Arrest Complete
Tap, tap...
I switched off the TV in my room and turned my attention to the sounds outside. I could hear the office staff laughing and chattering as they headed off toward the cafeteria.
I went out for lunch now and then myself, but basking in the sunlight was better than eating. Unless I was the one who suggested going for a meal, lunch simply never happened.
I endured the long wait until every last sign of people had faded. A few minutes later, the presence outside vanished completely. I rose without a sound, opened the door, and poked my head out, turning it left and right.
All clear.
The hallway was empty. I began to creep toward the office, walking as slowly as I could so my footsteps wouldn't make a sound. When I reached the door, I eased it open and peered inside. Not a soul. The place was utterly deserted.
"All right, then. The star takes the stage."
I announced it with a little clap. A line like that made the whole affair feel properly grand. I picked my way through the office, a jungle of chairs shoved every which way.
My target was the pantry. I had carried snacks off yesterday, only to finish every last one in a single day. The wrappers had gone into the shared trash bin inside the company—evidence thoroughly destroyed—so I had nothing to fear from the garbage.
"Ooh!"
The moment I stepped into the pantry, I couldn't help but gasp. Someone must have restocked it yesterday; snacks were packed tight into every corner. I barely held back the drool as I reached out this way and that, grabbed a fistful of the most delicious-looking chocolate cookies, and dropped them into a bag.
And the jellies that looked so soft and chewy—those too! I had no idea who kept the pantry in order, but they understood my tastes far too well. Before anyone could come back, I packed the snacks into the bag as fast as I could. My hands moved with a speed that would have done a thief proud.
Step. Step.
From outside came the one sound that must never, ever be heard: footsteps. In that instant I had no choice but to freeze, still as ice.
They hadn't even been gone a few minutes!
Listening closely, I could tell there was more than one of them. My eyes darted around as I racked my brain for a way out.
Come on, brain. Do your job!
Tragically, even my outstanding intellect reported that there was no escape. Then, right in front of me, I spotted a drawer fixed beneath the pantry desk. It was empty, and a body my size could just squeeze inside.
I scrambled in and yanked the door shut with a thud. A perfect stealth technique. There was absolutely no way I would be found. I had been crouched in that pitch-dark space for only a few seconds when the office door swung wide and people came in.
Please don't come all the way here. Just leave...
But I could feel them walking straight toward the pantry. They stopped in front of it and began to murmur among themselves.
"Huh? The snacks are gone again today."
"They are. If we ever catch whoever's doing it, they're getting a spanking."
It was Bora and Haru. Glad to hear them, I nearly burst out of hiding—but the word spanking stopped me cold, as if I'd hit a speed bump.
Anything but a spanking!
I hadn't been hit even once lately, but I had been in the early days, and my body shrank in on itself all on its own. It didn't hurt. It just felt as if something inside me were being chipped away.
"Shall we head out for now?"
"Yeah. I still can't believe someone is actually stealing the snacks..."
With that, I heard them walking away. Thank goodness. Thanks to my perfect stealth technique, they hadn't noticed I was hiding underneath. Unlike earlier, though, the departing footsteps sounded clumsy. Still, what did that matter?
I heard the office door close completely and slowly prepared to come out. The perfect crime seemed to have succeeded. Next time I visited the pantry, I decided, I would take only a few snacks.
Hauling off so many must have made it easy for Haru and Bora to notice. I had been in the dark so long that it was starting to feel frightening, so I flung the door open and crawled out.
"See? What did I tell you?"
"Haha..."
But when I opened the door and came outside, Haru and Bora were standing right there.
"Eh..."
I was so flustered that no words would come. Hadn't they gone outside? I had heard the footsteps, and the door closing...
I tried to bolt, but Bora's hand was faster. Caught in her grip, I had no choice but to end up cradled in her arms. I could already see it, clear as day: myself, getting spanked. Clutching the collar of Bora's clothes, I could only hang my head.
