The Special Sweet Potato
I drew in a long breath. Blue lines seeped out like fog and came to rest on the far side of the boulder I'd been staring at.
"Teleport!"
For a moment it felt as if my body were floating up—
Thud!
And there I was, standing on a rock five hundred meters away.
There was no real need to shout it. Calling out a spell's name, though, was a mage's little romance. The blue mist reached its destination two or three times faster than it had back at the 2nd Circle, and the landing, once unsteady, was solid as stone.
The time I'd teleported onto the company roof, I'd burned through every blue line I had. Now I figured I could make the round trip three or four times over without much trouble.
Kkaebi, stuffed inside the bag, yelped in shock.
"What the hell are you?! What kind of freak pulls that off?!"
In the hundred years he'd been alive, he said, he'd seen plenty of people—but never once anyone who used a thing called Teleport.
"No, seriously, are you even human? I mean, I've heard of guys centuries back who supposedly went around riding clouds, but they didn't move like this!"
Kkaebi's outburst settled it for me. At first, what with the yellow lines and all the talk of general-spirits and the like, I'd wondered if I belonged to that side of things. Taken as a whole, though, I was an entirely different creature from shamans and Taoist masters.
"Of course I'm different. I'm a mage."
"A ma— what?"
I checked my watch. Somehow it was already past three in the afternoon.
I would have liked another day in Gangwon, but burning two vacation days back to back on no notice felt like a bit much. Until I found a way to draw the Tower of Magic out of the Information Documentation Room, I had to keep showing up to work like a model employee. Get on someone's bad side and get fired, and I'd be breaking into the Tower of Magic illegally every single time. The last thing I wanted was the police catching me for trespassing and tangling my life into a mess. All I wanted was to plant myself in the Tower of Magic and read. Alone, with no one to bother me.
"I've changed a lot, haven't I."
This, I supposed, was what being a mage felt like. And it wasn't bad—more like walking toward something, one step at a time. Not the old, narrow hunger for a permanent position, but the sense that I was drawing closer to truth itself.
"I'm 3rd Circle now. Maybe I can learn another spell."
I shouldered the pack crammed with hasuo—fleeceflower root—and looked down the mountain. Far off, the bus terminal came into view. Could I actually make it?
I spun the blue lines into mist and sent them streaming out. Like a surfboard cutting a wave, the blue mist shot forward, clean and swift, until at last it dwindled to a speck. That tiny blue point arrived near the bus terminal.
I pressed the switch inside my mind. My body seemed to lift—
"Crap!"
I was standing in front of the bus terminal. The old woman selling rice cakes just ahead nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Aigoo, you scared me! Young man, where did you spring from all of a sudden?"
"Ah—sorry...!"
At close range I could pick an empty spot and land exactly where I meant to. From this far off, though, there was no way to tell whether anyone was standing there. Maybe, in time, the blue lines would let me see that too.
Getting to the terminal had cost me two-thirds of the blue lines in my body. Even so, it meant I'd cleared a good five kilometers in a single jump. An absurd thought struck me out of nowhere.
"Use this for deliveries and I'd make a killing."
Home first. I had a hasuo patch to plant.
I found a long planter and set it neatly on the balcony.
Each tuber of hasuo was a seed, or so I'd been told. Split them properly and plant them here and there, and the plants would shoot up on their own.
A snap, a slice. Four or five tubers came off a single root. I set them into the soil one by one, then did as I had before—hauled the tiger out of the steel box and went at it with a wire saw.
Skritch. Skritch. Skritch.
Fortunately, this time too, what seeped out wasn't blood but yellow lines. If it had actually been blood, I might have genuinely freaked. Then again, maybe not. I was a mage now. For the sake of truth, there wasn't much I wouldn't do.
I worked the pieces of tiger evenly through the planter. As the yellow lines soaked in, the blue lines in the soil began to darken and deepen. Planting so many tubers had paid off; the yield looked abundant. I was gazing down at the pot, thoroughly pleased with myself, when my eyelids started to droop. I'd spent too much of myself.
"Shower, then sleep."
I was out the moment I lay down. I must have been wrecked—I slept straight through from eight at night until six the next morning, and only barely dragged myself up when the alarm went off.
"Fold the blanket... hm?"
Something my hand had knocked aside went rolling across the floor. Wait. Don't tell me—
Roll. Roll-roll-roll.
The hasuo had multiplied on its own. Dozens of roots were tumbling over the floor, bursting out of the planter and bouncing every which way—a spiritual medicine potent enough to raise you a whole Circle just by eating it, spilling out like tangerines from a winter fruit box.
