I swiftly cut through the water, swimming with ease. Thanks to this perfect swimsuit, I barely felt any resistance from the water.
“Ah!”
But then, Jiyu caught me. She grabbed my foot and said, “Hana, we should play together! What’s the point of going ahead alone?”
“Ugh…”
As Jiyu held onto my foot, I started sinking into the water. I lost all the momentum I had built up from swimming so hard.
“Ah!”
Realizing her mistake, Jiyu let go. I surfaced and said, “Why did you grab my foot out of nowhere, Jiyu?”
“Hehe!”
Jiyu gave an awkward smile. Yumi walked over too. Everyone was having fun. I looked at Jiyu and Yumi and said, “Let’s see who can hold their breath underwater the longest!”
“Sure!”
A breath-holding contest was always a fun game. Yumi nodded too. I added a condition, “The loser buys drinks from the vending machine today!”
“Okay!”
Adding a bet always made things more exciting. Jiyu, Yumi, and I exchanged glances. I said, “When I count to three, we all go under, okay?”
“One. Two. Three!”
At my signal, Jiyu, Yumi, and I all submerged. I took a deep breath before going under, so I felt confident. At least I wouldn’t be the loser here. But Jiyu and Yumi had already exchanged looks and hatched a plan.
Jiyu and Yumi approached me with smiles. I felt a wave of unease and stepped back, but soon hit the wall. They surrounded me. I trembled like a girl being harassed, unable to do anything but stare. And since I was holding my breath, my heart was racing even faster.
Jiyu and Yumi reached for my armpits. I realized what they were about to do. These two had formed an alliance to make me the loser! But it was too late.
Tickle, tickle.
As Jiyu and Yumi started tickling my armpits, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. But we were underwater. Laughing caused the oxygen I had stored to rapidly escape. And after laughing, the instinct to gasp for air was unavoidable.
My lungs were demanding oxygen, but I was underwater. I couldn’t give them what they wanted. Watching the bubbles rise, I could only think, “I’ve been had.” But I had already laughed, and my breath was at its limit.
I couldn’t hold on any longer. I chose buying drinks over dying. My body shot up to the surface like a fish leaping out of the water.
“Phew!”
I filled my lungs with the oxygen they craved. Gasping, I looked around. Jiyu and Yumi saw me surface and came up too. I looked at them and said, “Tickling is cheating!”
“We never said that was against the rules. And Hana was the first one to come up!”
“Uh…”
Yumi’s logical response left me speechless. I accepted defeat. I didn’t whine like a child.
“I’m going to swim and have fun!”
I left Jiyu and Yumi behind and started swimming. I wasn’t sulking and playing alone. But as I swam, something felt off. The water was too shallow. It only came up to my waist, not even chest-deep. I could practically touch the bottom with my hands while swimming.
I sneaked out of the pool. I had seen another pool earlier, one used by the older kids. It wasn’t far, and swimming there seemed like it would be way more fun. How deep could it really be, anyway?
Looking around, I reached the older kids’ pool. No one was there today—maybe they didn’t have swimming class. I grinned and dove in like a pro.
But I forgot one thing: I’m short. And the pool was deeper than I thought.
“Gurgle, gurgle!”
I was in over my head. My feet couldn’t touch the bottom. I flailed, trying to get back to the surface, but panic made it hard to move.
“Help!!!”
I had no choice but to scream.
—
The village’s criminal acts didn’t stop at just one incident.
Of course, one person with a somewhat kind heart spoke up.
“It seems like we’ve filled up the village development fund… Are we finishing this with one last go?”
However, Village Head Kim Chun-bae, who had already tasted the sweetness of money, scolded the person who said that.
“Hey, you! Don’t you find those corporate guys annoying?”
“Huh?”
Kim Chun-bae spat as he explained.
“They’ve started building barriers on the lands we’ve been using for decades.”
As Kim Chun-bae said, Starlight Food began building barriers to protect Tangle. Of course, it would take some time to build that massive perimeter without gaps.
Of course, nothing was impossible with human effort. In fact, a barrier much longer than the one Starlight Food was trying to build had already been installed in South Korea.
If you think about the length of the barbed wire at the 38th parallel, the barrier Starlight Food was trying to build wasn’t even a drop in the bucket. Compared to the barbed wire at the armistice line, it was almost child’s play.
Still, it was a massive project that would take over a year.
Kim Chun-bae knew this, so he had to do his best to squeeze out every last bit. After a year, they wouldn’t be able to harvest Tangle anymore. Once the barrier was up, there would be no way for the ordinary villagers to get in.
“There was no one in our village who said, ‘This is my land,’ and built a barrier to keep others out.”
“That’s right, that’s right!”
“My brother also came to our village and asked, ‘What’s with the barrier?’ Since when has our village become so harsh? Our village is about sharing and living harmoniously.”
“Those Seoul folks are really annoying. They invaded our village, which was doing just fine, and all they do is build this huge barrier. They might even bulldoze our village later.”
From Starlight Food’s perspective, there was no reason to do that, but the villagers had already painted a picture of themselves being oppressed in their minds.
Village Head Kim Chun-bae, seeing the mood ripe, said:
“Ahem… So, until we say that those annoying corporations have done wrong, we will make a legitimate ‘protest.'”
“Village Head is right! This is a protest. Let’s not be fooled by the corporations’ tricks and do what we need to do!”
“Right!”
This village was a small one with less than thirty people. Maybe that’s why their unity was so strong. There’s a saying that you have to stick together to survive. Village Head Kim Chun-bae, who knew the villagers’ personalities well from running this small village, smiled slyly as he thought.
‘We go once every two weeks…’
At first, they only brought back a dozen or so, but gradually the number increased. Recently, they had even brought back thirty.
If they sold Tangle through normal channels, they could make a lot of money, but they couldn’t do that. Starlight Food would find out. So, they sold it secretly at almost half the price.
Still, it was a fortune. They could pocket nearly 100 million won every two weeks. Officially, it was for the village development fund, but Kim Chun-bae had no intention of disclosing the details to the villagers.
In fact, Kim Chun-bae was planning to run away. If he kept this up for just three more months, he could save enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Starlight Food wouldn’t even notice that Tangle was missing, so it was a perfect plan.
He would use the excuse of being sick to leave the village, and the village development fund he had saved up would go into his own account. There was no plan more perfect than this.
He planned to leave just enough money in the village development fund to keep up appearances. After all, they were all accomplices in this illegal activity, so no one would report him.
“Alright, alright. We have to get up early tomorrow, so let’s get some sleep.”
The villagers, who had already finished farming and had nothing else to do, preferred to go out early in the morning to pick Tangle. Nights were too dark and dangerous, and Starlight Food’s work didn’t start until after 9 a.m., so they aimed for around 6 a.m. to do their harvesting.
And so, the villagers, having gotten some sleep, woke up early and headed to Starlight Farm. They walked as if they were out for a pleasant stroll, all with happy expressions.
From a distance, a drone quietly filmed the villagers. It made almost no sound.
