The Sweet Potato Auction
"Sold! Sweet potato number one, for one hundred thousand won!"
The youngest boy in the village hall rang out loud and clear.
A boy of fifteen, presiding over an auction.
Everyone seated inside the hall felt as though they'd been swept off their feet by him.
Is that really a second-year middle schooler?
Jakgol-ri, a small village of barely fifty residents. Its chief, Park Chun-bae, had spent the entire afternoon watching Seo Ji-on run the auction, and the result of that observation was nothing short of astonishing.
The boy handled the proceedings with practiced ease, knew how to hold a crowd's attention, and understood exactly where to draw the line so that competition simmered without ever boiling over into chaos.
It was the fluency of someone who had spent decades rolling around auction floors.
I could tell from our very first conversation that he was no ordinary kid, but I never dreamed he was this good.
He was more impressed than he had expected to be.
Like a fish returned to water, like a catch of the day fresh off the boat, Seo Ji-on had commanded the village hall from start to finish with that vibrant, youthful energy of his.
"Sweet potato number two, sold for one hundred thirty thousand won."
"Number three, one hundred forty thousand won!"
"Number six has reached one hundred seventy thousand won. Sold!"
Bids had opened at a mere thirty thousand won, but the hammer prices had already blown past one hundred thousand and were closing in on two hundred.
"And now for the last sweet potato. As you can see, the price has climbed quite a bit, so we'll start the bidding at one hundred thousand won."
Park Chun-bae found himself recalling the day Seo Ji-on had first proposed this auction to him.
The day half the village had stormed Kim Gwang-nam's house, hammering on his gate. Chun-bae had caught wind of it late and made his own way over, only to be met by Seo Ji-on wearing the innocent face of a boy who knew nothing at all.
Park Chun-bae knew his face was on the fierce side. Younger folk usually felt intimidated by him, and anyone who felt intimidated always handed him the upper hand in a negotiation.
He'd assumed this time would be no different.
"The method I had in mind is an auction. We gather everyone and let the bidders compete against each other."
"...An auction, eh. Then I'll arrange the village hall for you. We'll do it officially, so the whole village knows what's going on."
When Park Chun-bae made that offer, Seo Ji-on had simply nodded his assent.
That was supposed to be the moment Chun-bae could name his price in return.
But the boy was no pushover child.
"And I imagine there's something you'd want in exchange? Priority purchasing rights for the sweet potatoes, say."
A single remark that cut straight to the heart of the matter.
Outmaneuvered at his own game, Park Chun-bae had no choice but to clamp his mouth shut.
The truth was, he had been planning to offer to run the auction in exchange for a single sweet potato. But the boy had made the suggestion first.
After that, there was no way the village chief could swallow his pride and ask for free sweet potatoes outright.
Truly, no ordinary kid. By raising the topic of payment before Chun-bae could sneak in his request for a freebie, the boy had thrown him a modest bone while making sure he paid cash for it.
Well, well. I took him lightly for being young, and he landed a solid blow. Heh. Then again, I suppose I should count myself lucky I get to buy at the lowest successful bid of the day...
As things stood, the lowest bid had been the one hundred thousand won that Madam Seo Bok-ja had called out at the very start.
Watching the price of sweet potatoes skyrocket in the span of a single hour, Park Chun-bae let out a sigh of relief—along with a flicker of worry.
Whatever sweet potatoes came next were certain to be even more expensive.
Park Chun-bae wasn't the only one rattled by this auction.
Seo Ji-on's maternal grandfather, Kim Gwang-nam, was in for a shock of his own.
In his youth, Kim Gwang-nam hadn't been a farmer at all—he'd been a salesman.
Though he'd grown up in the countryside, no one could out-talk him. Moving up to Seoul, he'd leveraged his honest face and silver tongue to land a sales position at a sizable company.
When the economic crisis hit and he was laid off, he'd had no choice but to return home and take up farming—but the blood of a salesman still ran hot in Kim Gwang-nam's veins.
The poise to stand before any crowd, no matter how large, without shrinking an inch. The knack for reading a room with a single well-placed remark and driving a sale home.
Kim Gwang-nam had been a man blessed with every quality a salesman needed.
And Seo Ji-on took after him.
His one and only grandson was reenacting the glory days of his youth, right here in this village hall!
Kim Gwang-nam's chest muscles—already swollen with pride over the sweet potatoes—flexed and twitched.
For years, money and people had beaten him down until he'd folded away his once-brilliant dreams and bent his back to the soil. In that time, Kim Gwang-nam's dream had lain buried deep in his heart, folded up neatly like a faded photograph.
But in this very moment, his blood was burning again.
My grandson's working that hard out there—I can't just sit on my hands!
Stepping outside the village hall, Kim Gwang-nam bumped straight into someone.
A man he'd never seen before, dressed in a crisp, neatly ironed shirt.
"Excuse me, sorry about that."
"No, my apologies."
After the brief exchange of apologies, the man shot a quick glance at Kim Gwang-nam as he passed, then turned his head to gaze back into the village hall.
"Three, two, one—sold!"
And above all, at the boy commanding everything from within—Seo Ji-on.
The auction, in a word, was a roaring success.
All ten sweet potatoes sold out. Thanks to that, the money we pulled in was far, far greater than I had originally estimated.
Once the auction wound down, I tidied up the noisy village hall and headed outside.
Out front, the winning bidders had gathered around the makeshift desk we'd set up. Now it was time to verify their number tickets and exchange cash for sweet potatoes.
A line of people waiting for me stretched out along the wall.
