The Leisure of a Cup of Coffee
Rustle.
Oh Hyeon-seong stirred beneath the covers.
Though his eyes were closed as if in deep slumber, he had, in truth, been awake for some time already.
That peculiar feeling of having risen but not wanting to rise at all. He luxuriated in the decadent, drowsy languor of wanting to stay buried forever in his soft pillow and warm blankets.
It was a weekday, when most of the world was bustling about. The mere thought that, if he wished, he could spend the entire day exactly like this made him smile with quiet delight.
After all, there was no harm in tending the farm only whenever he felt like it.
"...Still, I should get up."
Opening his eyes, Oh Hyeon-seong slowly pushed his upper body upright.
He'd long since shed the obsessive discipline of his Special Task Force days, but he was afraid that if this went on much longer, he might simply evolve into a human sloth.
So he threw off the covers and rose.
Feels like it's been a while since I've seen this room.
The interior of his bedroom felt strangely unfamiliar today. He had expected to be gone longer than planned, and it had certainly felt that way in his bones.
It's a good thing, sleeping under a proper ceiling.
Oh Hyeon-seong went to the kitchen, downed a glass of water, and ran a hand through his tangled hair while glancing at the small mirror hanging in the living room.
"Mm..."
Bleary-eyed, he looked around, then stood still on the wooden floor of the veranda, gazing out at the familiar view of the yard and the clear sky.
The weather had warmed enough that even stepping out in a short-sleeved shirt brought no chill at all. Some days, in fact, it turned just slightly muggy.
"So quiet."
A gentle breeze drifted through. The rustle of swaying leaves and the chatter of songbirds were the only sounds.
A place of perfect peace and solitude. No thundering artillery from the north, no grotesque howls of monsters echoing from a distance—nothing of the sort.
The chaos up north now felt like a dream, so deeply did this place cradle him in calm.
But no matter how seasoned a veteran might be, no matter how battle-mad a warmonger might be, being trapped in that kind of environment day after day inevitably wears down both body and mind.
The world's first-generation hunters, ground up and fed endlessly into the fires of war—no wonder most of them simply vanished.
It wasn't merely a question of strength or weakness as a hunter. The more exhausted the body and eroded the mind became, the more easily the miasma took hold.
Oh Hyeon-seong himself was one of the lucky few who had survived, and that was precisely why he understood better than anyone how precious this peaceful place truly was.
"...Come to think of it."
Thump.
He pressed a hand to his side. Feeling no pain whatsoever, he lifted the hem of his shirt—and there was a perfectly healthy flank staring back at him.
The wound he'd taken in his battle against the Named Monster, Nihil, had healed over completely, without him even noticing.
It had been an injury serious enough that no hunter would have dismissed it, yet in a single day it had mended clean—not even a scar, not even a faint discoloration left behind.
They say food is the best medicine. Apparently it's no joke.
Oh Hyeon-seong nodded in satisfaction.
The rice from his fields didn't just restore stamina; it also had a remarkable effect on wound recovery.
Just eating meals at home was enough to wipe away most injuries and their lingering aftereffects. That was also why, after returning home yesterday, he had devoured dinner and immediately collapsed into a dead sleep.
Keeng-keeng!
"Sleep well?"
The spirits had gathered around him at some point, waving their tiny hands, and Oh Hyeon-seong couldn't help but chuckle.
Then he slipped on a comfortable pair of shoes and crossed the yard.
"I'm stepping out for a bit."
He waved off the spirits, who were asking with their eyes where he was going.
Having lazed around in bed all morning, it was an awkward time to eat a proper meal—so he decided to use that awkward interval to head out to the fields.
There was something he needed to check.
I planted them a bit late, but most of the crops should be well along by now.
All sorts of things had happened up north, but his original reason for crossing the border had been something else entirely: a visit to the Secret Seed Vault.
First, to confirm the vault was still intact and unharmed. Second, to bring back additional Original Seeds he hadn't managed to retrieve before.
Of course, a single round trip could never have moved the vault's vast collection of samples, so the original plan had been to load his vehicle as full as possible and drive back down.
But fortune had smiled on him. His transportation had changed mid-journey.
A transport helicopter belonging to the National Security Bureau had graciously opened up its enormous cargo space, and he'd packed it to the brim with samples. Thanks to that, he'd been able to bring home far more Original Seeds than he'd ever imagined.
Most of the newly acquired seeds were now stored in his underground cellar. Since that cellar had been carved out with Mertz's power, it could expand as much as needed whenever new seeds arrived.
And thanks to Alvern's abilities, its preservation was even more flawless than a large-scale seed storage facility.
What demanded his attention right now was the fields themselves.
If anything went wrong and I lost the seeds, that would be a disaster.
For all the vastness of his seed vault, he only possessed a small amount of each individual variety. If the seeds he planted in the fields somehow failed, he might never again taste the true, original form of that crop.
Moreover, some of what he'd planted this time were fruits and crops not particularly suited to Korea's natural climate, which made him all the more anxious.
But fortunately, when he checked, every crop he'd planted the other day was growing splendidly.
Letting out a short sigh of relief, he summoned more seeds and expanded the fields. With spare seeds secured and stored in the cellar, he began laying out proper plots for each crop in the sections he'd already mapped out.
The work had grown familiar by now, and today's task was finished in no time.
That day at lunch, as always, the Yoo siblings came calling at his house.
They were the type to barge in uninvited even under normal circumstances, but they'd also been unable to hear a proper account of what had happened to Oh Hyeon-seong—what with him suddenly returning by helicopter. Yoo Eun-ha in particular had been so consumed with curiosity that she'd barely slept a wink.
