Linked by Color
"Aigoo... Do I really look that scary?"
The hulking man in the crisp black suit barely flinched at my emergency buzzer. He looked utterly unfazed. Bora had sworn that if I pulled it, he'd run...
Bweee-bweee-bweee!
The alarm shrieked, and every eye in the place snapped toward us. Even the guards making their rounds hurried over, wondering what had happened.
"What's the matter, little one?"
One of them—built like he actually used his body for a living—came up to me and asked. I pointed straight at the giant.
"A weird mister started talking to me!"
The guard lifted his head, got one look at the man, and jolted so hard he bowed on the spot. He wasn't even going to haul the creep away—he was greeting him?
Unbelievable! Did the security here bow on instinct whenever they saw a gangster?
I got ready to run. If that guard and the thug-looking man were in on it together, there was nothing I could do. Then Bora and the bosses came up behind me, and the whole thing fizzled out into a misunderstanding.
"That's why you ought to listen when we say we should meet him together."
Kim Sehee folded her arms and spoke with a venomous edge, a trembling me tucked against her side. It was absolutely not because this spot felt safe enough to hide in.
"Of course she'd be scared of a bear-sized lump like you."
Kim Seyoung nodded along, as if Kim Sehee had simply stated the obvious.
"Come on, sisters. What's so wrong with the way I look?"
Kim Semin, chairman of the board at Starlight Elementary, polished his glasses, looking thoroughly put out.
He was the youngest of the Starlight Guild's direct bloodline, and as a child he had monopolized the affection of his older sisters and brothers. Growing up, though, he had simply become enormous. At a glance he looked like some conglomerate's hired enforcer—the kind of build that belonged on a man carrying out special orders, a killer or a bodyguard who had no business pretending otherwise.
Looking closer, he had none of the presence he'd worn when I yanked the buzzer. Maybe that was because Kim Sehee and Kim Seyoung were tearing into him so thoroughly. Take the glasses off, though, and the charisma was real. Something raw and wild practically radiated off him.
"They said there was a child hogging all our sisters' affection, so I came to see for myself. I can see why."
Kim Semin reached out to pat my head. I darted aside and slipped out from under that enormous hand. Bora, Haru, and the bosses could pet me all they liked. Getting it from men was something I would rather decline.
"So you all gathered just to see Hana's entrance ceremony?"
When they were little and still lived under one roof, they had seen one another's faces every single day. Once they grew up and moved out on their own, those meetings dropped off sharply. A brief glimpse over the major holidays—Chuseok among them—was about the extent of it.
"It's Hana's entrance ceremony. Of course we had to come."
Kim Sehee said it as she scooped me up, and I settled obediently in her arms. Walking was fine, but being carried like this was so much better.
"I've seen Hana's face, so I'll be on my way. Sisters, get home safe."
With that, Kim Semin turned and strode off, his steps long and sure. Had he really come all this way just to see my face? Then again, if he was the chairman, he must have shown himself at the ceremony... I had probably slept through it.
I had dozed off for no good reason and set off an emergency buzzer I had never needed. If I hadn't nodded off during the entrance ceremony, I would have known the chairman's face and never pulled the thing.
I fiddled with the buzzer. Fortunately, Bora, Haru, and the boss didn't seem particularly interested in the fact that I had used it.
"Since we're all together for once, shall we grab a meal before we go?"
"Yeah, I'd love that!"
I answered the boss with my eyes shining.
"I want a hamburger!"
I had to collect the dinosaur toys that came with the burgers. Five of us meant five combo meals. By my brilliant calculations, that was five dinosaur toys in a single stroke.
The entrance ceremony ended in splendid success. After the hamburgers, I came back beaming, ready to inspect my spoils: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—dinosaurs in every color of the rainbow, gathered in my hands.
Two colors were already waiting at home, so if I brought back five dinosaurs of different colors today, I would have a perfect rainbow set. The absolute best. In the car I held the flowerpot and sang a song drunk on victory.
"Hana, couldn't you have just left that cherry tomato pot behind?"
Bora didn't seem to understand how important this cherry tomato pot was. It was one with this body. Whenever I got nervous or anxious, breathing in the scent of the cherry tomatoes made the tension melt away. Maybe because they had sprouted from my own teeth, they seemed to have a great deal in common with me. I plucked one and popped it into my mouth. I was full from the hamburger, but they looked so delicious I couldn't fight the urge to eat just one.
"On a special day like today, I have to bring the cherry tomatoes with me! This one probably wanted to see me at the entrance ceremony too."
I could feel what the cherry tomato was thinking. Staying quietly in the room wouldn't have been a bad decision, but wouldn't it get bored shut up in there all the time? If you were raising a companion plant the way other people kept a pet, regular walks were essential. It didn't nag me to go out the way an animal would, of course. It was perfectly happy on a sunny windowsill.
Only later did I learn that carrying this pot with me had dealt Starlight Food a serious blow.
The day after Hana's joyful entrance ceremony, Kim Sehee clocked in, sat down, and took out her phone.
She had taken new photos of Hana yesterday, and it was time to admire them. Most of the pictures were of Hana dozing off. Even so, she slept a little differently in each one, and flipping through them one by one was thoroughly entertaining.
Did the girl give off some kind of pheromone? The longer Kim Sehee stayed at her side, the more fiercely she wanted to dote on her.
But the moment she read the report that had come in that morning, the color drained from her face. She took her secretary and got into the car at once. The report was simple.
Approximately half the cherry tomatoes have necrotized for reasons unknown...
When she reached the farm with the accelerator floored, Kim Sehee barely kept her legs from giving out. A scene she could not believe was spread before her eyes.
The cherry tomatoes that only yesterday had brimmed with life, their skins gleaming with a rich sheen, were long gone. About half had withered until they had no commercial value left, and the living half looked so weak they might collapse at any moment.
"What... what on earth is this?"
Bewildered, Kim Sehee turned to the manager in charge of the farm. She could not understand how plants could wither like this in a single day.
"Well... they were definitely fine through yesterday. When I got up this morning and checked the crops, they were drooping as if they'd caught some disease."
Every so often, she forgot that these were cherry tomatoes that had come from Hana's own body. They were not plants that grew the ordinary way. They demanded something special in order to live.
Nothing like this had ever happened before. Could the crops be wilting because they had been separated from Hana? But she had taken the girl out any number of times, and the plants had never withered—not even on the night they had stayed out.
Then yesterday's image of Hana flashed through her mind: that peculiar sight of the child carrying a flowerpot. That pot was, in all likelihood, what you could call the mother of these cherry tomatoes.
Could the pot in Hana's arms be playing some kind of role? Kim Sehee saved every cherry tomato that could still be saved, then began running experiment after experiment. Fortunately, fruit still hanging on the vine was unaffected once it was picked.
First, calling Hana outside caused no problem for the tomatoes. Next, leaving Hana at the research lab and taking only the pot she had been holding outside also left them unharmed. The abnormality appeared only when both of them were gone.
Sure enough, the moment Hana came into the city carrying the pot, the cherry tomatoes around the research lab began to wilt at a drastic rate.
Only then could Kim Sehee breathe. She had been on the verge of abandoning cherry tomato cultivation entirely, and now it felt as if a hole had split open in the heavens.