A Warm Bowl of Noodles
"This place is..."
A large vinyl greenhouse near his house.
Once she stepped inside, Yoon Seol-ha was taken aback by how thoroughly professional the whole setup looked.
"I had no idea you knew how to farm, Senior."
"Can't swing a sword forever. I had to find something of my own to do."
Oh Hyeon-seong said it with a casual shrug of his shoulders.
Yoon Seol-ha simply stared around the place in a daze. She'd never imagined that "something" would turn out to be farming. The mere fact that he'd moved down to the countryside had been shocking enough — the Oh Hyeon-seong she knew had been a man far removed from anything resembling leisure or peace.
Which was exactly why she'd never dreamed he could turn his back on it all without a trace of regret and put down roots here.
"What are you standing around gawking for? Come on, we've got work to do."
"...Work?"
"Of course. You've got to earn your keep."
And so Oh Hyeon-seong issued her her first assignment.
Together with the spirits, they all got started on the day's farm work — but this time it wasn't the usual strawberry fields.
Back when Choi Jeong-il had stayed for about a month recently, Hyeon-seong had worked the man to the bone building two additional greenhouses. Now he'd planted a variety of other crops in that freshly acquired space.
I can't grow strawberries until the day I die. Though I'm not planning to ship these off to the department store just yet.
The true farm — hidden behind a barrier up above the house — was where his real crops were being raised. The greenhouses down here, below the house, existed to fool the outside world, growing the strawberries he delivered to Hankyung Department Store.
It was a deliberately downgraded patch, kept further from the spirits' touch. The original spirit crops had simply been too overwhelming in their power, so he'd carved out a separate space to keep from turning the entire world upside down.
Especially since I got my hands on the Original Seeds, the flavor has gotten almost absurd. If I ever let this stuff loose on the world, it would be utter chaos.
It wasn't just "delicious" anymore — the taste had crossed into something that defied common sense entirely. Even Choi Jeong-il, who by then had grown fairly accustomed to spirit-grown produce, had made an absolute spectacle of himself over it. For people who scraped by on hideously bad factory-made food, there was no way they could fail to notice.
Which made it all the more impossible for Hyeon-seong to share his crops with the neighbors. And so he'd expanded into new varieties — crops grown here, in this place, that he intended to serve to the people around him.
The siblings next door especially had done nothing but mooch lunchboxes off him until now, so he figured it was high time he gave them a proper feast.
Of course, I still have to keep the strawberry deliveries in mind too.
He'd gotten lax about sending shipments lately, and Hankyung Department Store had been in an uproar, practically begging him to send strawberries again. Apparently their VIP customers had been raising hell.
Thanks to the lopsided contract they'd signed back then, cutting off trade without notice carried no penalty for him whatsoever. Still, they were his only trading partner, and it wasn't as if it cost him anything, so he intended to keep supplying them.
The money he'd earned from their dealings so far was substantial, and he'd spent it freely on camping and fishing gear, on every farming and cooking tool his heart desired. And yet his finances remained comfortably in the black.
When a single one-kilogram box fetched 1.4 million won at the delivery price, it was hard to run out of money no matter what you bought.
"...Am I doing this right?"
Kyiing!
"Oh, like this?"
Meanwhile, Yoon Seol-ha was deep in her own farm work. Fumbling like any rank beginner, she was receiving instruction from the water spirit perched on her shoulder.
Watching her grumble and grind away at the task, a faint smile crept across Oh Hyeon-seong's lips.
She's working hard.
Nearly every guest who had ever come to Changyeong-ri had passed through this exact process, and now she was walking it without fail too. Truly, nothing cleared a cluttered head like farming. Move the body hard enough and the useless thoughts simply melt away. And once the thoughts tormenting you disappear, peace of mind follows on its own.
This was absolutely not an excuse to put her to work.
She's definitely far more stable now than she was.
