The Guest Who Came Along
Oh Hyeon-seong had never been particularly fond of fishing.
Until now, he'd never had the absolute free time or the peace of mind to indulge in such a hobby in the first place.
Back when he had no experience with it at all, he'd actually assumed he would never set foot in one of those quintessential leisure activities people raved about.
And yet there had been someone who made him take his very first step into that world.
It was in a Middle Eastern country that has since vanished cleanly from the maps — during a joint operation — that Choi Jeong-il first taught him how to fish.
While they were on standby in a port city, the man had suddenly proposed they go fishing during their downtime, and Hyeon-seong had followed along on impulse.
After that, whenever an opportunity presented itself, the two of them fished together a handful of times.
Choi Jeong-il's love of fishing had been extraordinary from the very start.
Even on battlefields and in the field, where life and death hung in the balance, the moment he spotted a body of water he would pick up a rod.
The sheer obsessiveness with which he carved out time to cast a line amid that grueling schedule was impressive enough that Hyeon-seong had genuinely admired it.
But then, at some point, he had stopped holding a fishing rod altogether.
Maybe that was why — perhaps all those years of suppressed desire burst out at once — Hyeon-seong could see that the man's eyes had gone slightly bloodshot with madness.
Truthfully, from Choi Jeong-il's perspective, it was somewhat understandable.
As an angler, he had discovered a legendary fishing spot — a place that bit absurdly well, with fish of exceptional size and quality. No man could hold back his fever without going half-mad over it.
Not only were there no rivals to compete with, but even the taste of the fish was supreme.
A burning obsession had taken root in him: here, and only here, will I break my records.
But that was his problem, not Hyeon-seong's, and Oh Hyeon-seong dragged him out of the reservoir by sheer force.
"Quit babbling about your precious catch and come help with the work."
"Wh-what did I..."
Choi Jeong-il flinched, finally coming back to himself. Only then did the man who had been hauled along like a rag stop stumbling and start walking properly.
"To think you saw me in such a disgraceful state... I apologize."
"Glad you're aware."
On the walk back, Hyeon-seong delivered a running stream of scolding. The great Choi Jeong-il, reduced to this. That was how terrifying addiction truly was.
And so they made their way back down the road. Only, Hyeon-seong's destination wasn't the house.
"This is... weren't we just passing through here?"
"It's my land. I farm everything on both sides of this road."
"Farming? It just looks like empty ground to me."
Choi Jeong-il stood rooted in place, scanning his surroundings. But no matter where he looked, all he could see was barren wasteland or long-abandoned fallow fields.
"Follow me and you'll see."
Hyeon-seong stepped into the empty lot ahead of him. Unlike usual, he drew out a small thread of mana, granting this third party 'access authorization' as he passed through.
And with that, Choi Jeong-il passed through the barrier behind him.
Whooosh!
In a single instant, the empty land transformed.
Trees heavy with fruit and every manner of crop spread out before them, each boasting its own vivid color. And darting and playing between the rows were the spirits.
"So this is where you've been growing those crops... I never imagined it would be on this scale. It's far more serious an operation than I expected. I'm honestly astonished."
"It has grown quite a bit compared to the beginning."
Oh Hyeon-seong said with a faint smile.
It was nothing like the Oh-Hyeon Farm's earliest days, when he had first tilled a plot and started raising just a few crops. The apple saplings he'd planted in the beginning had grown lush and strong, embroidering one corner of the field in green, while newer fruits like peaches and grapes proudly displayed their harvest. The other crops had multiplied in kind.
'In the early days there were times all I had was a handful of lettuce, but we've come a long way.'
Every time he craved a new dish, he had added the needed crops one by one, and this was the result. Nothing ever spoiled when the harvest season passed, and management had become far easier — so even these impulsive expansions posed no problem at all.
Compared to the days when he'd fussed over a tiny kitchen garden of lettuce and potatoes, it was a transformation fit for the phrase mountains and rivers shifting.
"By the way... a barrier of this caliber could only be the work of one senior of mine. I could guess before even checking."
The barrier was so seamless that even Choi Jeong-il hadn't noticed it existed until he'd physically walked inside. Only from within could one appreciate the perfect weave of its structure.
In this country, there was exactly one awakened individual capable of deploying a Double Distortion Barrier — a technique notoriously resistant to refinement — at this level of mastery.
