Let's Sell Wine to Japan
Slurp, slurp. I was sprawled in the massage chair, drinking banana milk. Banana milk after a bath had a flavor that belonged in heaven.
What had happened inside the bath was so dreadful, so brutal, that I couldn't bring myself to describe it. If I had written a novel that actually depicted the events of that bathhouse, I might well have been hauled off to a police station. It was that cruel.
"Aaaah~"
The fan's breeze washed over me, and paradise needed no other name. I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and panties, but this was still inside the bathhouse—a place where an outfit like that raised no objections at all. Just then Maru came over. She was wearing only her panties. I jerked my head away at once.
Seeing Maru like that with a perfectly clear head was far too provocative a sight. She looked straight at me anyway.
"Hana, we've got to dry your hair!"
"Eh?!"
"Come on, hurry!"
"Waaah!"
Caught in her grip, I had no choice but to be dragged over to the hair dryers. I couldn't step outside without drying my hair. Jiyu and Yumi were drying theirs too. All of them had hair longer than any boy's, so the drying took an age.
How women managed daily life with hair that long was beyond me. Washing and drying alone could swallow more than thirty minutes. Back when I was a man, washing and drying my hair hadn't even taken five, but a woman's hair was nothing but inconvenience. Not that I could just take a pair of clippers and shave the whole thing off.
Whirrr—
I gave myself up to Maru's hands with a look of pure resignation. Being a man, I hadn't known it, but a women's bathhouse differed from a men's in more ways than one.
For starters, there were no towels. A towel was essential for drying off after a bath, and yet in the women's bath you couldn't find a single one. I'd been thrown at first. In the men's bath, towels were stacked nearly a meter high. Here, there wasn't one in sight.
No one seemed to mind. Everyone simply brought a towel from home, and Maru had prepared one of her own as well. The second difference was that the hair dryers had anti-theft cords attached to them. Apparently a few people out there stole the things. And to make a dryer run, you had to feed it a coin. That one was shocking enough to stun me. In the men's bath they were unlimited, and you could carry them around as you pleased.
Still, there was nothing for it. I was the one who had to adapt. I closed my eyes and let myself feel Maru's hands, and before long my hair was dry. Fortunately it hadn't taken much time at all—we'd already wrung out as much water as we could with a towel beforehand. Jiyu and Yumi seemed finished too, and they headed for the lockers where their clothes were kept.
I scurried after them and changed. The last traces of flour had vanished long ago. Fresh out of the bath, everyone wore that soft, fluffy-clean look on their faces. A bathhouse really was a wonderful place.
"All right, everyone, let's head out~"
Maru had finished dressing at some point and led us out in her everyday clothes. Jiyu, Yumi, and I trailed after her like a family of ducklings.
"Whose house is closest from here?"
As we climbed into the car, Maru looked at Jiyu and Yumi. There was time to spare, and she clearly meant to drop the two of them off along the way. They answered her at once.
"We live in the same apartment complex!"
"You do? Then I'll drive you both right to the building!"
"Thank you!"
Instead of walking, Jiyu and Yumi could ride safely home in Maru's car. Come to think of it, I had something for her, so I rummaged through my bag. It was the pizza bread I'd made earlier. Some time had passed and it had gone cold, but it was pizza bread made by my own hands, and I was certain it would still taste good.
"Maru, I made pizza bread just for you!"
"You did? I'll eat it later, once I get to the institute. Thank you!"
I'd been afraid she might say she wouldn't eat it, but that worry was unfounded. Just like the cookies I'd made before, Maru would enjoy every bite of the pizza bread I'd baked.
"Bye, Jiyu! Bye, Yumi!"
"Get home safe, Hana!"
After we dropped my friends at their apartment, we returned to our cozy home. Playing around with flour earlier already felt like a dream.
