The Flour War
Jiyu lived by a single creed: kindness was always repaid, and a grudge was never forgotten. The timing could not have been better. Everyone was lost in sausage bread, and with the dangerous work finished, the teacher and the baker had stepped outside for a moment.
Which meant there was no one in that classroom who could stop her. Jiyu had not forgotten the flour baptism Hana had given her earlier. A grin spread across her face. Her target was utterly absorbed in a piece of pizza bread.
She drove her hand deep into a white bowl heaped with flour, so deep that anyone watching might have thought she was practicing iron palm. Her fingers closed around a generous handful. Hana had only dusted her cheek before. Jiyu intended to flour-bomb her entire face.
"It's so good!"
"Right? Right?"
Hana and Yumi were chattering away. Jiyu used the distraction to creep up behind Hana like an assassin. Her stealth was exceptional; she made it all the way to Hana's back without being noticed at all. Then again, Hana had never been especially quick on the uptake.
Tap, tap.
Jiyu rapped the back of Hana's head with a finger. Hana turned on reflex.
"Yah!"
Jiyu flung the fistful of flour straight into her face. The white powder struck like a bomb.
"Waaah!"
Hana's face went ghost-white. She couldn't even pull herself together. Jiyu clutched her stomach and cackled. A successful revenge was always sweet. The only problem was that the blast had also reached Yumi, who had been standing right beside Hana.
"Jiyu, what do you think you're doing!"
Yumi's clothes were plastered with flour. One look at her, and Jiyu flinched. Yumi was pure poison to her.
Flour hung in the air, billowing up in soft white clouds like someone had set off a fire extinguisher.
What Jiyu had failed to account for was a simple fact: third graders were overflowing with mischief.
"Look at Jiyu! She's having a blast!"
The moment a boy said it, the fun spread through the class like a contagion, and every kid grabbed for the flour.
"Ack!"
"Take this!"
Fistfuls of flour flew back and forth. The classroom descended into chaos. Once the fire caught, the children had no intention of stopping. Jiyu realized, too late, that she had touched off the fuse of an enormous bomb. Before she could come to her senses, Hana's counterattack arrived.
"Hah!"
Hana was the sort who paid back exactly what she was given. Jiyu had been staring blankly at the flour fight when the blow landed. She took the hit and laughed anyway. What was done was done; they might as well play. Jiyu was simple like that. She seized the whole container of flour and started flinging it by the handful.
"Waaah!"
Hana was no match for her. Jiyu was a tank, and Hana was a soldier with a gun. All Hana could do was run.
"Stop it!"
Yumi, the only sane person left in the room, shouted at the children to quit, but it did no good. They were playing with flour, and the current was impossible to dam. Before long the classroom had gone pure white, as if someone had popped a smoke grenade. A fog settled so thick you couldn't see an inch ahead.
Creeeak—
Into that pandemonium came the teacher and the baker, opening the door. For a moment they simply stood there, stunned, unable to process the sudden change. While the baker gaped at the disaster before him, the teacher recovered her wits in a hurry and shouted at the children.
"Stop—!"
Her sharp voice cut through the classroom, and the children froze as if by magic. Watching her face, they slunk back to their seats. Their instincts were remarkable.
The teacher returned to her place and took in the room. It was a wreck. The children looked as if they had been dredged in batter for frying, flour caked over their clothes and every exposed inch of skin. Clearly the hour had come to give them a proper scolding. Just thinking about the cleanup afterward made her head ache.
"Aigoo, you little troublemakers..."
Jiyu and Hana, the ringleaders of the whole affair, kept their mouths firmly shut and stood very, very still.
"Ooooh!"
Sihyeon let out a cry of wonder, like the hero of a famous cooking anime. The wine was that good.
"This... this is..."
The grapes inside the Starlight Wine kept teasing his tongue. The aroma was so rich that even after he swallowed, it still lingered in his mouth. He mourned his own meager vocabulary. It couldn't be helped. If he had been any good with words, he would have made his name on some other kind of show.
Still, he had drunk it, so a review was due. Sihyeon closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts.
"Superb. As my subscribers know, there aren't many wines I've ever called superb. This Starlight Wine is one of them."
He poured another measure into the glass.
"Color and aroma alone would justify a full five stars, but once you get to the taste, there's simply nothing left to say."
He spread his hands as he spoke.
"My verdict: out of a maximum of five stars, I'm giving this wine six."
These days, the winning move was to reach the conclusion fast. Ever since short-form video took over, long reviews had long since fallen out of favor. He used to stretch a review past ten minutes. Lately he kept them to two or three.
Go over ten minutes and people simply didn't watch. Unless a video was short, viewers couldn't last. It was an unavoidable fact of the age. Newtubers like Sihyeon, who didn't have a conglomerate behind them, had no choice but to ride the current. Strike out on your own, or fail to catch the trend, and all that waited was obsolescence.
"With flavor and aroma like this, it wouldn't lose to wines in the eighty-dollar range. If anything, it might taste even better."
"I hear they're planning a premium line later, and I'm very much looking forward to that. No matter what they charge, I suspect it'll be worth buying."
"As expected of a Starlight Foods product, the value is overwhelming. Calling it a bargain almost feels unfair. To everyone watching my Newtube channel, this is a wine I recommend!"
Sihyeon ended the recording. Then he settled in to enjoy the Starlight Wine properly. Before he was a broadcaster, he was a man who loved wine.
"Delicious..."
Had he been reviewing something bland or unpleasant, he would have poured out whatever was left. Starlight Wine suited his taste far too well for that. He laid out a few simple snacks and drank. A pleasant warmth rose in him. The wine he usually reached for, he suspected, was about to change today.
The wine Starlight Foods had released had yet to catch a real current. In an age when consumers were drowning in information, even a launched advertisement tended to vanish without a trace. For an ad to work, it needed a spark.
So Starlight Foods began seeding the wine through restaurants. They shaved the margin on the wholesale price down to almost nothing and supplied it cheap, and any restaurant that put Starlight Wine on the menu received extra benefits besides. From an owner's point of view, accepting was pure profit, so they adopted it without hesitation.
"Boss! Soju over here!"
A college guy shot his hand up in a pork barbecue place. At a restaurant like this, soju and beer were practically mandatory.
Just then, the young woman sitting across from him noticed a Starlight Wine flyer posted beside the restaurant's menu and spoke up.
"Oppa! What about Starlight Wine instead of soju?"
"Huh? Jiyeon, what are you talking about? Wine, at a pork place? And I don't think it'd even go with the meat..."
"I bought a bottle at a convenience store once, and it was seriously good. I think it'd be amazing with meat!"
Fortunately, the college guy had a strong adventurous streak. He listened to his junior and ordered a bottle.
"Here's the Starlight Wine, and a corkscrew."
The owner set the bottle and the corkscrew down on the table.
"If Starlight Foods made it, it's probably trustworthy... but wine, I'm really not sure..."
He had heard that everything Starlight Foods released was hitting back-to-back home runs. Holding on to that expectation, he poured. It was the first time he had ever poured wine into a beer glass.
"Cheers!"
"Yeah!"
Senior and junior clinked glasses and drank.
The reaction was immediate.