Even So, Hana Is Still Hana
"Bora!"
It was not Hana's familiar voice. A grown woman's cry rang out from inside the room, and Bora went tearing down the hall. She flung the door open and found an adult woman sitting on the bed in a dinosaur onesie that looked one deep breath away from splitting at the seams.
"Who are you?"
"Hiiing... Bora..."
The hair gave her away—the color of it, the eyes, the way she spoke. Bora knew. It was Hana. She had wavered for a second at first glance, but there was no mistaking her. Whatever had happened overnight, this woman was Hana.
Certain as she was, the Hana sitting in front of her clearly had not caught up with her own body. She fidgeted and floundered, utterly lost in it.
"Bora, I think something's wrong with my body..."
"I... I think you might be right..."
The sight of her was nothing short of devastating. Even as a little kid her looks had carried staggering potential, and now that beauty had opened into full, brilliant bloom. Her face was small and finely made, lovely enough that the average celebrity could not have held a candle to her. And her figure was so ruinous that Bora—who took a certain pride in her own—felt less like showing off and more like a squid washed up beside her.
"Bora, what do I do?"
The face was mature, and the voice was almost unfairly pleasant to hear. But the cadence was a child's. Listening to it, Bora felt the whole picture tilt out of balance.
"Hana, calm down. Just stay put. I'll help you."
Unused to the body she was in, Hana kept glancing around, tears trembling at the rims of her eyes. Watching them, Bora thought she finally understood why a beautiful woman's tears made men clutch their chests. Even another woman could see it. Hana was far too captivating.
Bora got on the phone at once. If anything went wrong with Hana's body, the people above her had to hear it first. Hana herself might not know it, but if something happened to her, tens of thousands of people would lose the lives they had built. And quite apart from that, Bora simply hated the thought of anything being wrong with her. If she ever had to watch Hana in pain, it felt as if her own heart would split. By now Hana was, to Bora, a child she had borne in her heart.
That was when Haru stepped into the room. One look at Hana and she clapped a hand over her mouth, struck dumb.
No... kids these days eat well and sleep well and shoot up fast, sure, but...
This was something else entirely, wasn't it? Growing a centimeter or two in a day would already be absurdly fast, and Hana looked as if she had gained thirty or forty centimeters overnight. The rate of it was impossible. The girl Haru had seen on her way out yesterday had been a little rascal who fit a third-grader perfectly. The person in front of her now was a fresh-faced young woman, bright with the charm of a college freshman.
"What... what in the world just happened?"
Haru was too stunned not to ask. Bora was the only one who had been with Hana through the night.
"I don't really know either. Even last night, when I was just patting her back, she was perfectly fine..."
Tell someone a little kid had turned into a grown woman overnight, and how many would believe it? They would tell you to stop talking nonsense. But with the reality laid out in front of her, Haru could only laugh in disbelief.
"This doesn't make any sense."
People grew as time passed. That was only natural. Barring some unusual genetic condition, children got taller and their bodies matured with the years. From where Bora and Haru stood, watching Hana age a little each day and grow slowly would have been more than heartwarming. It would have been a joy—the chance to see, with their own eyes, a child becoming an adult.
Covering that whole distance in a single instant was another matter. Growing this fast was never what they had wanted. Spring a change like this on the people raising her, and they would not even have the words.
She did not even have clothes to wear. It was a mercy that Haru kept a change of clothes in the car; otherwise Hana would have been standing there with nothing on. The dinosaur onesie, already in shreds, lay in a heap on the floor. Everything Hana normally wore was far too small to be of any use. Forcing her into it would have been child abuse.
Worst of all, every plan from here on out had come apart. An elementary schooler with a body like this? Send her to school as she was, and she would end up on one of those can you believe it shows.
Bora and Haru were sick with worry. If even they had this much to fret over, Hana—whose body had swollen up without warning—had to be reeling. Even now she was tugging at her clothes this way and that, fussing over how uncomfortable she had become.
There was a saying for people whose heads had shot up ahead of the rest of them. Most people, as a rule, carried a mind that fit their age. The spirit grew as the body did. Even the most clueless were said to grow up as the years stacked on, and that was not an empty saying.
Hana had been made an adult with no preparation at all. She still had not left the mental age of an elementary schooler.
Perhaps the one small mercy was that she had not started school yet. Let her walk the streets, and the wolfish men out there would not leave her be. They might never have looked twice when she was little. The body she had now was, unmistakably, a grown woman's.
"Hana."
"Yeah, Bora."
"You have to stay right beside me today. All right?"
"Okay!"
Even in an institute full of people who knew her, there was no telling what would happen if they lost sight of her. So Bora rose with Hana's hand locked in hers. They needed to check that nothing was wrong with her body.
Hana looked as if she had no intention of ever letting go. Her hand used to be smaller than this. Feeling the new size of it against her own, Bora could only sigh. Hana really was a walking bundle of trouble.
Department Head Kim Jaeman had taken the call from his subordinate and was driving as if he were in a race.
"Hana got bigger!"
"She got bigger? What are you talking about?"
"Argh— no! I think something's wrong with Hana's body!"
"I'm on my way!"
He was moving far faster than his usual commute. Once he left the city proper and turned toward the institute, he realized something was wrong with the road.
"Huh?"
Vines were growing over the asphalt. Vines forcing their way up through pavement? It was nonsense, and yet the nonsense was right there in front of him. They were lengthening so quickly he could watch them creep. At the sight of it he pushed the car harder toward the institute. Maybe it was not Hana something had gone wrong with. Maybe it was somewhere else.
The street trees were strange too, now that he thought about it. When he had left the house they had been nothing but bare branches, but the closer he drew to the institute, the more trees appeared with leaves still on them. Leaves, in the dead of winter? They ought to have fallen in autumn. Something about the plants around the institute had turned peculiar.
"Chairman!"
"Yes?"
Kim Sehee had come in early that morning, and good news was waiting the moment she arrived.
"What in the world—!"
One look at the photo an executive had taken on his phone, and a gasp was all she could manage. Unable to believe it, she got behind the wheel herself and drove out to the site.
"Oh!"
Once construction was finished, they had started growing cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse. Not even a few days later, the plants were already setting fruit—so much of it the branches were bending under the weight.
"Didn't you say this would take two weeks at the very least?"
"Yes, Chairman. That was the figure we got when the institute grew them directly."
"I can't believe it..."
It had not even been a week, and already this much fruit hung from the vines. Kim Sehee could not help being moved. Stepping into the greenhouse, she could not take her eyes off the cherry tomatoes, so red and perfectly ripe.
"You can tell at a glance. This is premium quality."
She did not need a second look. Even a passing glance told Kim Sehee she was staring at the very best there was.