Figures. It had been a fairly numinous tiger ghost, the sort that kept a changgwi, a spirit-servant, trailing after it. Not hundred-year hasuo, but even day-old hasuo ought to do ordinary people a world of good. And food marketing, as everyone knows, starts with a taste test.
I tucked a few roots into my bag and headed for the office. The 1st Circle had given me Laser Beam. The 2nd, Teleport. My heart pounded at the thought of whatever magic the 3rd Circle had waiting for me.
I arrived at the Information Documentation Room. It was usually silent and still, but today there was a visitor.
"Mr. Han Jiwoo."
PR Executive Director Oh Jaeyeong. What was he doing here at eight in the morning?
"Good morning, Director."
He came over wearing a faintly sulky look.
"Hey! There you are! You! I waited for you all day yesterday! They said you took a day off? Why would you just take leave without a word to me?"
"Sorry? The Information Documentation Room doesn't have its own approval process."
"Even so! I told you we'd talk on Monday!"
"You did. You just never actually called me in."
"Well, that's true, but still...!"
Oh Jaeyeong snorted a laugh and perched on the edge of the desk.
"You're nothing like any employee I've ever known. Don't you have any ambition to get promoted?"
I didn't. Ambition for magic, maybe. I wished the director would leave already—I needed to get into the Tower of Magic and learn the 3rd Circle spell. Oh Jaeyeong, though, seemed to read my expression differently.
"Okay. Kids these days say work-life balance matters more, don't they? You're that type, huh? Fine, I'll adapt. In exchange, I'd like you to actually pick up when I call during weekday hours."
...?
The PR director was saying the sort of thing a girlfriend might say.
"And why is that bag so stuffed?"
"Oh, this? Sweet potatoes."
He wouldn't have known hasuo from a hole in the ground, so sweet potatoes it was. Oh Jaeyeong's face lit up.
"Oh, I love sweet potatoes!"
"Want to buy one?"
"Sure, hand one over— huh? What did you just say?"
"I asked if you're buying one."
Oh Jaeyeong blinked.
"Boiled sweet potatoes from home... and you're going to sell them? To me?"
"Yes. These are special sweet potatoes."
"Special? How special are we talking?"
I let my eyes flick, just slightly, below his waist. The Red Lines there were still writhing. Catching my look, Oh Jaeyeong went red.
"You're saying it actually works... down there? A sweet potato?"
"It's not just a sweet potato. It's called hasuo. Fleeceflower root."
"Hasuo...? Isn't that something out of a martial arts novel?"
"It does actually exist."
He stroked his chin, hesitating for a long moment, then asked carefully.
"Hsss... how much...?"
Hmm. I hadn't thought about the price yet. Name it steep enough, and he'd lose interest and disappear.
"A hundred thousand won."
"For all of them?"
"A hundred thousand won each."
He just stared.
"Yes."
Oh Jaeyeong suddenly burst out laughing.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
When he finally stopped, he clapped me on the shoulder.
"You! You're already fully prepared as a PR man! Not a whole box of sweet potatoes—a hundred thousand won for one? This is a publicity strategy that makes a man desperate to know more, isn't it? What kind of sweet potato costs a hundred thousand won? That's exactly the hook you were going for! Pitch received!"
It wasn't. But Oh Jaeyeong was already a man deranged by politics. He was simply incapable of taking an ordinary remark at face value.
He drew a wallet from inside his sleeve and held out two fifty-thousand-won bills.
"All right. I'll call this an investment in making you my man. Expect me down here often from now on."
He pressed the hundred thousand won into my hand and walked off with a single root. Had I priced it too cheap? That was fine. It wasn't the hundred-year kind, anyway.
An ordinary person couldn't handle even a ten-year root, let alone a hundred-year one. If Oh Jaeyeong felt the effects, the marketing would probably take care of itself.
I planted a few roots in pots and got started on the day's work. Thanks to becoming a mage, a job that used to take half a day now took thirty minutes, so I meant to knock it out quickly and head into the Tower of Magic.
But then—
"Heeeeey! Jiwoo! Han Jiwuuuuu!"
Someone was screaming from the direction of the elevator. It was Oh Jaeyeong. In his hand was a root with a bite taken out of it.
"I—I only took one bite... just one bite..."
He'd sunk into a crouch, utterly at a loss, his lower half hitched awkwardly backward.
"Wh-what is this...! What the hell is thiiiiis!"
A good number of the Red Lines at his groin had vanished. He was more or less at the level of an ordinary person now.
I scratched the back of my head.
I told you. Special sweet potatoes.
I just hadn't expected them to work this well.