Hana Is Way Too Popular

The moment we stepped inside, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠place opened into a room far roomier than it had looked from the street, as if it had been waiting to welcome us. Jiyu and Yumi settled into their seats with the ease of regulars. It figured. Once school let out I usually climbed into a car and went straight home, so I hadn't had many chances to hang around with them.

When the final bell rang, Maru would pull up and I'd be gone. Jiyu and Yumi lived in the same neighborhood; for all I knew, they even ate dinner together.

"Hana, is this your first time having mala tang?"

Yumi asked it the way someone asks when they've already caught you acting awkward. I nodded, honest about it. Better to ask than to bluff and pay for it later. Most disasters start when you try to fumble your way past something you don't actually know.

"Come with me!"

They pushed up from the table with their bags still hanging on the chairs, and Jiyu beamed as she hauled me along. She dragged me over to the corner where the vegetables were laid out, then pressed a pair of tongs and a plate into my hands. I took them in a daze, with no idea what I was supposed to do with them. Luckily Yumi cleared that up before I had to ask.

"Just put in whatever you want to eat!"

Tongs in hand, I stood in front of the vegetables. Mushrooms, glass noodles, bean sprouts, and plenty more besides. I stole a glance at what Yumi and Jiyu were piling onto their plates. Surely it was wiser to borrow the recipe of two girls who came here all the time than to invent one on my first visit.

They were taking a bit of everything—mushrooms, glass noodles, vegetables—so I followed along out of the corner of my eye and loaded my own plate. I kept the portions sensible, too. Heap on too much and I'd be too full to finish it.

If I'd still been a man, I would have taken about twice as much. Unfortunately, the body I had now came with a stomach that couldn't hold all that. I could force it down if someone told me to. I just didn't want to.

"All done, Hana?"

"Yeah."

Yumi asked with her plate already in her hands, and I held mine up for her to see. She looked over what I'd chosen and nodded. Clearly I'd passed. If I'd done it wrong, she would have called me on it.

Next came the heat. Jiyu and Yumi both chose level one.

The board said level one was a spice mild enough ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that no Korean would find it a burden. I, however, had once been the manliest of men, so I passed over level one and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠took level two. The scale went all the way to four, but levels three and four warned that you had to eat them while crying, and I didn't dare go that far.

"Hana, level two's pretty spicy. You sure you'll be okay?"

At Jiyu and Yumi's worried looks, I shrugged.

"I'm fine! I can handle spicy food!"

Ingredients chosen and heat decided, we made it back to the table and started talking. The topic was figuring out which boy had slipped a love letter under the things in my drawer. I tried to stop them, afraid some poor boy's entire character was about to be assassinated, but it didn't look like it was doing any good. Jiyu and Yumi put their heads together and started narrowing down suspects.

"I bet Siwoo put the love letter in Hana's drawer! The way that kid looks at her is not normal."

"You think? Minsu, the one who sits all the way in front, seems more like the type than Siwoo."

"Ughhh..."

Somehow I was the one getting embarrassed. Jiyu and Yumi chattered on, then suddenly turned and looked at me.

"Hana, who do you think put it there?"

"Yeah! Fastest way is to ask the person it's about!"

I couldn't give them a proper answer. I didn't want to. The moment we pinned it on someone, I was sure I'd never be able to speak to that boy again. Better to live without knowing. At least then I won't have to be embarrassed.

Fortunately, the moment never came.

"Mala tang's ready~"

A staff member announced it, and Jiyu's and Yumi's heads whipped around.

I set the bowl on the table and picked up my chopsticks. Thankfully, the conversation moved on to the food. Everything I'd chosen earlier was packed in there, and I was dying to know how it would taste.

Around the time Tangle hit the market and bald heads everywhere were finally seeing the light, the other companies were not simply sitting on their hands. A Walmart monopoly on sales was one thing. It could not stop anyone from putting Tangle in the ground and growing it.

They were selling the seeds, after all. It would have been stranger if people didn't raise them. Tangle was a miraculous fruit that cured baldness, and every other person losing their hair would want some other company ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠growing it too. Let the companies compete, and the price was bound to fall.

"Watch out for imitations?"

The people buying Tangle barely spared a thought for the warning printed beneath it.

It said so plain as day—only what Walmart sold was real—but people figured it was all the same thing anyway.

Rice grown in America and rice grown in Korea might show some tiny difference, but most people wouldn't notice. They wouldn't even realize the rice had been grown in another country at all.

Tangle would be no different. What difference could there really be between fruit raised in Korea and fruit raised in America?

Consumers weren't the only ones thinking that way. Walmart's rivals bought up Tangle in high spirits and planted it in the richest, sunniest ground they could find. Korea didn't have much farmland of that quality, but in America, land was the one thing they had too much of. It might as well have been a private server running the admin's cheat map. Everywhere you looked was nothing but fertile soil, mostly because no one had farmed the country on any great scale before Americans settled it.

"Would you look at that. Shooting right up!"

The moment Tangle went into the ground, it grew like something unhinged. Fertile soil and obsessive oversight must have struck a perfect synergy, because it changed by the day. Even the farmers watching from the side were startled. Not being a plant of Earth, it grew at a pace that shrugged off the laws of physics. Before long it set fruit, and to the eye there was no difference at all. One of the rival company's people took one look and burst out laughing.

"Ha! Easiest money I ever made."

Seeing that Walmart hadn't taken any particular action, one researcher spoke up, careful about it.

"Don't you think Walmart already knows people are planting the seeds and selling the fruit on their own?"

"So what? You're saying we shouldn't sell it? This stuff is worth more than gold."

"Well, yes, but..."

The people eating Tangle didn't care where it had been grown. Buyers of food rarely fussed over origin in the first place. Most of them looked at the price. Almost no one checked, line by line, where a thing had been made before they bought it.

So long as it grew on Earth, it was all the same. Fruit from rich, well-conditioned soil might taste a little better, but unless you were a gourmet, an ordinary person had no hope of tasting the difference.

The so-called knockoff Tangle spread across the whole of the United States, the result of everyone and their neighbor planting it and raising it. Glutted with supply, the price fell to barely a dollar a fruit—a tenth of what the real Tangle cost.

Anyone who wanted Tangle naturally bought the knockoff instead. Walmart may have saved them from baldness, but faced with the hard reality of price, they had no choice but to abandon the faith.

"I'm still eating Walmart's Tangle!"

"They saved us. Stabbing them in the back doesn't feel right."

A tiny handful kept buying the Tangle at Walmart. Most people ate the cheaper knockoff. For a while, Tangle's sales dropped by ninety percent.

"Are you really sure this is all right, sir?"

James listened to the worry of a subordinate who didn't know the full story of Tangle, then grinned as if to say there was nothing to fear.

"Don't worry. They'll come back."

Just as James said, the people who ate knockoff Tangle instead of the fruit Walmart sold ran into side effects. Or rather, not side effects. The price of betrayal.

"My hair isn't growing! It was definitely growing when I ate Tangle!"

"I lost the hair I already had!"

"Real Tangle is sweet. Why is this one so bitter?"

The so-called knockoff had become a fruit that did nothing at all. It was money thrown on the ground. And it had even lost the sweetness of the original, so it wasn't worth eating in place of ordinary fruit either.

The companies that had sold it had no choice but to swallow staggering penalties. The customers, for their part, came right back to the Tangle Walmart sold.