Tears streamed down Han Suyeon’s cheeks.

Startled, Oh Hyunseong asked if she was all right, but she merely nodded without saying a word.

Then she began picking up the potatoes in front of her and eating them one by one.

Until now, she had lived on fancy-looking yet colorless dishes served in restaurants. Compared to those, the roasted potato crumbling in her mouth was rustic, but it made her feel alive.

With most of the food available in the cities today, drowning the taste in strong seasonings was considered a virtue.

If you carefully selected ingredients that were at least somewhat less defective, then masked their flaws with powerful sauces and seasonings, the result was considered the height of cuisine.

Anyone who tried to bring out the natural flavor of the ingredients, as people had in the past, was bound to be called insane.

Yet the potato she was eating now was firmly in the latter category. Aside from a light sprinkling of salt, it had no sauce or seasoning at all.

That made the experience all the more startlingly fresh.

"Um... Han Suyeon?"

Suyeon had even rolled up both sleeves and was now busily stuffing herself with roasted potatoes.

Every bite filled her mouth with rich flavor, and each time, her expression shifted dramatically.

Whatever poker face she possessed had shattered long ago.

A few minutes later, the two sat facing each other across an empty plate.

"...You ate all of them?"

"Hyunseong."

"Yeah?"

"I’m staying here tonight."

What brought this on all of a sudden?

Standing in the kitchen, Oh Hyunseong stared at the empty frying pan.

All the potatoes he had gone to the trouble of roasting were gone.

He was glad she had enjoyed them, but he hadn’t expected such an extreme reaction.

To think that Han Suyeon would become so absorbed in food that she couldn’t even hear what someone was saying to her.

Chomp.

Hyunseong ate the single piece of potato left in the pan.

Then he understood.

"This is freaking delicious..."

He stood in the kitchen for a while, savoring the lingering taste of the potato, before heading outside.

Suyeon was sitting on the wooden platform in the yard, taking in the scenery.

When he walked over and stood beside her, lights glowed from the village below, while scattered stars already shone in the darkening sky.

"It’s already night. When are you planning to head back?"

"It’s fine. I already told work."

"No, I wasn’t joking. Are you seriously going to stay the night?"

"...Can’t I?"

Suyeon stared directly at him as she asked.

Hyunseong pressed a hand to his forehead.

Giving him the choice like that out of nowhere was downright underhanded.

But he couldn’t exactly throw her out in the middle of the night when she could barely drive.

"Can you really do that without warning? Didn’t you say you’ve been incredibly busy with work lately?"

"My schedule tomorrow was packed, but nothing on it is urgent. So I’ll stay for just one night."

"I’m warning you now, I don’t have a bed."

"You have somewhere I can lie down, don’t you?"

"Look at the size of this house. If anything, I’ve got too much space."

"This is why big houses are so nice. Thanks."

Suyeon spoke with a bright smile.

She looked happier than she had at any point since arriving, leaving Hyunseong with a strange feeling as he sat down beside her.

But what followed was silence.

They both stared blankly at the scenery as an awkward atmosphere settled between them.

Has it just been too long since we last saw each other? I can’t think of anything to say.

At first, he had simply been happy to see a former subordinate again after so long.

But now that he thought about spending an entire day alone with her, he had no idea what they were supposed to do.

A great deal of time had already passed, and then he had seen her suddenly start crying without explanation.

Why did she cry earlier, anyway?

Had the potatoes simply been so delicious that they moved her to tears?

No, that made no sense.

No matter how much her personality might have changed, she wouldn’t react like that.

Han Suyeon had always been even less interested in food and less sensitive to taste than he was.

Hmm. Maybe I should’ve brought a board game from Seoul.

As the silence continued, it occurred to him that she was still his guest and he probably shouldn’t leave things like this.

Unfortunately, there was truly nothing to do for fun in this countryside house.

Then an idea flashed through Hyunseong’s mind, and he retrieved a deck of flower cards from a drawer in the living room.

It was the only form of entertainment left anywhere in the house.

"You’re bored, right? Want to play flower cards?"

"You don’t even know which pictures match."

"...Let’s just go to sleep."

"Ahaha! You always manage to be funny at the strangest times. Besides, it’s much too early to sleep."

Suyeon sprang to her feet.

Then she retrieved a bottle of liquor from the trunk of her car.

She must have received it as a gift somewhere, because even at a glance, it looked incredibly expensive.

"How about a drink with your former subordinate for old times’ sake?"

"Sounds good to me."

When he nodded, Suyeon poured them each a glass.

They lightly clinked their glasses and took a drink.

The liquor was obviously extremely strong, but both of them had drinking capacities beyond anything human, as one would expect of the awakened, so there was no need to worry.

"I should’ve brought you a housewarming gift, but I came here on impulse, so this is all I have."

"I am curious, though. What suddenly made you decide to come all the way out to a remote mountain village like this?"

"I just... suddenly thought of you."

Suyeon downed another glass and let out a deep sigh.

Then, her cheeks slightly flushed, she said, "I liked it when we worked together."

"You must’ve had plenty of work back then too. Is the president giving you a hard time?"

"No. The president treats me almost uncomfortably well. Sometimes I wonder if it’s becoming an obsession."

Back when she had belonged to the special operations unit, Han Suyeon had once rescued civilians who had been abducted during a mission by awakened agents from a hostile nation.

