I Don't Want a Haircut!
Kim Bora carried the hair samples she'd wrested from her battle with Hana back to the lab.
She had already run the human trials on herself and pinned down the effects, but plenty still remained unknown. A week passed. Once she had gathered the hair's effects and the various reactions into a single report, she brought it to the head of research.
Reading the documents Kim Bora had delivered, Department Head Kim Jaeman could only mutter under his breath.
"Fatigue recovery, relief from indigestion, a clearer head, instant restoration of eyesight, hangover cure..."
The effects listed on the page were all over the map. If you were going to call this a drug, shouldn't the benefits concentrate on some particular part of the body? Yet the report compiling everything Kim Bora had observed stated that the effects appeared across a broad range.
"Bora, is this actually true?"
He asked it in a tone that made plain he couldn't make sense of any of it. No health functional food—let alone a drug—existed with effects of this caliber.
Among the various proposals on the table, Kim Bora was pushing to market it not as a medicine but as a health functional food. Classify it as a drug, and they would have to punch through clinical trials and a mountain of regulation. Bringing it out this way, at least, wasn't a bad proposal.
Kim Jaeman's more primitive question, however, was this.
Did it actually work?
Even granting that this was some otherworldly life-form, could water steeped with its hair truly produce effects like these? Or had endless overtime finally done something to her head?
"It's real. I brought a sample, in case you wouldn't believe me."
She had expected disbelief, so she had pulled a few more strands, accepting the drop in Hana's affection.
The image of Hana wailing that she didn't want to still flickered at the edge of her mind... but it was only the sort of anger a single piece of candy could soothe.
A few days of handling the girl had taught her that when Hana was truly angry, she turned her back and refused to speak at all. Kim Bora was reaching the point of wanting to record every one of Hana's behavioral patterns and publish them as a book.
She handed Department Head Kim Jaeman the water steeped with Hana's hair. He took it and studied it closely, brow furrowed.
"The color isn't bad... and the smell's all right..."
It was a different reaction from before. Kim Bora herself thought the color of Hana's hair-steeped water was genuinely beautiful, and the scent was like the clean air you might breathe in the heart of a forest. It was always easy to take in, never the least bit heavy.
"This is safe to drink, isn't it?"
Kim Jaeman clung to his suspicion until the very end, but when Kim Bora nodded fervently, he began to drink. If drinking it killed you, Kim Bora would no longer be among the living.
He sipped slowly, savoring it the way one might a famous coffee brand, intent on parsing every detail from the first swallow onward. If they meant to sell this to the world, every trivial thing mattered.
Kim Bora saw the tip of the pinky on the hand holding the cup begin to tremble, ever so slightly.
That faint tremor spread. From the wrist to the shoulder, until Kim Jaeman's whole body was shaking.
How long did it last? At last he came back to himself and set the empty cup down. He had sat with his eyes closed, tasting the tea, and when he opened them he looked at Kim Bora.
"This... this is a masterpiece."
"Right? Right?"
Certain he had felt exactly what she had, Kim Bora said it with conviction. Nothing made conversation easier than sharing the same experience and finding a subject in common.
"We could sell this into the global green tea market... no. It does more than tea. It can function as a beverage. We could take it to the entire global drinks market..."
Fragrant, delicious, addictive, and it made the body healthier besides? Investors who heard of effects like these would show up clutching bundles of cash, begging—please, just let us invest! She could already see it. But selling the stuff came with one fatal weakness.
There wasn't enough of it.
How much could hair grow, really? A human typically had somewhere between eighty thousand and a hundred twenty thousand hairs, and since this life-form was humanoid, it would have a similar number, even if not exactly the same.
They couldn't shave Hana down to the scalp, either. She would have to keep at least a bob. Hair accounted for so much of one's appearance that cutting it all off would be a foolish thing to do.
"Do we go with a luxury strategy?"
"Our research team concluded that's the best approach."
Kim Bora produced another document and showed it to him. It laid out in detail how to sell the product at a high price, and how to turn it into a brand.
Distribution was nothing to worry about. Starlight Guild had penetrated so deeply that there was a mart in every neighborhood alley. Even short of that, the stuff was so rare it would obviously vanish somewhere along the supply chain.
The distributors would shake it out among themselves on the way; that much was obvious. To sell a brand this strictly limited, it would be far more profitable to sell it somewhere else. A department store, for instance.
"Good work. You can go."
"Yes!"
Once he had sent Kim Bora off, Department Head Kim Jaeman's thoughts only sank deeper.
I was in the room no longer called an isolation chamber, the one that had been renamed mine, curled in Kim Bora's arms and watching television. The other day some people had come and filled this space—which had held nothing but a bed—with a TV and all sorts of daily necessities.
Even now the screen was showing some comedian doing something funny.
"Hana? Isn't this fun?"
Kim Bora held me and chattered on about this and that. Breakfast this morning had tasted awful, she wanted to smack her boss across the face, and so on—nothing worth hearing, spilled out in every direction. I watched the television with a blank face.
Maybe it was because I was no longer human. The scene on the TV was funny enough, but none of it showed in my expression. To anyone looking on, I must have seemed thoroughly unimpressed.
Nestled in Kim Bora's arms, I popped the candy she had given me into my mouth and ate it happily.
Bora really did know exactly which candy I liked.
I felt her gently rocking me. A comfortable feeling settled over me, and sleep came drifting in. Strangely, being in Kim Bora's arms alone was like a human sleeping pill. Bit by bit, I sank under.
"Nn... huh?"
A rustling sound behind me pulled me out of sleep. Bora, startled by my sudden stirring, seemed flustered, unable to sit still. Cold metal touched my neck, and I scrambled out of her arms in a hurry.
"Eeeeeek!"
Kim Bora was holding a pair of hairdressing scissors and cutting my hair.
This couldn't be! I'd trusted Bora! I'd trusted her!
Last time she had plucked it out one strand at a time, and now she had come fully prepared to cut it with scissors.
And she was carefully tucking my shorn hair away in some box, for who knew what purpose. I hated the feeling of my hair being cut, so I fled.
When I had been human, getting my hair cut hadn't bothered me much. Now my instincts were sounding an alarm that my hair must not be cut, so I trusted them and scurried away from Kim Bora.
"Hana... I'll give you candy. Won't you come here?"
With a bed between us, Kim Bora and I faced off, eyes locked. Like cowboys squaring up on the open range, we watched each other and moved slowly.
From her pocket she drew a grape-flavored candy and tried to tempt me. I was certain I would never fall for a lure that cheap. Thinking of the age I used to be, it was absurd to be swayed by a single piece of candy.
When I failed to move the way she wanted, Kim Bora looked flustered.
Heh... I'm not the kind of kid who topples right over for candy.
But what she did next left me no choice but to be appalled.
From her arms she produced no fewer than three pieces of candy! Strawberry, grape, and melon—my absolute favorites.
The moment I saw them, I was sucked into Kim Bora's arms as if something had possessed me. She was a human black hole, with the power to pull in every living thing.
Happy in her arms, I ate the candy and giggled, hehe. Hair would grow back later anyway. Taking candy from Kim Bora right now was by far the better deal.