Let's Go See the Pandas
"I'm stuffed!"
"Me too!"
Maybe it was the hot dogs, but our little party sat slumped on a nearby bench, clutching bellies gone round as drums. A child's stomach was absurdly small. Back when I'd been a man, I could have eaten those hot dogs and still been hungry.
"Where are we going next, Hana?"
Jiyu asked. At that I pulled the amusement park map from my pocket and spread it wide, and like treasure hunters plotting the next dig, we set about choosing where to go.
"How about we ride some more rides?"
As if she'd already forgotten the hot dogs, Jiyu said something completely unreasonable. I answered with a straight face. She might have been blessed with an iron stomach, but I wasn't. Climb onto a ride with a belly this swollen, and I'd be throwing up in every color of the rainbow.
"We already rode a ton!"
The moment I said it with a solemn face, Jiyu shrank in on herself. Even she had to admit that rides, in our current state, were a bad idea. Hadn't we been riding since morning precisely so we could put away a proper meal?
"Hnng..."
Yumi, sitting beside us, made the little sound as she watched. She'd clearly had a place in mind for a while.
"How about here? I want to see the pandas!"
She tapped a spot on the map with her finger. Panda World — the place where the pandas were kept. Wasn't it somewhere everyone who came to the park wanted to visit? They even said the revenue there had shot up enormously.
Add up the fees paid to China for the loan of the pandas, the cost of raising them, and all the rest, and the park still came out ahead. That said everything. I'd wanted to see them myself, so I nodded along with Yumi. Beside me, Jiyu's eyes sparkled; she liked the idea too.
"I wanna see the pandas too!"
She bounced up and down as she said it. To think she'd get that excited... With our destination set, we headed for Panda World. It was a bit of a walk from here, but that was fine. We had perfectly sturdy legs!
And I'd once marched tens of kilometers, so a distance like this was nothing at all. Back then I'd been hauling an incredibly heavy pack, too. I couldn't even remember how I'd managed those marches. I think I'd just stared at the sky the whole way...
"Huff... huff..."
I braced a hand against the wall and gasped for breath. It hadn't seemed that far, and yet I was utterly spent. To be this weak already... I was going to have to start exercising. Watching me, Jiyu and Yumi sounded worried.
"Hana, you okay?"
Yumi said it while patting my back. I nodded to show I was fine. I didn't actually speak — I needed the air.
"Hana looks really tired!"
At Jiyu's words I hurried to act like nothing was wrong. Getting worn out from a walk this short was ridiculous. Fortunately, after a little rest, I started to feel my body settle.
"Look at that line!"
At Yumi's words I took in the queue ahead. So many people had come to see the pandas that we'd be waiting two hours. Pandas really were popular. We decided to wait anyway. The one mercy was that visitors weren't trickling in one by one — dozens surged through at once, so the line shrank quickly.
Even so, having to wait two hours when that many people were going in at a time made no sense. I'd heard that some expensive admission ticket let you walk right in without waiting, and I started to wonder if the unlimited pass had been a waste. With the money I was carrying, I could have bought tickets for Jiyu and Yumi too and still had plenty left over.
Well, the water was already spilled. All we could do was wait. Still, talking with Jiyu and Yumi, the line seemed to melt away in no time.
Two hours later we were finally allowed into the enclosure where the pandas could be seen. I'd watched them plenty on YouTube, but never in person, and I was looking forward to the real thing. Following a staff member's guidance, I stepped inside.
Nationwide, Idaya was supplying Starlight Coffee beans. Now that they'd secured enough volume, they had beans to spare not only for Seoul, where the people were, but for the major cities out in the provinces as well. And they were already thinking of opening still more cafés.
Not just in the big regional cities — they had the bold notion of planting Idaya stores even in quiet country towns, the way a certain famous hamburger chain did. The sort of idea other coffee shops wouldn't even dare to entertain.
At any rate, they were already selling drinks made with Starlight Coffee beans as far out as the provinces. The regional managers could feel the rising customer counts in their bones, but there was a separate place that showed, in hard numbers, exactly how far those counts had climbed.
"Double... triple... quadruple...!"
In the sales department at Idaya headquarters — the office that managed nationwide revenue — Assistant Manager Lee Jintae stared at his monitor and couldn't hold back his awe. In all the years since he'd joined the company, he had never seen a graph like this.
"How did the numbers get like this in a single week..."
Assistant Manager Lee shot up from his seat. He had to deliver the good news. Director Moon Jiseop was standing there waiting for his report, after all. Set an assistant manager's rank beside a director's, and the gap was heaven and earth.
"Idaya's sales... our sales are up four times from last week!"
"Waaaaah—!"
At Lee Jintae's words the sales department erupted in cheers. Even if Idaya's revenue was a drop in the bucket beside Sturbucks, a climb like this was heartening — four times what they'd already been making. It was by no means a small increase.
Director Moon Jiseop smiled with satisfaction and applauded. This was a result he himself had produced by bringing in Starlight Food's coffee beans. A result that carried him one step higher still among the executives.
And what pleased him most was the certainty that, with sales rising this far, the rival coffee companies' revenues had naturally fallen. Coffee sales were a zero-sum game. Drink Idaya's coffee, and some other café's takings dropped on their own.
A customer fully satisfied with Idaya's coffee had no reason to drink anyone else's. The reverse, of course, held just as true.
"Congratulations, Director!"
The head of the sales department rubbed his hands together and sang Moon Jiseop's praises. The director listened to the flattery, then quietly raised a hand. Good news was good news, but they still had a long way to go.
If they meant to claim the number-one spot in domestic coffee, a brutal road still lay ahead. For a start, the gap between Idaya and Sturbucks — the country's top coffee chain by revenue — was more than tenfold. When Sturbucks was posting three trillion won, Idaya was barely clinging to two hundred billion.
Without the Starlight Coffee beans, it would have been David against Goliath. They wouldn't even have qualified as opponents. When revenues differed by more than ten times, thinking you stood a chance was absurd.
Until they'd adopted the Starlight beans, they'd had no choice but to hold their breath and chase Sturbucks's footprints. Not anymore. They no longer had to follow those footprints — they'd obtained a weapon that could put them out in front. And that weapon was razor-sharp, its edge keen enough that even Goliath, even Sturbucks, would have to feel the threat.
The moment Director Moon Jiseop raised his hand, the office fell silent. Wasn't this the influence a director held? Perhaps it was for power like this that people burned to climb. Power was terribly sweet. Weren't there those who would lay down their lives rather than let it slip away?
Director Moon Jiseop used every bit of authority he'd been given. Rather than getting giddy over a windfall, he laid out the road ahead with precision. Set the frame, and those below would build the rest. That was a boss's job.