Dinosaur Pajamas
I was watching TV and eating snacks. Salty potato chips frolicked in my mouth, announcing their deliciousness to every inch of my body.
I lingered in the pleasant sensation they offered. I had a broadcast to film, but for now I had given myself over to this plush, cozy bed.
When I thought back to the days I couldn't land a job and lived as a complete bum, a life like this didn't seem so bad at all.
My whole life, the only woman I had ever known was Mom. These days I at least had Bora and Haru.
If I hadn't been changed into this body, wouldn't I still be stuck in a semi-basement, scraping by on part-time work and fretting my way through every day? I had no desire to go back to that time.
And so, perhaps because I still hadn't eaten dinner, I patted a stomach that snacks alone couldn't satisfy and went on watching television. Just then I heard the door open, and someone came in.
It was Bora. Night had fallen, and she stepped inside looking a little tired. All I had to do was study, so I was bright-eyed and buzzing, but Bora was working while looking after me. Maybe that was why she seemed like a slightly different person at night than she did in the morning.
"Hana, you're still awake?"
"Yeah. There's something fun on TV."
Little Magician Rumi was playing. Watching it live was mandatory.
"Mmm..."
Finding me glued to the cartoon, Bora rummaged through her things as if she meant to pull something out.
What could be inside a shopping bag done up in such a flashy design? I hoped it was snacks. I had run out. A trip to the convenience store would have solved it, but after I bought alcohol last time, a one-month ban had come down on me.
It was my own fault, so I had no defense.
"Ta-da~"
Bora drew something from the bag. It was a piece of clothing, green from top to bottom. Folded as it was, I couldn't tell from the outside what kind of clothes they were.
The moment she shook them fully open, though, I knew exactly what I was looking at.
"Gasp!!!"
Startled, I had no choice but to clap a hand over my mouth. What Bora had produced was nothing other than dinosaur pajamas—green all over, with a long tail dangling from the seat. She hadn't forgotten that I'd asked her to buy them.
Eyes sparkling, I crept toward her. Bewitched by those pajamas, as if a ghost had taken hold of me, I slowly lifted the fabric.
"C-can I wear something this precious?"
"I bought them for you to wear, Hana! Of course you can!"
"Waaah!"
Giddy, I all but snatched the dinosaur pajamas out of Bora's hands, flung aside the ones I had on, and changed into the new pair.
The size was a perfect fit. Still wearing them, I shook my hips, and the tail stuck to my rear swayed left and right. Delighted by the strange new feeling of having grown a tail, I laughed.
"Bora! I grew a tail!"
"Yes, yes."
Bora was filming me on her phone. I struck the coolest poses I could manage in the dinosaur pajamas, trying desperately hard to look good for the pictures.
Then I pulled the hood up over my head. It was shaped like a roaring dinosaur. Fully a dinosaur at last, I roared and prowled around the room. This room was entirely mine.
I had no intention whatsoever of showing these magnificent dinosaur pajamas to Bora alone. I slipped past her hand and made for the restaurant.
"Hana! You have to take the pajamas off before you go!"
"Heheh!"
I didn't so much as lend an ear to Bora calling after me. I threw the door open and bolted outside.
She put on a face that said there was nothing to be done and followed. Keeping a dinosaur this magnificent all to myself would have been a waste upon society. Everyone had to see it. If the only people who laid eyes on these pajamas were the ones working in the offices on my floor, the rest of the world would have been robbed of half a lifetime.
I bounced along on my shortened legs and jabbed the elevator button. Behind me, Bora had hold of my tail. I wanted to move like a tailed character out of a comic, but sadly the tail refused to do as I pleased.
The elevator doors opened, and I felt the people inside flinch. They must have been startled by the majesty of the dinosaur pajamas. Swelling with pride, I boarded with my head held high.
Bora seemed to be saying something to them behind me, but my eyes were fixed on the mirror mounted in the elevator. It hung so high I couldn't see my face—only the dinosaur on the hood.
"Kraang!"
I bellowed with the force of something about to devour me. Cowed by that momentum, perhaps, the elevator filled with a restless murmur. It had the air of people looking at something cute, but that was only because they hadn't seen my true form.
When I stepped off, Haru was waiting out front.
"Oh my! Oh my!"
The moment she saw me in the dinosaur pajamas, she came hopping over, and the instant she reached me she scooped me up in one arm.
"Hana, how are you this cute?"
With her free hand she seized both my cheeks as she said it.
"Mmphhh."
With my face trapped in her grip, the words wouldn't come out right. I yelled at her to let go, but Haru didn't so much as pretend to hear me, rubbing my cheek against her own.
"Let me go!"
Only around the time I managed to force the words out did she release me. Panting, I hid behind Bora's legs. No matter how ultimate a dinosaur I was, I couldn't beat Haru. It was a matter of fighting fire with fire—an adult had to be handled by an adult.
"Where are you off to, Bora?"
"I'm taking Hana to dinner."
"I'm a little hungry myself. Mind if I come along?"
"Sounds good."
I was marched to the restaurant with one arm in Haru's grip and the other in Bora's. To anyone watching, it would have looked like the arrest of a criminal. Waggling a tail that wouldn't wag itself, I went off to eat something delicious. Tonight it was pork cutlet.
When the supply of Starlight Lotion was cut not merely in half, but in half again, the beauty communities boiled over with rage.
Due to a disruption in the supply of materials...
Headquarters posted an apology, but the public's anger showed no sign of dying down.
Until they discovered Hana's hair, the company had been a tiny operation, so headquarters and the factory sat close together.
Unlike a certain automaker—head office in Seoul, plants out in the provinces—they had been too small to build that way. Circumstances had changed, though, and they were now pushing a plan to turn headquarters into a proper building and move it to Samseong-dong.
Kim Seyoung had inherited mostly stocks and real estate, so next to her siblings the scale of her company was shabby.
She did hold stakes in the Starlight Guild's other businesses, but the only company in which she owned a controlling majority—enough to actually exercise management rights—was Starlight Cosmetics.
Perhaps that was why she was so attached to it. That it happened to be a beauty company, the very field she loved, only deepened the fondness.
At any rate, Starlight Cosmetics stood on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province, where land was cheap and transportation reasonably convenient.
It would have made no sense for a firm that couldn't even clear a hundred billion won a year to build on prime real estate deeper inside Gyeonggi. She could have managed it if she spent the money she had, but she wanted to save that choice for last.
Buildings raised on the edge of a city naturally saw little foot traffic. Today was different.
A hundred people had flocked to the front of the factory. Unlike an ordinary protest, the crowd ran from people in their twenties all the way to their sixties, and most of them were women.
They demonstrated with picket signs bearing their demands.
The plant was already running at a bare minimum. The handful of employees still inside peered out the windows, watching the scene as if it were some curious spectacle.
"In all my years, I never thought I'd see people protest to make someone sell lotion."
"Tell me about it. I've seen protests over politics, or over other things, but over a single lotion..."
To those drunk on what Starlight Lotion could do, though, it was as precious as a lifeline. One protester demonstrated while pointing at the burn scars left bare because she hadn't been able to apply it.
"They're still distributing it, though, aren't they? Even if the volume's low."
"Yeah. They say the hair our CEO got from CEO Sehee last time will hold us for a week..."
"I wish time would just stop like this. Next week, Starlight Lotion production halts and nothing comes out. When that day comes, it's going to be truly horrifying."
They were already protesting like this. If sales of Starlight Lotion stopped altogether, the fallout was dreadful enough to fear.
With a crowd like that outside, the employees might not even be able to make it in to work.