“Hana!”
I saw Bora running into my room. I got off the bed to greet her. But Bora paused for a moment when she saw me, then approached me and said,
“Hana, you’re Hana, right?”
“What’s wrong, Bora?”
I wondered if I was seeing some kind of doppelganger. Bora looked at me with suspicious eyes, scanning me up and down. Then she came closer.
“Ah!”
Bora stuck her hand under my armpit and lifted me up.
“Bora, what are you doing!”
I couldn’t stop Bora’s strange behavior. My feet were dangling in the air, and I couldn’t resist. Bora looked at me like this and then put me back down on the floor. She even buried her face in my neck and sniffed me.
“It really is Hana…”
“Huh…”
Bora seemed weird. Did she have a bad dream or something? Seeing Bora like that reminded me of something. It was the dinosaur plush I got yesterday. I showed the dinosaur plush to Bora and said,
“Bora, it’s a dinosaur plush! I got it from the claw machine yesterday!”
“Really? It looks cute!”
“Right?”
I giggled and rubbed my cheek against the dinosaur plush. But there was a slight disappointment. The dinosaur plush was too small. I needed something bigger. I looked at Bora and said,
“Bora, I want a big plush.”
“A big plush?”
“Yeah, one as big as me!”
I spread my arms wide and told Bora. Like the ones you see on TV, bigger than a person. If I could put a plush like that on my bed, it would feel sturdy and reliable. The dinosaur plush was nice, but it was too small to feel satisfying.
I needed something I could hug tightly like a body pillow. Nabi was by my side, but Nabi was a tiny cat. And if I hugged her while sleeping, who knows what kind of accident could happen. If I rolled over on Nabi, she could die.
“Really? Then should we go buy a plush…?”
“Yeah!”
I ran around Bora, showing my excitement. Bora smiled at my behavior. The look Bora had when she first came into the room was long gone. When she first came in, she looked at me like I was some kind of alien. It hurt my feelings a bit. There’s no one as nice and obedient as me.
“Then let’s change clothes and go to the department store, Hana!”
“Yay!”
I spread my arms and expressed my joy. Today, I was planning to buy a big plush.
—
“Let’s get out, Hana!”
“Yeah…”
It was quite cold. The winter wind brushed past my cheeks. I looked up at the large building. It was definitely big, probably because it was a department store. My heart raced at the thought of finding the plush I wanted here. What kind of plush should I get?
Just a regular bear plush? Or my favorite dinosaur plush? Or maybe there are other plushies? I couldn’t help but imagine happily. And while appearance was important, the texture was the most important. It was going to be a plush I’d hug often while sleeping in bed, so I had to consider the feel and other factors.
I held Bora’s hand and entered the department store. The inside of the department store was warm, probably because the heater was on full blast. I wanted to take off my padded jacket, but of course, there was no place to put it, so I kept it on.
We took the escalator up and arrived at the corner full of big plushies. I flapped my arms and wandered around the corner filled with plushies.
“Ooooh!!!”
I couldn’t help but let out a scream. I wanted to take all the plushies in front of me and put them in my room. The solution to the dilemma I had earlier was simple: buy all the plushies and put them in my room.
Of course, space constraints made that impossible. My room wasn’t as big as a playground, so even three or four plushies would make the room feel cramped. The plushies would be on the bed, and I’d have to sleep on the floor—a complete role reversal. So I licked my lips and prepared to seriously start picking out a plush.
—
Lee Shin-woo, the CEO, was living a life that even a chaebol would envy.
He owned a building and had leased another building for a pharmacy. With the money he made from the original building, he was planning to start a pharmacy franchise. Of course, there’s no such thing as a pharmacy franchise, but still.
He hired a pharmacist and was running three or four pharmacies, which turned out to be quite profitable.
On top of that, if you add the money he gets from lobbying pharmaceutical companies through back channels, he might be earning as much as a top-tier professional. No, he could even be making way more than that. If things keep going like this for just 10 years, he might even reach the edge of being a chaebol.
“Wow, Oppa, are you the owner of that pharmacy? I pass by it a lot, and it’s so huge that it really sticks in my memory!”
“So, Oppa, you’re a pharmacist? I really like guys who are good at studying!”
“Exactly!”
Enjoying the girls’ flattery, Lee Shin-woo raised his glass and drank. Indeed, a life of making good money was the best. If he had been born just a hundred years later, he might have been just a farmer tilling the land. Making the most of modern society’s advantages was Shin-woo’s strong suit.
“Oppa, do you really make a lot of money?”
One of the girls looked at Shin-woo with a slightly suspicious gaze. In places like this, there were plenty of men who liked to show off. Since anyone with money could enter, people often hid their true circumstances, and all sorts of folks showed up.
And among them were plenty of unemployed guys pretending to be businessmen. Those types often complained about the exorbitant drink prices. Of course, when the big bouncers stepped in, the issue was quickly resolved. For the unemployed, the law was far away, but violence was always close at hand.
“Don’t you believe me, Oppa?”
Shin-woo smirked and pulled out his phone. There was an app that recorded the total sales every month. Shin-woo usually used this app to check his sales. He had a rough idea of how much his pharmacies were making, but he didn’t get daily updates.
However, the app consistently recorded the sales. Of course, Shin-woo didn’t really pay much attention to how much he was making. He already knew he was making good money, so he only checked it once a year when filing taxes.
“Wow, Oppa, you really make a lot of money!”
“Right! Oppa, are you making tens of millions a day?”
The girls went wild when they saw the sales figures on Shin-woo’s phone. Between the luxury brands he was wearing and this proof of income, it was impossible not to believe him. But Shin-woo couldn’t help but feel a bit panicked when he saw the sales figures on his phone.
They had dropped significantly compared to what he was making before. It definitely wasn’t like this the last time he checked.
His hangover vanished instantly. Shin-woo temporarily kicked the girls out of his side and made a phone call. Among the pharmacists he hired, there was one who managed his pharmacies like a salaried boss.
“Hey, Ki-woong. Why are the pharmacy sales like this?”
He couldn’t believe that the pharmacy’s sales had been cut in half.
[I mentioned this to you last time, hyung. Recently, the number of patients with colds and minor symptoms has dropped significantly.]
“What did you say?”
[The number of customers with chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure is still the same, but the number of patients with illnesses that can be cured by resting at home has decreased.]
“Is that even possible? Are the patients going to other pharmacies?”
[No, that’s not it. I had a meal with some pharmacists who work at other pharmacies, and they said it’s the same there too.]
“Really?”
[Yeah. It’s not just pharmacies; even hospitals are having a hard time. Their patient numbers have dropped, and their sales have significantly decreased too.]
“Got it.”
Shin-woo couldn’t help but frown. Of course, he was still making a profit, but the fewer patients there were, the less money he made. Still, it was some comfort that it wasn’t just his pharmacy—patient numbers were down across the board.
If his customers had gone to other pharmacies instead, it would have been a disaster.
Of course, Shin-woo decided to think of it as a temporary phenomenon. Surely this situation wouldn’t last forever, right? There’s no way this level of income would continue for a whole year. If it did, his plan to expand his pharmacies would be a mistake.
