I Want to Grow Taller
The interior construction and the redesign of the cafeteria were more or less finished. Set beside the old lunchroom, the new one belonged to another world entirely.
The patterns had been chosen for a child's eye, and the dinosaurs Hana loved had not been left out. They had even considered working in the characters from Little Magician Rumi, but that felt like a step too far, so they let it go.
The people who had worked the cafeteria were given raises and hired back on. They had been contract workers, so Kim Sehee converted them to full-time without hesitation, determined to win their will to work. These were the people who cooked Hana's meals. Fail to treat them properly, and she would have no face left to save.
She also wanted to be a gentle boss in Hana's eyes. She had no wish to become the kind of owner who wrung people dry by any means necessary just to push the numbers higher. Hana didn't care for that sort of thing either.
The nutritionist, though, and the cook who would assist her, were hired fresh.
"Are you here for the interview?"
A man who looked to be in his early forties stepped carefully into the room. His sturdy frame and the scars mapped across his hands made it plain he had spent many years in the kitchen.
"Yes. My name is Kang Taekgu."
The interviewer took him in and offered an easy smile.
"You can sit right here."
Kang Taekgu followed the instruction and lowered himself into the chair with a stiff, faintly nervous posture. In all honesty, a man his age ought to have been the one conducting the interview, not sitting through it. Society, however, was cold.
The interviewer glanced through the résumé and soon spoke with a smile.
"Is everything written here the truth?"
"Yes. There isn't a shred of falsehood in it."
The interviewer nodded.
"You've worked at a five-star hotel for over fifteen years, and you hold professional certifications in Korean, Chinese, and Western cuisine."
"Yes. A humble little career."
"Call that humble, and nobody in this industry has a career worth mentioning."
The mood of the interview was warm. It wasn't a pressure interview, and they were hiring for experience; both sides already understood what needed understanding.
"Incidentally, was there a reason you left the hotel?"
Kang Taekgu answered plainly.
"I have a child now, and the old hotel's paycheck wasn't nearly enough to live on, so I applied for the nutritionist post here."
Ordinarily, a school nutritionist's salary sat on the meager side. This posting, however, carried Kim Sehee's own judgment, and the terms were startling: seventy million won a year for the nutritionist of a single private school.
The conditions were every bit as tight. More than ten years of cooking experience was a given, and there were other requirements besides. Even so, for those conditions it was still an enormous salary, and the applicants had come in droves.
Kang Taekgu himself had rubbed his eyes and read the notice again. Fifteen years at a five-star hotel, and his own annual pay still fell short of forty million won. Salaries in the culinary trade were viciously low. Unless a cook hit it big, it was a hard way to make a living.
"Do you like children?"
"So many children love food like this..."
The interview had warmed through. Talking with the interviewer left Kang Taekgu with a good feeling.
And so he was able to bring the interview to a close. Then word came that he had passed.
With his acceptance in hand, Kang Taekgu reported to Starlight Elementary. He had spent the days before starting as the school nutritionist studying in earnest.
The moment he came through the main gate, solidly built guards stepped into his path. These were not the elderly watchmen of some quiet little facility. They were muscular enough to walk into a professional fighting ring without looking out of place. They were around his son's age, and he couldn't help but flinch.
"Do you happen to have an ID, or an employee badge?"
Kang Taekgu showed them the badge that had already been made for him. The guard compared the photo to his face, tapped it on a reader, and handed it back.
"When you come in from now on, just tap it here."
"Y-yes, sir!"
The children nearby passed the gate laughing, bright as anything, while every adult was put through a thorough identity check. The moment he arrived for his first day, Kang Taekgu felt the spirit drain right out of him.
"Nnngh...!"
I opened my eyes in a pitch-dark room again today. I used to wake before seven, but not anymore. The school was close now, so getting up at eight was more than enough. I only had to be there by nine.
In high school there had been a zero period, and I'd had to be in by eight. Elementary school had no such thing, which made life easy. Show up by eight and there was still nothing to do; my only task was to fold myself over the desk and sleep.
"It's seven..."
I turned on my phone, checked the time, smiled, and crawled back under the covers. I could sleep another hour. Time this sweet had to be spent asleep.
I shut my eyes, and the minutes slipped away again.
"Hana...!"
I opened my eyes through the fog of sleep to find Maru shaking me awake. I could have sworn I'd only closed them and opened them again, and yet a whole hour had passed. That was impossible. So I refused to open my eyes and burrowed deeper into the blanket.
But Maru had gotten stronger. She seized the blanket and lifted. I clamped down on it with no intention of ever letting go—and rose right up with it.
"Time to get up, Hana!"
In the end Maru's strength left me no choice but to wake. A round of wrestling first thing in the morning shook every last scrap of sleep out of me. I scratched at my bedhead and trudged into the bathroom. Seeing that, Maru went off to handle the rest of the preparations. The instant I confirmed she was gone, I dove back into bed.
"Ha-naaa!"
But the dive did not escape her.
"Waaah!"
All I was doing was going to school, and the day was already far too eventful. I had no choice but to be dragged off and scrubbed by Maru. I did tell her I could wash by myself, but the words never reached her ears. Of course, diving into bed the moment she vanished was partly my fault—but this was still excessive!
Under the crackling stare Maru fixed on me, though, I could only surrender. There was nothing to be done...
"Hana, heading to school?"
"Yep!"
The Boss was always standing in the building lobby when I left for school. Sometimes she wasn't there, but in nearly every case she was. If I had a day off, she would even come to my room. It was perfectly ordinary for the Boss to show up just to wake me, which was why I almost never slept past nine on the weekends.
Still, she did so much for me that I couldn't call it a bother. I couldn't begin to imagine how I'd be living if she weren't around. With nothing of my own, I'd probably be scraping by in some cramped little studio.
"Starting today, they're serving the lunches you wanted!"
"Really?"
"Mm-hm. The construction all finished yesterday."
"Ooh!"
I was astonished. Elementary schoolers were meant to eat cafeteria food; that was when it tasted the way it should. A week of packed lunches was starting to wear on me. Even Jiyu, who had sworn up and down that she would never get sick of them, was one step from that iron will giving way.
"When you say it like that, Boss, I can't help getting crazy excited!"
I waved to the Boss and stepped out of the building. The school was only a short walk from here. Sometimes I took the car, but most days I walked. Grow up riding in cars and never exercising, and you wouldn't get tall later on.
If I kept walking like this and steadily worked my growth plates, I would get taller. I was already on the small side next to the other kids; skip the walking and the exercise, and there was no chance I'd grow. People said height was mostly genetic, but I'd also heard there was definitely a part you could raise through exercise and other means.
Eat enough nutrients, exercise, sleep on time, and let the growth hormone do its work—then maybe I could get taller too. I was a girl, so something like five foot eleven was absolutely never going to happen, but I at least wanted to grow past the average for women.
This body did have good proportions, though, so it looked oddly long for its height. A short upper body and legs that ran on and on. A Westerner's body, you might say. Which made me wonder if, someday, my chest would get big the way a Westerner's did.
The thought of my chest getting big was dreadful. If I ended up as large as the Boss or Maru, wouldn't my shoulders ache? I was fairly sure I'd read somewhere that people with big chests ended up with chronic stiff shoulders.
I prayed, with all my heart, that my chest would not grow. The idea of going through life with a large chest left me feeling stifled.