He crossed his arms and studied her carefully. Over the past several days of staying here, Yoon Seol-ha — who had looked like she might crumble at any moment — had recovered a visibly steadier equilibrium. The turbid energy in her body had been largely neutralized by the spirit crops, and her badly overworked body was quietly mending itself now that it was finally allowed to rest.
But this isn't a cure.
To an unknowing observer she looked fully recovered — someone you could relax about. In truth, her condition was far graver than Ju Ji-hye's had ever been.
Psychosis naturally cycles between improvement and relapse.
A brief period of getting better meant nothing. Only when she smoothed out completely, with no instability even over the long term — the way Ju Ji-hye had — would there be any real meaning to it. For the time being, she needed to stay quiet, rest, and let them watch how things developed.
Bringing her out of the chaos of the city, which must have been a madhouse for her by now, had been unquestionably the right call.
With the farm work done for the day, they returned home. The chores that needed doing were finished, so they whiled away the remaining hours in perfect leisure.
The snow that had been dumping down on Seoul had stopped days ago, but fresh flakes had started falling again that afternoon, and now they were piling up. With the accumulated white blanketing the view outside his window, Oh Hyeon-seong was idly absorbed in a book when the sky quietly darkened around him. He set the book down and stepped out into the yard.
There sat Yoon Seol-ha in the middle of the snow-covered yard, warming herself by a bonfire. When he wondered what she was up to, it turned out she was simply sitting still, watching the spirits frolic.
Oh Hyeon-seong walked over and settled down beside her.
Crackle, crackle!
"Hard to get used to, isn't it? Doing nothing at all. Just sitting still."
"...It is."
"Same for me, at first."
Yoon Seol-ha looked at him steadily. Here he was, so at home with this kind of life that he could sit back and warm his hands by the fire — a scene that struck her as profoundly strange.
The Oh Hyeon-seong she knew had always been buried in work or training, constantly honing himself. Even when injured and recovering, he never truly rested; he'd gone to the training academy to help raise the new recruits instead.
Every scrap of knowledge and fundamentals he taught had saved countless juniors' lives out in the field. In truth, this wasn't unique to him — it was simply the universal daily existence of every Special Task Force member back then. They were thrown into operations without pause, and whatever scraps of time remained had to be spent desperately sharpening themselves just to survive.
"Come here, you little rascal."
Oh Hyeon-seong snatched up one of the fire spirits that had been scampering around. Watching him play with the giggling little creature, a soft smile touched Yoon Seol-ha's lips as well.
Her senior — the one who had lived more relentlessly than anyone in the unit, who had honed himself without end and kept a strict discipline over his own life. When things escalated, he'd rolled through the mire with a desperation that looked almost tragic just to get the mission done.
But now she found herself wondering: maybe none of that had come from Oh Hyeon-seong's true nature. Maybe the circumstances had simply made him that way.
"What are you thinking about so hard?"
"What if... we'd never been drafted into the unit? If we'd never become Awakened at all?"
"Hmm. I suppose we'd have just lived ordinary lives? No, wait — is that even an answer?"
Oh Hyeon-seong let out a thoughtful hum and sank into contemplation. Come to think of it, "ordinary" was an awfully broad category. It was how most people lived, and summing it up in a single word drained the answer of any meaning.
Still, nothing in particular came to mind. He'd been pulled into the training academy around middle school age, and honestly, back then he hadn't really had any dreams to speak of. He'd just been busy getting excited over that day's cafeteria menu and playing with his friends.
Memories that had grown hazy with time now.
"What about you? What do you think you'd have done? Anything you wanted to be?"
"I wanted to be a painter. I loved drawing since I was little, so I wanted to go to art school. I was actually planning to enter an arts high school."
"Oh, now that's a surprise. First I'm hearing of it."
"Well... it never mattered to anyone, so."
It was a story entirely her own — one she had never once spoken aloud to anyone through all her years in the unit. Her talent had shown itself early, and painting had been her lifelong specialty, but from the day she'd enlisted, she had never held a brush again.
