We Had So Much Fun
"Hurry up and get over here!"
The teacher had the phone pressed to her ear, still calling the children who hadn't shown up yet. No matter where you went, there were always kids who simply wouldn't listen.
In the old days there would have been no way to track them down, but everyone had a cell phone now, so finding them was only a matter of time. Sleep kept tugging at me, and my head nodded again and again. I'd moved around too much today; drowsiness came drifting in, soft and insistent. Jiyu and Yumi took one look at me and burst out laughing.
"Hana, you're sleepy already?"
"Hana's a sleepyhead!"
I didn't pay the slightest attention to whatever Jiyu and Yumi were saying. It was only kids fussing, after all. I was still fighting off sleep when the last of the children finally gathered, and the teacher smiled at the lot of us.
"Well? Did everyone have a good time?"
"Yes!"
They'd clearly had a wonderful day; the answering shout was enormous. They'd been running around from morning till night and still seemed bursting with energy. Children that age were living Energizer bunnies, carrying an endless supply of it wherever they went. I had an adult's mind in this body, and I was thoroughly worn out. Once the sun went down, everything in me seemed to go slack and heavy.
At home it hardly mattered. Turn the lights on and sleep stayed away. Outside was another story. I couldn't exactly switch the lights on out here. I yawned wide and waited for the teacher to finish. She went through the children one by one, checking carefully that no one was hurt.
These days plenty of parents would call a teacher in a full-blown panic over the smallest scrape their child picked up, so she had no choice. Times had changed. Saying so made me sound like an old fogey, but back in my day you couldn't say a word even if a switch left bruises across your backside.
I'd heard somewhere that if your parents found those bruises, they scolded you instead—what on earth did you do to make the teacher hit you? The one who got hit was the one in the wrong. There must have been justified discipline mixed in, but thinking back on those times, I remembered there were plenty of bad teachers too.
At any rate, once the teacher's inspection was finished, we got ready to head home.
"Everyone on the bus!"
Only after I'd dropped into a seat on the bus home could I finally let the tension go. The moment I sat down, sleep came creeping back over me. Jiyu and Yumi plastered themselves against either side of me. They insisted I smelled wonderful, but I, the owner of the body in question, couldn't smell a thing. If I'd been wearing some special perfume, I might have understood.
I didn't use perfume at all. Shampoo and body wash when I bathed, and that was the extent of it. For lotion I simply used whatever Starlight Cosmetics sent over. It was a lotion that sold out constantly, of course, but they never failed to deliver exactly as much as I needed for myself.
Probably because I was the one who could make it. Without me, Starlight Lotion would have had to close its doors. I'd heard there wasn't even a substitute. Rocking along inside the rattling bus, I shut my eyes and wished for nothing but home.
I had no idea how long I'd been out when I felt the bus come to a stop. Coming to, I found Jiyu and Yumi dead asleep on either side of me. They'd spent the whole day on their feet, and in the end even they couldn't hold out. I looked ahead. Total wipe. Every child had a head tipped against a seat, fast asleep. The teacher swept her eyes over them once.
Then she clapped hard and raised her voice.
"Rise and shine! We're at school, so everybody up!"
Clapping and voice landed together, and the children began to stir one by one. I woke Jiyu and Yumi beside me. Jiyu was sleeping with a trail of drool at her mouth, while Yumi dozed with her lips pursed like a little princess—two completely opposite pictures.
"Mmm...?"
Jiyu and Yumi opened their eyes, glanced at the scenery outside, and realized we'd reached the school.
"We're here!"
Jiyu shot a hand into the air and bounced to her feet. Children were already climbing down. I got up too and prepared to step outside, meaning to wait until the rush had passed and get off at my own pace. Right now they were pouring out in a crowd, and it was a mess.
Once the last of them had gone, I stepped down from the bus, and Jiyu and Yumi came trailing after me.
The teacher was checking that everyone had arrived in one piece. Buses from the other classes had pulled in as well. It was past six, late enough that the schoolyard lay quiet. On an ordinary day the upper graders would have been tearing around out there.
"All right, everyone go straight home! No detours! Promise?"
"Waaaaah!"
