Just How Far Did You Dig Before Coming Here?
Nyaaang!
The spirits carefully harvested the crops and carried them off.
They hoisted produce far larger than their own bodies without the slightest trouble, plopping it into baskets with cheerful little grunts.
The earth spirit in particular was remarkably strong, able to lift even a brimming basket in one go and haul it to a single spot.
But every one of the spirits — the life spirit, whose strength was the weakest of them all, included — was pulling its weight just fine.
Even the ones who usually spent their days rolling around on the ground were coming out with real enthusiasm, throwing themselves into the work.
"Phew, that's that. Good work, everyone."
Oh Hyeon-seong said it with a clap of his hands.
It was quite a lot for one man to handle alone, but thanks to the spirits helping with the harvest, everything was wrapped up in a matter of minutes.
He handed out snacks to the delighted spirits, then loaded the harvest onto the truck and moved it into the storage shed by the house.
The strawberry field expansion had me running around for a while, but the crops I'd already planted settled in before I knew it.
Several days had passed since he'd first sown a whole variety of crops.
By now, Oh Hyeon-seong's fields had taken on a remarkably respectable appearance.
Newly planted crops sprouting up after a round of math-based fertilizing mingled with the crops that hadn't yet been harvested, lush and thriving.
The apple trees, once mere saplings, had grown considerably as well; no fruit yet, but in a few days they'd be bearing, or so it seemed.
Considering that normally you'd have to wait two or three years after planting a sapling, that was an astonishing rate of growth.
Seeing land he had broken and tilled himself, once nothing but a bare and clumsy patch of dirt, transformed this far filled him with pride.
It made his heart feel strangely abundant.
Of course, the spirits' help had been the biggest factor in that.
"At last... the dinner hour I've been waiting for."
Oh Hyeon-seong finally stepped into the kitchen for the first time in what felt like ages and began to actually cook.
The first machine he set into motion was the rice cooker.
He'd harvested the rice he'd grown in his own fields, and the milled rice had come back — this was him taking it out.
Then he brought out his trump card.
What came down onto the counter with a thump was none other than gochujang.
Over the past several days, he had made meju — fermented soybean blocks — out of his harvested beans.
He'd gone through no end of trouble, even flying in a dedicated meju dryer because they needed to dry fast, but there was no helping it. He had to make it himself.
Fortunately, seasonings like salt and sugar hadn't degraded nearly as much in flavor as they had in the past.
On top of that, humanity had produced all manner of aggressive, punchy sauces, so it had at least been possible to attempt masking the taste of raw ingredients.
But a proper jang — a true fermented paste — had never been achieved.
This whole experience taught me something. Just how important soybeans are to Korean food.
Gochujang, doenjang, ganjang.
They were nothing less than the foundation of Korean cuisine, and without them, almost no Korean dish could be recreated with its original flavor.
And so, through trial and error, he'd made the meju, and though the ingredients weren't perfect and the method was a bit of a hack job, he had somehow managed to produce gochujang.
With that, all the preparations were finally complete.
He took out potatoes, onions, peppers, garlic and the like, began to cook, and proudly laid out the finished spread.
...Finally.
A mound of snow-white rice, steam curling off it in waves.
The color alone set it worlds apart from dull, factory-made rice.
The white, glossy grains gave off an aroma that could make your head spin.
Unable to bear it a second longer, Oh Hyeon-seong lifted his spoon, scooped up a heaping mouthful, and shoved it into his mouth.
"Mm..."
He closed his eyes and savored the taste.
An indescribable wave of happiness spread through his mouth.
Yes... this is what rice is supposed to be... not that strange lump of clay — this is real rice.
Freshly milled new-crop rice, cooked that very day.
The stickiness, the softness — everything was perfect.
But it didn't stop there.
Turning his head slightly, he found a pot of gochujang stew, simmered long and slow, gleaming a fierce, vivid red.
One spoonful — spicy, rich, and sweet from the onions that had melted into the broth. He ate it with rice, fished out the chunky bits, worked through the stir-fried potatoes sitting alongside as a side dish.
Without a single moment to spare for conscious thought, the table was emptied in the blink of an eye.
"Hooah..."
Only when his stomach reached full capacity did he finally stop.
It had been a truly proper meal.
Almost too good to believe.
How long has it been since I felt something like this...? I could die right now with no regrets at all.
He genuinely felt he'd made the right choice, turning to farming.
If he'd stayed in the city, he would have lived and died forcing nothing but dull, factory-pressed products down his throat.
And then a fierce surge of motivation welled up inside him.
It wasn't easy, but the result was a total success. Sure, it was the best I could squeeze out of limited ingredients... but from here on, I'm expanding the menu, one dish after another.
He'd have been perfectly content to eat this exact diet for the rest of his life.
Forget the stew and the stir-fry — even this single bowl of rice was a luxury that, in this day and age, not even a head of state could enjoy.
But so long as the door was open, there was no reason not to reunite with the countless dishes of the past that were waiting for him.
For the first time since he'd left the city, Oh Hyeon-seong had a burning new goal.
But to do that, there are a few things I need to take care of first.
His private land stretched out below the house.
Unlike the upper fields, which were completely concealed, this was where the unshielded, barrier-free empty plots lay.
Oh Hyeon-seong intended to put up two buildings there.
The first was a storage warehouse.
The shed attached to the house was already crammed full of seed stock.
There was nowhere to put the harvested produce, and going forward he'd need multipurpose space as well.
The meju dryer alone took up a fair amount of volume at the moment, and he was planning to get a home rice mill too — with things like these piling up one by one, even this big house wouldn't be able to keep up.
And the other was a cover farm.
He'd already told the neighbors he was starting to farm, and with trade underway now, he couldn't just leave empty land sitting there.
