Treasure Map - 3
That evening, the noisy crowd at the village entrance finally began to thin out.
The filming had wrapped. As the crew vehicles parked in the open lot started pulling away, the fans began heading back to Seoul as well.
Apparently, from now on the outdoor shoots would be done in half-day stretches, in and around Seoul and the metropolitan area. There would be no more long-term stays with the actors and staff living in the village like this.
Jo Woochul didn't come looking for me until well after dusk had swallowed the yard. He said reviewing all the footage with the script supervisor had run late.
"Thanks to you, it turned out even better than the picture I had in my head. I think this movie is going to be a massive hit."
"Well, I hope you get results that reward all your hard work—and then some."
Jo Woochul lifted his head, gave the courtyard one slow, sweeping look, and said he'd come back to see me after the official wrap. Then he headed off.
"I'll be in touch."
"Drive safe."
Seo Jinwoo planned to stay one more night at my place before returning to Seoul tomorrow. He wanted to talk with me a little more about how to promote 'Ugok's Yard,' the company I'd founded.
The beans had only just sprouted and begun to grow, yet somehow he seemed more impatient about it than I was. A top-tier actor wringing his hands over how to promote my little business—I could only be grateful.
"Chai, let's get dinner ready."
"Yes, sirrr!"
All it took was the word 'dinner' and he lit up like that. To be fair, he'd spent the entire day selling coffee and bottled water at the village entrance, so he must have been starving. Han Suja had even slipped him a fifty-thousand-won allowance.
If she was handing out money like that, she must have done pretty well for herself today.
I stepped out through the kitchen's back door into the sunroom. No. 1's kittens had grown big enough now, so I opened the sunroom door that connected to the backyard.
Back when I first renovated this house, I'd built a fence over two meters tall around the backyard. I wanted everything I did out there—cooking, reading, drinking coffee—hidden from outside eyes. Then last winter, a wild boar had charged through from the front yard into the back, so I'd put in a gate to seal it off. Thanks to that, even with the sunroom door propped open, No. 1's kittens couldn't slip out to the mountains or the fields. The mountain side was blocked by the two-meter wooden fence, and the front yard side by iron fencing.
"Miyaang!"
"Meow."
"Myaaa~!"
All twelve of them came tumbling out into the backyard in a wriggling flood. They rolled around, played, tangled up with each other throwing kitty punches—so adorable it was hard to believe they shared blood with No. 1 at all.
"Your backyard has become a cat garden," Seo Jinwoo chuckled, coming out of the bathroom with his makeup removed.
"I'll have to start getting them ready to be weaned off me soon. Before that, they all need their vaccinations and to be spayed or neutered."
"Miya?"
No. 1's head snapped up, and he stared straight at me. Apparently the mention of neutering his kittens was breaking his heart.
It has to be done, buddy. Otherwise we'll end up with inbreeding.
Hearing my unspoken words, No. 1 covered his eyes with his front paws. Facing the chaos his kittens would cause once they grew into adults seemed to make his vision go dark.
"You know how Japan and Taiwan have cat villages? What if we turned Ugok 1-ri into one?" Seo Jinwoo picked up one of the ten kittens Third Wife had borne and nuzzled it against his cheek.
"If the cats multiplied on their own and word spread naturally, maybe. But I don't want to deliberately market them. And besides..." I handed Seo Jinwoo a freshly brewed cup and went on, "if Segok-ri Reservoir does well, won't our village become famous as a filming location anyway?"
"You think so?"
Seo Jinwoo took the coffee, sipped, and his eyes went wide with admiration.
"Wow—how is this so good? The aroma is gorgeous, and there's this nutty richness with a delicate floral note running through it."
"Ethiopian Yirgacheffe green beans, medium roasted. That's what brings out the floral character."
Washing the fruit pulp off coffee beans with water deepens the aroma. None of the compounds inside the bean get damaged that way, and when naturally dried beans meet the heat of roasting, their fragrance erupts as if it were exploding out of them.
"So, um, that's actually what I wanted to talk about." Seo Jinwoo settled into the chair across from me and pressed on. "Instead of selling only doenjang and cheonggukjang through Ugok's Yard, what do you think about starting with your roasted coffee beans?"
"Coffee beans?"
"Yes. A handsome farmer roasts coffee in nature and sells it. This isn't a livelihood—it's a hobby, a joy. That joy is poured into every cup. That's the angle for the promotion."
Seo Jinwoo lived in an upscale mixed-use high-rise overlooking the Han River. Step out of the lobby on the first floor, he said, and there was a walking path that connected to a sprawling park. So many trees it could be called a forest, with lawns stretching out—nowhere in it did he ever feel that bleak, urban sterility. With a forest near the river, he'd always believed he was living close to nature. But come to Ugok-ri, he said, and you finally understand what real nature is.
"Is that lilac I'm smelling right now?" Seo Jinwoo lifted his head, savoring the floral scent drifting in on the breeze from the woods.
"Lilac mixed with acacia. This is my first spring in the countryside too, but every night I find myself breathing it in and marveling at it."
"See? That sense of wonder—it feels like it's steeped right into this coffee."
The taste of coffee lightly roasted over charcoal, made by burning firewood and carefully tending the flames. Inside it lived a farmer's heart—one that spared no amount of time in coaxing out the very best flavor.
"I think coffee beans would make a perfect first product for Ugok's Yard to launch with."
"That's not a bad idea, actually."
