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THUNDERDOME: what do they hv u doing
fides1104: spreadsheets
sugrjangz: taking minutes
not_ur_power_bank: coffee
spookyscaryskeletons: body double
spookyscaryskeletons: this is humiliating
THUNDERDOME: wtf
fides1104: for who???
not_ur_power_bank: don't u have a body double
spookyscaryskeletons: that was 1 time
sugrjangz: and u wouldnt shut up abt it
fides1104: for who???
spookyscaryskeletons: park sowon
THUNDERDOME: omg
spookyscaryskeletons: i dont even speak korean
sugrjangz: they made u the body double for the biggest idol in paragon creative
sugrjangz: ON YOUR FIRST DAY
spookyscaryskeletons: its not that great
spookyscaryskeletons: i need to meet some guy with a body manipulation quirk first
not_ur_power_bank: ew
fides1104: then what ru doing @THUNDERDOME
THUNDERDOME: nth much
"Hello. Earth to new girl."
Edie looked up from her phone, eyes burning, but her supervisor just smirked. "Are you done yet?" He didn't wait for her to respond. Instead, he pivoted on his heel and walked away, clearly expecting her to follow. Edie seriously considered the alternative, but it was her first day, and she wanted to leave a good impression. (But did she really? Ugh, whatever.)
As she dismounted from the van, her supervisor grabbed her shoulder roughly and manhandled her through a pushing, shoving horde of stylists and makeup artists. He exchanged a few words with his competitors- or were they his colleagues?- as they navigated the throng, brief snatches of conversation in rapid-fire Korean that Edie couldn't catch. Soon, he was slamming the door shut and gesturing impatiently at the empty racks in front of them. "Well? Hurry up."
Edie closed her eyes and visualized the piles of clothes that she had stored in her pocket dimension before leaving the building. A kaleidoscope of colors flashed through her head as they flooded out onto the racks. A loud, discordant jangling sound filled the room as the hangers hurtled backwards along their rails. Edie turned to look at her supervisor smugly, but instead he looked annoyed.
"No, no, no. I wanted them to be arranged logically. Look at this." He marched up to a random spot on the rack and pulled out two dresses, one white and one black. The black one was visibly shorter than the other. "You see this? They shouldn't be side-by-side. I want a color gradient, white to red to yellow to blue to black. And they should be arranged by height within their colors."
Edie couldn't speak. She was fairly certain that if she opened her mouth right now, she'd say something she'd regret. Her supervisor didn't seem to notice that she was almost apoplectic with rage. "You'll work on it. Tomorrow I want some level of organization instead of whatever this is."
"Tomorrow?" Edie managed.
"Tomorrow. Or do you want next week?" Her supervisor scratched the back of his neck and switched two more dresses before shuffling down the line to repeat the process with another pair. "Doesn't matter. You've already sped this whole process up by a lot." He turned to her. "Now go and get a coffee or something. And stay out of our way." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. "You need change?"
Edie shook her head. She probably had more in her credit card than this asshole made in a year, anyway.
"Got your lanyard?" Edie tugged at it from where it was looped around her neck. "Good. So the music show starts in an hour, this one gives you access to yellow areas. Meaning you can go and watch the show if you want, or else visit the staff-only vending machines and eating areas." Her supervisor turned away. "Now shoo. Have fun. Whatever."
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THUNDERDOME: cant make lunch sry
sugrjangz: wut
THUNDERDOME: im at mb
not_ur_power_bank: omg
spookyscaryskeletons: same actly
spookyscaryskeletons: as in i cant make lunch
spookyscaryskeletons: im at the airport
fides1104: that was fast
spookyscaryskeletons: idk psw dw to deal w the paps tdy lol
sugrjangz: k tmw then
sugrjangz: or sth
sugrjangz: how fkd r ur schedules
fides1104: im gna be here all day
not_ur_power_bank: depends
sugrjangz: ok. pretty fkd then
sugrjangz: can try n match dinner
fides1104: im meeting char for dinner tho :/
THUNDERDOME: txting is fine
sugrjangz: k
"Ditched, huh."
Hailey looked up from her phone to see Jess slide an acai bowl across the table. She didn't sound sympathetic. Hailey glared down at the bowl, then up at her sister. "The fuck is this?"
