself, and he wanted to share it.