A Little Girl's Bearing
"All right then, Hana! Call me if anything comes up, okay? And don't forget to let me know when the field trip's over! I'll come pick you up right away."
"Okay! You get home safe too, Maru!"
I waved Maru off after she'd driven me all the way to school. Watching the car disappear down the road, I headed inside. It was field-trip day, and the schoolyard was already crowded with big buses. We weren't going up to the classrooms first. Everyone was gathering straight on the field and leaving from there.
"Hana! Over here, over here!"
"Yeah!"
Jiyu and Yumi were already waiting. I walked over to where they sat in a decent spot. There was still a little time before we had to leave.
"Hana, you dressed so cute." Yumi said it as she looked over what I had on.
If I'd worn my Little Magician Rumi outfit, I probably would have gotten even more praise. That stung a little. Still, the coordination seemed good enough to earn a compliment.
"Yeah! Maru picked the clothes for me."
"Did she...? Sit here for now! I asked the teacher, and she said we just have to gather on the field by nine!"
It was eight-forty, which left me twenty minutes to space out before heading over. I set my bag down on the ground. It had a fair amount of weight to it. There was nothing to do for those twenty minutes anyway, so I figured I'd just talk with Jiyu and Yumi. We'd settled onto the school steps when Yumi took one look at how I was sitting, slapped her own thigh, and spoke up.
"Hana! Sit like that and your panties are showing!"
"Ah—!"
I was wearing a skirt. With my legs flung wide open, of course everything underneath was on full display. Heat rushed to my face, and I had no choice but to fix my posture. A girl's skirt came with far too many inconveniences. In jeans I could sit with my legs spread or crossed, and it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest.
Jiyu saw me like that and laughed.
"I'm telling you, Hana, you're such a scatterbrain! There was that time you walked right into the boys' bathroom, too! You're supposed to show some dignity as the top student in the whole school!"
She wasn't wrong. Day to day, I did get mixed up now and then. For decades I'd only ever used the men's room, and trying to use the women's still didn't come naturally. The one saving grace was that a girl accidentally walking into the boys' bathroom wasn't treated as a big deal. The boys inside would be startled, and that was the end of it.
Turn the genders around, though, and it was horrifying. If a man walked into the women's restroom, even by mistake, a trip to the police station was the baseline. Little boys might slip in without anyone making much of it, but let them be even a little older and people would watch them with suspicious eyes. No question about it.
I kept talking with the kids, and before I knew it, nine o'clock was close. Not many people had gathered on the field. Only the third graders were going, so it didn't even look like a hundred.
In my day, nearly four hundred kids packed the yard for a field trip. And they didn't split us up by grade, either. Every grade went together, staggered enough that they had to divide the arrival times.
Sending several thousand students out all at once was physically impossible. Thinking that over, I headed for where our class was. The teacher stood there holding a sign that read Class 3-1.
The Class 1 kids flocked around the teacher like chicks. There weren't even a few dozen of them, so a glance was enough to confirm that everyone had gathered. Small numbers were convenient at times like this. In the old days they would have checked each student one by one and run through all sorts of procedures before setting out, but schools these days were different.
They moved fast. The kids knew they were going to an amusement park, so they cooperated with the teacher. They understood perfectly well that the longer they dawdled, the later they would arrive.
"All right, everyone — onto the bus!"
"Woooah!"
The moment the teacher finished speaking, the kids poured onto the bus in a rush. If she hadn't stepped in midway to restore some order, someone could have gotten hurt.
"Hana, let's get on!"
"Okay!"
I'd been waiting for the others to finish boarding. There was no need to force my way on early. Getting on faster wouldn't let me into the amusement park any sooner. I climbed aboard at my leisure, and Jiyu and Yumi came with me.
"I seriously can't take this anymore."
Kim Taekju muttered it under his breath. This was his second year since being commissioned as a noncommissioned officer, and no matter how many times he went through a ROK–U.S. joint exercise, he never got used to it. Sitting in the trench, he pulled a combat ration from his pack. The hard training had his stomach howling for food.
"Staff Sergeant Kim? They're saying training resumes in thirty minutes."
One of his men said it as he dropped into the trench. At that, Kim Taekju dug one more ration out of his pack.
"Got it. Good work. Let's eat, and fast. Even a dog gets left alone at lunchtime."
"Yes, sir!"
Kim Taekju and the soldier started tearing into the combat rations. The rations, though, were ancient. Kim Taekju frowned and checked the expiration date. There wasn't much time left on it. He'd heard they'd signed a supply contract with some famous food company and were burning through the leftover stock, but he hadn't expected it to be this bad.
"Do I really have to eat this garbage?"
Skeptical, he took a bite of the rice and the side dishes that came with it. His face twisted at once. For a modern person used to modern food, the taste was completely wrong. A glance at the man beside him said his subordinate was thinking the same thing.
Kim Taekju shoved the ration into a corner. It didn't have a shred of flavor, and another bite felt like it might upset his stomach. His subordinate looked ready to cry.
"Staff Sergeant, it tastes awful."
"I'm with you. I'd rather dig up dirt and eat that."
He was starting to wonder if he'd have to train today without eating at all. Staring blankly up at the clear sky, something occurred to him.
Rummaging through his pack, Kim Taekju pulled out a Starlight Cherry Tomato. He'd bought it at a convenience store a while back and forgotten all about it. One pack held five of them.
His subordinate looked at him with doubtful eyes, then spoke.
"Sergeant? Five cherry tomatoes aren't going to fill anybody up."
Kim Taekju smiled at him.
"Hey, these are cherry tomatoes grown by Starlight Foods, and the calories are insane. Eat just one and you'll be full."
The subordinate, who had never heard of Starlight Cherry Tomatoes, went round-eyed in surprise. Then he said it as if the whole thing were nonsense.
"You're kidding, right? One cherry tomato, thousands of calories..."
"Just trust me and try it. You'll feel full right away. Rather than eat this rotten combat ration, I'll just have the tomatoes and be done with it."
With that, Kim Taekju tore open the pack and popped one into his mouth. He barely chewed before it slid down his throat like magic. Moments later, fullness hit him. Enough that the next round of training wouldn't be a problem.
"Here, try one. You'll feel it immediately."
He handed a tomato to his subordinate. The man wore an uneasy look as he put it in his mouth, and soon he was thinking exactly what Kim Taekju had. Not long after he swallowed, his stomach filled. That much satiety was plenty, even without the combat ration.
"Whoa... this is actually amazing?"
The subordinate said it in a daze, wearing a face that said he couldn't believe it at all. Something magical had just happened, so it was fair enough. Of course, foods that were small in volume and high in calories turned up often enough in military rations.
The American chocolate issued during the world wars boasted a staggering eighteen hundred calories a bar. The bars had been large, granted.
Set beside a Starlight Cherry Tomato, though, the difference was enormous. The chocolate was so big it took tens of minutes to eat, and forcing down more of it than you could stand became its own kind of harm. It was so sweet that the person eating it ended up miserable.
A cherry tomato, on the other hand, went down in a simple three seconds, and it was tiny. The calories didn't fall short of the chocolate, either. Living on nothing but cherry tomatoes could eventually throw your nutrition out of balance, but that would take a month or two of eating only those. In the modern world, nobody was going to live on cherry tomatoes alone.
Just then, from behind Kim Taekju — still enthusiastically laying out the tomatoes' virtues — a voice called out to him.