The Club With Only Four Members
The next morning, Madam Kim Mi-suk—who had passed out from drinking too much—rose from her bed like a zombie.
"Uuurgh……"
Her hangover was killing her. Every time she tried to sleep, the dizziness jolted her right back awake. Feeling her way along the familiar path toward the bathroom, she suddenly froze.
An unfamiliar ceiling. Unfamiliar walls. Even the layout of the room. Waking up in a place she had never seen in her life, her heart lurched with a sudden wave of dread.
"……Ji-on? Where are you?"
A dialect she hadn't spoken in years tumbled out of Kim Mi-suk's mouth.
"We'd like to impose on you until the house is repaired……"
The day Seo Bong-gu, the bear he'd been playing with, and I came crashing into the house, the building had half collapsed. It was an old house to begin with, but watching it crumble like that was still enough to leave anyone flustered.
We'd considered staying at the village community hall while the repairs were underway, but Grandfather Choi was dead set against it.
"You've got a perfectly good house, and you'd rather live somewhere people are always traipsing in and out?"
When I pointed out that it wasn't just one person but four of us who'd need to stay, he nodded without a moment's hesitation. He was just glad there was something he could do to help at a time like this.
The real problem was the unexpected pile of money flying out of our wallets.
Look at this. No matter how much I save, it's never enough.
I left my family behind at Grandfather Choi's house and headed off to school. There was something about having my schedule decided for me that I didn't much care for. The sooner I became a legal adult recognized by this country, the sooner I could do whatever I wanted—that was what I kept thinking.
Then again, Father was a professional businessman who had run his own ventures for decades. A crisis of this scale should be well within his ability to weather.
Still, simply paying off the debt wouldn't be enough. I needed to earn even more money! And for that, developing new crops was essential. I already knew how special crops came into being—so maybe, just maybe, I could deliberately graft specific effects onto them.
To do that, I'd have to lure someone into my fields who was desperately suffering from the very 'problem' I had in mind.
Convincing someone with a particular problem to come do farm work, huh. What would be a good way to go about it?
I was deep in thought when my homeroom teacher called for me.
"Ji-on, could you come down to the staff room for a minute?"
First period was about to start—was it something urgent? I got up from my seat and followed her to the staff room.
The reason she'd called me was none other than extracurricular activities.
"……You're saying I have to join a club?"
To get attendance credit, you had to attend class—and among those classes was one called Creative Experiential Activity, or CA for short.
"You transferred in during the second semester, so there aren't many places you can join, but you still need to pick one from these."
Apparently, I had to decide where to go before CA time that very afternoon. The teacher pointed at a sheet of paper listing the available clubs.
"Is there anywhere you'd like to go?"
Offering me choices, are we? As an educator, that's an admirable attitude. But……
"Teacher."
"Yes?"
"About the club options……"
"Mm-hm, go on."
"It's not that there aren't many. There's only one."
The sheet was packed edge to edge with the club sign-up form. But the name written inside it was exactly one: the Vegetation Research Club.
A club with a name so vague you couldn't even tell what it did. And according to the description on the side, its membership was a whopping four people.
"Didn't you say clubs need five members to exist?"
"Did I?"
"There are only four here."
"……Hoho."
The teacher turned her head away, pretending not to hear. I picked the paper apart line by line, and eventually her reaction made perfect sense.
"Ah-ha."
[Advisor: Park Ye-ji]
"Teacher, you were the advisor of a club on the verge of being abolished."
"Ha ha…… Say, our Ji-on, wouldn't you like to learn about how all kinds of plants grow? How they develop in different environments, whether there are ways to help them grow better, what they look like once they've grown—things like that!"
Teacher, the longer your explanation goes, the brighter your eyes get…… no, they're practically glinting. Apparently there was a very good reason she wanted to keep this nearly-dead club alive. So she was a plant nut.
"Hmm."
The prospect of lessons about a variety of plants was interesting. Interesting, yes—but not enough.
"Do you only do research?"
"……Excuse me?"
The teacher answered, flustered by my question. She clearly hadn't understood where I was going. I tried again, calmly and with a thorough explanation attached.
"You don't actually grow, cultivate, or produce plants yourselves? Things like going out to a field and observing crops we've raised with our own hands?"
The teacher, who had gone pale for a moment at my words, deliberated briefly before opening her mouth.
"Uh, activities that active aren't in the curriculum…… but! If that's what you want, Ji-on, I'll add them in!"
Desperate persuasion came right back at me. Apparently, she needed me badly if this club was going to survive.
"Hmm……"
When my deliberation stretched on, the teacher began rambling to fill the silence.
"Ji-on, you only have one option right now anyway, so is there really anything to think about……?"
Oh…… so even educators lie. 'Only one option'? That's simply untrue. I happen to know another choice exists.
