Emergency, Emergency
Today, of all days, my body felt heavy. The closer deep winter drew, the more the strength seemed to drain out of me. It wasn't as hard as the last time I'd caught a cold—my condition was simply poor.
As always, I climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom to wash. Hot water poured the instant I turned the handle, and I loved that more than I could say. Back when I'd lived alone, the hot water had barely come at all, and I'd suffered for it.
"Huh?"
I stepped up onto the stool, and the face in the mirror looked strangely unfamiliar. My hair was exactly as I'd cut it yesterday. The hair that ought to have grown back hadn't grown at all.
I didn't particularly mind having it cut. I could have it trimmed in a minute, and in return I was paid a great deal of money. From where I stood, the hair was useless anyway.
Today, though, it strangely refused to grow. I'd have to tell Haru, wouldn't I? Even so, I stayed unbothered. There had been a time before when it hadn't grown, and if I just endured two or three days the way I had when I'd had a cold, wouldn't it start growing again?
I turned that over while I washed my face. I'd meant to wash my hair, but I was too lazy, so I didn't. Once I was done, I put on the Starlight Lotion CEO Kim Seyoung had left for me. I liked the way it settled against my skin, as if it belonged there.
Finished with the simple wash, I toddled off to the office. It was still early morning, and Haru was the only one there. Today, too, her face was planted on the desk. If she was going to sleep like that, couldn't she just go home at night?
Watching her, I felt I was looking at an office worker grinding herself down to earn a living. I lived the exact opposite, rolling around and doing nothing. Being rich and unemployed had been my dream, and now that I'd achieved it, it wasn't actually any fun. People really did have to live by working.
I rose onto my toes and crept slowly toward her. She was sleeping soundly; her stomach rose and fell in a steady rhythm.
"Mmm..."
Seen from this close, Haru's chest was downright violent. Among women in Korea, it would have had no trouble placing near the top. I hoped I never got that big. Imagining those two heavy masses hanging from my own chest made my shoulders ache for no reason I could name.
Idle thoughts finished, I shook her awake. I wasn't tall enough to reach any higher, so I grabbed her thigh. The shaking pulled her out of sleep, and she looked at me with eyes that hadn't quite come into focus.
She checked the time on her phone, then spoke.
"Hana, you're up early."
With that, she switched off the alarm. She'd probably set it for around the time I usually woke. I'd beaten it, though.
I told her why I'd come.
"My hair isn't growing again."
"It isn't?"
This had happened once before, so Haru didn't seem to take it very seriously. I figured it would come back in a few days, too.
"Still, I ought to let them know..."
Saying so, she tapped at the keyboard and drafted something. From behind her, I could see she was sending notices to Starlight Food and Starlight Cosmetics. Was it all right to send something this early in the morning? Well, it probably didn't matter.
"Haru, let's go eat!"
"All right, all right."
Cradled in her arms, I headed for the restaurant in the building. What was on the breakfast menu today? I hoped it would be tonkatsu, and I pictured a plate of it arriving until my mouth watered.
"The research institute called. They say there's another disruption in the material supply."
"Is that so?"
Kim Sehee heard that Hana's hair had stopped growing again. Why wouldn't it grow? The question filled her, but from where she stood, there was nothing she could do.
Hana was nearly a plant. Was her hair refusing to grow in preparation for the coming winter? The idle thought crossed Sehee's mind before she could stop it.
"We've gathered as much of a reserve as we can, haven't we?"
"At the current level of demand, we can hold out for about two weeks."
After the last time the supply of Hana's hair had been cut off, they had stockpiled with something close to obsession. The regrettable part was that not much time had passed since then, so the reserves weren't large.
Still, they had two weeks' worth put away. If they waited just one week, wouldn't Hana's hair start growing again? The only real solution was to wait, and that was a shame.
Kim Sehee tapped the armrest of her chair with a finger as she spoke.
"If it's the research institute, they ought to know the reason... Is this because they never received much investment, and there's nothing to be done?"
Before Hana, the institute had been kept alive on little more than a breath, and set beside other labs, the quality of its research had inevitably lagged. Now that Hana was bringing in so much money, the standard of the work had been raised to a certain level—but that was a recent development. There still hadn't been enough time.
And when the contracts had been drawn up last time, shares in the company had been divided out, so the more Starlight Food grew, the better it was for the institute as well. Hana held shares, too.
This was not, then, some threat meant to tighten discipline. Sipping her Starlight Green Tea, Kim Sehee could only wish the time would pass. Hana's hair was a product nothing else could replace.
Yet a week went by, and there was still no sign that the hair would grow.
In that time, Kim Sehee's face grew gaunt.
In a very short span, the employees of Starlight Food were racing from one extreme of feeling to the other. Not even a few weeks had passed, and the mood inside the company had turned completely.
Until Starlight Green Tea came out, that mood had been as bad as it could get. The colleague beside you had been asked by the company to take honorary retirement, and production workers, by the nature of the job, had nowhere decent to go if they were cut. They had no particular skill, and piling up experience didn't mean anyone would recognize it.
But once the tea launched and they saw how much of it was selling, the employees could breathe a sigh of relief.
"At least I won't be told to retire like last time."
"Retire? Can't you see the line's running around the clock? Even with the factory going like that, they say there still isn't enough green tea."
"Really? They hired that many people last time, and it's still not enough?"
"We're short on people, sure, but I heard the important ingredient that goes into the tea is running short, too..."
They spent the whole day making Starlight Green Tea and still couldn't meet what the market demanded, and that fact left the mood among the employees bright. It was better, at least, than having no work. Back then they had lived in dread, never knowing when they might be cut.
Seeing how much tea was selling, though, they overhauled the lines inside the Starlight Food factory on a grand scale. Production of the other goods was scaled back, and the lines for Starlight Green Tea were expanded.
Once they had changed things that far, the volume became manageable to a degree. People, though, change their minds with their circumstances. The endless demand for product wore them down.
"What is the company thinking, running the factory without a single day off?"
"I understand why they're running it—there isn't enough product. But shouldn't they at least guarantee some time to rest? I got a nosebleed yesterday while I was working."
They had gone from a five-day week to working all seven, and some of the staff simply couldn't adjust. The employees who had been there longer knew how serious things had been when the company wasn't busy, so they complained less. The people who had come in relatively recently were full of grievances.
A two-shift rotation of days and nights was hard on the workers, and Kim Sehee understood the severity of it well enough. She was recruiting so they could move to four crews on three shifts. If they kept the factory running like this, the tea wouldn't be the problem—the employees would give out first.
The intensity of the labor was hardly light, which only made it worse.
But as the ingredients for Starlight Green Tea began, little by little, to run short, that problem solved itself. They went back to a five-day workweek.
Their pay shrank a little, but the workers who now had time to rest were glad of it. The executives, by contrast, looked worse with every passing day. Unlike the laborers, they knew something of how things really stood.
"This... if the worst comes, we may have to halt the factory."
"We have to start cutting the shipment volume now. Only then can we last a month. Of course, time passing doesn't mean things get any better..."
Bad reports came up one after another, and Kim Sehee's head began to ache. The institute's situation was surely no better, but this was the greater problem.
If I'm in this state after building a stockpile, my sister's company must be in an uproar.
Even as things worsened, the thought struck her. If their own company was like this, what must be happening at Starlight Cosmetics right now?