Jess shrugged. "Lunch. You said you weren't eating with me, but I had a hunch, so I bought two." Digging her spoon into the purple goop, she dug out a thick chunk of the stuff and stuck it in her mouth. Outside her window, the Seoul skyline spread out in all its splendor. But neither of them were looking.
"I'm not eating this shit."
"Suit yourself." With her other hand, Jess tapped through her tablet. "Oh, look. Samsung's trying to stage another comeback."
Hailey leaned over to look. A bunch of old Korean men were gathered in front of a building, cutting a red ribbon. It looked boring. "Isn't that Hamsung?"
"Not quite." Hailey realized a second too late that she'd set her sister off. "You see, the advent of quirks completely broke the government's monopoly on force, and in the resulting anarchy, many of the old megacorps could no longer enforce their trademarks." With a few swipes, Jess called up a hologram of the globe, revolving gently. "That's why you've got knockoff fast-food franchises like WcDonalds, Burger Queen, and the rest." She wrinkled her nose. "Not that I'd ever eat in any of those places."
Hailey grunted, looked down at her acai bowl, and gingerly scooped a spoonful into her mouth. It didn't taste bad, but it didn't taste good either.
"Samsung used to be one of the world's largest phone manufacturers, but once the unrest started, their factories got looted, their scientists got kidnapped, their blueprints got stolen... I could go on and on. In the US they had to make a concerted effort to break up the megacorps, but elsewhere they just fell apart on their own. Our great-grandparents were part of the crowd that broke Samsung. And over the years, our family built Astute up until we had the biggest share of the pie. Next to us, Hamsung is nothing. But they're still doing better than Samsung."
Hailey grunted.
"You didn't know this?" Jess sounded faintly condescending. "This is, like, Strategy 101. They teach this in the first year- no, the first semester- of every business course."
"I'm in the hero course."
"Seriously?"
Hailey rolled her eyes.
"What the hell are you doing there?"
"Because I want to be a hero." Duh.
This time Jess actually laughed. "Oh, I get it. I totally get it. This is one of your weird little teenage rebellions." Her spoon scraped over the insides of the acai bowl. "Not sure if you've noticed, but heroes are just another asset class."
"Whatever."
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sugrjangz: i hate my family
not_ur_power_bank: mood
"No phones at the table, Jimin."
Jimin Minnie looked up and stuffed her phone into the gap between the back of the chair and her butt. "Sorry."
Her mother sniffed, but didn't pursue the matter. Minnie looked down at her bowl, dug her chopsticks in, and started to laboriously gather another small ball of beef and rice. The longer her sojourns got, the less homesick she became. Schooling in America, she'd returned home maybe once a month, but in Japan, she'd gone three months without returning to Seoul, and she'd missed her family much less too. Maybe she was defective or something.
Her grandfather was waiting for them in the living room. Minnie approached him with trepidation and bowed as deeply as she could. His expression was unchanged when she straightened up. Come to think of it, whenever she met him, he always looked exactly the same. Craggy, solemn, severe. "할아버님," she murmured.
Her grandfather nodded, tight-lipped, and jerked his chin at the instrument beside him. "Your voltage."
The metal was cool beneath her palm. Minnie let the current flow and felt more than heard a hum begin to build in the air. "Jimin performed well in Kyoto," her father volunteered, apropos of nothing.
"I'll be the judge of that," her grandfather said coldly. Minnie tightened her grip on the bar and pumped more electricity into the device. She could hear a faint click-click-click coming from the device as it started to gauge the amount of electricity that she was outputting. Instinctively, she started to turn, but held herself back just in time. Her grandfather didn't like it when she tried to see how well she was doing. That was how it was for the rest of her cousins, anyway. So she didn't have anything to complain about.
Eventually, the machine stopped humming. Jimin Minnie kept her breathing steady and waited for her grandfather to nod before releasing the bar. The old man studied her face for a few long moments. The lines around his mouth twitched faintly.
Later, in the car, her mother asked if she was sure she wanted to stay with Hailey that night.
"어마..."
"Oh, do as you like," her mother snapped, her bracelet catching the light from the streetlamps. "Our fault for being concerned about you."
"You're the best of them all," her father said. "I don't understand why you insist on remaining in their company. They're obviously not good hero material if you keep outperforming them. You should mix with higher-achieving people-"
Minnie took out her phone and slipped on her headphones.