There was no chance that promise would hold. The instant they heard the dismissal, the children scattered in every direction.
I got ready to leave as well. I'd already called Maru when we boarded the bus at the amusement park, so she ought to be here any minute.
"Hana~"
Jiyu and Yumi were stuck to my side again. I could tell exactly what they wanted, so I turned to them.
"Want a ride?"
"Yeah, yeah!"
Taking the bus now would have been a nightmare. Hundreds of children were leaving school at the very same moment. We'd probably have to let two or three buses go by before we could even squeeze on. That many kids depended on public transit.
So of course Jiyu and Yumi had their eyes on the car Maru was bringing. I didn't mind, and I meant to go with them. We were headed the same way home anyway; I could just drop them off along the way. We waited and chatted, and before long Maru's car appeared in the distance.
"Hana's the best!"
Jiyu and Yumi climbed in with enormous grins. A car of your own really did make life easier. Public transit left you wishing for something better now and then.
And so the long, long day came to an end. I meant to get home, wash up quickly, and fall straight into bed. The fatigue from wandering the amusement park was still piled on me—the kind a good night's sleep would wash away.
Kim Jaechang threw himself into making makgeolli with Starlight rice. From the nuruk—the fermentation starter—all the way through to the ferment itself, he was only swapping out the rice, so there wasn't much that ought to change. He was on the final step now, pouring in water to dilute the brew.
His father, Kim Chunil, stood beside him wearing a look of pure amazement.
"The smell alone is a knockout, isn't it, son?"
It was definitely a finer aroma than anything they got from ordinary rice. Kim Jaechang nodded.
"It's really good. Honestly, if it's makgeolli ten times as expensive, it ought to be at least this good!"
They filled something like a great vat with the finished brew. They hadn't used much rice, and the yield showed it—enough for about two hundred bottles, and then it would be gone.
To an ordinary person, or to a small retailer, that might look like plenty. A company that actually made makgeolli would take one look at two hundred bottles and snort. A volume like that wouldn't even register.
Tens of thousands of bottles a day was the baseline. Two hundred bottles wouldn't last a day. They wouldn't last an hour. None of that mattered to Kim Jaechang. How much could you sell out of a little shop like this anyway?
He bottled the finished makgeolli.
"So this is makgeolli that costs forty thousand won a bottle!"
The price had come out higher than he'd expected—about thirty dollars a bottle. He'd figured on something closer to thirty thousand won, but they'd gotten less makgeolli out of the rice than he'd planned. Of course, if he didn't take Hana's cut, he could have held the price in the low thirties. No merchant sold at a loss, though.
If you made something, leaving a profit was what made you a merchant.
"But what are you going to do with it, Dad?"
His father had a wide network of acquaintances, so even staring at several hundred bottles, Kim Jaechang wasn't especially worried. Hand them out to people his father knew around the neighborhood and they'd be gone inside a week. That, of course, assumed he wasn't charging for the makgeolli.
"I owe a few people a favor. Figured I'd treat them."
"If that's what you want."
Even if Kim Jaechang tried to talk him out of it, he knew his father would end up treating the neighborhood on his own. Taking a loss didn't matter. The hit from missing a single day's production could be covered with money they'd already set aside. Running a brewery wasn't a job that failed to make money, and from where Kim Jaechang stood, he could shoulder it easily enough.
"First, let's have a glass ourselves, son."
"I'll get things ready, then."
Makgeolli on its own didn't amount to much of a meal, so Kim Jaechang set to work on the side dishes at once. His cooking was excellent, and before long a scallion pancake came out piping hot. Steam curling off a fresh pajeon, makgeolli beside it—this was heaven.
"Here. Have a drink."
Kim Chunil poured for his son with one hand. Kim Jaechang received the bowl politely in both, turned his head aside, and drank.
The moment the makgeolli touched his tongue, Kim Jaechang's eyes went wide at a flavor he had never tasted before.
"This is actually delicious, Dad."
"What did I tell you? Make it with Starlight rice and it can't go wrong."
"Even so, I never thought it would taste like this..."
That day Kim Chunil and Kim Jaechang drank until the makgeolli left them thoroughly plastered.