The First Bite of the Potato Business
“Ugh... it's way too hot.”
Choi Seo-dan, who had arrived at school early in the morning, slumped face-down across her classroom desk.
A sleepless night had left her in rough shape.
“...Good grief.”
And it was all Seo Ji-on and Lee Dae-kyung's fault.
What had happened during yesterday's Career Activities class.
She couldn't even describe how much it had rattled her.
That middle-aged woman who'd grabbed the teacher by the hair, looking absolutely unhinged.
And that woman was Lee Dae-kyung's mother.
It was true that pure circumstance had landed him in the same class and the same club as her, but since fate had introduced them anyway, she'd tried to get along with him.
He was supposedly the best student in the entire school, and his calm, steady demeanor had honestly appealed to her.
But who would have thought she'd witness such raw, naked family drama within a single day of meeting him?
Seo-dan rose from her seat and walked over to the window.
Perhaps because it was only half past seven, there were hardly any students coming to school yet.
...I hope Dae-kyung's doing okay.
But about twenty minutes later.
Contrary to Seo-dan's worries, Lee Dae-kyung appeared looking perfectly fine—no, not just fine, positively radiant.
“Hey, Seo-dan.”
“Huh? Oh... uh, hey?”
Seo-dan waved awkwardly.
...Lee Dae-kyung had changed. A lot.
He was seriously grim-faced just yesterday! Don't tell me everything got solved overnight?
Up until yesterday he'd had his shoulders hunched in, timid and withdrawn—but today was different.
Shoulders squared, posture straight, an unfaltering voice, and even a relaxed, easy smile.
What is this? How is his face glowing like that?
He'd had an ordinary face, but seeing him smile so shyly with that bright expression made him look different.
More precisely, it was as if someone had slapped a filter on him—somehow he looked... handsome?
Seo-dan vigorously shook her head.
No! He is not handsome! Okay, fine, he's at least that level, but...!
Seo-dan's eyes bulged as she stared past him at something.
Someone was walking toward the classroom from behind Lee Dae-kyung.
“Why is everyone out here already?”
It was Seo Ji-on, wearing an utterly neutral expression.
“So you're saying the problem got resolved, really, really well?”
“Yeah. Mom's coming in to apologize to the teacher today, too. She seemed busy yesterday clearing out all the mom cafés she'd joined.”
“...Mom cafés?”
Seo-dan looked at Dae-kyung with a horrified expression.
“You must have really been through it. I get chills just hearing the words ‘mom café.’”
“Why? Are they really that bad?”
At my question, Seo-dan snorted.
“Wow, you're even more out of touch than I thought.”
...
So I—nearly eighty years younger than her—am the one who doesn't understand the ways of the world.
Shocking.
What exactly am I supposed to be ignorant of, pray tell?
Sensing my resentful glare, Seo-dan shrugged and went on.
“Not all mom cafés are like that, but some of them are absolutely rabid. If she was joining multiple ones and hopping between them, I guarantee she was in at least one of the aggressive ones.”
“Aggressive ones?”
“Yeah. Communities packed with parents desperate to get their kids into elite universities. Networking and all that.”
Seo-dan shuddered violently.
“A while ago, some woman who was supposedly the president of a mom café showed up and told me to be friendly with her son or whatever. Where did she even dig up my background... She must've been running background checks on people!”
Fair enough—Seo-dan was a third-generation chaebol heir of the Taeram Food ownership family.
She'd had her share of people digging up her identity and worming their way close to her.
Lee Dae-kyung gave a rueful smile as he listened to Seo-dan vent her disgust.
“Yeah, there really are people like that. My mom keeps blaming herself for falling for it.”
“N-no, that's not what I meant—”
Oh. She's flustered.
Seo-dan waved her hands frantically, panicking.
“...Sorry. I didn't mean it like that.”
“Haha, I know. I was just teasing you a little.”
At Dae-kyung's words, the atmosphere softened.
