Why Am I Getting Healthier?

The negotiations with Park Jeongtae, the person in charge at the department store, went incredibly smoothly.

Whenever Oh Hyeonseong said something, Park could do little more than nod helplessly.

And so, the final supply price came to a staggering 1.4 million won per kilogram.

It was an enormous sum.

Aside from DiSanto’s Black Label, the highest premium line, there were no strawberries anywhere in the current market that commanded anything close to this price.

I could probably charge much more if I really wanted to… but looking at it in the long term, this should be just about right.

If he raised the price dramatically from here, the range of potential customers would become too narrow.

The strawberries would cease to be a fruit that many people sought out and went crazy over, becoming nothing more than an ultra-luxury fruit for a select few to admire.

But at this price point, he could make plenty of money while maintaining the buzz surrounding them.

The mere fact that natural strawberries could cost this much would be more than enough to shatter people’s preconceptions.

The shift in public perception that would follow would also benefit natural farms growing premium varieties, as well as the Yoo siblings.

More importantly, I stuffed a ton of favorable clauses into the contract in exchange for lowering the price a little.

The high unit price wasn’t the only important part of this contract.

Unlike an ordinary business relationship with a department store, the contract made the reversed positions of buyer and seller painfully obvious.

Oh Hyeonseong could adjust the delivery schedule and quantity however he wanted, whenever he wanted, and the department store was obligated to accept his notice.

He had also included every favorable clause he could think of, including promotional rights, confidentiality provisions, and enormous penalties for violating them.

All the rights belonged to Oh Hyeonseong.

All the obligations belonged to the department store.

“Well, I think we’ve agreed on enough.”

“Th-Then… is that satisfactory…?”

Park Jeongtae’s face had gone pale.

He looked as though negotiating this contract had aged him by another ten years.

“However, there’s something I’d like to make clear before we sign. You must keep the source of these strawberries absolutely confidential. There will be no flexibility on this. The moment even the slightest bit of information leaks to the outside, the contract is over.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Our department store always strictly adheres to the terms of its contracts—”

“I’m not talking about basic rules like that. I’m saying that even if one of your VVIPs or some powerful politician comes looking, you don’t say a single word.”

A department store would do just about anything for a wealthy customer.

When dealing with ordinary customers, they might pretend to uphold their principles. But if an influential person came knocking, quietly handing over a phone number through some indirect channel wouldn’t exactly be difficult.

That was why Hyeonseong was laying down the law in advance.

The moment anything troublesome happened, this deal would be over.

“I-I’ll keep that in mind.”

Park Jeongtae swallowed hard and nodded.

“Wow, is this really it? The stuff everyone’s been going crazy over lately?”

People packed the area, whispering among themselves.

At the very center of the food hall in the prestigious Hankyung Department Store, strawberries from Ohhyeon Farm were proudly displayed all on their own.

Even after receiving additional shipments, the supply was still nowhere near enough to satisfy demand.

The product’s price had risen considerably along with the increased supply cost, but word of mouth had only spread further, bringing even more people looking for them.

Even though a box containing only a handful of strawberries cost several hundred thousand won, customers lined up in advance and sold them out in an instant.

The department store had even added individually packaged products and limited purchases to one product per person per day.

And yet the situation remained the same.

Naturally, people’s interest only continued to grow.

And that attention inevitably translated into profit for the entire department store.

The influx of customers sent sales soaring, and the natural-produce section, which had once been tucked away in a corner, had even been moved to a more prominent location.

As demand for natural products increased, the tiny section had more than doubled in size.

“Haha… This isn’t a dream, is it?”

A bright smile spread across Park Jeongtae’s face.

He had already been one of the people pushing for the natural-produce section, and now that he had brought in such a blockbuster product, his standing and influence within the company had changed dramatically.

A special promotion was practically guaranteed.

When he had visited the farm owner’s house, he had been completely fleeced.

But looking at things now, the man hadn’t been some merciless highway robber after all.

He had been the second coming of a savior.

All right. Let’s keep going. When the tide comes in, you’ve got to row the boat!

Park Jeongtae strode forward, clutching a stack of documents.

Luxury food and beverage businesses, including various hotels and fine-dining establishments, were currently scrambling to track down these extraordinary natural strawberries.

But there was no way to obtain them without going through Hankyung Department Store.

Naturally, the department store had no intention of handing its supply over to outside businesses.

There was only one exception.

A luxury hotel’s lounge café, one of the affiliates of the Hankyung Group, had been given a supply of strawberries from Ohhyeon Farm.

For one reason only:

To make a limited-edition natural strawberry bingsu.

“Haa… What the hell is this that everyone’s making such a fuss about on social media?”

A woman frowned deeply as she stared down at the table.

