Episode 20
20.
Sihu’s house was a 40-minute walk from school.
Sihu started walking home with the thought of getting some exercise after his lectures ended.
Since ideas for menus often came to him while walking, he did it often.
He looked at the mountain from the bus stop.
‘Isn’t the city doing any redevelopment?’
The uphill alley leading home was always hard to walk.
Not to mention the stairs here and there along the alley.
It was the alley Sihu had walked up and down since he was old enough to know better.
When spring came, spring also arrived in the alley.
He even saw street cats crouched on the walls, yawning lazily.
Sihu disliked the season called spring, but he didn’t dislike the dynamic sight of life stirring.
‘If only there weren’t any pollen…’
Achoo-
Sniffle-
Blocking his sniffling nose with a tissue, he pushed the iron gate.
Squeak-
Clunk-
As soon as he got inside, he threw the bag on his back onto the sofa.
Thud-
That figure looked exactly like Sihu when he was in middle school.
He grabbed a basket and mesh bag from the kitchen and headed to the master bedroom’s basement.
As he entered the field, he felt cool air.
‘Huh?’
Sihu was surprised that the wind blowing was slightly cooler than when he had come down to the field yesterday.
‘It feels like autumn.’
Sihu felt the cool breeze in the field.
Looking around, he saw fresh crops.
Crops in the field similar to Korean plants.
‘Does this place have winter?’
Sihu glanced around and began quickly harvesting only the crops he needed.
Starting a few days ago, he had begun to feel a strange gaze.
Moreover, whenever he left his basket for a moment and went elsewhere, there was always something inside.
It was also how he learned that chrysanthemums, roses, lilies, and peonies existed in the ‘Otherworld Field.’
Today too, Sihu discovered a small flower inside the basket.
‘Hmm, what on earth could it be?’
After harvesting the necessary crops from the field, he came back up to the house.
He came up to the kitchen and placed the vegetables on the table to trim them.
Many vegetables and crops.
Thud- tap-
While trimming the vegetables, Sihu recalled the sea he had discovered recently.
He had learned that food cooked with vegetables and crops harvested from the field had special effects.
If so, what if he cooked with creatures from the sea?
Bzzt-
Sihu checked the phone he had placed on the table.
It was a text from Hayun.
[Do you have any thoughts about permitting YouTube filming at the store?]
Sihu tilted his head at Hayun’s text and made a call.
Rring-
Click-
-Hello?
“Hyung, what do you mean by this? YouTube filming?”
-Since [SeeYou] is famous on Stargram, there’s a YouTuber called [Ttakttaguri] who runs a channel called [Fact Check].
Sihu listened to Hayun without replying.
He was saying that it was suspicious how people were praising the place so much.
“Does that mean this Ttakttaguri person will come to the store, eat the food, and evaluate it?”
-To summarize, yes.
Hayun spoke as if letting out a small sigh.
-Even if we give permission, we only operate from 10 AM to 3 PM. Who knows when a YouTuber will show up.
“Well… that’s true. And this Ttakttaguri? I don’t mind them coming, but I’m worried they’ll disturb the other customers.”
The sound of swallowing could be heard over the receiver.
He must have felt that Sihu’s voice had turned slightly colder.
“If they sit quietly without disturbing the customers, eat their food, and don’t hurt anyone else’s feelings, I think it should be fine.”
Until then, Sihu had thought of the YouTuber’s request as merely a request from a customer coming to eat.
***
As usual, when the alarm rang, Sihu kicked his bedsheets off and got up.
As soon as he woke up, a barrage of sneezes began.
Achoo-
Aachoo-
Sniffle-
Morning sneezes that any pollen allergy sufferer would experience.
When the sneezing stopped, Sihu headed to the kitchen.
He opened the kitchen fridge, took out a bottle of barley tea, and poured it into a cup.
Slosh-
Gulping down the golden-hued barley tea, his body and mind seemed to awaken.
He always boiled the barley tea before bed and let it cool.
‘As the days get warmer…’
Sihu looked at the electric glass kettle.
Water drawn from the field’s well, boiled with barley and corn kernels, had cooled.
He filled a clean glass bottle to the brim and put it in the refrigerator.
Since it was time to go to the store, he checked the clock on his phone.
[06:10]
Sihu headed to the field through the master bedroom’s basement.
A quiet, empty field.
He had felt someone’s gaze when he came in to pick vegetables, but now there was only silence.
Creak- squeak-
Grrrrowl-
Only the sounds of unknown animals were occasionally heard.
Trudge- trudge-
He circled around the field, lightly stretching his body.