Apparently he hadn't only fixed his stuttering—he'd picked up conversational charm along the way.
As we chatted and swapped idle jokes for a while, Dae-kyung spoke up with a worried look on his face.
“Honestly, there's still one thing I'm worried about.”
“What?”
“Well...”
Dae-kyung recalled the post his mother had been typing on her phone yesterday.
He'd sneakily peeked at it—and the word potato had been in it.
“So, um... the mom cafés might find out the potato exists...”
“Oh ho.”
Dae-kyung said it like it was a disaster, but this could very well be a windfall.
According to everything Seo-dan had told us, parents were locked in constant competition to maximize their children's admissions prospects and every other advantage.
In other words, the people who held the decision-making power over money were too busy fighting and checking each other to cooperate.
...Wait. Handled right, this could make me a fortune.
I licked my lips.
What kind of post did she write?
Those rabid parents would never, ever let the Clever Potato slide by unnoticed.
She'd better have written it in a way that made it shine.
“Well, anyway, it's a relief she quit all of them.”
Seo-dan said to Dae-kyung.
Then she suddenly turned to me and asked,
“By the way, when can we harvest the potatoes we planted yesterday?”
“Ah, we should be able to harvest next week.”
“Next week? Do they normally grow that fast?”
“Uh... yeah. It's a special seed variety.”
Seo-dan nodded at my answer.
“No wonder. You even prepared the bags of seed potatoes yourself.”
“Haha... well, they're not exactly easy to come by.”
Right. Land inscribed with mana isn't exactly easy to find on this Earth.
“But if harvest is next week, does that mean we can't do weeding or anything like that?”
“I was planning to handle that myself. It'd be boring and tedious for you guys.”
As much as I'd wanted to show Seo-dan what real farming looked like, a newbie was a newbie.
The rule of thumb with newbies is that you only let them experience the fun, exciting parts, isn't it?
But Seo-dan, apparently, had understood something entirely different from my intentions.
She bristled at my words and shouted,
“So you're saying we can't even handle pulling weeds properly?!”
“What? That's not what I—”
“We can do it! We can do all of it!! No—we WILL do it!”
Lee Dae-kyung, who'd been listening to the exchange nearby, flinched like he'd been struck by lightning.
“...Why me?”
“You're a club member too, aren't you?”
“Th-that's true, but I don't really need to pull weeds...”
“What are you talking about? We're the Vegetation Research Club. We're supposed to observe the whole growing process, start to finish!”
“Uh... does it work like that?”
Dae-kyung was completely steamrolled by her momentum.
Seo-dan wins!
I looked at the two of them and let out a small sigh.
“Good grief. Even if you want to quit halfway, I'm not letting you go.”
“Obviously. I'd never quit halfway!”
“Then let's all go pull weeds together today.”
“All of us? Then I should call the others too, right?”
We're calling the other kids in now?
This was scaling up faster than I expected.
If things kept going like this, I might as well just build a storage shed next to the field...
“Alright! Let's go!! We can do it till the end!”
“Nope. This isn't it. I can't. I CAN'T!!”
Seo-dan hurled down the weed root she'd been gripping just moments before.
Three days. It had taken a grand total of three days after her declaration that she would absolutely never, ever give up, for the surrender announcement to come.
These kids.
And I'd even let them rest on the weekend.
Their stamina was abysmal.
“Resting and then going back at it makes it a thousand times worse!”
With that shout, Seo-dan flopped backward onto the ground.
“...I spread supplementary fertilizer out here in the early morning, so it's going to stink.”
“AAACK! Why are you telling me this NOW? No wonder I felt all grimy!”
Seo-dan leapt to her feet and frantically brushed herself off.
Well, I guess she's not quite at the point of collapse—she's clearly still got the energy to throw a tantrum.
The other kids, however, were another matter.
While Seo-dan lay on the ground throwing a fit, the others...
“Hahh... hahh...”
“Hooo... oww. My, my muscles feel like they're tearing apart.”
