NOVEL NEXT Chapter 26
I tried to get up energetically from bed, basking in the morning sunlight. A strong and good morning!
But contrary to my lively spirit, my body refused to move as I wished. I lay in bed for a while with my eyes wide open. It felt like something that shouldn’t be coming was on its way.
“Ugh…”
Forcing myself to sit up, my head spun. It felt like someone had grabbed my head and shaken it violently for several minutes.
I had no choice but to lie back down. My mind was so dizzy that I couldn’t even walk. I decided to just let my body rest on the bed, fearing it might get worse if I forced myself to move.
So, I lay in bed for a while, soaking in the morning sunlight. My mind was so hazy that I couldn’t tell if I was awake or still asleep.
After what felt like hours, Bora opened my door and came in, probably because it was almost time to go to work.
“The kid who’s always in the office in the morning isn’t there today… Hana, are you still sleeping?”
Bora, dressed in simple work clothes, muttered as she entered my room. Normally, I would’ve sat up straight and greeted her, but today I couldn’t.
“Bo…ra… Hi…”
My throat was so dry. My voice came out strained, and Bora seemed to notice something was off.
She rushed over to me, seeing me lying in bed. She even threw her shoes haphazardly at the entrance, which showed how urgent the situation was.
“Hana! Are you okay?”
Bora quickly walked over with her long legs and placed her hand on my forehead. My forehead must’ve been burning hot. When I touched it earlier, it was scorching.
“Oh my! Hana, your forehead is burning up!”
Bora, noticing my high temperature, showed a panicked expression I’d never seen before. Despite feeling sick, I couldn’t help but laugh at her frantic movements. It felt like I’d discovered a new side of her.
Bora quickly moved around, and I could hear her running down the hallway. She came back with a towel and a thermometer.
“Hana, let me check your temperature real quick.”
Bora placed the cold towel on my forehead and inserted the thermometer into my ear. I giggled at the ticklish sensation of the thermometer.
But whether my condition was worsening or I was just relaxing because Bora was here, the pain started to intensify.
*Cough cough*
I started coughing uncontrollably. With a beep, the thermometer finished measuring, and Bora checked the temperature.
“Bora, what’s my temperature?”
“Uh… Hana, it’s not that high.”
Her expression seemed off, but according to her, my temperature wasn’t too high. However, as my coughing worsened, so did my condition.
“Bora… I’m cold…”
Even under the blanket, it felt like I was standing in the middle of a freezing winter wind between buildings.
“Wait a sec… hold on…”
Bora removed the towel from my forehead and placed her hand on it again, looking startled. Was my forehead still burning?
Bora took the towel and went outside again, probably to soak it in cold water once more.
With the cold towel gone, I felt an intense chill. My forehead was hot, but everything below my neck felt freezing.
*Shiver shiver*
Cold sweat poured down my body, and even under the blanket, I felt icy. Tears streamed down my face as I wished someone would save me quickly.
“Bora! Haru! Bald Man!”
I called out the names of my close colleagues from the office as my vision started to darken.
As I lost consciousness, I occasionally woke up to someone massaging my body and replacing the towel on my forehead. It was probably Bora or Haru.
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The sales of Starlight Green Tea were nothing short of insane. It was almost like a frenzy.
Whether it was at the supermarket or the convenience store, as soon as Starlight Green Tea was stocked, it sold out in less than a minute.
Normally, stores would keep some in the warehouse, but no supermarket or convenience store bothered to stock Starlight Green Tea in the warehouse. Why? Because as soon as it hit the shelves, it was gone. There was no need to store it.
Plus, there was an incident where a customer found some in the warehouse and caused a scene, so store managers just put it straight on the shelves as soon as it arrived. Anyway…
If the price of blood hadn’t gone up, this wouldn’t have happened, so I was working, thinking of it as the last incident.
Of course, it was common for sellers, not distributors, to hoard Starlight Green Tea. When goods came in, they would just scan the barcode and pretend to sell them, then sneakily stash the Starlight Green Tea elsewhere. Selling it next month could yield nearly 20 times the profit, so not doing it would be foolish.
From distributors to sellers, everyone was united, diligently stockpiling Starlight Green Tea. Each dreaming of a golden future.
Meanwhile, Starlight Food’s factory was running non-stop, 24/7, to meet the demand, working day and night.
“Factory manager, there’s a problem with Green Tea Production Line 2.”
“What? It had to break down now, of all times?”
“Exactly.”
“Both the machines and my wife are equally difficult to handle, you never know when they’ll act up!”
Of course, the employee who brought the news of the breakdown didn’t know about the factory manager’s wife, but he got the gist—things weren’t great between them.
As he walked to the line, the factory manager grumbled. The situation now was completely different from before Starlight Green Tea was launched.
In the past, running the factory for 8 hours a day was enough to meet market demand. But nowadays, Starlight Green Tea was so popular that the factory had to run all day just to keep up.
Originally, Starlight Food’s factory was small. If Starlight Food had been doing well before the green tea, it could have handled this volume, but unfortunately, it wasn’t.
Perhaps, though not certain, Starlight Green Tea accounted for about 90% of Starlight Food’s sales. Maybe even 99%. Other products were barely surviving in the market, like they were on oxygen support.
“Factory manager, it’s great that Starlight Green Tea is selling well, but what happens to our factory if we can’t make it anymore?”
“Exactly. From what I know, we get the ingredients delivered every morning. If something goes wrong, I don’t even want to think about it.”
“I heard they make some reserves separately, not all from green tea…”
The factory manager and his subordinate didn’t know the exact process of making the green tea, but they had a rough idea. The ingredients came in the morning under tight security…
And the volume of those ingredients was small enough for one person to carry. The factory manager thought it might be something like the fur of a creature, perhaps similar to the mane of a Saber Tiger, a popular raid byproduct from the Starlight Guild.
The factory manager, who could roughly guess the ingredients in Starlight Green Tea, knew just how absurd this product was.
The cost of ingredients was almost zero, yet the price was 5,000 won. He was confident that no product in the country could match the net profit of Starlight Green Tea.
Even after deducting factory operating costs, labor costs, material costs, and other expenses, there was still a lot left. He even heard they stopped advertising properly after the initial phase because word of mouth spread so well.
In the food business, where ingredient costs are usually the bulk, no product made this much net profit. The daily revenue from green tea was almost 2 billion won, and nothing else Starlight Food sold came close.
Not even close, really. Nothing else sold as well as Starlight Green Tea.
“Our job is to keep the factory running. The rest is up to the higher-ups. Our mission is to keep the production lines going. No need to worry about anything else.”
“But what if the ingredients for Starlight Green Tea suddenly run out?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet. Focus on the obstacles in front of us. The line’s broken, and we can’t even handle that properly.”
“True.”