I've Grown
I let out a soft, helpless little sigh and simply gave myself over to Bora's hands. The way her fingers found exactly the spots I wanted and worked them loose in a hurry was nothing short of a massage sent down from heaven.
When it was over, I stretched long and wide and let the morning begin. Waking up always left me a little foggy, but starting the day this refreshed put me in a wonderful mood.
Bora slipped out, and once I had the room to myself I dove onto the plush bed. Ordinarily I would have drawn the curtains and gone straight back to sleep, but my body needed sunlight, so I lay there in the warmth of it and drifted into a light doze.
The office staff hadn't come in yet, which meant a precious hour or two of honeyed sleep was mine for the taking. Bora never scolded me for napping like this.
I couldn't have had my eyes shut for long before a bustle outside pulled me awake. The office people had definitely arrived.
Pat-pat-pat-pat.
I pumped my short legs as fast as they would go and hurried out. Sure enough, my subordinates were already there. I was the captain, obviously, and everyone in this office existed to assist me. Now and then I suffered the delusion that I possessed no dignity whatsoever, but I was a democratic sort of captain, so little mistakes like that could naturally be overlooked.
The contrast was immediate. Haru was already hammering away at her keyboard, while Baldy lounged with a coffee as if he had all the time in the world. Bora was nowhere to be seen.
I planted myself right behind Haru and watched her pound the keys. She must have felt me there, because she turned.
"Hey, Hana!"
She greeted me like she was in a fine mood. I shot one hand up in answer, then shifted my gaze.
"Baldy, hi!"
"Yeah. Have a good one."
Baldy took a sip of his coffee and returned the greeting. As expected, I was a merciful boss. Where else would you find a superior who said hello to her employees first?
I asked Haru where Bora had gone. She set a finger to her chin and thought for a moment, but she clearly had no idea.
Empty-handed, I settled into Bora's seat and amused myself at the computer. The last time I'd played around I'd caused a serious accident, so I made sure there was nothing like a glass of water on the desk before I started tapping the keys. I was deep in battle with the password, trying to reach the desktop, when I felt someone stroke my head.
"Bora!"
She had returned to her desk when I wasn't looking. I beamed and welcomed her, though whatever she'd been through had left her looking a little tired.
"Hey, Hana~"
She scooped me into her arms and eased me toward the chair beside hers. I had already slipped into full carry-me mode, so I quietly surrendered to her hands. Bora set me down in the seat next to her and started typing. I stared, mouth open, as she blew straight past the lock screen I had failed to crack hundreds of times.
I sat and quietly watched her work. Lunch would come first, and studying only after that, so I had time to spare. I was staring so openly that Bora glanced my way, then turned to look at me properly.
Had something about me changed?
She stroked my head and studied my hair up close.
"The color looks deeper somehow..."
My hair was a pale green. But just as Bora said, it was definitely darker than before—maybe from that time I'd been sick, though I couldn't be sure. The change was slight, but it was there.
Bora abandoned what she was doing, scooped me up, and carried me off somewhere.
The research lab, probably?
Dragged along in her arms, I was put through a simple examination and came out the other side with stronger hair. From what I half-caught, the effect my hair carried had roughly doubled. In other words, a single yield that used to make four hundred thousand cups of Starlight Green Tea could now make eight hundred thousand.
Word was that Kim Sehee danced for joy when she heard the news.
"Haa..."
Stepping out of the office, Kim Seyoung couldn't help a sigh of relief. Whether it was the affection between sisters or some piece of good news, Kim Sehee had received her with a smile. After that she had said the whole secret was simply adding a special ingredient, and told her to go to the Starlight Research Institute. Compared with most executives from cosmetics groups, who came and left with nothing to show for it, that alone was a blessing.
Kim Seyoung got in her car and headed for the institute. The midsize sedan rolled up with a soft hush of tires, and guards who had already received word came out to greet her. Inside the great building, a lobby welcomed her that was not lavish, yet neither plain nor cramped—clean, and neatly finished.
She worked the elevator with the ease of someone who knew the way. A soft chime, and she stepped out onto the floor she wanted. The corridor was empty. Tension threaded through every step as she crossed the soft carpet toward the office.
She paused at the door, drew a steadying breath, then opened it and swept the room in a glance. Fortunately, she found the person she needed. Kim Sehee had described the face, and there she was: a researcher carrying some child off toward somewhere.
"Um, excuse me..."
Fortunately the researcher seemed to have been expecting her, and welcomed her with a pleased look.
"Ah, yes! We got the message. Please, come this way."
She set the child down and led Kim Seyoung into a meeting room off the office. The green-haired child, burning with curiosity, plastered herself to the glass and peered in at them.
Bora asked for help in the very same way she had asked Kim Sehee, and with one more person in the office rising to lend a hand, they were able to seal a supply contract. Before Kim Seyoung quite noticed, a contracts officer was already in the room.
Starlight Cosmetics! A New Product Is About to Launch!
Get Brand-New Skin with Starlight Lotion.
See What Starlight Lotion Can Do!
Starlight Cosmetics opened an aggressive advertising campaign. The formula had cleared its clinical trials with room to spare and passed every regulation required to put a cosmetic on the market, so the public release was only a countdown away.
The claimed benefits—brighter skin, fewer blemishes, improvement in pigmentation disorders, relief from atopic dermatitis, and on and on—were printed in type so fine you could hardly tell whether you were looking at a cosmetic or a skin medication.
The price, of course, sat well above other lotions. It was set at 199,000 won for 100 milliliters, close to two hundred dollars. There would be no large size. They simply couldn't make enough to sell it in bulk.
When Starlight Lotion first appeared on the market, the response was lukewarm. The advertising had been sparse, but the real problem was that the Starlight Cosmetics name carried little weight. Hardly anyone knew it. Cheap, and decent enough—that was the whole of its reputation. It wasn't even a top-five cosmetics company, so they resolved to wait until word of mouth carried the effect outward. Starlight Green Tea had succeeded the same way.
Most of the housewives and women who actually bought lotion took one look at Starlight Cosmetics' unhinged price and started cursing. The price and the volume were simply too absurd to believe. That was the habit of consumers: when a strange product appeared, they glanced it over, and if they didn't like it, the insults came first.
Starlight Cosmetics waited with patience. They could have flooded the market cheap from the start, the way they had with Starlight Green Tea, and seized it that way, but they expected fierce resistance the moment they tried to raise the price later. So they launched high and held the line. And because they had watched the effects with their own eyes while developing the cosmetic, the staff could smile at the market even through the customers' outrage. They were certain that the very people cursing them now would turn a full one hundred eighty degrees the moment they got a taste of the lotion.
As if to answer that faith, beauty communities began, slowly, to catch fire a week later.
It was exactly what Starlight Cosmetics had waited for, and waited for, and wanted.