Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Episode 12: The Divine Tree (3)

Thanks to getting off work early, by the time I finished grocery shopping and arrived home, it was exactly seven.

Inside the brightly lit coffeehouse, the three of them were sitting together in a row just like in the photo.

“I’m back.”

“The coffeehouse owner is here!”

“I thought my neck would fall off waiting for you. How is it that one person causes the accident and someone else has to clean it up?”

“That’s why I bought all this to treat you.”

“Ooooooh! That’s a lot!”

The raccoon dog was not satisfied with merely peering into the shopping bags I had brought and practically crawled inside, so I pulled it out and dumped the ingredients onto the table.

“Hm? Why are you dumping everything here instead of going to the kitchen?”

“Because we’re making it here today.”

“On the stove?”

“It has atmosphere, doesn’t it?”

Truthfully, it was an unnecessary thing to do.

If one thought that food was all the same once it entered your mouth and wondered why it mattered where or how it was cooked, then the correct answer was a meal kit where all you had to do was apply heat.

But serving someone food was far removed from that kind of efficiency.

Especially not the dish I had thought of when I saw the old stove of unknown age and origin inside my old coffeehouse.

It was a more primal and stimulating dish.

“I want to eat quickly!”

“I’ll get everything ready soon. Just wait a little.”

There was hardly anything to prepare.

I had studied the seasoning recipe beforehand at work, so unlike last time, I did not need any grand assistance.

Besides, supermarkets these days sold plenty of vegetables that had already been cleaned nicely.

The onion, carrot, and green onion only needed to be roughly washed and chopped.

The seasoning was the same. Mix gochujang with an appropriate amount of red pepper powder, sesame oil, soy sauce, cooking wine, sugar, and minced garlic until it gave off a sweet aroma, and that was it.

It was the orthodox recipe for spicy stir-fried pork, a dish that was easy to make yet somehow came out tasting different every time.

Following the cooking method I had studied in advance, the spicy stir-fried pork was almost complete and went back onto the stove in a large frying pan.

“Oho, meat.”

“It’s not just any meat. It’s pork belly. Do you know how expensive pork belly is these days? It’s practically beef-tier.”

As the name suggested, spicy stir-fried pork was not a dish normally made with particularly good meat.

It was the sort of menu where you used shoulder, hind leg, or cuts that smelled a bit or had poor texture and covered it all up with seasoning.

But once pork belly was involved, things changed.

Pork belly was already delicious even if you simply grilled it raw with nothing but salt and pepper.

Adding seasoning on top made it into a luxurious dish.

Like kimbap with truffles in it or crackers topped with caviar.

-Sizzle.

As expected of a wood-burning stove.

Once I added a bundle of well-dried firewood all at once, the kind of heat impossible from a kerosene or electric heater quickly heated the frying pan.

Now there was only one ingredient left.

“Hm? Where are you going in the middle of cooking?”

“I’m going to the vegetable garden for a bit.”

I quietly handed the long frying chopsticks I had been using to turn the stir-fried pork over to Director Baek Mahyeon.

“You have a vegetable garden?”

“Not separately, but well, you could call it that. Haha.”

“You, that bag... Don’t tell me?”

It seemed the sharp-eyed nine-tailed fox Elder had realized what I intended to do.

I had tried to brush off the continued questions because my conscience pricked me, but apparently that only made his suspicions worse.

“Well, it’s not like I’m committing a crime.”

“You call that an excuse?! It wasn’t enough to scatter divine power into the soil, and now you plan to grow wrap vegetables with it and eat them!”

That was exactly right.

What I had secretly intended to bring outside was something I had bought from the supermarket gardening section.

More precisely, not even vegetable seedlings, but seeds.

They were sold in a convenient assortment called ‘Assorted Wrap Vegetable Seeds.’

I had already practiced the magic of turning those seeds instantly into wrap vegetables that morning.

The only thing I had to overcome was the slight guilt of being the person responsible for knocking over the Divine Tree and now exploiting the energy from that fall as well.