She wore a pair of oversized sunglasses to conceal her face, but her exceptionally pale skin and sharply defined nose made her identity impossible to hide.

People who had already recognized her were whispering nearby.

“Isn’t that Joo Jihye?”

“I think it is. I heard she comes to this hotel pretty often.”

Joo Jihye, one of the star names of Aegis Entertainment.

She was a top-tier hunter who was highly active in Korea, as well as a super-celebrity with 26 million social media followers.

She was also a popular actress and model who had deeply established herself in the entertainment industry.

Because she worked primarily in Korea, she was somewhat less well-known overseas. But at least among Koreans, there was no way anyone could fail to recognize her.

She was a bona fide top star.

Because of her activities across so many different fields, she also had plenty of antis who accused her of being an attention seeker rather than a hunter.

But whenever that happened, she had the skills to shut them all up with her staggering Gate records.

There was a reason people were making such a fuss as they passed through the hotel lobby.

Joo Jihye, however, didn’t care about any of the people recognizing her.

She was already accustomed to that sort of attention, and she couldn’t care less what a bunch of flies buzzed about.

Her attention was focused entirely on the bingsu in front of her.

“The mango bingsu at the hotel next door is 810,000 won, and this tiny strawberry bingsu is 900,000 won? Even though it uses natural strawberries?”

Shredded strawberries were piled on top of a small bowl of condensed-milk bingsu.

There were practically only a few strawberries’ worth.

The mango bingsu at the other hotel was already famous for being small enough to fit in one hand, but this one was even more diminutive.

“They bring in tasteless produce, slap the label of a new variety on it, jack up the price, and rip off gullible people. It’s probably the same thing this time.”

She harshly criticized the strawberry bingsu.

Of course, it wasn’t because she was worried about wasting money. Her bank account was overflowing with more money than she could ever spend.

She simply needed something to be annoyed at.

And to be fair, the price was absurd.

Still, that didn’t mean she could leave without trying it.

Click!

She began taking photographs to upload to social media.

With an explosive topic like this, there was no way a natural-born celebrity like her could afford to sit it out.

After pressing the shutter button nearly a hundred times, she finally put her phone down and tried the bingsu.

She had no great expectations.

But the moment it entered her mouth, her eyes widened.

“What? I-It actually tastes good?”

Joo Jihye stared at the strawberry bingsu in confusion.

The flavor was so far beyond her expectations that she was almost bewildered.

She had always eaten extremely expensive fruit, but even compared to those, there was absolutely nothing lacking.

For something that’s merely natural strawberries…

The price she had initially complained about suddenly felt like an incredible bargain.

To get this kind of flavor from premium synthetic fruit, she would have to pay at least twice as much.

There was no question that it was the best hotel-event bingsu she had ever eaten.

Were people really not exaggerating?

Joo Jihye quickly finished the bingsu and stared blankly at the empty bowl.

She was satisfied.

So satisfied that it almost hurt her pride.

For a moment, she wanted more.

But that was impossible.

It was a limited daily quantity that the hotel had heavily promoted, and reservations were required to taste it.

There had been fierce competition for reservations, but thanks to the privileges of her highest-tier membership, a portion had been set aside specifically for her.

But there had only been one serving.

There was no way she could come back now and demand another just because she had found it delicious.

“Hah, whatever. It’s still just a strawberry.”

Joo Jihye frowned irritably.

People without money who have to obsess over value for money might go crazy for it… But it’s not some irreplaceable flavor. Can’t I just eat another top-tier fruit instead?

She was merely surprised that natural strawberries could produce this level of flavor.

She had absolutely no intention of clinging to some strawberry that was acting all high and mighty just because it was limited in quantity and supposedly exclusive.

Having lost interest, Joo Jihye left the hotel.

That evening, she ate a multi-million-won course meal, and after returning home, she had some of the finest fruits piled up in her refrigerator for dessert.

She didn’t think about the strawberry bingsu even once before lying down in bed and going to sleep.

But for some reason, she slept unusually well that night.

What the hell? Why do I keep thinking about it?

During a break from filming her drama, Joo Jihye held her head with a troubled expression.

She had clearly lost all interest in the strawberry bingsu from that day and had gone about her daily life without any issues.

And yet, several days later, the strawberries she had eaten at the hotel kept flashing through her mind.

I don’t feel well either… This is so damn irritating.

Dark circles hung heavily beneath her eyes.

They were obvious even beneath her makeup.

Her severe insomnia had flared up again.

I thought it was getting a little better these past few days. I thought I was finally making progress. Ugh, I just want to kill everyone.

The can in Joo Jihye’s hand crumpled with a crunch.

Filming would resume in only a few minutes.

But her condition was so poor that she couldn’t concentrate on acting at all.

