"Huh?"

Han Suyeon flinched when someone suddenly shouted her name.

It could have been considered rude to blurt something like that right in front of her.

But the people who had said it were far too overwhelmed to care.

"Wh-What? I’m not seeing things, am I?"

Yoo Eunha rubbed both eyes as she spoke.

Yet the same person was still standing there.

The very Han Suyeon she had only ever seen on television.

Naturally, Yoo Seungsu was just as astonished.

What in the world is going on?

He had merely come over to have lunch with his neighbor, only to encounter someone he never could have expected.

For a moment, he wondered if an enormous Gate had appeared somewhere nearby.

But if it were serious enough for Han Suyeon to respond personally, the entire village would already have been ordered to evacuate. Besides, dressed as casually as she was, she clearly hadn’t come here for combat or official business.

"Wow... She’s really beautiful..."

Eunha murmured blankly beside him.

His sister had always been a sucker for a pretty face.

Gender made no difference to her.

But honestly, even he had to agree this time.

For a second, I thought there was a doll standing there.

The siblings themselves were hardly lacking in looks.

In fact, they had spent their entire lives being called handsome and beautiful.

Even when they lived in Seoul, their sophisticated appearances and urban air had made them quite popular with the opposite sex.

But they couldn’t compare to the person standing before them.

Seungsu had once happened to see a famous actress in person, but unlike then, when all he had felt was a brief flicker of admiration, this was the first time he had ever experienced anything like this.

She simply didn’t seem like someone who lived in the same world as everyone else.

Her actual appearance was overwhelmingly striking in a way no camera could possibly capture.

Seungsu looked back and forth between Oh Hyunseong and Han Suyeon.

Come to think of it, Hyunseong’s appearance had been unusually striking when they first met as well.

Seeing the two of them together, they seemed remarkably well matched.

It was as if they belonged in the same picture.

"Wow, Hyunseong. You’ve got some serious skills."

"I’m not a hunter."

"No, not that. What exactly are you two to each other?"

Eunha hurried over and asked Hyunseong.

For some reason, she whispered from behind him as though trying to hide from Suyeon.

"We just know each other."

"You know each other? How?"

"You already know this. We worked at the same place, and after running into each other a few times, we became friends."

"So... you aren’t dating?"

"What are you talking about all of a sudden?"

Hyunseong looked genuinely baffled.

His reaction left Eunha confused.

As someone who loved gossip about the hunter world, she had already run through several fantasies involving a top-tier hunter’s secret civilian boyfriend or a civilian spouse she had secretly married.

Besides, what mere acquaintance would come to a man’s house alone and walk around dressed like that?

"Hyunseong had an excellent reputation at the Bureau. He showed me the ropes when I first joined, and we eventually became quite close."

"Gasp."

Eunha drew a sharp breath when she realized Suyeon had approached them.

For some reason, she and Suyeon now stood on opposite sides of Hyunseong, facing each other over his shoulder.

Suyeon smiled brightly.

Eunha’s cheeks turned scarlet, and after hesitating for a moment, she opened her mouth.

"C-Could I have your autograph?"

"Ah, so you’re one of Hyunseong’s neighbors."

"Yes, yes, that’s right."

"It seems you already knew who I was."

"Of course! I’m a huge fan. Oh my gosh..."

Eunha sat on the edge of the porch, her face glowing with emotion as she received Suyeon’s autograph.

Her initial suspicions had already vanished without a trace.

Watching her, Hyunseong let out an incredulous laugh.

He knew Suyeon was famous, but he hadn’t expected anyone to react quite this strongly.

"Let’s just eat."

The two men had already set the low table in the living room.

Since all they had to do was unpack the lunches the siblings had brought, there hadn’t been much else to prepare.

They had only needed utensils and small plates.

Once everyone had gathered, Hyunseong couldn’t help laughing at how stiffly Seungsu sat beside him.

"Didn’t you say you weren’t particularly interested in the hunter world?"

"There are limits to that. Do you seriously not realize who’s sitting in front of us?"

Seungsu whispered into Hyunseong’s ear.

Even as he spoke, he kept sneaking glances at Suyeon across the table.

He still couldn’t believe that such an influential hunter—someone who regularly entered and left the presidential office—was sitting around this tiny table with them, eating a packed lunch.

"Maybe. I spent so long in the hospital that it still doesn’t feel real."

Hyunseong tilted his head and picked up his spoon.

When he saw the bundles outside, he had assumed they contained a random assortment of side dishes. Instead, they held beautifully arranged packed lunches.

Apparently, Eunha enjoyed cooking and had prepared everything herself.

Her skill was evident from the selection of dishes and how neatly each one had been arranged.

Eunha seemed quite proud of her cooking as well, judging by how enthusiastically she showed it off.

Unfortunately, after eating the potatoes and lettuce from his kitchen garden, Hyunseong’s standards had risen considerably.

The ingredients used in these lunches fell far short of them.

The crops the siblings had grown themselves at their facility were somewhat better, but most of the dishes contained factory-made ingredients and couldn’t possibly taste good.

Inevitably, the food wasn’t delicious.

All he could think was that Eunha had done the best anyone could under the circumstances.

The greatest praise he could give it was that it didn’t completely ruin his appetite.

""

"How does it taste?"

"Mm, it’s delicious."

Suyeon answered with a smile in her eyes.

But she couldn’t hide the awkward twitch of her lips from Hyunseong.

After all, she had eaten her fill of potatoes from his kitchen garden yesterday.

She had even woken that morning expecting to eat more, only to be served something entirely different. She couldn’t help feeling disappointed.