Sihu went near the fruit trees and picked one cluster of ‘Apple Grapes’ hanging temptingly.
They looked like grapes but tasted like an appropriate mix of apple and grape, a name Sihu had given them.
Plucking and eating the grapes from the cluster one by one, he returned to the basement.
A routine of coming down to the field every morning.
Though there was the purpose of exercising by walking around, more than anything, it was because the air was incomparably good.
‘Can air be collected?’
Sihu struggled with the sneezing that began as soon as he woke up.
So much so that while breathing the field’s air, he had thought, ‘I wish I could just wear this like a mask only during spring.’
Huaaah-
After inhaling the air with all his might one last time, Sihu came back up to the master bedroom.
Checking his phone, Sihu tilted his head slightly.
[06:20]
‘I definitely wandered around the field for quite a while?’
Not much time had passed.
Until now, he hadn’t checked the time even after walking around the field like that.
A hypothesis formed in Sihu’s mind.
‘Could it be that time inside the field flows faster than in reality?’
Then it made sense that the plants were fully grown when he went down the next day.
He realized in his mind why the plants grew so quickly.
In the fantasy novels Sihu had read a lot through Hayun, when one spoke of ‘other worlds,’ magic was the most common feature.
‘And here I thought it was something like plant growth magic.’
Sihu put down the Apple Grapes he had brought, simply boiled some scorched rice, ate it with kimchi, and prepared to go out.
***
A small room on the second floor of a studio apartment.
A room with blackout curtains drawn, the background pitch-black.
In the dark room, one side was brightly lit.
“Hello! Today too, I’ll check out the flaming comments online, and try going to a famous restaurant.”
A man was filming a live video in the room, having turned on three round ring lights.
“Huh? The store called [SeeYou] in front of Korea University is supposedly that delicious?”
The man was watching the rising chat when his gaze stopped on one message.
He spoke in a curious tone.
“Oh- I see. Then let me take a look at Stargram.”
Click- click-
After splitting the screen and outputting the comments one by one onto the video, the man’s eyes widened.
“Huh? What is this? Let me read Stargram. ‘Lost 10kg in a month eating tofu steak? Someone lost 4 kilos in 3 days?’ Does this make sense?”
The man waved his hands in front of the camera, saying it was nonsense.
Then, people started typing in the chat at a rapid speed.
└It’s true.
└I lost quite a lot eating there and exercising too.
└Guri, why don’t you go there and lose weight too?
└Our Guri doesn’t exercise, right? You should eat tofu steak at [SeeYou] and exercise too!
The man tilted his head as he watched the chat, moving his hands.
Searching for another comment and Stargram post, the man clicked and let out a hollow laugh upon seeing a photo of the store owner.
“Huh-. No way, everyone. A young man like this runs the store? You must have mistaken him for a part-timer.”
The man, whose gaze was chasing the rapidly rising comments, was surprised by one message.
“What? He’s actually a Korea University student and a sophomore? And he reduced the store’s operating hours because of school classes?”
The real-time chat window was rising at a rapid pace.
The man crossed his arms and muttered.
As that muttering was picked up by the mic, the real-time chat window rose even faster than before.
“A diamond spoon? Has it all? They say he’s good-looking and cooks well too?”
Sigh-
The man looked at the camera as if having made up his mind after watching the chat.
“Then [Fact Check]’s own Ttakttaguri will go to the store, try the food, and do some fact-checking. Whether it’s real or not, I’ll peck away and dig into it thoroughly.”
At those words, the chat fell silent.
No one sent a message for a moment, then the chat began flooding up all at once.
└Are you crazy? The line there is so long, and you’re going to go check for yourself?
└They do takeout there. Don’t disturb others and just eat takeout.
└Hey, even if you’re that Ttakttaguri guy, we can’t forgive you if you make a scene at that busy store claiming to fact-check.
The man called Ttakttaguri waved his hand at the screen and said,
“Oh come on, Guri-nims, it’s a misunderstanding. When have I ever made a scene at a store because I was fact-checking? You’re really misunderstanding.”
The man put on a tearful expression, saying it was a misunderstanding.
“First-. I’ll schedule a visit with the owner of [SeeYou] and go see him. Live broadcast of Ttakttaguri’s Fact Check—thank you for watching today too!”
└Hey! Don’t go, don’t go. If [SeeYou] gets more crowded, we can’t eat there either!
After ending the broadcast, the man’s gaze darkened as he watched the still-rising chat.
“They can’t eat because the line is too long?”
The man monitored the rising chat with his arms crossed until the broadcast ended.
Thank you for reading.
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