The Second Field
The longer Ha Jang-seo deliberated, the drier Kang's own mouth seemed to grow. Beneath the table, his clenched fist was filling with sweat, while beside him Namgoong Min-ah rolled her eyes every which way, the awkwardness of the gathering written plainly in her restless glances.
That was when it came.
"I can't think of anything we've brought into the house, really..."
The disappointed words fell from Ha Jang-seo's lips. Kang pressed his mouth shut, and Namgoong Min-ah watched him in silence from the next seat.
"I'm sorry. No matter how hard I think, nothing comes to mind."
"Please, don't apologize. What I mentioned might not be the cause at all."
With an apologetic look on his face, Ha Jang-seo smiled in a way that only tugged at one corner of his mouth.
Theirs was a relationship that amounted to little more than supplier and buyer. And yet Kang Hyeong-seok was treating the trouble as his own, turning it over as if it were his own — and for that, Ha Jang-seo was grateful.
"Since you've come all this way, why not have a look around the fields before you go. Through the end of this year, I'll keep the crops on schedule even if the sky itself splits in two."
"I'd like that, but will you be all right?"
"You don't think I can manage that much? I'm genuinely fine, so have a look before you head back."
Reading the earnestness beneath the words, Kang nodded, a smile settled on his lips.
"Oh — wait. Though there are two fields now. Would you have the time for that?"
"Sorry?"
Kang glanced reflexively at Namgoong Min-ah, then took his eyes off her. He himself was only hearing this now; there was no way she would know anything.
"Truth is, I just signed a contract on a new plot. It used to be bare ground you'd hardly call a field, but it was already prepped for planting."
"Already prepped...?"
Which meant nothing had been planted there yet. Which meant the land was a recent purchase.
Then perhaps... the cause might lie in the place itself, not in any object.
Kang tilted up his water glass, moistened his throat, and spoke.
"You never said a word about this before. When did you sign?"
"I meant to tell you once things were a little further along. Ah, no — never mind. There's nothing much to see out there anyway. Just look over the original field and head home."
"No — no, sir."
Kang had half risen from his chair before he even realized it.
"I want to see it. Please — I truly do."
It was a fervor Kang Hyeong-seok rarely let show within the company walls. Namgoong Min-ah stared up at him with startled eyes, and even Ha Jang-seo looked thrown.
"Yes. Then — then let's do that. Let's go."
Settling back into his chair, Kang wore open relief on his face.
The plot Ha Jang-seo had newly contracted sat barely twenty minutes away by car — though hardly close enough to reach on a casual stroll.
It lay at the mountain's edge, drenched in sunlight, and yet a strange sense of seclusion hung over it.
"It's all the trees crowding it round, that's all. Soil's fine too — it's not bad land, honestly. And the price was cheap, for a start."
Walking shoulder to shoulder with Ha Jang-seo, Kang studied the green growth standing thick past his ankles.
"This doesn't look like garlic, though."
"That'd be soybeans."
"Soybeans?"
"Sowed them as an experiment, nothing more. No thought of harvest — come plowing time, they'll go right back into the ground and make fertilizer."
A tangle of feelings on his face, Ha Jang-seo set a cigarette between his lips. If his health alone had held, this broad field would have been brimming with plans for garlic by now.
"You're not hiring any hands, then?"
"No need for it. It's all getting plowed under anyway, so there's no call to fret over water deer or wild boar."
He gazed blankly at the beans a while, then exhaled a long plume of smoke.
"Wanted to make a proper go of it, too. A real shame, this."
Kang gazed out over the field, lips pressed firmly shut. He wasn't carrying his backpack. The one holding the sacred shaman bells had been left behind — it would have looked odd, that was all. If he had brought it, would the bells have rung?
Most likely they would have. To Kang's eye, that was exactly how it would have gone.
Crunch. Each footfall seemed to drag the soil up tangled with his soles, and the trees coiling around the field's edge walled it in like a rampart. Sunlight fell generously here, yet the place felt secluded all the same — the energy had pooled and gone stagnant. Ground like this was never good ground. Not for human beings, at least...
"Mr. Ha? Wasn't there an elementary school around here somewhere?"