“S-senior. Save me, please...”
Muscle soreness stacked on top of grueling labor—it looked like even breathing was a struggle for them.
I occasionally used wind magic to help them catch their breath, but that only lasted so long.
Before long, the kids lay sprawled out, as limp as the very weeds they'd been pulling.
“Do we... really have to do this for two more days...?”
“Hang in there just a little longer. If they grow faster than expected the day after tomorrow, we might even harvest tomorrow.”
The potato plants had grown far taller than the day we'd planted them, boasting lush, abundant leaves.
A few flower buds had appeared, too.
Once those flowers bloomed and fell, it would be time to harvest the potatoes.
If things went well, we might pull up a few by tomorrow.
“...Tomorrow?”
The word tomorrow seemed to reignite hope in the kids, and their hands got back to work with renewed effort.
“Alright, good work today, everyone. See you tomorrow.”
“Ughhh...”
“...Yeeesss, siirrr.”
Look at those dragging sentence endings.
Yeah, those kids' stamina is hopeless, no question.
Where would I even start with training them? I had no idea.
After a night with a future as murky as pitch, the long-awaited harvest dawn finally broke.
Crops Growing in Mana Land Plot 3
- Clever Potato (50%): Partial harvest available
- Clear Eye Carrot (50%)
The System said “partial,” but when I checked with my own eyes, a fair number of the potatoes had already flowered and died back.
I'd say about one-sixth of them were ready for harvest.
“Well, I can't exactly let that rob me of the joy of a first harvest.”
Technically I'd already harvested one root, but that one was an exception.
Buzzing with excitement, I headed off to school.
I'd already told Seo-dan and Dae-kyung, my classmates, that we'd be harvesting today.
The three kids from other classes and grades, I planned to tell at lunchtime.
Yes.
My lunchtime plans had been flawless, if I do say so myself...
So why am I currently being held captive here, without even a proper lunch to show for it?
“H-haha...”
Ms. Park Ye-ji, seated on the sofa across from me, let out an awkward laugh.
The principal, sitting on the sofa in the middle, kept wiping the sweat beading on his forehead.
“Ji-on, my boy. Sorry for calling you in so suddenly.”
“Oh, no, it's fine.”
Running on an empty stomach, I was in a fairly foul mood.
The principal, darting nervous glances this way and that, stole a careful peek at the middle-aged woman seated beside him.
“The reason I called you here is that we have someone who would like to meet you.”
I didn't need to guess—that woman was obviously the someone.
I glared at her.
“And who might you be?”
“...She is the wife of the Jeonbuk Superintendent of Education. Madam, this is the student you were looking for—Seo Ji-on.”
The superintendent's wife?
Not even the superintendent himself—his wife. Why on earth would she come all the way to a mid-sized middle school tucked away in a town like this?
And out of all those students, why single me out and summon me specifically?
Then it hit me—something Seo-dan had said a few days ago flashed through my mind. And Dae-kyung's worried words, too.
“Aha.”
Now I finally understand what's going on.
Mom cafés.
The culprit and the starting point of this whole circus.
The woman sitting across from me wore an extremely smug expression.
Despite her broad, imposing features, she was dressed in an elegant white tweed two-piece with a silk blouse and sky-blue high heels.
From her very posture, she radiated an aura of I am a very important person, you see—someone clearly accustomed to lording over others from a seated position.
But at the end of the day, she was a parent with children.
Which is to say, this was merely the first nibble of the potato business.
As first nibbles went, she was a pretty big fish—but I could guarantee many more nibbles were coming.
And yet, to be dragged here like this and robbed of this precious meal...
I was already lamenting the fact that I only get to eat three meals a day as it is!!
...Haa.
Lunch was already lost to the river, and the situation was in motion.
Which meant the only thing left to do was squeeze every last drop of value out of it.
I leaned back comfortably against the sofa and said,
“So, madam. What exactly did you see, and where?”
And then—
just how far ahead did you come here thinking?