Yoon Seol-ha
"Are you sure this will be enough?"
"For me, it's everything."
Thump!
Oh Hyeon-seong had loaded box after box of potatoes into the trunk of her car.
It was the exact same arrangement as last time, so he'd asked if she needed anything else — but no, potatoes, she insisted. Nothing but potatoes.
"Thank you for all your hard work this week."
"You did all the work, sunbae. All I did was step in and correct things now and then."
Han Su-yeon let out a soft laugh.
Jacket slung over her shoulders, she had traded her grubby work clothes for her old self — Deputy Director Han Su-yeon, restored in full.
"More than anything, it was fun. It's been a long time. Training instructors together at the academy with you, sunbae — it all came flooding back. I never thought I'd get to do that again."
"Back then, we nearly worked ourselves to death, you know."
After sharing a hospital ward together following a mission, she and Hyeon-seong had once served a stint as instructors at the training facility.
But while Hyeon-seong went on to teach several successive classes after that, she had never properly trained anyone again after that single experience.
If it hadn't been for his request, she would have refused this time, too.
"Thanks to you, I can finally breathe again. Time for me to head back."
She had already come down on her own a full week ago.
She had at least sent word before descending, but a message fired off out of the blue at dawn amounted to a unilateral notice — the office up top must have been in utter chaos.
It had been remarkably impulsive of her, but the pressure that had been choking her had lifted just as remarkably, and now it was her turn to go clean up the mess.
"Oh, and it's fine to have people over at the house, but leave one room empty for me. Got it?"
"Yes, yes, I'll keep a room for you, so stop worrying and come down whenever you feel like it."
"Thank you."
With a faint smile, Han Su-yeon climbed into the car.
Just then, Hyeon-seong leaned down and spoke through the gap in the window.
"Before you go — one last favor. Mind if I ask?"
"Hm? And what favor might our dear instructor suddenly need?"
"I think I need to borrow the power of our Deputy Director."
He had learned it from the matter with Ju Ji-hye this week: as long as those strawberries were being delivered to the department store, there was always a chance of trouble stirring.
He had of course hammered the nails in tight at the contract stage, and he'd confirmed that Park Jeong-tae had kept the secret to the very end for that reason.
But Park Jeong-tae was only a single point of contact.
No matter how strong his sense of responsibility, he was still just a salaried employee — if a decision came down from above, or pressure was applied, he had no choice but to fold.
And what if the pressure came from somewhere far more powerful than a department store president — more powerful, even, than the chairman of a corporate empire?
Then the traffic would be redirected, cleanly and completely.
And naturally, only someone like Han Su-yeon could play that role.
"Hmm... I'm not particularly fond of interfering in the private sector."
"So — can you do it?"
"Fine. In a way, we're a community of destiny bound together by potatoes."
"That has a remarkably unimpressive ring to it."
"Haha! Then I'll see you next time, sunbae."
With Ju Ji-hye gone, and now Han Su-yeon after her, Hyeon-seong savored the rare quiet that had settled over the house after days of commotion.
The siblings next door, who usually dropped by or called around this often, were silent as well.
Since the last incident, they'd been busy cleaning up the damage to the farm, too swamped to even exchange messages.
That was why he hadn't run into them at all during Ju Ji-hye's training these past few days.
Still, thank goodness Seung-su seems to have gotten his spirits back.
The losses had been steep, what with the ruined crops compounded by the gap in production, but his designation as a preferred farm at Hankyung Department Store had been confirmed, and that had buoyed him considerably.
On top of that, the strawberry boom had driven up demand for natural produce, and the department store had placed additional orders for his other crops — the money troubles, he'd said, were finally easing.
The siblings were holding up well, all things considered.
"Well then, shall I head out too?"
Having finished the day's farm work in short order, Hyeon-seong had time to spare. He shouldered the backpack and gear on his back and stepped out of the house.
Ordinarily he would have headed down the road toward the village, but today he wasn't going to the secret field either — he started walking in the opposite direction entirely.