"Painting, huh. You could pick it back up even now. Doesn't have to be your profession — even as a hobby."
"But... could someone like me really do that?"
"Why wouldn't you? You've got nothing but time."
"I probably... won't ever be able to live an ordinary life again."
Yoon Seol-ha could never return to the field. Independent of her own will, she had to avoid turbid energy exposure at all costs — her life as a hunter was, for all practical purposes, over.
She would have to live an ordinary life. But the problem now was the very real possibility that even that much was beyond her.
She was like a time bomb, and she knew it better than anyone. She had watched countless people fall prey to psychosis, right up until the day the madness swallowed her too. She knew perfectly well how their stories ended.
Right now she could calm herself, keep the darkness under control. But could she truly live an ordinary life, day after day, in constant contact with other people?
She was afraid that she might never return to normal again. And she was afraid that she might hurt someone else the way she'd been hurt.
Once upon a time, Yoon Seol-ha had believed it was fine to die for the greater good. The unit may have dragged her in against her will at first, but it was fact that their missions sustained the nation and society, that they had saved countless lives behind the front lines.
But having actually crossed the threshold of death and come back, she'd learned that in that moment, the only people you could think of were the ones you'd left behind.
Thwack!
"Ugh...?"
Yoon Seol-ha stared at him in wide-eyed confusion, one hand pressed to the stinging forehead he'd just flicked.
"S-Senior?"
"I told you before, remember? You worry too much about things that don't matter."
Oh Hyeon-seong rose to his feet.
"You must be hungry. Come on, let's get some food in you. You've been living on nothing but gruel — time you had a proper meal."
He headed inside, and before long he came back out carrying a tray. Yoon Seol-ha received from him a large, generous bowl.
A single bowl of noodles, crowned with an impressive array of toppings.
"This is..."
"What are you waiting for? Eat."
Oh Hyeon-seong, already seated cross-legged, was inhaling his own noodles. Following his lead, she carefully lifted a single bite of noodles to her lips.
And her eyes went wide.
It tastes... like something. Something delicious.
When she had fallen into psychosis, it hadn't just been hallucinations and phantom voices — every one of her senses had slipped beyond her control. Her sense of taste had been affected too; no matter what she ate, it was as though her entire tongue had gone numb. Nothing had any flavor at all.
But now — had her taste buds returned, even faintly? Gentle, subtle flavors were blooming from the noodles. And not from the factory-made synthetic flour she'd been eating all this time.
It was the real taste of noodles from her childhood — the taste of the past.
"...Do you remember the noodles you bought me after my first mission, Senior?"
"I do. What a sight that was. The so-called ace of the 7th batch, dragged halfway down a sewer drain by some monster, sitting there bawling her eyes out."
"You kicked me out because of the smell. I had to sit on the curb to eat it."
Yoon Seol-ha burst out laughing. And as she sipped the steaming hot broth, a warm glow spread through her whole body.
It wasn't a flavor any grander than it actually was. What she could taste now was only the faintest hint of something. But it carried nostalgia with it.
She'd been so young and foolish back then, looking at it now — but it had been a time when she could cry and laugh without a single worry in the world.
"Hh..."
Amid the laughter spilling out of her, Yoon Seol-ha wiped quickly at the corner of her eye and busied herself shoveling down the noodles.
Whatever was happening in the world, Changyeong-ri flowed quietly on, just as it always did.
Seoul, however, was a different story. The fallout from the massive incident that had just struck the city was still raging. The media was in an uproar, of course, and with no one knowing when a follow-up attack might come, an undercurrent of unease ran through the citizenry. Armored vehicles conducting special security operations stood parked on more than a few street corners.
It was then that a plane touched down in Incheon.
A blond man in sunglasses, arrived by private jet.
"You've made it, sir."
"Take me there."
The man — a National Strategic-Tier Hunter of France — settled into a waiting vehicle.