She clears her throat and tries again. "I don't know as much about the logistics department, so I can't say for sure that they don't share a lot more with the logistics of more properly seasonal industries than I think they do, but from what I can tell most of their energy is spent on gauging when to switch focus to the next season and stop production and distribution on the previous season. It's not that bad if the stock runs out a little early or if there's some leftover, it gets recycled soon and we always run season's end sales."

"Good. That was good."

("...eeeeee.")

"How do you recycle clothes?"

"A T-shirt is a T-shirt. If we pull it from the display for a couple of months and then bring it back in the non-seasonal miscellany section of the store, most people won't recognise it as being part of the same sets from before. This is harder when the designs are more distinctive and recognisable, but those tend to sell out early anyway, and when they don't the end of season sales usually cover them."

"Huh, and it's not an issue that it takes up space while you're waiting to put it on the non-seasonal rack?"

"Oh, it is, but that's exactly the sort of thing that the logistics department deals with so that I don't have to."

Thumbs-up!

"So what's going to be in this summer?"

"Oh I certainly can't tell you that."

"What happened to 'I only wear jeans and T-shirts'?" he teases.

"I guess I can say that there will be T-shirts and that jeans are evergreen."

"This one time you might recall I also wore a kimono," Haru tells Jaeha primly.

"True, you did do that!"

("Not in puuuuuuuubliiiiiiiiiiccccccccc haaaahhhhh........")

But he did! He did wear it in public! He sticks out his tongue at Jaeha.

He looks at Dal-seo again but illusions himself a cartoon blushing effect and tiny cartoon hearts circling around his head for a few seconds.

"So where was it you studied, again, when you went abroad?"

"Germany."

"Do you speak German? Does that come up much?"

"I do, yeah. Hyundai has lots of German partners and very good engineering schools."

"Neat. I like learning languages, but so far I've only got three and haven't decided what to do fourth now that I'm tolerable at Korean."

"—right, you said you're from Canada. Your Korean is perfect."

"I don't think it's perfect. My Japanese isn't perfect and I lived there from ages eight to twenty two!"

"Nonsense, I've spoken both Japanese and Korean with you, you're great at both."

("Everything about you is perfect.")

"I think I'm still more competent at expressing myself in English!"

"That might just be a deficiency of Japanese and Korean, honestly, I sometimes find myself reaching for English and it's not like we're not known for stealing English words left and right."