"Su-yeon did me the favor. I asked her while handing her a single potato, and she agreed."
"The Deputy Director of the Bureau, sold out for one potato?"
Choi Jeong-il burst out laughing. Only one man alive could put that Han Su-yeon to work for the price of a single potato.
Just then, Alvern — who had been clinging to Hyeon-seong's shoulder — bounded off, plucked an apple from one of the trees, and trotted back with it.
Choi Jeong-il reflexively accepted the apple the tiny otter offered as it waddled up to him.
"Have one while you're here. It was just picked, so it's fresh."
"Ah, thank you."
Choi Jeong-il nodded and bit into the apple. A spirit-grown apple was a fruit he'd already tasted as dessert a few days prior — he knew its texture and flavor well.
Yet the moment he bit down, he flinched, his face registering surprise.
"I might be imagining it, but... this seems even more delicious than the one I had before."
"You're not imagining it. I noticed it too."
"How could it possibly taste better than that apple..."
"I wondered the same thing at first. They came from the same variety, off the same tree — and yet the difference in flavor was unmistakable."
It was far too short a gap to attribute to harvest timing. And Hyeon-seong had quickly learned the answer.
Alvern had recently sprayed a large volume of water over one section of the field, supposedly to help out — and exactly the crops within that radius had changed in taste.
Supplying pure water free of turbid energy was something even the low-tier water spirits handled well. But the power of a high-tier spirit like Alvern accomplished something beyond that.
Cleansing the reservoir's parasites was one example; Hyeon-seong couldn't explain the mechanism, but there was no doubt some extraordinary ability was at work.
In any case, thanks to it, his crops now boasted flavors that could rank among the finest produce of Earth's untainted past — much like the apple Choi Jeong-il was eating right now.
"And drawing inspiration from that, I ran a few tests — and found one more interesting fact."
Over the past week, while Choi Jeong-il had fished his heart out, Oh Hyeon-seong had conducted experiments on flavor.
The most interesting results had come from potatoes. He had sourced seed potatoes of more than a dozen different varieties, grown them, and compared their tastes.
Even under identical conditions, passed through the spirits' hands, the flavor differences between varieties were clear and distinct. Of course, he had expected that much.
But there was one noteworthy oddity.
The cheap, mass-market seed potatoes sold at any market, when grown, turned out superior in both taste and quality to the elite, selectively bred strains.
"By all common sense, the premium variety should produce better quality — but after the spirits' touch, the cheap varieties came out ahead. I can't figure out the correlation at all."
"That is... genuinely strange."
"Which is why I need you to help me out."
Oh Hyeon-seong gestured casually toward a stack of boxes piled at the edge of the field.
When Choi Jeong-il approached to see what they were, he found them filled with potatoes, sorted by variety. Digging through the boxes stacked beneath, he discovered one crop after another, each packed by type.
"This is...?"
"Samples. Analyze them and tell me why the potatoes differ like that. As for the leftover samples — use them however you like in your own research."
"S-Sunbae-nim..."
"Don't say I never gave you anything more than an apple."
Oh Hyeon-seong said it simply. He couldn't help with mass-producing the cure, but he could hand over small samples for use in turbid energy research. And if something useful came of it, all the better.
"What, any objections?"
"...No. Thank you, truly."
Choi Jeong-il bowed his head deeply. For a long moment he couldn't find his voice. When he finally spoke, it was quietly.
"You always used to tell us, sunbae-nim. Don't shoulder the fate of the dead. The living must go forward as the living."
"That was a time when you had to believe that just to keep standing. I have no intention of forcing it on you now, either."
"No — it's the right words. Seol-ha said the same thing."
"Yoon Seol-ha did...?"
"But all this time, I've been bound to the past. I even rationalized my obsession with it as concern for my juniors' futures."
Choi Jeong-il continued in a calm, even voice.
"The reason I couldn't fish all these years was that I hated the stillness of that time. The moment I stopped keeping my body frantically busy, the idle thoughts would surface without fail and torment me. But... this past week, that never happened."
A faint smile crossed his face. It felt foolish in hindsight — how long had it been since he'd been able to lose himself so completely, without end?
His transformation had, in truth, begun the very day Joo Ji-hye found her salvation in Oh Hyeon-seong.
"Whatever results come from now on, that's not what matters. All of it is thanks to you, sunbae-nim."
