The Bathhouse Again?
Between the children and their teacher, the cleanup was more or less finished. It was nowhere near perfect. Yeonwoo, their teacher, let out a long, heavy sigh. The sweeping was one thing, but a single look at the children made any reaction seem reasonable.
They had all been buried in flour, white powder clinging to every inch of them. Send them into the classroom like this, and there would only be more to clean. With no other choice, Yeonwoo herded them outside so they wouldn't go back in.
Dismissal happened to be upon them anyway, so rather than letting the children into the room, she meant to go in herself and bring their backpacks out. If they stepped inside looking like this, the mess would only multiply. The children, for their part, were delighted by the sight of one another.
"All right, everyone, straight home! And make sure you explain things properly to your parents!"
Washing them before she sent them off would have been best, but the school had no facilities that could handle this many children at once. Simply sending them home was easier.
Yeonwoo handed out the bags she had fetched from the classroom, one by one. The children took them with bright faces and set off.
"Hana, you're so white!"
"You're pale too!"
Hana and Jiyu walked home from school, laughing themselves silly at the sight of each other. Beside them, Yumi watched the pair with a distinctly unsatisfied look.
"You little troublemakers! I told you to stop, and you didn't listen to a word!"
Yumi was probably angry because the clothes she had on were ones she treasured. The pink outfit had been buried in flour and turned completely white. Flour, of course, came out in an ordinary wash, so there was no real cause for worry.
Had it been something harder to clean, there was no telling how far Yumi's temper might have climbed. Hana was counting it a mercy. When Yumi truly lost her temper, she and Jiyu had to stand there trembling and weather the full force of it. Perhaps because Yumi so rarely got angry, the sight of her when she did was terrifying beyond belief.
"Oh my? Hana, what happened!"
Maru, who had been waiting in the car, came rushing out in a flurry. She had arrived early today and been standing by, which was how she caught Hana coated head to toe in flour.
Hana gave an awkward little laugh.
"We were making pizza bread today, and somehow it ended up like this!"
From those few words, Maru could roughly piece together what had happened. She could see it all too clearly: Hana messing around with the flour. And judging by how thoroughly her friends were coated as well, it had not been a small prank.
"Wait just a moment!"
Maru popped the trunk. Inside were supplies stocked against any unexpected situation, clothes for Hana among them. She pulled several outfits out. There was more than enough for three.
"Here, take these, hop into the back seat, and change!"
She brought over a large blanket to screen them. The children did as they were told, changed inside the car, and came back out. Maru gathered the dirty clothes and tucked them into bags—separate ones, so nothing would get mixed together.
"Hmm..."
But the traces of flour still clinging to their hair left her uneasy. Going home like this didn't seem right.
"Kids, let's stop by the bathhouse on the way!"
Maru produced a simple solution. It was dismissal time anyway, so a trip to the bathhouse was no trouble at all. Jiyu and Yumi must have been delighted at the thought of a bath, because the moment they heard her they started bouncing.
"I've been wanting to go to the bathhouse with Hana! Yes!"
"Me too!"
Jiyu and Yumi loved the bathhouse, but Hana's reaction was far more complicated. She began edging away, looking for somewhere to slip off to. Maru caught her before she could.
"Hana, you're coming to the bathhouse, aren't you?"
Hana squeezed her eyes shut. There was no helping it. She had been to the bathhouse before, but that had been with Maru alone. Going in with Jiyu and Yumi felt like crossing a river she could never cross back. She shook her head from side to side, making her refusal plain. Even so, she was soon dragged inside by their hands.
Kim Seungyong was a security guard at the Byeolbit Research Institute. He had originally been a competitive athlete, with a solid record of placing in regional meets. Competing in the Olympics had been his dream, but he simply didn't have talent of that caliber.
In any case, he had seen a job posting from the institute and applied. He would rather have worked as a coach, or somewhere else in athletics, but he didn't meet the requirements. Athletes who wanted to become coaches could have filled a truck, and most of them had far more experience and far more medals than he did.
So he folded that ambition cleanly and started looking through private security listings instead. That was when, by luck, he came across the Byeolbit Research Institute's posting.
They're paying this much?
For a building security guard, the salary was remarkable. Kim Seungyong read the listing carefully. There had to be a reason they paid so well—long hours, perhaps, or some hardship they couldn't put in writing. Try as he might, though, he couldn't find much of a flaw.
The hours were reasonable, and there didn't seem to be any hidden drawbacks. He went onto a site where employees reviewed their companies. The Byeolbit Research Institute was easy to find, because its rating was high.
Reviews from a year ago called it a company with no real prospects, the sort of place where you were fine so long as the paycheck arrived—nothing particularly glowing. The recent reviews were different.
Most of the reviews were nothing but posts lamenting how sad it was to leave. As proof, the number of people quitting was tiny beside the number joining.
Doesn't seem like a bad company.
People who left a workplace had every reason to leave a sour review, and yet the page was full of praise. At the very least, it was evidence that, from the employees' side, the Byeolbit Research Institute was a good place to work.
And so, after surviving a fierce round of interviews, he became a security guard there. His first impression on joining was that he had walked back into an athletes' village. Most of the people around him were built of thick, rugged muscle.
He started out tense, but once he settled in, the job proved satisfying. The workload was light enough to make him yawn. For someone who had trained at high intensity every day, guard duty was as easy as lying back and eating. There was hardly anything to do. He simply waited at the entrance and checked the identities and passes of the staff coming in.
The pay was substantial, too. The base salary was already good, and his seniors said the annual performance bonus was excellent. He had heard it wasn't originally a wealthy institute, but its recent climb was dazzling to look at. They said it now ranked among the research institutes that earned the most money.
What Kim Seungyong liked best, though, was the cafeteria inside the institute. The food was good enough to put a luxury hotel to shame. To his palate, it tasted better than restaurants he would have paid for.
Perhaps that was why so many employees took all three meals there. The company provided every one of them, so there was nothing to pay. You just scanned your pass and ate. After joining, Kim Seungyong could feel himself putting on weight. Faced with food that good, willpower didn't stand a chance.
The benefits are good, too...
The company also offered something called Hana Mall. Every month they handed out points, and with those points you could buy all kinds of vegetables and fruit. For Kim Seungyong, who lived with his family, it meant spending less on groceries, which was wonderful. His mother even held the account. There was no need to go shopping; you simply bought produce on Hana Mall.
The bestseller was something called Byeolbit Rice, though he had never tasted it and didn't know how good it really was. He also couldn't see why they had insisted on naming the place Hana Mall. Wouldn't Byeolbit Mall have been plenty?
While he was turning that over in his mind, he waved through a Japanese man who had come to the institute on business, along with an interpreter. A thorough identity check and security screening went without saying. The man's name was Danaka—someone Kim Seungyong had no reason to know. However famous he might have been in Japan, he was a stranger to a Korean.