A Call from America?
I slipped onto the bus around the time the children had all climbed aboard. The cabin was lively with kids, though one thing set it apart from the buses of my own school days: empty seats gaped all over the place. A coach built for a full class of forty now carried fewer than twenty, so of course there was room to spare.
I scanned the rows for a decent spot and was about to sit when the seating itself became the problem. There were only two seats together.
"I wanna sit with Hana!"
"I'm sitting there!"
Jiyu and Yumi were scuffling over the seat beside me. Watching them, I stood at a crossroads — and then found the optimal answer almost at once.
"Jiyu, Yumi, you two sit here!"
All I had to do was move to another seat, and the problem solved itself. I didn't sulk like a little kid over riding alone. If anything, there was an upside: I could watch the scenery go by and travel in peace.
That thought died the moment Jiyu spoke.
"Let's just sit in the very back!"
The last row held five seats in a line. In my day that had been the delinquents' territory; now no one was sitting there at all. Too few people, maybe. Dragged up by Jiyu's hand, I ended up in the back row after all.
"This is perfect!"
"Me too!"
I sat in the middle, with Jiyu and Yumi on either side. Their voices came at me in surround sound, and I felt my mind about to leak straight out of my skull. Sitting alone might honestly have been better.
Fortunately, the disaster I'd feared — my head exploding under stereo chatter — never came. The amusement park was an hour away, and perhaps because of that, Jiyu and Yumi talked themselves out and were asleep in under ten minutes.
If they were going to pass out like that, I couldn't understand why they'd fought over the seats in the first place.
I settled into the quiet current of the bus. The kids in the seats ahead were sleeping too. As the coach jolted and rattled along, I laughed to myself, a little awkward about it. I'd been sure I would never again ride a big bus as an elementary schooler. Live long enough, and you really do see everything.
The ride to the park was taking its time, but I still figured we had it better than kids from the provinces. I didn't even want to imagine how long it took to reach an amusement park in Seoul all the way from Jeolla or Gyeongsang.
There was a reason everyone fought tooth and nail to live in Seoul. Most of the famous, decent cultural spots were here. Out in the provinces, the best you could hope for was something a notch below. It couldn't be helped. I'd heard the population of the capital region outnumbered every other region in the country put together.
And so the bus arrived at the amusement park. Once it stopped in the lot, the teachers woke the sleeping children, who dragged their eyes open with some effort.
The moment they saw the park outside the windows, though, their excited chatter rose. I shook Jiyu and Yumi awake beside me. Jiyu was so deeply asleep her head had tipped all the way back. Yumi had been leaning on my shoulder, so waking her wasn't hard.
"D-did we... get there, Hana?"
"Yeah. Teacher says to get off quick."
Waking Jiyu, I set the edge of my hand and chopped her in the throat. I'd simply wanted to. There was no other reason.
"Ghk!"
The chop snapped Jiyu straight out of sleep. I hauled her and Yumi off the bus, and outside the teachers were trying to gather the children, who — being little kids — weren't listening at all. There weren't even that many of them. I didn't want to imagine what it would be like once the numbers grew.
Our homeroom teacher either had real leadership, or the kids in our class were simply obedient: they fell into a neat line without fuss.
"All right, everyone! We're going straight in through the park entrance! No need to buy tickets!"
The arrangements looked already settled. The children trailed after the teacher, and it seemed our class would be first inside. The other classes were still struggling just to get their rows straight.
"What are you eating there?"
Fluent English came from behind him. It was a short break in the middle of training, and no one bothered the men sprawled in the trench. If you didn't rest properly when you had the chance, what was the point of the training? Fortunately Kim Taekju spoke English, so he could answer. His pronunciation, of course, left something to be desired. It couldn't be helped. He hadn't learned it overseas; he'd learned it in Korea, and his tongue was bound to be clumsy.
"Ah — I was just grabbing a quick meal, sir."
Kim Taekju was grateful he'd buried his combat rations in a corner. If he'd left them out in the open, he couldn't begin to imagine the lecture. A chewing-out, at the very least. The man looked old enough to be a battalion commander, and a glance at the rank insignia suggested that was about right.
"These cherry tomatoes?"
The foreigner beside him, something like an aide, spoke up. It was probably his first time seeing a Starlight Cherry Tomato. They were sold only inside the country, so of course he wouldn't know what it was.
"Would you care to try one? You won't regret it."
"Interesting."
The foreign battalion commander popped the cherry tomato Kim Taekju offered into his mouth, and the aide beside him ate one too. Not long after, their eyes went round at the fullness that washed over them. Only moments ago their stomachs had been empty; now, as if that hunger had been a lie, they felt as sated as if they'd finished a whole meal.
"This is... incredible."
They were soldiers. They understood exactly what these cherry tomatoes were worth.
The same reaction broke out everywhere else the training was underway. Koreans drilling in other sectors were pulling out cherry tomatoes instead of combat rations, and unlike Kim Taekju, they hadn't packed them by accident — they'd brought them on purpose. Eating a Starlight Cherry Tomato beat choking down combat rations on the edge of their expiration date. Word was that the gaps in the rations currently being issued were already being filled with the tomatoes.
Plenty of people would rather spend their own money than eat rations with no flavor to speak of. A Starlight Cherry Tomato meant giving up the pleasure of real food, but there was no way to chase fine dining in the middle of training. Filling your stomach was plenty.
They were training alongside the U.S. military, which meant the Americans got a chance to try the cherry tomatoes the Korean troops were eating.
"Something this small packs that many calories?"
Even the skeptical Americans changed their minds after a single tomato.
"Soft, the taste is just right, and it goes down easy."
The newest modern combat rations did bother with flavor, but the ones from not so long ago had barely managed to fill a stomach, taste be damned.
American soldiers of every rank, from the troops on the line to the command staff, revised their opinions the moment they tried a Starlight Cherry Tomato. U.S. combat rations weren't on the bad end of the scale, but set against the convenience and the satiety of a Starlight Cherry Tomato, they simply couldn't compete.
"Adjutant. I'll need a report drafted for higher command."
"Yes, sir. What should the report cover?"
"These Starlight Cherry Tomatoes. I think they'd be worth supplying to our forces. They'd be a real help to the troops running field operations on the front line."
He heard the same from the soldiers under his own command. Everyone who had tried them had nothing but praise.
Kim Sehee was, as ever, deep in a chat with Hana. On the desk in her office sat a frame holding Hana's photo, and it was to her, mid-conversation, that her secretary brought news from a thoroughly unexpected quarter.
"The U.S. Department of Defense wants a contract with our Starlight Food?"
No matter how well Starlight Food was doing at home, comparing it to America was almost an insult. Even the most successful conglomerate in Korea was, from America's point of view, an ant that could be crushed whenever they pleased.
Physically and economically alike, Korea didn't amount to a single hair on America's head. A call from that country's Department of Defense left Kim Sehee tense for no good reason she could name. She had no idea what business had brought them, but she wasn't truly worried.
Their ties with Wilmart had given Starlight Food a connection in America — a very thick one, not the sort that snapped easily. And thanks to Tangle, they had the bald of the United States behind them as well.