The coffee Han Suja had sold to visitors at the village entrance today was roasted by me too. I'd felt a quiet pride watching people drawn in by the aroma, lining up in a long queue. What amazed me even more was that people who'd bought a cup in the morning came back to stand in line again in the afternoon.
Business was so good Chai had to go fetch more beans partway through the day.
That's how good it was. Selling coffee beans looked like it would carry the weight of promoting 'Ugok's Yard' on its back.
"Should we start with a small batch, then?"
"If I promote it on Byulstar, small batches won't cut it. You'll need a steady base inventory ready at all times."
"You're awfully confident."
"I'm putting my own face on the line here. Haha. Though honestly, if the coffee is this fragrant and delicious, the reorders are going to be enormous."
Hold on a second.
If business does too well, won't I end up chained to that cauldron roasting coffee beans all day, every day?
Before that happened, I began to wonder whether I needed to build a proper system first.
Seo Jinwoo took another sip and spoke up. "Shall I commission the coffee packaging design? These days, attractive packaging makes a purchase far more likely, after all."
"As it happens, I know just the professional."
Choi Hogyeong—Park Seoktae's best friend and a classmate of ours from farming school—was a painter.
"The person who designed my caricature and the company logo lives in the very next village. She runs a natural dye workshop and grows cape jasmine, chrysanthemums, foxtail millet, safflower—things like that—herself."
Choi Hogyeong had chosen soybeans as her first crop too, but I'd heard she'd left space in her fields to plant the flowers essential for natural dyeing.
"If you entrust her with the coffee packaging, she'll make it original and beautiful."
"Then go ahead and ask her right away! I want to see Ugok's Yard get famous as soon as possible."
I puffed out my chest a little and called Choi Hogyeong.
"Yes, hello?"
While I talked with her about the coffee packaging, I watched the kittens scampering across the backyard like they were flying, all paws and fur. The rich floral scent riding the soft spring breeze down from the mountains had never felt sweeter.
A few days later.
Chai went out to the soybean field early in the morning to prune the branches. The machine—a long pole resembling a brush cutter, fitted with saw-blade attachments—required nothing more than walking down the furrows; the branches cut themselves off as he went.
Pruning the branches encouraged more shoots, more blossoms, and ultimately more pods. What's more, my fields used no fertilizer or pesticides whatsoever, and we didn't even pull the weeds. We were growing the beans exactly as nature intended, on track for organic certification.
Chai could still handle the field work alone for now, since most everything was done by machine. But I'd decided to hire one more employee.
I'm going to be away from the house a lot, translating Shoichi's letter to find where the treasure is buried.
And I had to launch the coffee business, too. The vacant house renovation had already begun, which meant I needed to drop by and fuss over it every day. On top of all that, I still had six months left as Pyeongcheong County's promotional ambassador. There was a spring outing–themed shoot this weekend, and apparently I had a promo schedule nearly every week.
Outing season is here, so I suppose I have to promote hard.
The winter really was the easy part.
Ambassador duties were set to get even busier once the summer vacation season kicked into full swing. Which is why I'd arranged an interview with Bang Jeongsoo, Bang Seonghyun's father, to bring him on as an employee.
We'd lived right on top of each other, neighbors above and below, and exchanged greetings whenever we crossed paths. But lately I'd hardly seen his face at all, so I'd asked Han Mija to arrange it—asking him to please come by my place today, whenever he could spare the time.
Han Mija had been overjoyed at the thought of Bang Jeongsoo working my fields. The commute was three minutes. No more driving off to distant farms before dawn—and he'd get to spend a few extra words with the kids each morning.
"Um, hello? Anyone home?"
Late morning, Bang Jeongsoo's voice drifted in from the front.
I was pouring coffee in the backyard, and hurried out to the entryway.
"You made it! I was just waiting for you. Come on in."
"Thank you for having me."
Bang Jeongsoo stepped inside with his shoulders drawn up tight. Nothing in his life seemed to go right lately, and it showed—he looked like a man perpetually braced for the next blow.
"The weather was so nice I was out in the backyard. Shall we sit out there together?"
"Y-yes, of course."
Bang Jeongsoo rose up on his heels and followed at my back. I guided him to a seat and handed him a cup of pour-over coffee.
"Give it a try. You've probably heard from Seongeun's mother—I've decided to get into the coffee business as well."
"Ah, yes. It's delicious."
Bang Jeongsoo answered after gulping down the scalding coffee in one swallow.
Did you actually taste that?
I could only hope his throat and stomach lining had survived the assault. Doing my best to ignore the man's visibly uncomfortable state, I spoke up.
"Selling roasted coffee means building a system that complies with food sanitation law and online sales regulations, so there's quite a lot I need to look into."
"Ah, yes, yes, of course."
"So here's what I'm thinking. Tell me the monthly salary you'd want, and I'll match it."
I knew the standard day rate for working greenhouses from dawn to dusk was around 150,000 won. He worked somewhere delivery trucks came even on weekends, so multiply by thirty: 4.5 million won a month, call it. Matching that figure seemed fair.
In exchange, working with me meant he could eat lunch at home, spend nothing on gas, and reclaim all that commuting time for himself. Most important of all, I planned to give him weekends off—five-day workweeks, with flexible hours on top. For the couple, Bang Jeongsoo and Han Mija, wouldn't this be just about the ideal arrangement?
And yet.
"Um, I... I don't think I can work under you after all, sir. That's what I came here to tell you."