Thank Goodness
"Waaaaah!"
After Haru left, I paced the room and wailed. My entire Little Magician Rumi collection was gone. I pounded my poor, blameless head with my fists, this way and that.
Yesterday-me! What were you thinking, throwing it all away!
There was no answer. Unable to hide how miserable I was, I stared quietly at the bubble gun Haru had left behind. With a click, I set it against my temple exactly as I had before, but I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger. All that would come out were soap bubbles anyway. Bubble gun in hand, I headed for the office, fully prepared to open fire.
"Hana...?"
The moment I walked in, the staff spoke up in puzzled voices. Fair enough. I almost never dropped by the office in the morning, and the people who had clocked out after seeing me yesterday were now looking at a child. That alone was probably half the shock.
"Waaah!"
I pulled the trigger and tore through the office in every direction. Part of me hoped someone would take pity on gloomy little me and offer comfort. All I got were employees scattering to get out of the way. So I made for the biggest boss in the room: Department Head Kim Jaeman.
"Wuh... wuuuh!"
The tears wouldn't stop. The sight of how little hair Kim Jaeman had left nearly made me laugh, but with indomitable will I choked it down and sent a volley of bubbles his way. He took one look at me and turned his head.
Unbelievable. I'm this sad, and he won't even look at me?
I launched even more bubbles, enough to bury Department Head Kim Jaeman completely. The gun whirred, and a tremendous flood of bubbles glittered into being before my eyes, blooming one after another. Some sparkled even brighter where they caught the office lights. They were so beautiful I nearly forgot why I had come.
If I had pulled this yesterday, people would have sighed at how childish I was being. Right now, though, I was very, very sad, so I considered the whole thing entirely justified.
In the end Kim Jaeman sighed and swiveled his chair toward me.
"Hana. Why are you crying?"
His tone was a little chilly, the voice of a man who had just been handed a nuisance. Even so, buried in it was real curiosity about why I was crying.
"Rumi... my Rumi..."
"Rumi? What about her?"
"She's gone..."
"Ah! You mean the stuff Bora took yesterday?"
He said it to the employee beside him without even looking at me. The employee nodded. Haru had said Bora took it too. Had Bora thrown my toys away?
I stopped crying and sank into despair. If anyone would understand my heart perfectly, it was Bora. Surely she hadn't thrown them out. She knew my condition better than anyone. I prayed, with everything I had, that she hadn't.
"Bora hasn't come in yet. We'll have to ask when she gets here."
"Bora wouldn't throw Rumi away, right?"
"That, I wouldn't know."
"Waaah!"
I aimed the bubble gun at Kim Jaeman again and let loose. Without Rumi I was desperately sad, and sadness like this had to be shared. I had fired so many bubbles that the floor had gone slick with soap.
I rampaged around the office so thoroughly that no one could get any work done. Someone seemed to be filming me, so I shot bubbles at them too. My righteous protest came to an end when Kim Jaeman shot Haru a look.
"Hana! Let's wait until Bora gets here. She might not have thrown them away, you know?"
"Hiiing..."
Honestly, running around the office shooting bubbles had been secretly fun. Unfortunately, my protest ended with me dangling from Haru's arms. I had put up a fighting spirit worthy of a textbook, and now I was spent. Charging around like that from morning was bound to drain a person.
Back in the room, still in Haru's arms, I waited only for Bora. She held every key. I sat on the bed and played with the bubble gun. I had been fiddling with it for a while now, and it was surprisingly fun.
When did Bora usually come in? I had always thought she arrived early. For once, she seemed to be late. Only later, after she showed up, did I learn that Kim Jaeman had given her a separate assignment the day before.
I was passing the time with Haru when the door opened and Bora came in. Our eyes met, and she smiled as she approached.
"Hana? You're back~"
She said it while stroking my hair. The petting put me in such a good mood that I grinned like an idiot. Having your head stroked felt wonderful no matter when you got it.
Oh!
I jumped up, plastered myself to Bora's leg, and burst out.
"Bora! Bora!"
"Hm? What's wrong, Hana?"
"Um... that box I gave you yesterday. Did you throw it away?"
At that, the corner of Bora's mouth twitched. She looked as if she were thinking it over. She hadn't actually thrown it out, had she? If anyone in the world knew my heart, it was Bora. I was certain she hadn't.
What came out of her mouth was not what I expected.
"I threw it out."
"For real...?"
"Yep."
I had no choice but to collapse onto the floor. It felt as if every last bit of strength were draining out of me. I had woken up this morning in peak condition. Now I was one step from death.
Seeing me like that, Bora hurriedly scooped me up.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I put it away somewhere safe."
My eyes sparkled as I looked up at her.
"Really?"
"Really."
"Hooray!"
Thank goodness. My collection was safe. Bora had taken it from Haru yesterday, but once she confirmed I wasn't in my right mind, she hadn't thrown it out. She had stored it separately. Holding her hand, I went into the office storeroom, and there it was, exactly as I had packed it into the box the day before.
"Whoa!"
I pulled out Rumi's magic wand and thought, thank goodness. What I had gone through to get this! I had bled and sweated to scrape it together, and throwing it away would have been an unbearable waste.
These days Kim Sehee spent far more time outside than she did in the office. She had been watching Hana's cherry tomatoes, day after day, without a break.
"Recently, the growth rate has recovered."
Last time the cherry tomatoes had finished growing in less than a week. Now they were maturing over a normal span, though even that span was still astonishingly short.
"Isn't it about time we started moving them onto the market?"
"Yes. We've secured sufficient volume now, so this seems like the right moment to launch the cherry tomatoes alongside an advertising campaign."
Steady harvesting had succeeded in building up a respectable stock. The farmland was modest compared to anything in America, but a plot of this size was hard to find in South Korea. It might well rank among the largest in the country.
Kim Sehee popped a cherry tomato into her mouth. Lately she had been skipping a proper breakfast and getting by on a single one. She still ate real meals for lunch and dinner.
Even that was an enormous change. One cherry tomato in the morning, and she stayed comfortably full until lunch, with nothing in it that was bad for the body. Once she understood how convenient it was, the cherry tomato began to look like something that could replace breakfast across the whole of South Korea.
If even she could eat this comfortably, what about everyone else?
For married men, of course, it would be devastating news. A single cherry tomato was more filling, and far easier, than laying out a full traditional table. Their breakfasts stood a very real chance of being replaced by one piece of fruit.
Kim Sehee decided not to meddle in other people's household affairs. Wives who still cooked their husbands breakfast weren't all that common anyway. If anything, for the husbands making do with cereal because their wives didn't cook, this might be the greatest gift imaginable. A cherry tomato was definitely more filling than cereal, and better for you besides.
"This... might work as combat rations too, don't you think?"
One of the employees said it while eating a cherry tomato. Kim Sehee nodded.
"It really would. You can fit dozens of these into the space of an ordinary combat-ration pack. Replace a full day's worth of rations with cherry tomatoes, and you'd last a week at minimum."
They needed no preparation at all. You simply put one in your mouth. The only catch was that they would rot if left out too long, so they would have to be vacuum-sealed.