I Got a Computer
I'd only just gotten back from playing at the office when I realized strangers had come into my room. I tried to slip right back out, but Bora caught me from behind, gathered me into her arms, and carried me inside. Staring at unfamiliar faces was nowhere near as fun as playing with the bald guy at the office.
Still, what reason did they even have to be in my room? The question nagged at me until I saw what they were doing, and then it made sense. They were installing a computer on the desk. Day after day of lessons from Bora and Haru must have convinced them I'd finally gotten up to speed.
Honestly, the social common sense those two were teaching me was nothing I didn't already know. I simply never let on, not when they put so much heart into the teaching. And watching their faces as I soaked it all up at lightning speed was strangely satisfying.
So I stayed tucked in Bora's arms and watched the computer go in with my own two eyes. Maybe I wouldn't have to color picture books anymore. A single lonely television had been boring me senseless, and now I was truly ready to step into that vast ocean of information called the internet.
"Whoa!"
The moment I saw the installation finished, I let out a cheer of pure delight. Touching the keyboard made an old memory flicker through me and I flinched, but that was all. Once I confirmed the machine was running properly, I turned to Bora.
"From now on, this computer is mine."
"Why does this kid talk like that..."
"Hehe."
By then Haru had come up beside us and started talking with Bora. I pricked my ears and eavesdropped on whatever secret the two of them thought they were sharing.
"Hana's still so young. Is it really all right for her to have a computer?"
"We were going to have to put one in eventually. Once she starts elementary school and plays with her friends, it'd be weird if she didn't know a thing, wouldn't it?"
"Even so..."
"Adult sites are blocked at the source, of course, so it'll be fine."
"Oh, that's a relief, then."
Heh. They had no idea I could hear every word from over here. Handing me information that precious... Not that I had any intention of visiting weird sites in the first place.
I pressed the power button on the tower and switched it on. An SSD must have been inside, because the loading screen flashed past in an instant and the desktop appeared. The wallpaper was the plain default: an empty meadow with nothing on it.
But... what am I supposed to do?
Even powered on, there was nothing to do. Was I supposed to play a game? I had no legal identity, though, so signing up for anything was impossible. To properly enjoy the internet, you needed one. A resident registration number was mandatory whether you were making an account or verifying anything at all.
I was sitting in front of the computer, staring blankly into space, when Bora came over to help.
"I asked them to install this..."
She took the mouse and started opening folders this way and that, clearly searching for something. It didn't take her long to find what she wanted.
"Here it is."
Educational videos. A course for heading out into society—sixteen parts, each one a monstrous hour long. Just looking at them soured my face. They wanted me to watch something this dull? Dying would have been better.
While Bora was briefly distracted, I worked the mouse and dumped every last video into the recycle bin. In the split second before I could delete them, she caught my hand and stopped me.
"Hana! When did you put these in the recycle bin?"
Then she took the mouse away from me. All I could do was watch with wistful eyes.
"Hana, you don't want to stay locked in this room until you've watched every one of them, do you?"
She threatened me, glaring with a razor-sharp look. I had no choice but to fold before something that terrifying. The one small mercy was that I didn't have to finish them all in a single day.
Sixteen hours back to back would take more concentration than anyone reasonably possessed. I had no choice but to surrender to Bora's threat. Still, once the videos were done, I wouldn't have to do anything else... right?
Thinking that, I sat through the boring videos she put on. Even split across days, the thought of sixteen hours of this left me thoroughly depressed.
Barely a few weeks after Starlight Lotion appeared, every community tied to beauty and cosmetics went into an uproar. They used to talk about plenty of other products, but the lotion's effects were so absurdly broken that every other cosmetics discussion had long since been shoved aside.
Women, who actually used the stuff, went far wilder over it than men, who tended to care less about beauty. And interest in cosmetics didn't care about age. From teenagers to people in their sixties, every age group was talking about nothing but Starlight Lotion.
The relatively high price meant some stock still remained, but even that was reaching its limit. A hoarding craze had taken hold, and shops selling Starlight Lotion had gone so far as to bundle it with other cosmetics. From a customer's point of view there was no real choice. You either stood there fretting while it sold out in front of you, or you swallowed the bundle deal and bought it anyway.
Shin Sungcheol, CEO of Naeilmore Pacific.
He was staring at a single bottle of lotion set on his desk. His gaze burned so hot that even the person who had brought it could feel it.
"So this is the Starlight Lotion?"
An ambitious cosmetic from the Starlight Guild. The guild completely dominated every raid-related industry—byproducts from the raids, sales of hunter equipment, all of it—and lately they had been concentrating on finance. And now that same guild was putting out cosmetics?
Of course he had known Starlight Cosmetics existed. They worked the same ground; it would have been strange not to. But for decades the guild had shown no interest in anything outside raids, and he had never imagined that colossal giant stepping into a market this insignificant.
"Yes, sir. We cleaned out every cosmetics shop around our building just to get our hands on some. We managed to buy about three. The other two are at the lab, being analyzed for their ingredients."
"Hmm... It just looks like an ordinary lotion."
Shin Sungcheol turned the bottle this way and that as he spoke. The design was nothing special, and it wasn't housed in any luxurious material either. The cost-cutting showed through plain as day.
If his own company ever released a product with a design like this, he fully intended to fire the person responsible on the spot.
"But the effects are real. It can solve nearly every skin problem, and unless a face has literally been ground away, it can turn someone into a remarkable beauty. The catch is that if you don't keep applying Starlight Lotion, the skin goes back to how it was."
"Is that so...?"
If Starlight Lotion had permanently cured the skin, every dermatology clinic and skin-related industry in the country would have risen up in revolt. Fortunately, once you stopped applying the lotion, the skin reverted.
"The fortunate part is they aren't flooding the market with it."
"Same as Starlight Green Tea. For something with such outstanding effects, the production volume is relatively modest."
Shin Sungcheol immediately pressed for countermeasures. Supply was still short, so the market hadn't taken a serious hit yet, but if production ever exploded, the rest of the cosmetics industry might have to shut its doors.
The researcher who had just been handed that assignment only grew darker in the face. As things stood, there was simply no way to win.
Even so, when the boss said jump, you jumped. He left the CEO's office without voicing a single word of what he was thinking.