“It can’t get any worse than this. Shouldn’t we at least check whether growing plants like this consumes the divine power and turns the ground back to normal?”

“No, even so, in this case...”

Persuasion is about momentum.

Once you argue with enough confidence, the moment the other person hesitates, the game is already over.

And so we stood before the Divine Tree once again.

This time, with slightly greedy intentions.

There was no need to scatter too many seeds.

If I got greedy and ended up with leftovers, I might face the unfortunate fate of forcing myself to eat vegetable wraps at every meal.

-Riiip. Riiip.

Afraid the nine-tailed fox Elder would start another lecture, I quickly tore open the packets and took out pinches of seeds.

“Are all of those vegetables? There are so many kinds.”

“They’re all wrap vegetables. Even I didn’t know there were this many until today.”

Sometimes when I went to a barbecue restaurant, I would come across a generous assortment of leafy greens, but like most men, I treated vegetables as little more than supporting actors to wrap meat in once or twice when things got too greasy.

But now that I was opening each packet and placing them in my hand one by one, they almost felt like spices made from a mixture of all kinds of seasonings.

“Then I’ll plant them.”

We had already confirmed the power of the soil infused with divine power, so there was no need for something like a hand hoe.

I simply dug out a long strip of the loose soil with one hand and scattered all the seeds I was holding into it at once.

Then I lightly covered them with soil and gently brushed my hand over the top.

“Ha, truly. The more I look, the more fascinating it becomes.”

“They look like wriggling worms!”

The roots tangled together, cotyledons sprouted, and then those leaves dropped away as the stems stretched out.

Just as the raccoon dog said, they really did look exactly like worms.

After brushing the soil a few times like that,

just as expected, the wrap vegetables whose names I could not even remember all grew large enough to eat in no time.

Vegetables grown in a truly pollution-free garden, with no need to worry about pests, fertilizer, or pesticides.

Their grown forms were just as varied as the seeds, making the patch look like a carefully decorated little garden.

Almost too pretty to pick.

“Has the divine power in the ground decreased at all?”

“Not even remotely. It has not changed in the slightest.”

After sniffing around among the lush vegetables and examining the soil and plants for quite some time, the nine-tailed fox Elder delivered a somewhat disappointing conclusion.

“That’s a shame. If the divine power decreased, I was going to grow a whole bunch of fruit trees.”

“Tsk! If you’re going to lie, at least change your expression while doing it.”

“Haha.”

Of course, I was not disappointed.

Whether the divine power decreased or not, I still intended to grow plenty of fruit now that prices had risen to practically gold.

“The meat should be done by now. Let’s hurry and pick these.”

With six hands, the work was over quickly.

In less than five minutes, the basket was full of wrap vegetables, and when we returned to the coffeehouse, the savory smell of spicy stir-fried pork had already filled the room.

“Looks like it was a success.”

“Don’t even mention it. I was tricked by that fellow again.”

“I never tricked you.”

“How is it that swindlers, whether in the Joseon era or now, always say the exact same shameless thing without changing even a single syllable? Honestly.”

“And thanks to that, we’ve got a plentiful meal spread out, don’t we? Please, eat.”

“It’s a grand feast!”

Calling it a grand feast might have been a stretch, but it was certainly a generous dinner table that stimulated the appetite.

Instant rice heated in the microwave, spicy stir-fried pork made with pork belly, and wrap vegetables grown with divine power.

For a dinner made by an adult man, this was a pretty respectable spread, wasn’t it?

Without anyone needing to go first, we each layered several wrap vegetables together, made wraps barely small enough to fit in one bite, and put them in our mouths.

“Mmmmmmph! Thish ish a drinking crisis!”

“Hey! You’re spraying everything! Swallow before you talk, you brat.”

“I’m glad it came out edible even though it was my first time making it.”

It felt strange to praise food I had made myself, but it really was delicious.

The only flaw was that because I had thrown the seasoning together somewhat carelessly, I could not guarantee reproducing the exact same taste if I made it again.

On top of that, the place where we were eating strangely made everything taste even better.