Still, she didn’t let it show.

"Thank you for the meal!"

Once the somewhat underwhelming meal had ended, a brief argument broke out as they cleared the table.

"We’ll do the dishes!"

"No. The person who received the meal should clean up afterward. You two go sit down."

"That’s right. We’ll handle it."

"B-But... should hands that beautiful really be washing dishes...?"

"She tears monsters apart with her bare hands. What are you talking about?"

Hyunseong stared at them in utter disbelief.

Then he forcibly dragged the siblings into the living room and sat them down.

Once they finally gave up, he returned to the kitchen and found Suyeon already standing at the sink. She had tied her hair back and put on a pair of rubber gloves.

"You have good neighbors. They really look after you."

"Right? I’ve only been here a few days, but they seem like good people. Maybe they take extra care of me because we’re all originally from Seoul."

"Ah, so they moved to the countryside and took up farming too."

"They came here two years before me. I’m impressed you still remember how to wash dishes, Deputy Director."

"If I couldn’t even wash dishes, I’d be a princess, not a hunter."

"Good. That works out perfectly. There was something else I wanted you to do."

"Something you want me to do?"

Suyeon looked at him as though a question mark had appeared over her head.

Hyunseong grinned.

"Don’t you want more of those potatoes from yesterday?"

"What am I looking at right now?"

The siblings sat side by side on the slope, staring blankly ahead.

In the distance, Oh Hyunseong and Han Suyeon were digging up the ground with hand hoes.

Han Suyeon was doing farmwork.

The Grim Reaper of the White Night, who had entered countless S-rank Gates alone and torn monsters limb from limb, was digging in the dirt with a hand hoe.

"...Am I doing this right, Hyunseong?"

"Yeah, you’re doing well. Just keep digging like that."

Hyunseong raised a firm thumb.

Suyeon scratched her head, heaved a deep sigh, then rolled her sleeves up to her elbows and continued working.

"I never imagined I’d come all the way here and end up doing this."

"Those who do not work shall not eat. They drilled that into your class at the training camp too. Don’t you remember?"

"I’d forget it if I could. But why are you digging all this up?"

"Since I moved to the countryside anyway, I thought I’d start farming properly. I should plant more than just potatoes."

Hyunseong brought his hand hoe down with a thud as he spoke.

This area would be for grain crops, while beyond it he planned to create an orchard.

Fruit tasted excellent on its own without requiring any preparation, and it offered an entirely different kind of flavor from cooked food.

It had been so long since he last ate proper fruit that he couldn’t even remember exactly how it tasted, but the impression of it remained etched in his mind.

"Farming... Then will everything grown here taste that good too? Like the potatoes I ate?"

"Probably."

"Your spirits had an incredible ability all along."

Hyunseong’s expression twitched at her words.

Had she already figured it out?

He had wondered why she hadn’t asked him anything about the potatoes yesterday.

After tasting them herself, there was no way she could have mistaken them for ordinary potatoes.

"How did you know?"

"A spirit told me."

Whine!

A fire spirit suddenly popped out of Suyeon’s shirt pocket.

It was clinging to her like glue.

Hyunseong stared at the spirit in disbelief.

"When did you get in there?"

"Don’t pick on the poor thing for no reason."

Suyeon spoke with a mischievous smile.

It seemed she had already managed to win the spirit over.

Ordinarily, that would have been impossible.

But Suyeon possessed a special constitution just as he did.

More specifically, she was one of only a handful of mana resonators in all of Korea.

Rather than merely accumulating and using mana, mana resonators were specialists capable of directly sensing and controlling the mana surrounding them.

Even among them, Han Suyeon stood at the undisputed pinnacle.

Normally, only Hyunseong, as their contractor, could perfectly understand what the spirits were saying.

However, through her resonance with mana, Suyeon could also hold detailed conversations with them.

On top of that, she was a veteran who had survived among even the most devious politicians, so winning over a few innocent spirits was child’s play for her.

Fire spirits in particular were extremely compatible with Suyeon, which made them especially susceptible to her charms.

"You’re still getting a scolding later."

Whimper!

The spirit immediately burrowed into Suyeon’s arms.

Of course, that wouldn’t help it in the slightest.

Its contractor was right here. Where could it possibly run?

"Just so there’s no misunderstanding, I retired and came here because I wanted to live a quiet life."

"Don’t worry. I’m not stupid enough to go around telling people about this. I even played along with your former civil servant story earlier. Besides, I have no desire to make an enemy of you."

"Someone powerful enough to have the entire Bureau beneath her feet seems to think awfully highly of a washed-up hunter with a crippled leg."

"I imagine every hunter from our generation feels the same way."

Suyeon shrugged.

When it came to matters like this, Han Suyeon was probably the most trustworthy person he could ask for.

Even so, he intended to make absolutely certain before she left.

Rustle.

Hyunseong pulled a foil-wrapped potato from inside his clothes.

A mouthwatering aroma drifted from the perfectly steamed potato.

Someone unfamiliar with it would merely have thought it smelled delicious. But Suyeon knew how devastatingly good it tasted, and her mouth began to water before she swallowed audibly.

This was no longer a matter of reason.

It was pure instinct.

"Th-That’s underhanded."

The situation had unfolded a little differently from what he had expected, but he had needed Suyeon’s cooperation anyway.

He hadn’t fed such an observant person potatoes from his kitchen garden for no reason.

He had already needed an accomplice. If anything, this merely made the conversation simpler.

"There’s something about the farm I wanted to discuss with you. My dear former subordinate, I need you to do me a favor."

Chapter 8

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