My Song Is a Lullaby
I made it to school without a hitch again today. Still wearing my backpack, I stepped into the classroom, said hello to Jiyu and Yumi, and got so caught up talking with them that class time crept up before I noticed.
Today was music. It hadn't been part of the curriculum in the first semester, but now that we were in the second, we'd been handed a textbook called Music and given a class all its own.
Music class didn't come with many fond memories. I'd always been hopelessly tone-deaf and rhythm-deaf, and I simply couldn't sing. The moment my friends and I hit a karaoke room I belted out famous singers' songs, but sadly my voice was nothing like theirs. All that ever came out was a noise like a dog barking. My friends weren't any better, of course, so we just sang our lungs out and called it a day.
Online, everyone's standards for singing had climbed sky-high, but step into real life and it was a gutter. Most people sounded more or less the same. There was a world of difference between what professional singers produced and what an ordinary person managed.
Even YouTube had videos of regular people busking—genuinely talented, and still unable to draw a crowd. Then the original artist happened to take the busker's microphone, and the instant they started singing, people swarmed in. That was how those videos ended.
An enormous gap lay between amateurs and professionals. I had no intention of becoming a singer myself, so all I needed was to avoid singing badly enough that people couldn't stand to listen.
"Today we're going to learn a children's song~"
The moment the teacher cast her computer screen onto the big TV, the kids started murmuring.
"Teacher, can't we sing pop songs?"
"We're already third graders! Who sings nursery rhymes!"
"Teacher, you are so not Gen Z..."
Realizing how fierce the rebellion was, the teacher hurriedly put on something other than a babyish children's song. Kids these days seemed to be growing fast in body and even faster in mind. As far as I remembered, we'd still been learning nursery rhymes back in my day.
"All right, the song we'll sing today is..."
Fortunately it wasn't a brand-new hit, but one of the songs that had been popular a while back. True to the teacher's stubborn streak, though, it was a children's song that still felt like a pop tune.
"Like a thread on a tree branch~"
It was Cotton Candy, a song that had been genuinely huge in my time. I swayed my shoulders and hummed along to the familiar melody, but to the kids around me the music was strange. Fair enough—they'd been born after Cotton Candy came out, so of course they were hearing it for the first time.
I was the only one following along properly. The others were hearing the song for the first time, after all. Ever since I'd changed into this body, my voice had become completely different from the one I used to have—different for the better, of course. It had grown clear and crystalline. Even my ordinary speaking voice was pleasant enough that my friends said they liked listening to it. So much so that Jiyu and Yumi had gone as far as telling me I could be a singer.
I was singing with everything I had when the teacher, who must have had her eye on me, called my name.
"Hana~"
"Yes!"
"Would you come up front for a moment?"
She told me to sing it as a demonstration. The kids were hearing the song for the first time and struggling to follow, so she'd singled out the one person who was doing it well. She seemed to think that if I showed them how, it would help the others sing along.
"Um... do I really have to?"
"It's a request from your teacher. Won't you, Hana?"
"Then I'll sing it with a friend..."
I could only hesitate as I said it. Mixing my voice with another child's was fine, but the truth was that if I sang alone, people fell asleep. I needed at least one friend to sing with me.
The look in the teacher's eyes, though, said she had no intention of indulging me. I had no choice but to get ready.
"On a tree branch~"
My refined voice unfurled through the classroom. As the accompaniment played beneath me, the kids beamed and clapped along, and I rode that momentum, singing even harder.
"Why am I so sleepy?"
"Right...?"
Once the song passed its midpoint, I could see the kids nodding off, heads bobbing. And when it ended, there wasn't a single person in the classroom with their head still up. The teacher was asleep too, sitting exactly as she had been, face planted on the desk.
Left standing there awkwardly, I stayed perfectly still until the kids and the teacher woke up.
This is why I said someone had to sing it with me.
At first, Wilmart had planned to sell Tangle in every store across the United States. Selling it without giving competitors time to respond had proven effective. But Byeolbit Foods had balked at the idea.
"As we said last time, Tangle's harvest still can't keep up. We need a little more time."
Thoroughly disappointed, Wilmart settled for the best option available. Dispatching company staff to Byeolbit Foods was only the start; they also picked idle factories in the United States and ran them through the night to produce Tangle. When it came to farming, America was where the most modern, cutting-edge technology gathered, so if that elite talent helped Byeolbit Foods, a dramatic jump in output was within reach.
In any case, Wilmart kicked things off by introducing Tangle to several hundred stores, centered on the major cities. Towns with fewer people would, regrettably, get it later—a small sacrifice for the greater good. And since no one was going to die for lack of Tangle, they could roll it out to the countryside, rather than the big cities, at a measured pace.
Word of a fruit that cured baldness, even at only fifty-percent odds, swelled the hopes of every bald person living in America. The rumor that Wilmart—the most successful retail company in the United States—was selling a fruit good for hair loss spread nationwide. Wilmart ran advertisements, yes, but the spiderweb of networks connecting people with hair loss was already burning hot before a single Tangle went on sale.
The ones most closely affected by the rumor of Wilmart's new product were none other than Wall Street's traders. The product was guaranteed to move the stock one way or another. Either the rumor was exaggerated and the share price would plunge, or it was true and the price would soar. One of the two.
"I hear Wilmart's selling a fruit that cures baldness?"
"They say it's a fifty-percent chance. At that rate, isn't this an insane deal?"
"You believe that? Up till now there've been drugs that slow hair loss or ease it, but nothing that actually grows hair back completely. Curing baldness is God's domain!"
"Looks like Wilmart's taking a reckless gamble because Amazon's breathing down their neck."
The heads of Wall Street's office workers, who labored harder than most, gleamed. For people whose actual hours ran past ten a day, losing hair was only natural. They were paid well, but they carried a workload to match. The saying that stress was a direct ticket to baldness fit perfectly: the traders on Wall Street lived with thinning hair as a constant companion.
"Still, a fifty-percent shot seems worth a try, doesn't it? Fifty percent is a steal."
"True, but do you really think it works?"
"We eat it and decide. The only thing we stand to lose is dollars we've already got more than enough of."
After clocking out, the traders headed for the nearest Wilmart branch on Wall Street.
Once they reached the store, they didn't have to hunt for the corner selling Tangle. The sight of a line with no end in sight left them gaping. The queue stretched well past the entrance, and every single person in it was a bald man.
"What even is that line?"
"I think every bald guy who lives on Wall Street is here."
"It wasn't this long when I came in for work this morning, was it?"
If Tangle had a single weakness, it was that only people with hair loss came looking for it. It tasted decent enough, but that was all. Aside from growing hair, it wasn't superior in any other way. Ordinary ingredients were sought by all 330 million Americans, but Tangle, effective as it was against baldness, was sought only by the bald people living in the country.
Even so, with a population as large as America's, tens of millions of people would buy it. Only half of them would actually see results, though, which cut the number in half again. You could certainly make money—but there was a ceiling on how much.
Later, once production improved, they could look for markets beyond the United States. Europe and the like would do. The world was wide and bald people were many, so there was no need to worry about it now. That was a problem for another day.
For the moment, the supply of Tangle was short. Even so, after several rounds of massive construction, that supply would explode in short order. The more farming efficiency improved, the more production would explode—and then other markets would be there for the taking.