I Hate Sunscreen
"Uuugh..."
I was cradled in Maru's arms while she squeezed out sunscreen and worked it into my face, concentrating on my soft cheeks. They were like fresh rice cakes, squishing this way and that in her grip, and because they still belonged to a child they had a springy give to them. I poked at them myself sometimes, when I was alone.
I thrashed to get free of her hold, but escaping in this child's body was a distant hope. The sheer difference in size between an adult and a child meant I didn't stand a chance.
"Phew!"
Only once the sunscreen was fully on could I finally wriggle loose, and I pulled a sulky face. The stuff felt strange, and right now I looked as if a white ghost had appeared. My skin was pale enough already, but the cream was paler still—like BB cream smeared on to the absolute limit.
I fled from Maru. Stay in her clutches any longer and there was no telling what she would do to me. In the greenhouse I set about tending the crops, though there wasn't much for me to do. The plants I raised killed the weeds on their own. The way pines and plants like them smother everything growing nearby, mine had the same trait.
So I didn't have to weed or fuss over the fiddly chores an ordinary farmer would. From where I stood, that was a blessing. Less tiresome work.
Watering can in hand, I sprinkled diligently, not forgetting to drop strands of my hair into the water. I made my rounds and watered busily. About once a week was enough, and they grew perfectly well on their own—whether that was normal, I couldn't say. The plants I raised had the stubborn life of cacti in a desert.
Transplant them to Africa, and within a few decades the place might turn into a forest like the Amazon in Brazil. These were plants that could thrive even in the Sahara.
Maru was watching Hana farm with all her heart, though it was debatable whether what Hana was doing even deserved to be called farming.
If other farmers saw someone working the way Hana did, they would glare and declare:
Crops were supposed to be the crystallization of a farmer's blood and sweat, but what Hana grew looked no different from a houseplant on a windowsill. In other words, it took almost no effort at all.
Even to Maru, what Hana was doing looked like playing house. The ability that child possessed might truly be cheating. The climate crisis was only deepening, and if they succeeded in studying the power held in Hana's hair and copying it, a Nobel Prize would be theirs for the taking.
It wasn't only the plants that came from Hana's teeth that were extraordinary. Plants raised on water in which her hair had been dissolved were extraordinary too. They had an absurd resistance to pests and blight, the fruit they bore was enormous, they tasted wonderful, and they had so many other virtues it was hard to list them all. Their growth wasn't quite as broken as the plants from her teeth, but even these advantages alone were ridiculous.
Maru tried to imagine farming with water that had Hana's hair dissolved in it. Then this Earth, sunk in climate crisis, could hold out just fine. Unless temperatures shot up by dozens of degrees, they could easily produce enough food for all of humanity. Existing crops, people said, would go extinct if the temperature rose even a little. In a way, Hana's very existence might be a blessing bestowed upon the planet.
Early on there had even been talk of planting her in the ground and pulling out her hair, but Maru didn't want to imagine it. Hana was such a cute child. How could anyone handle her like a psychopath?
"Maru, help me~"
While Maru was lost in useless thoughts, Hana called to her from across the way. Maru shot to her feet and ran over. Hana was holding an enormous watermelon.
"Let's eat this with the people from the research institute!"
The watermelons Hana produced boasted a taste like pure honey, a sweetness no ordinary melon could match. Maru nodded and took the one Hana was holding. It was so big that even she struggled to lift it, and she wondered how Hana had managed to carry it at all.
And so, with the researchers who had come running at the news that Hana was there, Maru got to eat delicious watermelon. Seated on the wooden platform, it tasted like pure honey, and as they ate in its shade the song of cicadas swelled until the air was full of it.
"F-five hundred thousand head?"
The section chief couldn't help but shout. There were about three and a half million hanwoo—Korea's native cattle—in the country, and this was nearly twenty percent of them. An astronomical number for any private party to raise.
Of course, Kim Sehee had named the maximum. Realistically, once you accounted for the ranches they had prepared and everything else, only ten to twenty thousand head were possible. They wouldn't even have enough rice straw to feed five hundred thousand cattle. But you had to aim high, didn't you? That was why she had told the official their target. It was far more convenient to declare five hundred thousand now and negotiate than to say ten thousand and change the story later.
"Yes. For now, that's the number we're aiming to raise. The ranches we've prepared won't be enough, but I do think you have to set your sights high."
The section chief broke into a sweat. Listening to Kim Sehee, a private company meant to monopolize beef amounting to nearly twenty percent of the hanwoo market. It was absurd.
"Chairwoman! It is absolutely not that I dislike Starlight Food, or anything of the sort! But you cannot increase the hanwoo headcount by this much! Even now, people are fighting over whether there are already too many and whether the numbers ought to be cut."
He spoke within the bounds of what he considered reasonable. He himself was reaping handsome benefits from Starlight Food's products. The full head of hair he currently enjoyed was thanks to Tangle, made by Starlight Food. Without Tangle, he would have had to wear an unbearably uncomfortable wig.
He never wanted to go back to those days. Let the wind blow even a little hard, and he had to clutch the crown of his head and fret over whether the thing would fly off. Now no gale bothered him. He could enjoy a cool breeze with his hands in his pockets.
But public duty and private feeling had to be kept apart. From the standpoint of a civil servant in livestock, Kim Sehee's entry into the beef market was an alarm bell. Just as domestic beef was losing its edge, a dinosaur of the market had appeared. Starlight Food would mercilessly cut the small ranchers to pieces.
"Are you worried the domestic beef market will be smashed to pieces?"
Struck dead center, the section chief cleared his throat before he answered. Even so, this had to be stopped now. Put it off, and what a hoe could block today might not be stoppable later even with an excavator. Just as the first minutes mattered most with a fire, the early response here was everything.
"You understand perfectly. Hanwoo farms are having a very hard time these days. Please consider the position of farmers who must compete not only at home, but with foreign beef as well."
There had once been massive protests against American beef—demonstrations insisting that cattle stricken with disease must never be eaten. From the protesters' point of view, it was a fair concern. If the beef went wrong and the public fell ill, that would be a disaster. Through exemption clauses and fresh negotiations, they had produced results the demonstrators could accept to some degree. Even so, once you weighed the protests and the wider social backlash, people had assumed American beef would not sell much. Koreans were famously fond of food from their own soil, and the government had expected them to prefer domestic cattle.
But once word spread that foreign beef was cheap, and that its taste was by no means inferior to hanwoo, the public gradually began eating a great deal of it. At some point imported beef was closing in so fast that domestic hanwoo farms had to grow tense. At this rate, people might eat more foreign beef than hanwoo.
Kim Sehee crossed her legs.
"I'm not sure I see any reason we should do as the government says."
As she said, Starlight Food was a company that had not taken a single cent of government support.