The plan was to set up an indoor farm — nothing too suspicious, but designed so no one could see what was inside.
The only problem was that it would cost quite a bit of money.
Setting aside all the incidental expenses, simply raising buildings on bare ground would mean a major outlay, no way around it.
Riiiing!
Just then, his phone buzzed in his pocket.
The caller turned out to be Yoo Seung-su.
"Hyung! Hyung!"
"What's got into you all of a sudden?"
"We're proceeding with the negotiation exactly as-is! The department store called — we're getting through this deal with no penalties at all!"
He was so worked up that his breathless voice crackled through the phone.
"Haha, good for you. What did I tell you? I said it'd work out."
"I can't believe it! They were being so firm I thought for sure it was hopeless... Oh, right! You took the manager's contact info last time — what on earth did you do?"
"I just know someone at that department store. I asked if they could take another look, since someone was being treated unfairly."
"Y-you had connections at Hankyung Department Store?"
"Don't get the wrong idea, it's nothing impressive. It wasn't my word alone that flipped anything. All I did was get a re-review, that's it. It was an unavoidable accident to begin with, and from the department store's perspective, your farm has long-term value — so that's the decision they came to internally."
"Hyung... I... I really can't thank you enough..."
Yoo Seung-su's voice, thick with tears, came faintly through the receiver.
Seeing the young man so genuinely happy made him happy too.
Seung-su had helped him no end with the farming lately, so this much was the least he could do.
"Consider it proof your farm's been properly recognized. Chin up."
"Thank you so much... If you ever need anything from me, just say the word! I'll drop everything and come running!"
"Don't overdo it."
Oh Hyeon-seong hung up with a chuckle.
Still — no department store on earth goes out of its way to rescue one person from an injustice.
There had to be a reason the situation suddenly turned.
Looks like... the reactions are finally starting to come in.
Hankyung Department Store's food hall had a natural-produce corner.
It was quite a distinctive differentiation strategy.
Even with recent advances in cultivar-improvement technology and a growing consumer base, natural produce had never been mainstream in the premium market.
Compared to high-grade synthetic crops, its share was minuscule.
Natural produce had always labored under the weight of public prejudice — an image far removed from anything "luxury."
And so carving out a dedicated natural-produce corner in one side of the food hall had been a rather bold gamble on Hankyung's part.
Even now that it had found its footing, the section was by no means large — tucked away small and quiet in the deepest corner of the food hall.
And the spot Oh Hyeon-seong had squeezed into was just one item among them: strawberries, nothing more.
But that single item had caused an absolutely seismic stir.
It had been only a few days since Oh-Hyeon Farm's strawberries went on display in the food hall.
The strawberries sold out in an instant, a smash hit beyond all expectations.
Lines formed every morning, a daily scramble for what little stock remained.
They were the downgraded version — in taste, aroma, and texture, all a step below the real crops Hyeon-seong grew.
And yet even that downgraded version carried a sense of aliveness that simply couldn't be found in anything on the market before.
The flavor had its shortcomings, but palates conditioned by factory-made food accepted even that incomplete taste with almost violent enthusiasm.
"Honestly, it's remarkable. When you first proposed the natural-produce pilot, I barely believed it would work at all."
The executive across the desk said it with a nod.
"Where on earth did that foresight come from? Who could have guessed one new strawberry would cause this whole commotion? The name recognition we're getting is worth far more than hiring dozens of viral marketing firms."
Limited supply, exploding demand.
Reviews from those who'd tasted it were setting social media ablaze, and the buzz had already shot into the stratosphere.
Drawn by the scent of money, resellers had moved in — and the phrase Strawberry Frenzy had begun appearing across internet news articles.
It wouldn't be long before the subject hit the networks' prime-time news broadcasts.
Word of mouth normally takes time to spread, but no product in the department store's history had ever taken off like this.
To be fair, with the volumes so small, the raw sales figures weren't extraordinary.
Measured against the revenue of a department store this size, selling a few strawberries was child's play.
But what mattered, as ever, was the buzz.
The issue and the attention translated directly into foot traffic — so much so that sales were rising across the entire store.
Even the other natural-produce items sitting right next to the strawberries were selling out, one and all.
"If this keeps up, your promotion is a given — and it'll keep me comfortably alive for the next few years too."
"Th-thank you, sir."
"Now then. Here's the thing — I'm hearing something rather strange. That there's no stock prepared for the next round... What kind of nonsense is that?"
"That is... the contract only covered the first shipment. We've contacted the farm owner dozens of times already, but he simply won't pick up the phone, so..."
Park Jeong-tae was sweating buckets.
He hadn't anticipated an issue of this scale either, and he'd been in full crisis mode scrambling to respond to the frenzy.
"Let me get this straight. A product that's hit this mother lode of a windfall has no contract for the next shipment, so it's just going to... end? And if Daesung Department Store swoops in and snatches the deal, everything we've built pours straight into those bastards' mouths?"
The executive's face, already crumpled, darkened into something ugly.
"Get out there right now and land that contract, whatever it takes!"
"Oh? You came all the way out here, Manager?"
Oh Hyeon-seong said as he saw Park Jeong-tae arrive at his front gate.
Nerves wracking him, sweat trickling down his face, Park Jeong-tae managed to force the words out.
"I, uh... I came to continue our conversation from last time..."
"About the strawberries, right? Perfect timing. I was just looking around for somewhere to supply the next batch myself."
"Then please — please, sign with us!"
"Of course. I'd been hoping to keep supplying Hankyung all along. Provided the contract terms are right, of course."
Oh Hyeon-seong said it with a wide, gleaming grin.
"Oh, right — you're aware the unit price starts in the three digits, yes?"
"Yes... yes, sir."
Park Jeong-tae's head drooped in gloom as he nodded.