"Hm?"
Namgoong Min-ah, silent until now, had struck up a conversation with Ha Jang-seo.
"Actually, sir — I'm from Danyang originally."
"Oh, that so?"
Ha Jang-seo's eyes widened in surprise, and Namgoong Min-ah smiled with her eyes crinkled like someone greeting an elder from her hometown.
"There used to be an elementary school near here, right? That's where I went."
"Ahh! Oh — that one! Over by the crossroads?"
"Yes! That's the one!"
"Well, I never. Wouldn't have guessed it in a hundred years — had you down as a Seoul girl, pure and simple."
"Hehehe."
Seeing Namgoong Min-ah handle the small talk better than he'd expected, Kang let the corners of his mouth lift. That's it. Keep him talking. Buy me some time.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Strolling as though surveying the plot, Kang swept his surroundings with rapid glances. Would it have helped to have a geomancer at his side? No. It would have meant nothing. It wasn't the land that needed reading — it was the energy.
Somewhere in this field waited the force that had been siphoning off Ha Jang-seo's vitality. Find it, restore the old man, and keep the business relationship breathing — only then would both Namgoong Min-ah and he himself come out of this unscathed.
Swish, swish.
Brushing through the bean stalks that swatted at his legs, Kang came to an abrupt, rooted stop.
"Assistant Manager Kang! What are you doing?"
Namgoong Min-ah's voice carried from behind him.
"There's nothing worth seeing over there. If you're done looking, let's start heading back."
Ha Jang-seo, too, called out to him, but Kang gave no answer, his eyes locked on the thing that had halted his feet.
A tree stood there. Its bark had peeled away abnormally, the healed-over scars plainly visible, and its trunk was riddled with holes as though a woodpecker had mauled it.
…A curse offering.
Someone had worked a curse here — and its traces were etched sharply into a tree that stood watch over the whole field.
"Assistant Manager Kang?"
Namgoong Min-ah spoke again from behind him, edged with bewilderment. Letting out a long breath, Kang turned to her and shook his head. Then his gaze crossed with Ha Jang-seo's.
"Mr. Ha — would you happen to be free tomorrow?"
"Hm?"
"The mountain here looks well worth climbing. If it suits you tomorrow, I'd like to hike it — even if only briefly."
Namgoong Min-ah's eyes went perfectly round, while Ha Jang-seo, flustered as he was, felt his mouth tug upward.
Even the offer itself was a gift. Those who stand by you when the harvest is good rarely earn much gratitude. But the ones who show up when times turn hard — those you remember.
"No, no, there's no call to wear yourself out on my account..."
"I insist, Mr. Ha. Who knows when I'll make it out this way again."
Kang's tone left no room for argument, and Ha Jang-seo's gaze sank to the ground. A moment later he raised his head and nodded, deep and slow, gratitude written large across his face.
"Then we shall. You and me — let's climb it together."
As though borrowing the old man's expression, Kang smiled and dipped his head.
After parting ways with Ha Jang-seo — downtown Danyang. In a nightlife strip packed with motels, convenience stores, and bars, Kang Hyeong-seok sat with Namgoong Min-ah at one of the outdoor tables in front of a convenience store. The sun had slipped away, and a thin dusk was staining the sky.
"So you're telling me you'll be back tomorrow?"
"Yes, Department Head."
"Haah... this is trouble, this is."
The fact that Ha Jang-seo intended to farm only through the end of this year had already been made clear, and worry ran thick in Kwak Young-ho's voice because of it.
"And you say his health is that bad?"
"From what I could see, it doesn't look critical. But something in him has broken, I think."
"Aigoo... good grief!"
Kang gestured at Namgoong Min-ah across the table — a silent instruction to stop fretting and drink her coffee.
"For now, I'll do my best to talk him around tomorrow while we hike together."
"And you think that'll work, Assistant Manager Kang?"
Expectation ran heavy in the man's voice. Of the two people out in the field — Namgoong Min-ah and Kang Hyeong-seok — the only one Kwak Young-ho felt he could lean on was Kang.
"If we lose that account, it's a real migraine. Hold on — is Min-ah with you?"
"She is, but speak freely."
