"Of course, she says, like I wear anything but jeans and dungeon gear without prompting, for all I knew you held onto your spring releases till mid-June."

"That wouldn't be very springly of them, then!" she laughs.

Here's the waiter, offering Jaeha and Haru only very slightly homophobic looks. "Good afternoon, are you familiar with our selection?" he asks, offering the two of them menus (Dal-seo already has hers).

"Not yet!"

Do they want to play that game? Jaeha can be obnoxiously sweet and give Haru suggestions and they can get things to SHARE. Because they're GAY. And in LOVE.

That's not really Haru's game but he will play along, sure, they can split a pastry and taste each other's tea.

UnFORTUNATELY Jaeha has not yet been able to get over the extent to which spiting homophobes fuels him.

"So, uh..."

Mmhm?

She looks at Haru once it's been a couple too many seconds of silence.

("Save me, please?")

"So how do you analyze a market, are you like, polling random people, or doing corporate espionage, or a secret third thing?"

"Oh, lots of things. We're just a department store so we don't need to be vanguard, we just need to make normal things normal people wear that still look good and fashionable. We look at things like the seasonal listings from six months ago in the southern hemisphere, trends in what does and doesn't sell well in both seasonal and non-seasonal ones, advance insights from our contacts in big brands, influencers, and yeah, polling random people."

("Thank you.")

"Huh, it never occurred to me that you could just crib from the southern hemisphere. I assume they're doing the same thing? Does this give Australia a disproportionate influence in what everyone's wearing?"

"We still need to fit our analyses to our respective audiences, so they're more pointers than anything. Though people do dress very similarly around the world nowadays."

"What fraction of your job is stuff that would generalize to a completely unrelated industry and what fraction is more specific?"

"...I'm not sure. Fifty-fifty? Commerce is commerce, but people are wearing clothes, well, literally all the time, there isn't really anything else like it to sell, you know?"

"I'd expect accessories to have some overlap, and anything else with a seasonal component, like, uh, sunscreen, skiing equipment, to have some logistics in common, but yeah, makes sense."

"Well, for things like sunscreen and skiing equipment they're the one thing that has high and low seasons, but we're always selling clothes, just different ones depending on the season. I don't do much with the logistics department, though, so there might be more in common than I know, and I haven't really worked here very long, um," she's gonna have some tea actually.

(There were no subtitles until the very end, there, and then, "Oh no I've talked too much and pretended like I know what I'm talking about, I don't!!!")

Poor Dal-seo. Haru will sip his tea too.

"That was good, you know. Solid. You should've kept at it, no need to trail off at the end like that. I know for a fact there'll be a bunch of Korean businessmen, and it will almost always be men, who will want to assert their dominance by mansplaining things to you or trying to correct you on even the smallest technicalities you get wrong, and you should stand your ground. I'm sure you've seen how Nam Hee-seo-nim deals with those men."

She flinches. "That obvious?"

"Didn't really catch my notice but I was not raised to inherit a business empire so what do I know."

"Men like Kang Jaehyuk teach their sons to not show that kind of vulnerability, and also to see it as an opportunity in others." He thinks he's starting to understand what the problem is, though. "Say that again, about the logistics?"

"...uh..."

("...are you making fun of me?")

"I'm serious. Just go again, but firm, don't make excuses."