Say, taking my extracurricular activity outside school entirely. If I submitted a form citing my activities with Grandfather Choi or the farm as grounds, I might be able to claim that entire block of time for myself. Of course, it wasn't a guaranteed method—a gamble, even on my end.
And yet, maybe I wouldn't even need to take that gamble. Because if things went well, I could shape this club exactly to my taste, exactly as I pleased.
CA was a curriculum subject requiring at least three hours a week. That was by no means a small amount of time. If I was going to invest hours like that, I deserved to profit from them too.
I flashed the anxious teacher a smile that looked as harmless as could be, and delivered my verdict.
"All right, Teacher. I'll join this club."
"Really?"
She lit up as if she'd just grabbed hold of a rope dangling from heaven. You seem a little too happy about this. My conscience stings, just a bit. Does she realize that the rope she just caught is a mercenary to the bone? That I intend to squeeze every last drop of marrow out of her that I need……?
'She loves plants, so she'll probably go along with everything I'm planning without much complaint.'
I did my best to suppress the sinister smile creeping onto my face.
"So I'll take it as settled that you're joining the Vegetation Research Club? CA class is this very afternoon, so just head over to the science lab."
"Yes, understood."
Living honestly for my family's sake really does make heaven pour opportunities down on me.
Middle schoolers carried every kind of problem under the sun. And a club bond made it remarkably easy to strike up conversations and build a sense of belonging—connections formed almost on their own. In that sense, this club offered me at least two things.
First, talent. They'd be nothing but sprouts rather than fully grown talent, but sprouts were exactly the level I wanted from kids. And sprouts, after all, were the most satisfying to raise exactly to one's taste.
Until now, I had only ever farmed the land I'd been given. The 500-pyeong plot rented from the agricultural cooperative. The small garden behind Chairman Choi's mansion. And though I hadn't discussed it yet, I could also use Grandfather's field until the rental period ran out, now that the zucchini harvest was done.
But that wasn't enough. From here on, I'd have to grow a wider variety of crops across far more fields. And for that, talent was essential. You have to start somewhere with people, don't you?
Second, new crops. New people always came carrying new problems. If they planted even a single new crop in my Mana Land, it meant I could keep developing new special crops indefinitely. Would any of the newly developed special crops be useless? I could declare with absolute confidence: never.
People mostly suffered from the same common problems, and they lived their lives wishing for the same things. Which meant every one of them would become a valuable, useful ingredient.
The kind of power that made any problem seem trivial. And to reach that, I had to keep growing. I knew all too well that once growth stopped, only decline and ruin remained.
As a 1st Circle mage, the fields I currently managed covered roughly 800 pyeong. What happened when I reached the 2nd Circle, then the 3rd? It would be impossible to manage all that expanding land alone. And on broad land, you had to grow all kinds of crops or it wasn't worth the effort.
"I'd better make a lot of friends."
I laid out plans for a bright, boundless future. Of course, everyone has a plan—until they get punched in the mouth.
Lunch hour passed, and CA time arrived. I walked to the science lab, opened the door, and found myself utterly speechless.
"……"
CRASH!!
"Hey! Park Chi-woo! Just wait till I catch you!!"
"You'd have to actually catch me first!"
Chairs and desks toppled over one after another. The two culprits behind all the racket sprinted madly around the classroom. Meanwhile, one girl stood entirely apart from the chaos, radiating an aura of her own as she admired the potted plant on the windowsill. And one boy looked around at the others with a gloomy expression, at a complete loss for what to do.
A gathering of kids—I'd expected a certain degree of disaster. Just not this much.
Ding—dong—daeng—dong—♪
The bell rang to signal the start of class, but these characters showed no intention whatsoever of quietly taking their seats.
Screech—
The club's advisor, Teacher Park Ye-ji, pushed the door open and came in.
"Kids! What do you think you're doing! The bell rang—sit down, now! What if you'd gotten hit by a thrown chair?!"
If there was chaos, this was chaos incarnate. Park Ye-ji righted a fallen desk and shouted at the top of her lungs. Only then did the two ringleaders and the girl still standing around return to their seats.
Of course, sitting down didn't make them quiet.
"Ugh, seriously. You tore my uniform pants."
"Ew! Don't give me that look—just go change into your gym clothes!"
The boy and girl seated in the row in front of me immediately started bickering and kicking up a fuss. Beside them, one girl was murmuring to herself as she scribbled something into a notebook at top speed.
"When water stress accumulates, the growing point reacts first…… and the clarity of the leaf veins……"
A plant journal? The pages were crammed with drawings and photos of every species of plant imaginable. That was practically professional level.
And then, the last one. A boy sitting there awkwardly—I took my own seat too.
Hm? That last guy looks familiar somehow.
Ah. A familiar face—it was Lee Dae-kyung from my class. A brilliant student, but an extremely passive one who stuttered when he spoke.
Regardless of what state these characters were in, my goal was crystal clear.
Turn every single member of this club into a professional of farm work.
Talent cultivation for the future!