Choi Jeong-il bowed his head low toward his senior of so many years — carrying with it his unwavering respect, and a gratitude that came straight from the heart.
Clunk!
"Whew... I thought I was going to die."
Joo Ji-hye leaned her head against the steering wheel and let out a long sigh of relief.
It had been far too long since she'd driven anywhere without a manager or staff, and she'd even driven all the way out to this winding stretch of countryside. She'd gotten stuck in a rice paddy embankment once along the way, but had simply lifted the car out with her telekinesis and pressed on.
Having survived that harrowing journey, Joo Ji-hye stood before the front gate.
"Hee hee..."
Her expression, once she'd collected herself, was bright indeed — thanks to a successful shoot back in Seoul.
She could feel her body's condition improving day by day, and as her mental struggles receded, her acting had deepened in turn. She'd come home today drenched in the director's and the screenwriter's lavish praise.
At this rate, a full return to Gate duty wouldn't be far off. Ever since her battle with the Lurker-type monster, her confidence in her true work as a hunter had been coming back to her.
Clack!
She stepped inside the gate. But the yard held no one at all — only a few spirits scattered about, wandering here and there.
"Don't tell me he's at the reservoir again..."
Joo Ji-hye muttered, her face going pale.
Just that morning, everyone at the company had been bewildered, wondering why the CEO had suddenly stopped showing up for work. This was a man who would never have done such a thing under normal circumstances.
Honestly, the spicy fish stew she'd eaten back then had been astonishingly delicious, but she simply could not understand, with a woman's mind, what could possibly be so entertaining about sitting on his rear all day long.
Knock knock knock!
She'd settled onto the wooden porch to wait — how many minutes had passed? At the sound of a light tapping on the gate, her head turned.
'Who could that be?'
The homeowner, Oh Hyeon-seong, was obviously out of the question.
If it were Choi Jeong-il, he'd know the gate was open while a guest was outside, so there'd be no need for him to knock like that.
Wondering if it might be the sibling pair from next door she'd met before, or one of Hyeon-seong's friends, she headed for the gate.
Clack!
"Huh...?"
But the moment she opened it, the person standing there was someone else entirely.
"Isn't this Oh Hyeon-seong's house?"
"Ah, yes, it is... but, um, he's not here right now..."
"Is that so?"
She was beautiful enough to startle even Joo Ji-hye, a woman famous for her own dazzling looks. But it was less a beauty that drew the eye than a frigid presence that made one want to shrink back on sight — a cold-blooded beauty. Skin like a sheet of ice, eyes with a faint red glimmer, and a long scar slashing down beneath her left cheek.
Joo Ji-hye knew exactly who this woman was.
'Baek Ji-soo of the National Security Bureau...!'
Joo Ji-hye swallowed hard.
The notoriety of the National Security Bureau — one of the government's three great special agencies — was known to everyone. They said even the most arrogant hunters, the ones who acted as if the world lay at their feet, turned into docile lambs the moment they were hauled in front of the Bureau.
And Baek Ji-soo wasn't just the real power gripping that formidable organization — her personal standing was nothing to be hidden behind her institution, either.
Joo Ji-hye was well acquainted with the terrifying rumors that circulated about her, too. Get on that woman's bad side even once, and living anywhere in Korea would become a treacherous pilgrimage.
'Then why is someone like her here? And why, of all times, when I happen to be here...?'
"Ah, it's Joo Ji-hye, isn't it."
"Um...? You know me?"
"Of course. How could I not?"
Baek Ji-soo said with a small smile. Joo Ji-hye had been terrified of her just seconds ago, but the woman's unexpectedly pleasant manner put her slightly at ease.
"How are you feeling lately? Your body holding up all right?"
"Ah... my body? I suppose. I haven't really had any lingering illnesses since I became a hunter, so..."
"Is that so? From where I'm standing, it doesn't look that way."
"Sorry... yes?"
At that single remark, Joo Ji-hye's heart plummeted.
Only now did it surface in her mind: one of the National Security Bureau's core mandates.
She had gone white as a sheet. On the outside she did her best to appear composed, but a cold sweat was already sliding down her forehead in rivulets.
"I-I'm not sure what you mean by that. Ha... haha..."
An awkward laugh, clumsy beyond words. And inside her head, a single desperate scream had plastered itself across every wall:
Please, somebody save me.