The Elf's Song
I pulled the picture book out of the drawer under the desk and closed my hand around a set of brightly colored pencils. It was the book Haru had left behind for me to color. When I opened it, the early pages were already covered in the vivid strokes I had laid down, and no matter how many times I looked, I had done a wonderful job.
I paged through my drawings until I reached somewhere around the middle, where an uncolored picture was waiting. Giggling, I took up the green pencil and started to fill it in. Most people in Asia have black hair, but everyone in my picture book was green. My own hair was green, so coloring them black would not have made any sense.
I was supposed to be studying Korean, or something else entirely, but even a little studying made my head burn, so I took the book out now and then just to cool off. I felt so good that I started to hum. It was the Baby Shark song Haru played on her phone all the time.
"Daddy Shark, doo-doo-doo-doo..."
The accompaniment was addictive and the words were fun, so lately I had gotten hooked and sang it often. It was a song made for little kids, but I knew its charm, and I belted it out without a shred of shame. Even so, singing it in front of Haru or Bora felt a little embarrassing, so I only did it when I was alone. I had always been tone-deaf and rhythm-deaf, and I had never much liked singing, but strangely enough, ever since I had come into this body, I enjoyed it.
I was singing away, laying my own colors into the book, when I sensed someone behind me. I was sprawled on the floor drawing, so it never occurred to me that anyone might be staring at my back. Whoever it was, the possibilities were already fixed: Haru, or Bora, or—by some truly, truly awful stroke of luck—the bald guy. Only a set handful of people lived on this floor of the building. Lately it seemed as if others had started dropping by, but still...
I turned my head. Haru stood there with one hand clapped over her mouth, looking as if she had just witnessed a miracle. What had shocked her that badly? Curious, I asked.
"Haru, why are you standing there like that?"
"Hana... could you sing that one more time?"
"Sing?"
Oh no. She must have been listening from behind me. My singing was hardly worth hearing; I had only been causing noise pollution. Then again, it was my room. If I wanted to sing, what was the problem? Even so, when she asked me to do it again, I meant to refuse out of shyness. Singing in front of other people was a little embarrassing when I was not a singer. But if Haru was the one asking, maybe once would be all right...?
As my resolve softened, Haru pressed her hands together and begged. If she was going to humble herself that far, I could sing it for her once.
"I'll sing it one more time!"
Using a colored pencil for a microphone, I launched into Baby Shark from the very beginning. Haru, apparently desperate to keep a record, opened the video camera on her phone and filmed me, and she even put the instrumental track on through YouTube. That made it much more fun to sing.
Mommy Shark, doo-doo-doo-doo...
Wearing a mother's smile, Haru filmed me with all her heart. So my singing really was nice to listen to. Relieved, I made it all the way to the end, and when the song finished, Haru's thunderous applause came as a bonus. Puffed up despite myself, I threw my chest out and let the ovation she sent my way wash over me.
"But what are you going to do with that video?"
I asked because I was curious where she meant to post it. Haru answered.
"I'm putting it on the YouTube channel our research institute runs. You sing so well, I think it's going to be insanely popular."
"Is my voice really that good? I thought it was ordinary."
"I'll vouch for your singing. This is guaranteed to hit."
"You think so?"
I watched Haru tap furiously at her phone, busy with something or other. My interest faded quickly, though, and my eyes drifted back to the picture book. There was still coloring left to do, so I took up the pencils again and filled in what was missing. Haru had already left the room. In no hurry at all, I stayed sprawled on the floor, kicking my feet, and colored at my leisure.
One week after Starlight Lotion launched.
Jeong Jiyeon, a clerk at a cosmetics shop, could only stare in horror at the line stretching away from the storefront.
"Why on earth are there so many people?"
Jiyeon almost never talked to herself, but the queue was so absurd that even she ended up muttering under her breath. Lines in a busy shopping district were, in a way, ordinary. At a famous shop, or a restaurant that had blown up on Instagram, a wait was a given. A cosmetics store was another matter. A line outside a restaurant or a café, fine—but she had never once seen people queued outside a cosmetics shop. Aside from opening day, there was no reason anyone should be lining up here, and yet hundreds of people, by a rough eyeball count, were waiting in the middle of the shopping street.
Jiyeon slipped inside through the back door of the building. The front entrance looked hopeless. A few employees were already there when she came in.
"The crowds kept growing, and today it's a full-blown riot."
"Is some celebrity coming or something?"
"Apparently the Starlight Lotion we sell here is that popular."
"Then why aren't they going to other cosmetics shops? Why is our line like this?"
"Other shops don't stock nearly as much Starlight Lotion as we do. Our boss ordered a huge amount..."
"No wonder..."
They finished the usual preparations for opening, and the moment the long-awaited doors swung wide, chaos erupted. The waiting crowd shoved forward all at once and flooded into the store. The staff did everything they could to hold people back, but without the police there was only so much employees could do.
"Give me Starlight Lotion!"
"Where's the Starlight Lotion?"
They came on like a horde of zombies charging a living person. There was no orderly line—only a scene that looked like the middle of a war. The employees fell back on exactly what they had been trained to do.
"You have to buy two hundred thousand won's worth of cosmetics before you can purchase Starlight Lotion."
"If you'd like to buy Starlight Lotion, please show us a receipt for two hundred thousand won."
The sales strategy was not to hand out Starlight Lotion as a free gift with a two-hundred-thousand-won purchase. It was to sell the right to buy it. During training, the staff had been skeptical. What customer would spend two hundred thousand won on cosmetics just for a chance to purchase something that was not even a freebie?
Contrary to every expectation, the customers pouring in started buying two hundred thousand won's worth of products for the sake of Starlight Lotion.
"Over here!"
One customer, clutching a pure-white bag stuffed full of cosmetics, held a receipt out to an employee. They had paid for more than two hundred thousand won. The employee checked the receipt and sold them the Starlight Lotion. All told, the customer had spent four hundred thousand won, but they did not look the least bit unhappy. Beaming, lotion in hand, they walked out of the store. Everyone who saw it scrambled, without exception, to sweep the shelves clean.
It got so bad that a man who looked like a confirmed bachelor—unmarried, by all appearances—was buying armfuls of baby lotion. Cosmetics had always been a women's world, not a men's, but if you counted the customers in the store right now, the ratio of women to men was about seven to three. Men were the three, and even that was already miraculous enough. Most men stopped at lotion or toner, so the simple fact that this many male customers had shown up could be called a remarkable success.
The staff kept calling out directions to everyone coming through the door, and before long the customers were entering in something like an orderly fashion. In that single day alone, at least several thousand people came through the shop, and the store had to close before lunchtime. There was still plenty of Starlight Lotion, but every other cosmetic on the floor had sold out without a single item left.
There was stock in the warehouse, but they had shelves to reorganize and other preparations to make, so business ended early. The employees sank to the floor, utterly drained, while the owner stood there grinning from ear to ear.