Vroom!

A smooth engine hum replaced the vehicle’s previous sputtering.

Oh Hyunseong climbed out of the driver’s seat and returned to the house.

“All done, Mrs. Hwang. It should start properly again now.”

“Thank you, Hyunseong. We were already short-handed, but you helped with the harvest and even fixed the truck. You said you came from the city—did you work at a repair shop there?”

“No, I was just a civil servant. I had to work on vehicles a few times in the past, so I know a little about them.”

“My goodness. You’re so pleasant and handsome, I’d love to introduce you to one of my daughters. I have no idea when they plan to get married after running off to the city.”

“Ahaha...”

Oh Hyunseong laughed awkwardly.

His plan to win her favor appeared to have been a resounding success.

Mrs. Hwang knew nearly everyone in the village, so earning her approval would go a long way toward helping him build a good reputation and fit into the local community.

Kwon Gyeongmin had tipped him off that she would be busy with the autumn harvest for precisely that reason.

“Mm-hmm. You’d make an ideal husband.”

Yoo Eunha nodded as she sat on the porch.

She was chuckling as she munched on rice cakes.

“Sorry. We already ate all the rice cakes.”

“...Is it all right for you to be sitting around here? I don’t have any farming to do, but you said your operation was fairly large.”

“We finished harvesting the potatoes the other day. The busy period is over, so we have some free time now.”

Oh Hyunseong sat down beside her on the porch.

After their previous meeting, he and the siblings had agreed to speak casually with one another.

Although they were in different decades of their lives, the actual age gap was not particularly large. He was only grateful that his next-door neighbors wanted to be friendly with him.

“When we went to Seoul the other day, it was to deliver the potatoes we’d harvested directly to the department store. Besides, the advantage of expensive facilities is that they require less labor relative to their scale.”

“So that’s why you kindly came over to help with the farmwork?”

“We’re always getting kimchi from Mrs. Hwang. Hehe.”

Yoo Eunha picked up the remote.

When she changed the channel from an unpopular variety show, an interview appeared on the news.

A strikingly handsome man was speaking calmly before a crowd of fans and reporters.

“Whoa, Ryu Jihwa cleared another S-rank Gate in the United States. And he did it alone. He’s going to land a ton of commercials.”

Yoo Eunha stared at the television with her mouth hanging open.

She tried not to show it, but her subtle admiration made it obvious that she was a fan.

“Oh, come to think of it, Ryu Jihwa said he worked for the Administration Bureau before joining an agency. Didn’t you ever run into him?”

“We never worked together in the field, but I have seen him.”

“Gasp... R-really? No way! What does he look like in person? Is he really that handsome?”

“Who knows?”

Yoo Eunha leaned closer in astonishment, but Oh Hyunseong merely shrugged.

Now Ryu Jihwa was an enormous superstar and the face of Aegis, one of the three largest agencies. A few years ago, however, he had still been a complete rookie.

He had lacked the experience to work alongside Hyunseong as either a colleague or a junior, let alone join him in the field.

However, whenever an injury prevented Oh Hyunseong from entering the field, he occasionally trained junior operatives as an instructor.

Ryu Jihwa had been among one of the classes he taught.

The young man had shown considerable promise, so Hyunseong remembered putting him through brutally rigorous training.

Seeing that clueless kid acting like that in front of the cameras... The world really has changed.

Nothing made him feel how much the world had changed during his five years in the hospital quite like the mass media.

From network news and current-affairs programs to entertainment channels, there was hardly anywhere that did not talk about hunters.

Now that hunters had stepped into the public eye, they influenced not only national power and security but countless aspects of society as well.

Of course, daily dramas and televised trot competitions were overwhelmingly more popular in a rural village like this.

“Here, you two. You’ve both worked hard, so eat up and get some rest.”

“Wow, thank you!”

At some point, Mrs. Hwang had brought the entire table out from inside and set down the meal.

The spread looked magnificent, with rice wine and potato pancakes at its center. Yoo Eunha happily picked up her chopsticks.

“Aren’t you eating? You must be hungry.”

“I am. I’m going to.”

Although he picked up his chopsticks, Oh Hyunseong could not bring himself to eat with much enthusiasm.

Ever since that shocking meal the other day, he had been plucking and eating lettuce at every meal.

He had not eaten a single bite of rice, and his body was beginning to feel the lack of carbohydrates.

Even so, his diet remained unchanged. By that morning, he had finally eaten every last head of lettuce in his kitchen garden.

As Yoo Eunha eagerly stuffed herself with potato pancakes drenched in soy sauce, she looked at him and asked, “Come to think of it, did you try the potatoes we gave you?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Something came up. I’m going to eat them today.”

Oh Hyunseong grinned.

He had already lost all interest in the food before him, his anticipation focused entirely on what awaited him once he returned home.

After his meal with the lettuce, Oh Hyunseong had ordered seed potatoes online.

They were perfectly ordinary potato seedlings.

He had not toured nurseries in search of healthy specimens. He had simply bought a small quantity online from some company he knew nothing about.

Moreover, it was not even the season to plant autumn potatoes, and he had not done anything as basic as laying plastic mulch for cultivation.

He had simply planted them without any preparation whatsoever.