Negotiations behind the scenes had fallen apart, leaving the captives on the verge of being discarded, but she had quite literally saved them by a miracle.

Of course, she had never dreamed that one of the novice politicians she rescued back then would eventually become the leader of the ruling party and then the president.

"Then why the sigh?"

"When I first joined the team, you seemed like such a coldhearted person. You never hesitated to sacrifice two people to save ten."

"We fought over that once."

"That’s right. Back then, I couldn’t stand the thought of working under a team leader like that. It was only later that I realized it was the best possible outcome we could’ve achieved."

Suyeon downed another glass.

She seemed to be drinking rather quickly, but Hyunseong kept pace with her.

"That still doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do."

"I’m not qualified to judge either way. Just as we gradually became accustomed to our colleagues dying, I can feel myself growing numb the longer I do this job. And... now human lives look like numbers to me. Numbers placed on a report... only to be replaced by new ones tomorrow."

With a bitter smile, Suyeon lowered her head.

Her exhausted, fragile gaze fixed on him.

"How... did you endure that hellish time?"

Night came early in the countryside.

Yet their conversation lasted unusually long that night.

"Ugh. How many bottles did we drink yesterday?"

The next morning, Oh Hyunseong woke up and rubbed his face.

He had no idea how much liquor Suyeon had stored in her trunk, but their drinking session had grown far more serious than expected.

Perhaps that was why, despite it already being later than usual, she showed no sign of waking.

When he cracked open the door, he found her sleeping so deeply that she might as well have been dead.

She had apparently been so overwhelmed with work lately that she could barely sleep, so he decided to let her rest properly while she had the chance.

Feeling a hangover for the first time in ages, he drank some water and headed out for a walk.

When he stepped through the front gate, vast stretches of land unfolded before him.

They were all fields and private property that had been transferred to him along with the house.

As Hyunseong walked along, gazing idly at the surrounding scenery, he noticed an empty field pockmarked by moles.

"I suppose I should start working on this place too."

The field had been abandoned for a long time.

Since it had received no proper care, there was no way it could function as a proper field in its current state.

Unlike the small kitchen garden attached to the yard, it was enormous, and Hyunseong hadn’t even considered trying to tackle it.

Now that I’ve thought of it, should I just deal with it today?

Hyunseong stopped and slowly surveyed the area.

He had more time than he knew what to do with.

Besides, he had already been thinking about expanding his kitchen garden.

I can’t live on potatoes forever.

He hadn’t eaten plain potatoes because he was too lazy to cook.

It was because adding anything beyond basic seasonings such as salt or sugar would make the food significantly worse. Even the simplest dishes usually required basic vegetables such as onions or garlic.

Whether naturally grown or factory-made, once ingredients like those went into a dish, it was beyond saving.

But no matter how quickly crops could grow in a single day with the spirits’ power, the tiny kitchen garden in his yard was too small to cultivate a wide variety of them.

In other words, he needed to expand it.

Hyunseong went back inside and fetched a hand hoe.

It’s a daunting amount of work... but I can just expand it little by little.

Thwack!

He cleared away the thick weeds and removed any stones that might interfere with the crops’ growth.

According to what he found online, he was supposed to spread compost in advance and neutralize the soil, but he decided those steps were unnecessary and skipped them.

His previous two attempts at something resembling farming had already proved that.

Once the basic preparations were complete, he formed raised rows for the crops and furrows to drain the water.

The result was clumsy, as one would expect from a complete beginner, but it was more than sufficient.

As the repetitive work gradually became familiar, Hyunseong considered what crops he should grow next.

An hour or two passed.

As he reorganized the field, feeling his initially fumbling hands become more proficient, he heard a voice from some distance away.

"Hyunseong, what are you doing over there?"

He turned to see who it was and found Yoo Seungsu and Yoo Eunha.

The siblings had arrived carrying armfuls of things.

"Me? Farming."

"...Farming? Why did you suddenly decide to start farming?"

"More importantly, why are you two here?"

"We thought eating alone might feel lonely, so we came to have lunch with you."

Eunha lifted one of the bundles as she spoke.

It turned out to contain packed lunches.

The siblings approached and asked Hyunseong what had prompted his sudden farming project. Leaving out the part about the spirits, he gave them a rough explanation.

"Ah, so you want to try farming properly?"

"That works out well. As your seniors in farming, we’ll help."

"No, it’s fine. Everything you brought will get cold. Let’s just eat lunch."

They had even brought him lunch. He couldn’t make them work for free on top of that.

Hyunseong put down the hand hoe and returned to the house with the siblings.

As Seungsu followed him into the yard, he glanced behind himself and spoke.

"There’s a car here I haven’t seen before. Isn’t that thing really expensive?"

"Oh, that isn’t mine."

"Huh? Then whose car is it?"

Seungsu asked in confusion.

But before he could even finish speaking—

"Oh, Hyunseong. You’re back."

They turned toward the alluring voice and saw Han Suyeon standing on the porch, apparently having woken up at some point.

She looked as though she had just showered. Drying her hair with a towel, she wore the loose men’s T-shirt she had borrowed the night before.

The siblings’ jaws dropped, and they froze rigidly in place.

Exactly three seconds later, they shouted in unison.

"H-H-Han Suyeon!"

Chapter 7

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