Chocolate Donuts
"Mm..."
I was lying in bed, meditating. It wasn't as if I were short on sleep from secretly watching Little Magician Rumi in the small hours. Eyes shut, I was simply exploring some unknown world—and I was still out there when I heard the door open.
"Hana!"
Bora came into my room with both arms full of food. I shot up off the bed and ran to her. Bora really was the best.
She set a bag gently down on the desk in the middle of the room, a piece of fine, expensive wood, and my eyes locked onto it with ferocious focus. What kinds of things to eat were in there?
Maybe it was the growth spurt, but I could eat and eat and still be hungry. I was shoveling food down like someone possessed. Stack that against the appetite I'd had as an adult, and the grocery bill had to be getting absolutely wrecked.
While Bora was busy on a phone call, I pulled out what was inside the bag. Tasty snacks, and donuts packed in an elegant paper box.
I swallowed, and I couldn't look anywhere but the donuts. They were the fancy kind they didn't even sell in this building, and they were coated in chocolate. That showy gleam was tempting me. I felt my mouth flood as my hand went out. There was no resisting it.
I flicked a glance at Bora, snatched up a chocolate donut, and brought it to my mouth.
Nom, nom.
Sweet chocolate spread all through my mouth. It was so good. I kept eating, not even caring that I'd smeared chocolate all around my lips.
"Bora, which donut shop did you get these from?"
"A shop downtown."
Fair enough. Bora and Haru didn't only work in the office. They'd climb into a car and vanish off somewhere, business-trip style. I'd wanted to tag along once, so I snuck after them—only to get caught and marched straight back to my room.
Holding the half-eaten donut, I studied Bora's face. There used to be a trace of fatigue there. These days she looked completely charged, and if anything she seemed to have more energy than I did.
"So what have you been up to lately, Hana? Still streaming regularly?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna be a NewTuber when I grow up."
"Sure, sure."
These days, ask kids what job they dreamed of and NewTuber came in first. It used to be celebrity or scientist, I was pretty sure. I streamed because it was fun, and I couldn't quit easily. The pull of it was like a drug.
"Anyway. You are brushing your teeth properly, aren't you?"
Bora said it looking me straight in the eye. Under that intense stare, I had no choice but to turn my head a little aside. It was absolutely not because I'd been snacking at night without brushing.
"Y-yeah! I brush every single time!"
I got the words out, barely hiding the shake in my voice. Bora set both hands on her hips and looked at me in a way I couldn't quite read. I dodged that look by busying myself with the donut.
"And you're going to bed on time, correct? You said you weren't a little child, you were an adult—so you haven't forgotten our promise not to stay up all night, have you?"
This time I couldn't answer her properly. If she found out I was staying up late every night to watch anime until dawn, she would not be looking at me kindly.
"Yeah. I'm out cold by ten."
"You've been getting up a little late lately, though."
"I—I'm sleeping just fine!"
"Really? I can take your word for it?"
She pressed it as if she were demanding a firm answer, and I nodded with everything I had.
Whether she was moved by the performance or not, Bora smiled and stroked my hair. The donuts in the big box were already gone. She'd eaten some, but I'd finished the rest.
Dinner was still a long way off, so I hadn't hesitated. This fullness would collapse in no time. Of that I was certain.
Clutching my ballooned belly, I slumped over the desk. Whenever I ate something delicious and got this stuffed, my whole body went limp.
"Aigoo..."
Bora took one look at my face and wiped around my mouth with a handkerchief she'd produced from somewhere. I'd thought I'd eaten the donuts quite neatly. Apparently not. The handkerchief came away thick with chocolate.
Then, brimming with energy, she fetched a comb from who knew where, sat me up from where I'd collapsed, and started brushing my hair. A cool, pleasant feeling spread over my scalp, and I gave myself over to the strokes.
The layabout life really was the best. Nowhere else left you this full, or this warm.
"Is this the Starlight Cherry Tomato?"
Major General Kim Taeseong, Logistics Director of the ROK Army, said it while studying the small cherry tomato set before him.
"I am told it is a product Starlight Foods has prepared with considerable ambition, sir."
"This little cherry tomato is capable of yielding a full thousand calories?"
"Yes, sir. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has already certified it, and it is flying off the shelves."
Kim Taeseong, though, was staring at a single cherry tomato with doubt written plain across his face. Something no bigger than a quarter, and that was the energy it was supposed to hold?
"This does not add up."
"The Starlight Guild must have found a new plant inside a gate, sir. Look at the new products Starlight Foods has been bringing out lately, and there is no other explanation."
"Hm."
With that, he rolled the cherry tomato across the desk with a spoon. It was firmer than any ordinary one. He had pressed hard enough that a normal cherry tomato would already have been pulped, and this one had simply held.
There was a time when a combat ration meant calories and shelf life, and nothing else. In the modern age, taste had come to matter just as much.
So much so that NewTubers existed whose whole work was eating the field rations of various nations and reviewing them. A tasteless ration was nothing but a public joke, and it struck hard at morale besides.
The one drawback was that chasing flavor had made them bulkier than before.
After turning a cherry tomato this way and that, Logistics Director Kim Taeseong scooped up one of the tomatoes rolling on the desk and put it in his mouth. Better one taste than ten thousand looks.
It went in, and after a few chews it slid smooth down his throat. The texture, for a start, was entirely satisfying. He had guessed as much from the look of it, but the thing was exceedingly convenient to eat. No preparation at all. You simply put it in your mouth.
"Hm. The flavor is good as well."
The sweetness ran far stronger than an ordinary cherry tomato. A moment ago he had barely had an appetite. Now his mouth felt awake, as if he had just taken an appetizer.
"You men try one. It is quietly excellent."
The aides, who had been staring at the cherry tomatoes in wonder, followed his word and put them in their mouths. As the fruit went down smooth, satisfaction spread across their faces.
"Sir... a man could eat this even with no appetite at all."
"I doubt there is a food this simple to consume."
Even thrown into the extremes of a fight, however wretched the conditions, a man with nothing but these cherry tomatoes could hold out for a long time.
"It is the same when one looks at the hunters' weapons, sir. The Starlight Guild's technology is remarkable—enough to make a man proud this is a guild of the Republic of Korea."
The aides were still gazing at the cherry tomatoes as if they could not quite believe them.
"If I may, sir... I seem to be getting full."
"I had lunch not long ago, so I cannot be certain, but this fullness is no small matter."
"One cherry tomato, and I am this full."
Every aide who had eaten one was pleading satiety. And Kim Taeseong's aides were, to put it plainly, gym rats. Their basal metabolism ran higher than a civilian's, and still they were this full.
Fed to an ordinary soldier of the ROK Army, it would leave a man fuller still.
Just as they said, Kim Taeseong himself—having eaten only a single tomato—was awash in an enormous fullness. The kind that came from clearing a bowl of rice packed down tight, and a whole pot of soybean-paste stew along with it.
They were trading glances when one of the aides spoke, carefully.
"Sir... if we adopted this as a combat ration, I believe it would serve us exceptionally well."
To the firms already supplying field rations, the words would have been a bolt from a clear sky. Where efficiency was concerned, there was no comparison to be made.
Fill the space of a single ration pack with cherry tomatoes—pack them in hard—and a hundred would fit.