Danaka stepped carefully into the Starlight Research Institute building. Security guards stood inside as well, and the grounds around the building were enclosed by a wall, a stretch of land as wide as a park, just like the grounds of some major corporation's factory. He had no idea what they made in there, and he couldn't fathom how they were allowed to throw up a wall that enormous around a research institute.
In any case, he was here on business today, so he passed through without any particular obstacle and entered the room where Kim Sehee was waiting. When he opened the door, he found her with a peculiar green-haired child settled on her thigh, stroking the child's hair. The two of them looked as special as a mother and her daughter.
If those two shot a pictorial together, wouldn't the birth rate explode? Plant the fantasy that a man could have a wife and child like that, and men would go and get married all on their own. Shaking off the idle thought, Danaka began to speak through his interpreter.
The moment Kim Sehee murmured something, the green-haired child pattered outside. She had clearly been sent out so the adults could talk business. Danaka spoke with care.
"Might that child be your niece, President...?"
He knew Kim Sehee was unmarried, so he kept the question within the most reasonable bounds he could manage. Hearing it, she smiled softly.
"She's the child I treasure most. I wouldn't trade her even if you offered me the whole Starlight Group. I gathered every last share of the Starlight Research Institute for Hana's sake."
"I see!"
A child she wouldn't trade for the Starlight Group—there was clearly a secret or two wrapped up in that girl, but Danaka decided not to dig any deeper. Press any further and he had the feeling he'd be caught in a dead end with no way back. Listening in on someone else's family affairs never ended well.
"Ahem... You said there was good news today, so I came. What is it?"
He asked with a flutter of anticipation. Had the supply of Starlight rice increased? It would be wonderful to use it not only in the big cities, but at the Kara Sushi locations in the smaller ones as well. His thoughts tangled themselves into a knot.
"Starlight Food has developed an exceptionally fine wine."
With that, Kim Sehee produced a bottle of Starlight Wine. At her words, Danaka squeezed his eyes shut. Kara Sushi's liquor was already famous for its beer—craft beer the master brewers made by hand. The price was steep, but the flavor was remarkable, and plenty of people drank while they ate their sushi.
The moment he saw the Starlight Wine, though, an uneasy imagination took hold. Wasn't there that classic move, the one where the party in the superior position shoved a product of its own making onto its subcontractors? Put simply, he was thinking of the way a franchise headquarters forced its stores to buy whatever it told them to buy.
Even so, he couldn't give up the Starlight rice, and he had already made grand promises. So he smiled at Kim Sehee, praying that all she wanted was to borrow their distribution network, and hoping with everything he had that she would not tell him to sell this wine at the Kara Sushi franchises.
"Wine, is it? The color alone is magnificent. Splendid just to look at."
He praised the bottle until his mouth went dry. Kim Sehee seemed pleased by the compliment, and she came to the point.
"I'd like to supply this Starlight Wine to the Kara Sushi franchises, and I'd like to use your distribution network in Japan as well. We've already set aside a separate volume for the Japanese market."
As she spoke, she brought out a Japan-localized bottle of Starlight Wine. Japanese lettering covered the label, and the design was exquisite. Even Danaka was briefly struck with admiration. He wiped the sweat streaming down his face with a handkerchief. The air-conditioning was blasting, and still the sweat poured off him like water.
A single word from him could clearly swing a contract worth a staggering sum, and he couldn't make the tension stop. For the moment, he carefully lifted the glass of wine Kim Sehee had poured for him.
He hoped, at the very least, that it would be drinkable. Wine was not a good liquor for a brand-new company to attempt. Wouldn't it have been better to use the Starlight rice for something like makgeolli, that cloudy Korean rice wine, or a clear rice wine such as cheongju? Japanese people didn't know Korean liquors like makgeolli very well, but he had the feeling that makgeolli made with Starlight rice, at least, would sell.
Then Danaka took a sip, and his eyes flew wide. A moment later, the happiness circuit in his head spun into overdrive. A wine with a flavor like this—he ought to be the one bowing his head to receive it.