He was headed somewhere completely different from his usual destinations.
The village elders told me about it. There's an old reservoir beyond the mountain behind the village.
Not long after he left his sprawling property behind, the gentle path ended and a trackless forest began. He crossed the ridgeline and arrived near his destination.
"Looks like I made it."
Yellow no-entry tape, strung up here and there, greeted him.
It had been slapped up with no thought whatsoever for the landscape or surroundings, and even that much was torn and hanging loose.
Even at a glance, the place radiated something far from ordinary.
This was a government-designated Restricted Area.
In the early days of the Gate crisis, there had been a period when humanity, starved of information, couldn't mount a proper initial response.
Nowadays gates were detected instantly and hunters dispatched, but back then, abandoned gates let monsters run rampant, and lands fouled by takgi could be found scattered across the map in considerable numbers.
This place had been one of them.
Whoosh!
Ignoring the tape, he stepped inside, and before long the reservoir he'd been looking for came into view.
It could hardly be called large, but its surface area was greater than he'd expected.
Overgrown brush crowded the banks, and it was so remote that an outsider would never find it in a hundred years.
Hyeon-seong approached the water's edge and knelt on one knee to examine it.
Just as I heard — the water quality is completely wrecked. Heavy takgi contamination.
There was a reason places became Restricted Areas.
Time had let much of the miasma settle, but water pollution, once it took hold, was never so easily undone.
"Do you think you could purify this place too?"
Squeak.
The water spirit in his pocket shook its head, side to side.
At that, Hyeon-seong clicked his tongue.
"Figures. Beyond even this much, huh."
Just as the earth spirit drew the takgi out of the soil to create healthy fields, he'd thought the water spirit might cleanse the reservoir in the same way.
But because this land still remained a Restricted Area, its contamination ran far deeper than ordinary ground.
Beyond what his spirits could purify at their current level.
Still, you never know... Let me at least check its condition.
Hyeon-seong took out the fishing rod he'd brought along.
It wasn't a full-blown hobby of his, but he'd fished a few times, so he knew the basics well enough.
He settled into a decent spot and waited at his leisure, and before long a bite came and he pulled in a fish.
"Oh, a crucian carp."
A rare taste of that tug on the line brought a smile to his lips.
It was a laughably little thing, but a catch was a catch.
Yet as he lifted the carp out and turned it over this way and that, he discovered it was riddled with problems.
The fish was utterly riddled with disease.
Even a layman could see it at a glance — the issue wasn't the taste; it was barely fit for eating at all.
Eat something like this and I'd knock ten years off my life. Yeah, this won't do.
Hyeon-seong released the carp and heaved a long sigh.
That was why he'd brought the water spirit all the way out here.
Just as crops untouched by takgi boasted transcendent flavor, he'd believed fish raised in a healthy, miasma-free environment would flourish just the same.
It was a matter of real consequence — one that could widen the range of ingredients available to him enormously.
It wasn't as though he hadn't anticipated this outcome, but he had come with hopes anyway, and so the disappointment weighed that much heavier.
A real shame. A place this remote, that no one ever visits — it would've been the perfect spot for my own private supply line.
Having seen the place with his own eyes, the regret only lingered longer.
He racked his brain for some workaround, but no matter which way he turned the problem, no answer came.
Ding!
Just then, his phone chimed.
Thinking it was someone or other, he opened the screen to find a message from Ju Ji-hye.
Contrary to all her own worrying, she'd finished the shoot without a hitch, and the message went on and on about herself, gratitude spilling from every line.
And at the very end, one comically staged selfie.
"Compare her now to that first day, and you'd swear she was a different person."
Letting out a soft laugh, Hyeon-seong settled onto the bank and gazed out at the scenery — the sun, before he knew it, already sinking low.
The reservoir set in the mountains, drenched in sunset, was, at the very least, breathtaking from the outside.
The water spirit seemed taken with the view as well, rolling contentedly above his head with pleased little sounds.