No matter how strong a hunter was, they were still human. If their basic needs weren’t being met, their entire body was bound to start breaking down.

In the end, that day’s filming was a complete disaster.

There were only a few usable scenes, and even the scenes they had tried to salvage were scrapped at Joo Jihye’s insistence.

As a result, the entire filming schedule had to be pushed back.

For a production that had only just begun filming a new drama, it was essentially throwing a bucket of water onto the whole operation.

Yet nobody expressed any complaints toward her.

She belonged to Aegis Entertainment, an absolute powerhouse in the industry. She was a popular actress with tremendous box-office pull, as well as a terrifyingly powerful hunter.

Even the head writer and director had no intention of crossing her.

Only the staff caught in the middle quietly grumbled behind her back.

“I’m here!”

“Hey, what took you so long? I told you they’d hand it over immediately if you gave them my name.”

“I’m sorry. They said it wasn’t easy to pull the stock out either, so it took some time…”

“Whatever. Just give it to me.”

Joo Jihye snatched the strawberries from Hankyung Department Store out of her manager’s hands.

Then she returned home and ate them while grumbling.

Once again, she was fairly satisfied.

Could it have been a simple coincidence?

Strangely enough, she fell asleep almost immediately that night and slept soundly.

“…Could it really be because of the strawberries?”

Joo Jihye nervously chewed on her fingernail.

What had begun as a suspicion was gradually approaching certainty.

Every time she ate the strawberries, her terrible insomnia improved, allowing her to sleep properly that night.

Even now, perhaps because she had eaten strawberries the previous evening, she had slept soundly and was in excellent physical condition.

A problem that countless hospitals had failed to solve was getting better simply because she ate strawberries.

It made no sense whatsoever.

But if the strawberries really were helping even a little, then sweeping up dozens of tons of them would hardly be excessive from her perspective.

Just then, she encountered a group of hunters in the hallway.

They were rookie hunters from Aegis Entertainment, the same agency she belonged to.

Under normal circumstances, they were far beneath the level of people she would bother speaking to.

But this time, Joo Jihye stopped them first.

“Hey, you guys…”

“Yes, sunbaenim! It’s an honor to be supporting you! We look forward to working with you on this operation!”

“Quiet. Has any of you eaten the strawberries from Hankyung Department Store?”

“Ah, those? I’ve only heard about them. I haven’t tried them.”

“I have!”

“I was curious too, so I paid the resale price and tried them.”

Two of the six hunters immediately raised their hands.

“How were they?”

“How were they? I was surprised by how delicious they were for natural strawberries… but I figured I’d try them again once the hype dies down a little.”

“I was completely satisfied. Even though I paid three times the price, I don’t regret it. They’re seriously much better than Black Label strawberries.”

“No, not that. Did you notice any changes in your physical condition? Like suddenly feeling healthier or something…?”

“My condition?”

“No, nothing like that.”

The hunters looked completely baffled.

Joo Jihye questioned them in detail about various other things as well, but they continued to insist that they hadn’t experienced any effects whatsoever.

And from a common-sense perspective, it wasn’t as though eating a few strawberries would suddenly make a person’s physical condition noticeably better.

I guess… I was imagining things. It must have just been a coincidence.

Joo Jihye changed her mind and finished her schedule for the day.

But when she returned home, she received some bad news.

“What? You couldn’t bring the strawberries?”

“I’m sorry. I asked them several times, but the department store said they absolutely couldn’t spare any stock this time.”

“Hah… You’ve got to be kidding me. They kept giving me just a tiny amount at a time, and now they dare turn me down?”

Joo Jihye was instantly irritated and considered calling the department store to complain.

But she soon shook her head and gave up.

“Fine. I’ll just stop eating those stupid strawberries. I won’t touch them ever again.”

Honestly, she did want to eat the strawberries.

Perhaps because she had eaten them several times, the thought of them occasionally popped into her mind even when she was busy with other things.

But now that it had come to this, her pride wouldn’t allow it.

There was no way a top hunter who was the face of Aegis, and an arrogant superstar actress at that, could become hung up over something as trivial as food.

Thump!

Joo Jihye lay down on the bed and tried to sleep.

For someone suffering from severe insomnia, the bed was also a frightening place.

But she had managed to sleep soundly for several days in a row.

Maybe it had been because she ate the strawberries.

But that was nothing more than a superstition born from coincidence.

She wasn’t the sort of person who normally believed in things like that, so she lay down with a comfortable mind.

“…”

Time passed.

The next morning.

Joo Jihye suddenly shot upright after not sleeping a wink.

The dark circles that had barely disappeared had returned, hanging heavily beneath her eyes.

“Aaaah! What the hell is this?!”

Her arms trembling, Joo Jihye screamed in frustration.