"Bora... I just really wanted snacks..."
I had no choice but to say it in a wilted little voice. I wanted to get something—anything—out before the spanking came.
Bora held her stern expression, but the moment she heard me she broke into a bright smile.
"Is that so?"
Beside her, Haru caught my cheeks in her hands.
"Hana! If you want snacks, just say so! We had the wrong idea! I thought someone from the office was stealing them."
"Uwaaah..."
"Hana, let's go to the convenience store! We'll buy every snack you want to eat."
"Really?"
"If it's a snack Hana wants, of course we have to buy it!"
"Yay!"
The feeling from a moment ago—like my heart was about to drop clean out of my chest—vanished as if it had never been real. Cradled in Bora's arms, I headed for the convenience store in the building. If I had known it would turn out like this, I should have just told Bora and Haru from the start.
Kim Sehee took her employees out to look at land near the Starlight Research Institute. For the moment, she hastily secured plots around the institute. Unfortunately, people were already living on some of the land, and she couldn't acquire as much as she would have liked.
"Even this much is incredibly vast, though."
With the Starlight Research Institute at the center, she had purchased a circular stretch of land twenty to thirty kilometers across. Fortunately, the institute sat well outside the city, so the prices were nothing extraordinary.
"For now we'll buy as much available land as we can, and we'll keep purchasing from here on. The final goal is to clear every building around the Starlight Research Institute and turn it all into farmland."
The secretary beside her said this to Kim Sehee. Kim Sehee wore an expression that suggested the plan was not a bad one and flipped through the documents. Hana's cherry tomatoes bore far more fruit than ordinary ones, so they didn't need all that much land.
Even using only a small portion of what they had already bought, they could more than meet the expected domestic demand.
Still, no one knew what might happen next, so the extra land was best thought of as insurance.
Right in front of Kim Sehee, construction was already underway. She had called in a contractor and was preparing greenhouse-style structures for growing the cherry tomatoes. Hana's cherry tomatoes grew incredibly fast, so the preparations had to start at once.
Wearing a straw hat she had bought on the street, Kim Sehee looked over the site. Coming out to see things with her own eyes was far more comfortable than staring at paperwork in the office. Only when she saw it herself was she satisfied.
"So this is where Starlight Food's production plant will stand, then?"
"That's correct."
Kim Sehee had decided the company would farm directly from now on. The plants wouldn't grow anywhere but here anyway, so contract farming was out of the question.
There was no telling what byproduct might come out of Hana next, so the plan was to secure as much land as possible and farm it.
Watching the company grow like this, Kim Sehee felt as if she might cry. Before she met Hana, things had been so bad she had wondered whether she ought to shut the company down altogether.
The old Starlight Food had posted worse sales than some mid-sized firm in Seoul—a conglomerate in name alone. It had barely managed to keep the Starlight name alive.
Now it was different. A company whose annual revenue had once been only a few dozen billion won was setting its sights on the trillion-won mark. Starlight Green Tea, currently priced at five thousand won, was selling about a million units a day.
On Starlight Green Tea alone, the company brought in a hundred and fifty billion won a month. Every other product combined didn't even reach ten billion.
Kim Sehee had no intention of stopping there. She meant to diversify. The green tea market was already hers; next came coffee. She planned to begin once she had gathered enough of Hana's hair.
No. Right now I need to focus on this.
Kim Sehee shook her head and fixed her attention on what was in front of her. The research institute had presented her with cherry tomatoes. She would have to put them to proper use.
She had already confirmed that they grew to full size and bore fruit within a week, so if things went quickly she could supply cherry tomatoes nationwide in two weeks. Cherry tomatoes that grew this fast simply did not exist anywhere else.
And if they strayed beyond a certain range, they withered and died, so private individuals couldn't grow them either.
Kim Sehee smiled and kept checking the construction site. Built greenhouse-style, the houses would let them supply cherry tomatoes even through the winter.