Despite all that, the potatoes he planted had shot up.

They had grown so vigorously in a single day that shipping the seed potatoes had taken longer than the entire growing period.

“The harvest is finished. Now it’s time for the final showdown.”

Oh Hyunseong sat before the table with a determined expression.

Steam rose from the boiled potatoes divided between two bowls.

At a glance, they looked identical, but the potatoes came from distinctly different sources.

On the left were the premium-variety potatoes supplied to a department store, a gift from the Yoo siblings next door.

On the right were the kitchen-garden potatoes of dubious pedigree, grown by a novice farmer.

Thump.

With a tense expression, Oh Hyunseong picked up a potato from the left.

He took a large bite of the gifted potato first.

After savoring it carefully, he nodded.

So a proven, top-class potato really is different.

It was merely a boiled potato, yet it tasted noticeably better than Mrs. Hwang’s potato pancakes, despite all the care she had put into making them. Unlike factory-made potatoes or ordinary naturally grown potatoes with their dreadful texture, it was far less dry and crumbly.

The difference came from the ingredients, not a lack of cooking skill.

It tasted even better when dipped in salt or sugar to mask its flaws.

It still has that hollow flavor peculiar to potatoes grown after the Gate crisis... but this could almost compete with premium synthetic crops.

The siblings had not urged him to try them so confidently without reason.

Their potatoes were distinctive enough that even someone insensitive to taste would immediately notice the difference.

Yet they still had plenty of shortcomings.

They were clearly top-quality potatoes, but the fact that he could not stop thinking about the lettuce he had eaten that morning proved as much.

Gulp.

Oh Hyunseong set down the half-eaten potato.

Then he pulled the bowl on the right toward himself.

An extraordinary aroma had been teasing his nose for some time. He picked up one of the potatoes from his kitchen garden with both hands and brought it to his mouth.

...This is insane!

The shock felt as though someone had struck him hard in the back of the head.

This was not some crude imitation. He could taste the aroma and texture of a real potato.

With every bite, the fluffy potato flooded his mouth.

It was so hot that he hurriedly rolled it around inside his mouth, yet even that was delicious.

Have I... really been living all this time after forgetting this taste?

It was a shock.

The lettuce had ultimately felt like an accompaniment, but the potato possessed devastating power all on its own.

Considering his eating habits until now, this was one shocking experience after another.

After humanity as a whole had compromised for the sake of survival, people had grown numb in something close to resignation. But once he tasted the real thing, his eyes had been opened again.

As Oh Hyunseong devoured the potato in a frenzy, his eyes met those of the spirits.

Whine?

The spirits of all four elements stared at him in confusion, as though they could not understand this side of him that they had never seen before.

“Yeah, I feel awkward about it too. And it’s all thanks to you.”

Oh Hyunseong affectionately stroked their heads.

After planting the seed potatoes the previous night, he had spent some time observing the spirits’ behavior and the changes in the kitchen garden.

In the process, he had witnessed the entire growth cycle with his own eyes.

He had seen everything the spirits did for the crops.

The crops grew in an instant because of the life spirits’ touch, just as I thought. The earth spirits consumed and eliminated the impure energy in the soil, then supplied it with abundant nutrients. The fire spirits provided warmth and maintained the ideal temperature, while the water spirits supplied pure, uncontaminated water.

They completely removed the impure energy, supplied pure nutrients, and optimized the surrounding environment for the crops.

Under those conditions, there was no way the crops could taste bad like factory-made produce or crops exposed to impure energy.

As spirits were part of nature, reading the plants’ condition also came easily to them.

From the spirits’ perspective, they had merely helped unfortunate plants exposed to impure energy grow properly.

Yet their care was something no facility, regardless of how much cutting-edge technology and capital had been poured into it, could ever imitate.

The result was a clear and unprecedented difference, from the lettuce to the potatoes.

This isn’t simply a matter of whether the quality is good or bad... It feels like eating wholesome food from before the Gate crisis. No, it doesn’t merely feel that way. I’m certain of it!

Oh Hyunseong set down the potato and sank deep into thought.

Until now, humanity had chosen to imitate the delicious ingredients of the past as closely as possible.

Both the flavor and texture had been designed to resemble food from before the Gate crisis.

But this was not some artificial reconstruction.

This single potato was identical to a perfect crop from before the Gate crisis. Even if he could not put the difference into words, it was impossible not to recognize it.

“This... may be a much bigger deal than I thought.”

At first, he had simply been delighted to have delicious food.

But after giving it a little more thought, he realized this could develop into something unimaginably large in scale.

Bang, bang!

While he considered the various possibilities, someone knocked on the gate outside.

It was an unexpected visit without any prior notice.

Were the siblings from next door here? Or was it Kwon Gyeongmin?

“Excuse me. Is anyone home?”

A woman’s voice came from beyond the gate.

Startled, Oh Hyunseong sprang to his feet.

He went outside, flung open the gate, and came face-to-face with the woman standing there.

“You...”

She was a tall woman dressed in a neat, immaculate suit.

Yet even her restrained attire could not diminish her striking features.

“It’s been a long time.”

His longtime junior, Han Suyeon, gave him a faint smile.

Chapter 5

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