Hana and the Dinosaur Plush
"So good! So good!"
I patted my stomach, wearing a thoroughly satisfied look. Today's school lunch had been excellent—genuinely delicious. I could say with confidence that no elementary school in Seoul served a meal this good. As expected of the Chairman.
"Hana, you went back for seconds. You sure you're okay?"
"Seriously. Did Hana always eat this much?"
There hadn't been enough noodles in the jajangmyeon, so I'd gone back for another helping. Maybe it was because the cafeteria had switched to feeding one grade at a time, but by the time I finished eating, there wasn't even a line left. Normally the place would have been packed shoulder to shoulder. So I'd carried my bowl over and asked for more noodles.
And of course they'd given them to me. There was no way our school was going to run short on ingredients now. Earlier, the teacher had said the cost of the ingredients that went into lunch had gone up two or three times over. The old per-student lunch budget had been only about five thousand won; these days, she said, they were spending close to fifteen thousand.
From the Chairman's point of view, that was pocket change. The whole school didn't even have six hundred students, so even if the lunch budget tripled, the difference came to only a few hundred million won at most. I'd heard that, to the Chairman, a few hundred million was the kind of money you tucked into a pocket and forgot about.
She'd told me herself that our Starlight Food earned tens of trillions of won a year. What was even more staggering was that the company was still growing. So I could accept her generosity without a shred of guilt. And since she'd said that none of this growth would have happened without me in the first place, I could take her gifts with my head held high.
"The jajangmyeon was just that good!" I said, gazing at my spotlessly empty bowl.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"Hana, you've got jajang sauce on your mouth!"
Yumi pulled out a compact mirror and held it up for me. I could see myself in the glass—black sauce smeared all around my lips. My face went scarlet. I'd eaten exactly like a little kid. Even actual children these days were mature enough not to get jajang sauce all over their mouths...
"Aaah!"
I yanked out a tissue and scrubbed furiously at my mouth. That insolent jajang sauce! Jiyu and Yumi watched the whole performance and laughed. So much for an adult's dignity. I'd been sure they thought of me as grown-up.
Of course, Jiyu and Yumi had never once thought Hana was grown-up at all.
"Hana, wanna hang out today? I heard a really good coin karaoke opened in our neighborhood!"
I could actually go out and play with Jiyu and Yumi now. Before, Maru's schedule meant I couldn't stay out long and had to head home, but ever since we'd switched buildings, playing until evening was no problem at all. And if Maru couldn't come get me, some other staff member could, so my life outside had gotten a whole lot more comfortable.
"Sorry! I've got plans with the Chairman today, so I don't think I can! Let's play tomorrow!"
But today I'd already promised to spend time with the Chairman, so I couldn't go with them. It wasn't as if I played with her every day. She was busy—she met with people all the time, but setting aside time and making an actual appointment like this was rare.
She was, after all, the entrepreneur running the most promising company in the country.
"Really? Aww..."
"I wanted to hang out with Hana!"
Even so, Jiyu and Yumi didn't cling. They understood my situation well enough. I waved goodbye, and they waved back until they disappeared from view. Then I headed home to my hometown—which was, of course, the building.
It was close enough to walk now. I used to need a car to reach the Starlight Research building, but after the move there was no need at all. Living near school had its perks.
"Chairman!"
"Hana! Did you like today's lunch?"
"I loved it, Chairman!"
I burrowed into her arms and chattered on about everything that had happened that day. She listened closely to every word. I was smiling so happily as I talked that the smile never left her face either.
On top of that, she'd prepared a wonderful present.
"Ta-da!"
"Whoooa!"
I circled the gift she'd set out for me. It was enormous—a dinosaur plush so majestic you could feel it just by looking, and exactly my size. I hugged the dinosaur tight and showered the Chairman with thanks.
Pleased herself, she pulled out her camera and photographed me clutching it. I struck a pose so she'd have an easy shot.
Only later would I find out that the picture of me and the dinosaur plush had become the wallpaper on her phone.
Kim Sehee had scoured the country for land fit for a ranch, and nothing had quite satisfied her. South Korea was simply too small. The plots in Gyeonggi Province and the surrounding area were far too cramped for raising livestock.
So, with no other choice, she turned to land in Gangwon Province. The province was mountainous, but it had a fair amount of flat ground, and—more importantly—the land there was easy to buy.
A plan to raise everything in one place, though, never came together. No matter where she looked, there was nowhere in the country large enough to keep tens of thousands of cattle on a single ranch.
Reluctantly, Kim Sehee decided to establish several ranches instead. It would cost a little more, but there was no real alternative. It helped to think of it as trading Gyeonggi's expensive land prices for Gangwon's cheap ones. Gangwon, after all, had plenty of idle land, and few people came and went there. She chose to look on the bright side. Wouldn't cattle raised on Gangwon's clean air and clean water taste even better? And if they were fed the rice straw from Starlight rice on top of that, the meat would be better still.
Even so, spreading the ranches across multiple sites still felt like a shame the more she thought about it. She'd heard that Australia had ranches larger than the whole of South Korea—that a single cattle ranch could be bigger than her entire country. Hearing it, she could barely imagine the scale. She envied a nation that could devote that much land to pasture alone.
If she had owned a tract that size, she might have been able to supply all of South Korea's beef by herself.
On land the size of the country, you could raise several million head and still have room to spare. You'd have to drive out to slaughter them, but that hardly mattered. She'd even heard that some Australian ranches were so vast that cattle sometimes died of old age before anyone ever caught them. Raised free-range, they were butchered only when beef was actually needed.
Australia was practically the size of a continent. South Korea was painfully small.
But what could she do? She'd already been born here. And Kim Sehee was the heir of a chaebol family, the kind of life everyone dreamed of. There was a truckload of citizens who would look at her and call themselves jealous.
In any case, the ranches were going up quickly. The moment word got out that several would be built across Gangwon, the local officials rolled up their sleeves and pitched in. At the scale she had in mind, the ranches would generate a floating population of nearly ten thousand people in the province.
The staff living on-site alone might number in the thousands. Add everyone helping to build the ranches and everyone handling transport, and while it might not quite hit ten thousand, something close to that many people would be coming and going through Gangwon.
It would breathe life into a local economy that had survived on the military alone. True, the shops out there had a bit of a reputation for gouging, so the boost might not amount to much—but it was still true that a lot of people would be passing through.
Once she'd confirmed that construction was underway, Kim Sehee went around inspecting the sites herself. In her heart of hearts she wanted to buy Jeju Island outright, clear everyone off it, and raise cattle there, but that, regrettably, was impossible.
Jeju was land Kim Sehee could never have. She didn't have the money for it, and realistically there was no way to drive out the people who already lived there.