Sniff sniff!
But as they stood before the front gate, a fragrant aroma drifted out to meet them.
"What is that smell?"
They were more or less used to delicious smells wafting from Oh Hyeon-seong's house by now. Dishes made with the crops from his farm alone had always carried a heavenly scent.
But this aroma was different from all of those.
The truth of it revealed itself soon enough.
Clank.
"Whoa...!"
"That smell from before—was that coffee?"
The two siblings, seated on the wooden floor, went wide-eyed. Oh Hyeon-seong, who had just poured the coffee, nodded.
"That's right. A new crop I brought back this time."
Coffee beans—one of the crops he'd recently begun growing. He'd watched home-roasting videos and roasted them himself, then brewed the coffee with a hand-drip set he'd bought in advance.
There had been a few miserable failures along the way, but once his hands got somewhat used to it, a fairly respectable cup had come together.
Compared to professional baristas, his drip technique was still hopeless—but then, no one could overcome the power of good ingredients. The finest coffee in the world, brewed by an utter novice's hands.
"What are you waiting for? Try it."
"W-well..."
Gulp.
The siblings stared down at their cups.
Unlike the older generations, they had never once tasted proper coffee in their lives. They'd had coffee before, certainly—but only the cheap factory-made stuff, and it had tasted so vile that they'd genuinely wondered why anyone drank it at all.
They couldn't even imagine what good coffee might be like.
Slurp.
But the moment the two of them closed their eyes tight and took a sip, exclamations of wonder burst out of them unbidden.
"This... this is what coffee was supposed to be?"
"Yep. That's the stuff."
Oh Hyeon-seong smiled faintly and sipped from the cup he'd brought for himself. Truly superb—aroma and flavor alike.
The seed vault had carried a remarkable variety of coffee strains, but honestly, he knew nothing about coffee and couldn't have told them apart. He'd simply grabbed a handful of whatever was within reach and grown them.
Still, a difference in taste and aroma this stark was impossible to miss. It was on a whole different plane from the black liquid—pure satanic impurity—that he'd been served at Seoul cafés.
No, it was fair to say this was an entirely different category of beverage altogether.
"O-Oppa... could I possibly have one more cup?"
"As much as you like. I need the practice anyway."
The house filled with the rich, roasted scent of coffee, and the three of them sat together chatting happily for a good while.
Oh Hyeon-seong headed down to the village. He'd run out of laundry detergent, and there were other daily necessities to pick up besides.
But on the way down, he spotted an extremely familiar white Bongo truck chugging along the road.
Screech.
The vehicle pulled up beside him. The window rolled down, and a middle-aged man with his arm propped on the sill leaned out.
"Hey, Hyeon-seong!"
"Deok-su, sir."
At the appearance of the grizzled-bearded, sun-browned man, Oh Hyeon-seong gave a nod of greeting. But the man didn't seem satisfied and moved to correct him.
"Rascal, I told you to call me hyung."
"There's not that much of an age gap between us."
"You heartless little brat."
It had already been months since he'd come to live here. The stage of being a strange newcomer from the city was long behind him, and he'd built up solid relationships with the people of Changyeong-ri. His house might be quite far from the village center, but he made a point of coming down regularly to spend time with everyone.
It was his own way of working to become a true member of the community—and thanks to that, he'd grown especially close to a few of the residents.
Heo Deok-su was one of them.
"Heading down to the village?"
"Thought I'd stop by the general store. Are you going out for work, sir?"
Oh Hyeon-seong glanced at the hunting rifle propped against the passenger seat as he asked. It wasn't an angle that made it particularly visible, but an old habit from days gone by had simply come out of its own accord.
Of course, in the past, he'd have shattered the window and dragged the man out before his hand ever reached the weapon. These days, there was no chance of that.
Heo Deok-su was the village marksman.
A marksman, in a world crawling with monsters—what use could he possibly be? Quite the opposite, actually: it was precisely because of this world that he was needed.
Wild animals had a habit of straying into the village.
In rural Korea of the past, there had hardly been any creatures capable of threatening a person, and chasing them off with a bit of shouting had been enough. But now, with the miasma inflating the aggression of every beast in the wild, things were radically different. One wrong encounter with a berserk animal could cost a person their life.
And so virtually every countryside village these days kept at least one professional marksman who hunted dangerous wildlife.
"Nah, nothing like that."
But Heo Deok-su shook his head.
"There's hardly any work these days to begin with. Around this time of year, a boar from the back mountain usually comes charging out and trashes somebody's field before moving on. But for whatever reason, nothing's been coming anywhere near the village lately. Strange, right?"
The wildlife was unusually quiet—strangely so, in fact.
And of course, that was Oh Hyeon-seong's doing.
Ever since the Lurker-Type Monster's nest had thrown the village into an uproar, he'd been making regular patrols of the surrounding area, checking for monsters. While he was at it, anything that wandered into the range where it might pose a threat to people—even ordinary animals—was either driven far off or dealt with.
Naturally, then, no animal ever made it into the village to cause trouble.
"If it's not work, then what's with the rifle?"
"Ah... well, that's..."
Heo Deok-su's gaze darted sideways for a moment. A subtle expression flickered briefly across his face.
It was remarkably good composure for an ordinary civilian—but to Oh Hyeon-seong's eyes, it was as transparent as glass.
"It's nothing, really—"
Thud.
Oh Hyeon-seong stepped up and planted a hand on the truck's window frame. Startled, Heo Deok-su flinched and shrank back.
"Come on, out with it. What's going on?"