School Lunch, Restored
"School lunch is getting healthier?"
"So Byeolbit Elementary's lunches are finally going back to normal..."
I ignored the chatter buzzing around me and kept talking with Jiyu and Yumi.
"They say the cafeteria's completely different now?"
"I know. I can't wait!"
I was every bit as excited, wondering what kind of lunch they had come up with. From what I'd heard, the chairman said they'd hired a famous hotel chef and taken on more staff...
When I tried to press for more, she only smiled and told me it was better to experience it myself, so I didn't ask again. If I'd really insisted, she probably would have told me—but that felt a little much. I'd know soon enough if I just waited a day.
"All right, everyone, line up and off we go~"
The teacher clapped to pull the children's attention back, and they trailed after her like ducklings. I followed too, not that there was any real chance of getting lost.
"Whoa!"
We gasped the moment we reached the cafeteria doors. Through the glass, the room looked nothing like it had before, and a delicious smell already seemed to be drifting out. The teacher ushered us inside.
"Whoa!"
A display the size of a billboard stood just inside the entrance, with photos of today's menu shining on it. They handed out a monthly menu sheet, but seeing the actual dishes photographed like this wasn't bad at all.
The children kept gasping. The screen was impressive, but I liked the interior even more. Where the old cafeteria had been dingy and dim with age, this one had been made completely bright.
The wallpaper alone was a fine, faintly pink affair, and huge glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs were stuck up here and there between the panels. My eyes lit up the moment I saw them. Jiyu and Yumi caught the look on my face.
"Look at all those glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs Hana loves!"
"Right? Her eyes are already spinning!"
I cleared my throat and dragged my gaze off the dinosaurs and onto the two of them. I'd let on just how happy I was, right there in front of the other kids, and I already regretted showing Jiyu and Yumi a side of me that embarrassing. I was supposed to carry an adult's dignity. What would they think of me if I kept acting like this?
They'd probably decide I was carrying on like a third-grader. Someone with a grown-up's mind had no business showing children a face like that.
While I was busy thinking it over, the teacher was kindly walking everyone through the renovated cafeteria. The children wandered this way and that, listening, and Jiyu, Yumi, and I did the same as we took in the explanation.
The short version was that the menu had doubled. Split into a Course A and a Course B, there were now two lunches to enjoy—though you still had to choose one. Even so, having a choice was a good thing.
If Course A didn't appeal, you ate Course B, and the reverse held just as well. If both were a letdown you'd have no choice but the snack shop, but looking at today's menu, I couldn't imagine feeling that way.
After the meal they were even serving something to drink for dessert—tea, sikhye, that sweet rice punch, and the like. We clapped and cheered. We had at least three more years of school lunch ahead of us, so a change this good was very much in our favor.
"Then shall we all go back to the start and choose what we're eating?"
At the teacher's direction we returned to the entrance, where I hesitated between the two menus. One side was delicious Korean dishes; the other was Western food and noodles. I settled on Course B—jajangmyeon, black-bean noodles—then turned and stole a glance at Jiyu and Yumi.
"What are you and Yumi getting, Jiyu...?"
I asked them quietly. They looked at me and smiled.
"Today we'll eat whatever Hana wants!"
"Me too!"
"Really?"
I laughed. Today I actually had the chance to eat good jajangmyeon. Without hesitating, I stepped into the Course B line, and Jiyu and Yumi followed right behind me.
Kim Sehee was expanding the business one careful step at a time. Business was a strange thing: starting out was hard, but the moment a single product took off, the growth was explosive. What had begun with green tea was now pushing all the way into beef—and all of it, really, thanks to Hana alone.
The war chest, at any rate, was more than full. In America, Tangle was selling out faster than they could stock it, so much so that fakes good for nothing but side effects were everywhere. Grow a Tangle anywhere else and it was a complete waste, but with so many people trying anyway, the backlash was inevitable. Just as people ran a machine without ever reading the manual, buyers planted Tangle in front of their houses, watched it shoot up lush and green, and dreamed of living off their own supply—only to face reality soon enough.
A Tangle grown in your own front yard tasted absolutely foul, and it did nothing at all for hair loss. At Walmart, meanwhile, the real thing had already settled in as a dependable cash cow, and it had been on the shelves for barely a month.
The sales were so ferocious that Walmart was even considering a price hike, though that would require Starlight Food's permission. Tangle's runaway success had every other distributor watching Walmart and swallowing hard. Without the exclusive-sales clause, it was the sort of product they would have come charging after with their eyes rolled back.
So Walmart was careful not to ruffle Starlight Food. By company size and revenue, Starlight Food was plainly the junior partner—but not an ordinary one. Like TSMC, it was a super-supplier that made even the party holding the leverage watch its step.
Kim Sehee, for her part, was already thinking of putting that overflowing cash to work somewhere else. Simply piling money up did a company no favors, and she had a promise to keep to Hana. She was going to have to earn still more.
"Then you're planning to enter the domestic market with hanwoo?"
Taking the home market first was indeed the sensible move, and Starlight Food was already growing its share step by step. Starlight Grapes had already claimed more than half the domestic market, and that in almost no time at all. The company was swallowing Korea's grape market the way a monkfish swallows its prey.
For ordinary vineyards it was a tsunami they had no hope of outrunning. The prices were similar, but nothing could match Starlight Grapes for flavor or juice, and domestic farms were closing one after another. Kim Sehee was at least showing a measure of mercy by holding the volume in check—though she fully intended to export whatever was left.
If this was the reaction at home, she didn't need to look to know what kind of frenzy it would cause overseas.
Rice was a different story. Domestic law, regrettably, kept her from selling it in Korea. They were working around it by selling rice to Japan and re-exporting it back, but that couldn't amount to even one percent of the domestic supply. There was, however, a market reaping the spillover.
In Japan, the share of households eating Starlight Rice was said to be climbing fast. Even Koshihikari, a variety famous there for its flavor, was nothing but a commoner before Starlight Rice. Riding on the back of Karasu Sushi, Starlight Rice was slowly taking over the Japanese market. The government might try to pick a fight later, but by then it would already be too late. Ordinary Japanese people were already addicted to Starlight Rice.
"I'm thinking of the American market rather than the domestic one."
"America?"
"Yes."
Her reasoning was simple. She barely even glanced at the domestic market. How much hanwoo could a home market of fifty million people really eat? Aiming at the vast American market was far more efficient, and American salaries ran three or four times Korea's. That meant purchasing power to spare.
She wasn't abandoning Korea entirely. She only meant to use it as a brief test run on the way into America.
The straw from Starlight Rice was, after all, a feed beyond compare, and there was already one farm that had seen what feeding Starlight straw could do.
The beef that came out of it was staggeringly delicious—good enough to bring even hanwoo to its knees.
Kim Sehee pictured Americans eating the hanwoo raised by Starlight Food. The thought alone sent a thrill through her.