The spicy stir-fried pork, cooked not on a burner but on an old wood stove, continued sizzling over the gentle residual heat of the firewood that had burned down to just the right level.

Since the main dish was sitting on the stove, it was even nice in its own way that we were all sitting around awkwardly, holding our rice bowls in our hands as we ate.

It felt like the shabby kind of fun I had enjoyed as a child when I deliberately flipped yogurt bottles upside down and sucked them empty.

“Tsk, anyway, what are you going to do now? With the Divine Tree and even this land constantly giving off energy like this, someone will have to stay and guard it.”

Only after our stomachs were reasonably full did the worry finally begin rising back to the surface.

The reason the three of them had been unable to leave and were still here eating dinner at this hour.

“I can guard it! I can go back and forth between Mount Gyeryong and here, and keep eating this spicy stir-fried pork too!”

“Forget it. Don’t you already leave Mount Gyeryong unattended too often? It would be better if I stayed...”

“No.”

“What?”

Of course not.

One way or another, guarding the Divine Tree meant staying at the coffeehouse twenty-four hours a day.

At first, it had been unavoidable, but I had absolutely no intention of living together uncomfortably with a customer who ought to go home after business hours ended.

Even setting all those reasons aside, asking someone to guard the Divine Tree would create a debt.

I had spent years moving from one jeonse rental to another because I hated even taking out loans.

I had no desire to live carrying a debt with no foreseeable repayment date.

Besides, the nine-tailed fox Elder had a strong tendency to expect excessive treatment whenever he helped with something.

It was obvious he would use guarding the Divine Tree as an excuse to act like my master.

“Jinseong, do you have a method in mind?”

“For now, I’m going to try this.”

I opened my phone and turned the screen so they could see it clearly.

On the display, 「Work-from-Home Application」 was listed as awaiting approval.

“I’ll probably still have to go into the office around twice a week because of work, but that’s still better than leaving the place empty all day, right?”

“If you simply tell us which days you’ll be going in, it will make things much easier for us.”

Calling it a solution would have been generous.

It was more like the second-best option.

Given the nature of my department, communication was important, so under normal circumstances this application never would have been approved.

But even for work-related meetings, the other person had to actually be present.

Most of our company’s development teams worked from home, so our department already conducted most of its work through video conferences.

On top of that, my workload had clearly defined busy and slow seasons, so there was probably a good chance the request would be approved.

If I worked from home at the coffeehouse while wearing the ring, then at least I could serve as the guard myself and the nine-tailed fox Elder and raccoon dog would not need to come.

The same went for the National Intelligence Service agents who had nearly ended up guarding the coffeehouse while disguised as customers despite never having asked for such a fate.

“Hmph, that resolved itself rather blandly. I thought you would suffer over it a little more.”

“Even so, I can’t stay tied to the Divine Tree until I die of old age. I’ll have to keep trying other things.”

“That’s right! Next time, instead of wrap vegetables, we should try sweet pumpkin!”

“Not that kind of experiment!”

And just as the nine-tailed fox Elder said, this worry truly ended up being resolved in a rather anticlimactic way.

_______________

“Sniff sniff sniff.”

Damn it, I had only just fallen asleep.

The childish crying coming from the middle of the night no longer frightened me, since I had already been thoroughly vaccinated against such things.

The raccoon dog had come again.

It had forced itself to eat until its belly was swollen, so sure enough, it must have gotten indigestion.

I took digestive medicine from the medicine box and headed toward the kitchen where the crying was coming from.

“I told you not to eat so much or you’d get sick, didn’t I? You even ate two bowls of rice...”

The one crying was not the raccoon dog.

It was a little girl who looked about four years old.

And a blonde foreign girl at that.

“Waaah! It’s spicy! It’s too spicy!”

This is driving me crazy. Who is it this time?

Fortunately, the answer was easy to guess.

The leaves wrapped around her in place of clothing were exactly the same shape as the leaves of the Divine Tree standing in the yard.

Even the faint energy emanating from the child was the same.

It was definitely the Divine Tree.

Or something born from the Divine Tree.