The phone wasn't on speaker, and the street around them was hardly quiet. Nothing would carry.
"Nobody's even at fault here, and it still looks bad. An intern goes on her very first business trip, and the client we've worked with for ages drops us..."
"It does."
Corporate life was, in the end, a war of appearances. Even incidents that were nobody's mistake had a way of imprinting a bad image, and it happened all the time. Once such an image set in, it clung like a label for a long time afterward.
"Assistant Manager Kang, you can stay an extra day — no, two if you need them. Can you turn Mr. Ha's heart around?"
"It's his health, like I said."
Kang reached out and closed a hand around the coffee set before him — the convenience-store kind, poured from a plastic pouch into a cup of ice.
"But the will to keep farming is still in him. If I can persuade him properly, I think we can make this work."
"Anything you need, call me right away. I haven't reported this up the chain yet — if it can be settled on my level, I'll move heaven and earth."
It must have been the length of the call. Namgoong Min-ah was fidgeting with her fingers, visibly ill at ease, and Kang curled his lips upward and shook his head. Not that the gesture was meant for her, particularly.
"Thank you — sincerely, even just for saying it."
"Anything unusual comes up, you call me right away."
"Yes, sir."
"And I'll write off every last expense, so sleep somewhere comfortable tonight! Eat something good, too!"
Kang nodded along as though the man were standing right beside him.
"Understood."
"I'm counting on you, Assistant Manager Kang!"
The call ended. Kang lowered his phone, tipped his head back, and gazed up at the darkening sky.
A downtown was a downtown. Whether from the lights or the smog, the swollen moon hung plainly in view while the stars stayed hidden.
"Assistant Manager Kang... what did the Department Head say?"
"Nothing you need to worry about."
"Aww, come on, you can't just leave it at that."
With a wry lift of his mouth, Kang raised his coffee and met her gaze across the table.
"I'm saying there's nothing for Namgoong Min-ah to worry about."
It wasn't the kind of trouble an intern needed to carry.
He drained the rest of his coffee and let his eyes drift toward a suitable-looking motel nearby.
"Rooms first. You must be exhausted."
"Oh — yes, yes!"
Namgoong Min-ah hurriedly dropped her gaze and wiggled her feet. He hadn't been looking, so he hadn't noticed — her feet must have been worn out, because her heels were already off.
"Excuse me."
At the motel counter, before the clerk could get a single word out, Kang ran through what he needed at speed: overnight stay, two rooms. If the man asked whether they wanted it by the hour, things would get awkward for no reason at all.
Clatter. Card keys in hand, Kang kept one for himself and held the other out to Namgoong Min-ah.
"Get some proper rest, and we'll regroup tomorrow morning. If you need anything, there's a convenience store right out front."
Still clutching her key card, Namgoong Min-ah blinked at him. She had assumed, naturally, that they'd ride up together. But Kang's feet were rooted to the lobby floor, his body already squared toward the door.
"Assistant Manager Kang, where are you going?"
"Just stepping out somewhere close by."
"Huh? Then I'll come too."
"No — you rest up, Min-ah. Call me if anything happens. Or I might be the one calling you."
She rolled her eyes, turning the question over — where on earth was he going? — but nothing came to her, so she managed an awkward smile and simply dipped her head.
"Okay! Then be careful out there!"
"Ah — one thing, just in case. A drink or two is fine, but don't overdo it."
"Yes, sir!"
Watching her answer so gamely, Kang turned for the door. He was on the point of stepping through it when her voice caught his feet.
"Oh? You're not leaving your bag?"
He glanced back at Namgoong Min-ah and gave a single nod, smile unchanged. Then he wiped the expression clean from his face, pushed the door open, and stepped out.
The street, in the meantime, had sunk wholly into night.
I have to see that field.
Kang stepped off into the current of pedestrians as though dissolving into it, and set his feet moving.
Ha Jang-seo's health. A contract that could not be allowed to break. Namgoong Min-ah's shot at a full-time contract. The soybean field, the tree riddled with nails. And the curse offering.
With every step, the thoughts packed themselves tighter into his head.
Ting. As though urging his steps on, the sacred shaman bell inside his bag rang out once, faint and clear.