The Picnic
"Is there anything I can help with?"
I had finished packing every last roll of kimbap into the lunch boxes, and with nothing left to do I drifted around the room. Bora and Haru were both hard at work on something, and I was starting to feel like the only one taking it easy.
When I said so and looked their way, the two of them met each other's eyes and nodded. Haru set down what she was doing and pulled me into her arms.
"There's something very important that Hana has to do."
The gravity in her voice made it sound truly important. I nodded. No matter how hard or difficult it was, I was sure I could manage it.
But the place Haru led me was my own room. I stared at her, utterly lost.
What is there to do in my room?
Haru sat me gently on the bed. I waited quietly, curious what she would ask of me. If it was something I could do in my room, it had to be special and wonderful, right?
Haru hooked her phone up to the TV and switched it on. Little Magician Rumi was playing.
It was an episode I'd missed by going to bed early. If I sat down to watch it, I wouldn't be able to help Bora and Haru at all!
"Hana, your job today is to watch TV right here. It's a very important job, so you mustn't sneak out, all right?"
Good heavens. A job this comfortable actually existed. Even so, concentrating on an anime was difficult for me, so I could understand why Haru had put it that way.
I put on a resolute face and nodded. Just as she'd said, I made up my mind to pour every bit of my energy into watching TV today.
The moment I fixed my eyes on the screen, Haru crept backward, step by careful step, and slipped out of the room.
Bora, Haru, and I had come out to the park in front of the company. It was still early February, and the air was chilly. Whenever the wind blew, my long hair scattered every which way.
"The cherry blossoms are already out?"
"They are. Don't they usually bloom at the end of March? Is this Hana's doing too?"
The trees along the street had been in brilliant flower for some time already. Watching the pink blossoms open all around made something tickle deep in my chest, and the flower beds were blooming just as brightly.
"Bora, I'm hungry."
A growl rose from my stomach. Aside from sneaking one piece of kimbap that morning, I hadn't eaten a thing. I hadn't gotten nearly enough sunlight either, so hunger was inevitable.
"Let's find a nice tree, spread a mat, and eat."
Fortunately, Bora didn't seem inclined to roam the whole park. Perhaps because I'd complained of being hungry, she was already turning her head this way and that, checking for a suitable spot.
Quite a few people had come. The cherry blossoms, no doubt. The news had reported that this was the only place in all of Korea where they were in bloom, so it was well worth a visit. The sunlight was dazzling, and for winter the day felt mild.
Maybe that was why picnic mats were a common sight all around us. Luckily, there was still a place for us to sit. We claimed a spot beneath a great cherry tree, unfolded the mat, and got ready to enjoy ourselves.
The mat Bora had brought was an impressive one, printed with an illustration of Rumi. Haru set all sorts of drinks down on top of it, and for good measure placed plastic bottles at the corners so the wind wouldn't carry the mat away.
I set the lunch boxes I'd brought onto the mat. Bora and Haru had said they were heavy and offered to carry them, but I had refused. They were heavy, yes, but wasn't it only right that I, the star of the picnic, should be the one to carry them? The most important things belonged in my hands.
A full five-tier lunch box, packed with every kind of food!
I set the boxes of kimbap, sandwiches, meat, and fried food down in front of me. The box that held nothing but vegetables I quietly nudged over to Haru's place. Bora and Haru were busy straightening the mat, and I seized the opening.
I am absolutely not eating that.
"Hana. Even so, sliding the vegetables off to the side is a little much, don't you think?"
Haru said it after lifting the lid of the box in front of her. Sure enough, the one she held was packed with something very much like a salad.
"Haru, I don't eat vegetables."
I said it with perfect confidence.
"Then shouldn't you not eat the rest either? There's vegetables in the kimbap and the sandwiches too."
When Haru went straight for my weak point, I had nothing to say. Worse, she actually moved as if she meant to take the food sitting in front of me.
I turned a pleading look on Bora. Catching my eyes, Bora gave an awkward smile and came to my defense.
"Ms. Haru. I don't think Hana eats a fully plant-based diet. Maybe because her essence is a plant? So forcing her to eat them feels a little wrong."
That's my Bora!
"In that case... I suppose it can't be helped."
Haru looked as if she had more to say, but one glance at my face and she swallowed it. There was no reason to stir up trouble on a picnic day this pleasant.
I popped open the lids in a bright, excited voice.
"Wow! It's absolutely packed with delicious food!"
These were the dishes Bora, Haru, and I had worked so hard to make that morning. I barely held the drool in check and reached in at once for the kimbap.
But Bora caught my hand. Why wouldn't she let me eat?
Then, with a wet wipe she produced from somewhere, she carefully cleaned my hands, and only after that did she speak.
"Hana, eat as much as you want. We made all of this for you."
With Bora's permission secured, I fully intended to become a god of eating today. I hadn't had breakfast, so there was plenty of room.
As I was working my way through the lunch boxes, the wind rose and cherry blossom petals came scattering down.
The sight was so beautiful that I forgot to eat and simply drank it in. It felt as if the cherry trees themselves were welcoming me for coming to play in their park.
"Don't the petals seem to be falling an awful lot around us?"
"They do. Everywhere else they aren't even drifting, let alone falling, but around us they're swirling all over the place."
I thought I had a pretty good idea why. The petals were coming to see me.
A little time passed, and the bidding for the army's combat rations began.
It was a formality, but because this was, strictly speaking, a military supply contract, other companies had to be given a chance to take part. Of course, it was nothing more than a formal procedure.
The other companies simply could not meet the combat-ration requirements that Starlight Foods had already satisfied.
Put simply, the first condition required that a combat ration be no larger than a single notebook and be capable of covering thirty days of food in an emergency, among other things.
There were plenty of other conditions, but they couldn't even clear this first one. Preparing a single meal of any other combat ration already demanded as much space as a notebook, and that one meal wouldn't last a week, let alone thirty days.
Even so, the companies that had been supplying combat rations until now felt relieved once they saw the Ministry of National Defense's stated position.
The Ministry had shown the ration companies some consideration. Putting every egg in one basket was far too dangerous, so it had chosen to divide them.
The supply of cherry tomatoes from the private firm Starlight Foods could be cut off in an instant, and the variables were comparatively many. So the Ministry set the combat-ration ratio at seven to three.
Existing combat rations would be kept at close to seventy percent, and the new Starlight Cherry Tomatoes at thirty. They would begin by using up the old rations as their shelf life ran out during training, and slowly raise the share of Starlight Cherry Tomatoes from there.
The Ministry's final goal was to hold the ratio at five to five. In the event of a provocation or a semi-wartime situation, cherry tomatoes would be issued; in ordinary training, the existing combat rations would be eaten.
They were not buying thirty percent cherry tomatoes all at once. As the existing rations were consumed, what was used up would be replaced with cherry tomatoes. Starlight Foods had said it could not supply nearly thirty percent of them in a single stroke.
For the time being, the military placed an order for one hundred million Starlight Cherry Tomatoes over the course of a year.
That came to nearly ten million a month. The Ministry's annual order reached a staggering four hundred billion won.
"This... we'll have to expand the existing farm to three or four times its size, won't we?"
Measured by area, the cherry tomato farm was already close to the largest in Korea, and now it was set to become first by an overwhelming margin.
It was possible only because each of Hana's cherry tomatoes set fruit at an abnormal speed, and in astonishing quantity.
Had they grown and fruited as slowly as ordinary cherry tomatoes, a volume like this would have been out of the question.