These were customers who had spent big money relative to their means. They deserved treatment to match.
Better hurry up and—huh?
What's going on? Why is the line getting shorter?
I hadn't even handed over the sweet potatoes and collected the money yet, but people were already heading home. What happened?
Just as I reached the desk in front of the village hall, I spotted it.
Grandfather, standing in the spot where I was supposed to be.
"Grandpa!"
"Oh-ho, you're out already? Cleaned everything up too, did you? You worked hard running that auction, son."
"Thank you... but what have you been doing here?"
"Heh heh, did you think this old man could just sit by while you did all the work? I rolled up both sleeves and got to it. All I'm good for anymore is lending a hand with the wrap-up, mind you."
Handing out everything took less than ten minutes. Once Grandfather had collected every last won, he held out a bundle of bills.
A thick, plush stack of green ten-thousand-won notes.
"Here you go. This is the money you earned all on your own. Feels heavy, don't it?"
"It really is thick."
"Want to count it yourself?"
I took the bills and held them in a way that made counting easy. Grandfather seemed startled by how practiced my hands were.
But what could I do? It was second nature to me. Back in the day, I'd had to manage the proceeds from selling artifacts I crafted myself, so of course I'd gotten used to it.
Flip, flip, flip. I counted it out and confirmed the total: the auction had earned me one million two hundred thousand won. Adding the sweet potatoes the village chief had agreed to buy, it came to one million three hundred thousand all told.
Astounding money for a crop grown over barely two weeks.
At this level of income, even Mother's household budget—the one she'd been struggling with—should finally have some breathing room.
Last night came back to me: Mother slipping quietly into the darkened house, utterly worn out. And the worried look on her face when I had first come to my senses in this body.
"...I want to give this money to Mother. Since it's the first money I've ever earned."
That's right—this was the first money I'd earned in Seo Ji-on's body. Naturally, it belonged to Mother.
The sweet potatoes would keep growing every two weeks from here on out. Whatever money I wanted to stash away for myself could come later.
Hearing this, Grandfather was so moved that he stroked my head.
"That's right, that's the way. ...Aigoo, our Mi-sook. She may be short on luck with parents, but the child luck sure runs deep in her."
"She has luck with parents too, Grandpa. She has parents to lean on when things get hard."
I meant every word of it.
Luck with parents is a subjective thing, when you get down to it. Most people would say that merely having parents alive is already a measure of fortune.
But having parents who take you in when you're at your lowest—that goes beyond good fortune. That's overflowing abundance.
Before I entered Seo Ji-on's body, I had always lived carrying a knot of anxiety. An anxiety born of having no parents. The aimlessness of having nowhere to return to, no one to care for me. It got better after I awakened as a mage, found a lover, and later met the master of the artifact workshop—but that fear had never quite faded.
So Seo Ji-on's mother, Madam Kim Mi-suk, was what you'd call a person whose luck with parents didn't just run deep—it overflowed.
Grandfather's eyes began to glisten at my answer.
Oh no. If this keeps up, he's going to cry.
"Grandpa, thank you for setting aside the wrapping paper earlier."
"Don't mention it. Brought back old memories for me, that's all."
"Old memories?"
Grandfather nodded.
"Ji-on, thanks to you, I remembered there's something I love more than farming."
"What you love more than farming... is sales?"
"So here's the thing. From now on, whenever you've got something you grew to sell yourself, can this old man keep lending a hand with it, Ji-on?"
That was an incredibly good offer for me. It was like having already secured a trustworthy person you couldn't buy for any amount of money.
"If you'd do that, the pleasure would be all mine."
"Heh heh. Leave all the selling to your old grandpa from here on."
"Yes, sir!"
On the walk home, Grandfather pitched me one idea after another. Most of them were useful, but if I had to pick the very best, it was this one:
A trademark.
"Now see here, just tossing sweet potatoes in plain envelopes like today felt a bit dull, didn't it? Next time, why not make up some envelopes printed with your name or your farm's name? What do you think?"
"My name or the farm's name?"
He'd framed it in a way an easy kid could follow, but the core idea was simple: print a trademark on the packaging.
And it was something I'd been mulling over myself, just recently.
Branding.
The supreme form of marketing—cementing a company's image so firmly that it cultivates a devoted fanbase.
The artifact workshop I'd belonged to in my past life had likewise poured vast sums into nothing but spreading the rumor that its finest artisans had all gathered under one roof.
We hired bards to compose songs about us, and promoted our products by presenting artifacts to famous knights and nobles. That was how our workshop became the most famous on the continent practically overnight.
That was the model—do what the artifact workshop did back then.
Craft an ideal trademark, stamp it on the crops we sold, and since these were special-effect crops, the quality would speak for itself. Given enough time, the consumers' impression would be fixed in place: Ah, crops grown here never disappoint.
And then, game over.
From now on, sweet potatoes would be harvested every week. That meant sales like today's would happen on a weekly cycle.
What's more, as my mana circuits expanded, the area of my Mana Land would expand with them. In other words, the number of sweet potatoes I could harvest would only keep growing. Eventually I'd be cultivating other crops alongside them, too.
So why not plant an image in people's minds from the very beginning?
The image of rare, special-effect crops grown in Seo Ji-on's fields.
"Rather than my name, I think it'd be better to go with the farm's name."
"The farm's name? That's the common way of doing it, I reckon."
"Yes—and this is as good a time as any to come up with a new one."
We were right in the middle of brainstorming farm names when I heard it.
Thud, thud.
The sound of someone approaching us.
"Excuse me—sorry to bother you."