Come to think of it, the sky was exactly like this back then, too.
Bathed in the afterglow as he took in the landscape, Hyeon-seong let out a quiet sigh.
"Yes. I hope this lets you set down at least some of what you've been carrying. Ju Ji-hye — and you too, Choi Jeong-il."
Thud!
"Hoo... that drains a man."
Entering his office, Choi Jeong-il dropped into his chair as though throwing his body at it.
He had just returned from an overseas schedule.
The meetings with Europe's heads of state, prepared over the past several months, had wrapped up successfully, and the staff who had accompanied him had come back with expressions positively beaming.
But on the face of the CEO himself, he could not hide the tangle of emotions.
Time... by now, the shoot must be finished.
He stole a glance at the clock.
He was thinking of Ju Ji-hye, who had only just arrived back in Seoul today to work through her drama schedule.
Not that it does any good to tell her — the more she pushes herself, the worse it only gets.
Even after her aftereffects had appeared, Ju Ji-hye had kept pressing on with her schedule on sheer stubbornness.
This drama shoot, too, existed because of her iron will.
Had it been up to Choi Jeong-il's usual nature, he would have applied pressure, hard, to stop her from overextending herself.
But that once, he had been unable to stop her.
A bleak future she could not escape.
If she stopped here, it would feel like it was truly over — her words kept circling in his head, even now, this very moment.
I've kept her condition hidden from the public as much as possible, but someday the early progression of psychosis will come to light. No — maybe the government agencies already know.
If the psychosis grew imminent, Ju Ji-hye would be Disposed of.
Even a man with Choi Jeong-il's vast resources and network could not prevent that future.
And to act selfishly, for her alone, was impossible — this was not a matter riding on one or two lives.
"Then as now... there's nothing I can do."
Choi Jeong-il stared blankly out the window.
His senior, Oh Hyeon-seong, had taken her in under the banner of treatment, but even that, he'd said, was only about testing a possibility — nothing certain.
Frankly, unless a miracle occurred, it was impossible.
And that miracle, as if to teach him the cruelty of reality, had never once shown its face.
Drriiing!
Just then, his phone rang — an incoming call.
It was Ju Ji-hye's manager.
"...CEO!"
"What is it? Did something else go wrong?"
"N-no, sir! Quite the opposite! A miracle happened!"
"What are you talking about?"
The manager had witnessed everything that had happened to her that day.
She had finished the shoot in flawless form. She had complained of no mental aftereffects — no anxiety, no fatigue, none of it. And above all, her personality had changed.
Exactly like the Ju Ji-hye of a year ago, before her injury.
"She changed that drastically? Overnight, in a single week?"
"I saw it with my own eyes and I still can't believe it, sir!"
News beyond all belief.
But he was the manager who had handled Ju Ji-hye since before her injury — there was no way he could fail to recognize the change in her.
Choi Jeong-il's eyes shook violently.
So much so that the manager's excited rambling barely registered in his ears at all.
Has... has sunbae truly done it?
Hanging up, Choi Jeong-il sat frozen in place for a long while.
He wouldn't know her exact condition until he saw it himself, and it might be a temporary improvement rather than a cure.
But even so, nothing would change.
Pouring everything he had into the search and catching not even a thread of a clue — the miracle that had tormented him endlessly all this while, a mirage he could never grasp — Oh Hyeon-seong had summoned it into being.
Click.
He turned his gaze and opened the desk drawer.
Then, carefully, he lifted out a faded photograph lying face-down.
A group photo of the old unit — Hyeon-seong, Han Su-yeon, and the rest of his former squadmates in their black operational fatigues.
In one corner of it stood Choi Jeong-il himself, stony-faced, and beside him a woman, arms crossed, smiling brightly.
"..."
His head bowed low, Choi Jeong-il's shoulders began to tremble.
No sound came. Only silence stretched on — and still, for a long, long time, he could not bring himself to leave that seat.