Chapter 64: The Peach Orchard and the End of Peace

“Was it you?”

“Who else would it be if not me?”

Sung Ji-woo pointed directly at Koo Min-ah, clearly meaning to make her feel guilty, but she turned out to be a tougher opponent than expected.

She replied indifferently, as if he were asking something completely meaningless.

That only left Sung Ji-woo even more at a loss for words.

“Why……”

“Why did I do it?
Didn’t I tell you before?
I absolutely hate getting involved in situations like this.”

She had said it before.
Sung Ji-woo remembered that clearly, so he couldn’t bring himself to argue back.
Instead, he asked what he was most curious about.

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“Get your facts straight.
Did I bring you?
You were the one who got in.
My car was already heading this way, and you jumped in halfway.”

……Annoyingly, she was right.
Sung Ji-woo gave up on pressing her further.
Yu Hiro nodded as if he’d expected that outcome.

“If that was the case, you should’ve contacted me sooner.
I would’ve come to pick him up right away.”

Oh, really?
Sung Ji-woo turned his head to stare at Yu Hiro.
Koo Min-ah piled on without missing a beat.

“Why?
He’s great manpower.
If you’ve got him, you might as well put him to work.”

Unbelievable.

Ignoring Sung Ji-woo’s dumbfounded expression, Koo Min-ah continued.

“If you two are done settling things, finish today’s labor before you leave.”

“What?”

“You’re paying for gas, lodging, and food before you go, right?”

“…….”

Having finished her meal first, Koo Min-ah left the kitchen.
Sung Ji-woo silently stuffed rice into his mouth.
Even so, the freshly cooked, fluffy rice was insanely good.

The side dishes—soy-braised beef, stir-fried dried squid, and sausage—were good too.

So his irritation fizzled out before it could fully surface.

“You’re doing it too.”

Instead, Sung Ji-woo dragged Yu Hiro down with him.
There was no way he was letting the main culprit relax alone.

He expected Yu Hiro to show reluctance, no matter who he was, since it was annoying work.
Instead, Yu Hiro answered as if it were only natural.

“If hyung’s going, why wouldn’t I?
Of course I’ll come along.”

“…….”

It never even crossed Sung Ji-woo’s mind that Yu Hiro might be worried he’d run away again.
All Sung Ji-woo could think about was what kind of labor awaited him today.

“Let’s go pick peaches.”

Around nine in the morning, Koo Min-ah appeared wearing the same mom-bae pants as yesterday.

Having done it once already, Sung Ji-woo changed clothes with practiced ease.

“That’s a lie.
Don’t believe her.”

Yu Hiro looked at him with a strange expression.

“Are you done changing?”

“Yeah.”

Hearing that, Koo Min-ah opened the door again and scanned Yu Hiro from head to toe.

Up to the low 180s in height, long socks could more or less cover exposed ankles……
But that clearly wouldn’t work for Yu Hiro.

So she resorted to drastic measures and brought out her father’s work clothes.
They were short on Yu Hiro, but still better than mom-bae pants.

The two of them fell silent when Yu Hiro emerged in green cargo pants.

“That’s weird.
It should be funny…….”

Sung Ji-woo muttered quietly.

When he’d worn mom-bae pants for the first time yesterday, the baggy fit and exposed ankles had been absurdly funny.

He’d been sure Yu Hiro wouldn’t escape that rural vibe either.
Turns out, that was just his imagination.

“This is irritating.”

Koo Min-ah tossed out the comment flatly, and Sung Ji-woo nodded emphatically.

The three of them, now dressed for labor, left the house.
They wore straw hats and carried large baskets in their arms like the day before.

“So what are we actually doing?”

“I told you earlier.
We’re picking peaches.”

“And then you’ll make us pick bell peppers instead.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You told me we were picking strawberries yesterday and took me to pick chili peppers.”

Yu Hiro’s eyes widened.

“Hyung, you picked peppers yesterday?”

“Yeah.
She said strawberries, so I got my hopes up……”

Sung Ji-woo answered in a slightly dejected voice.
Given the circumstances, it couldn’t be helped, but Koo Min-ah really had been mean about it.

“They’re both red.”

“Then what is it now?
Do pink bell peppers grow these days?”

Sung Ji-woo kept shooting her suspicious looks.
Unlike the pepper field from yesterday, the path this time was far more rugged, and he had to rely on Yu Hiro’s help several times.
Koo Min-ah, on the other hand, climbed the slope effortlessly.

“Hah…… hah…!
I don’t care if it’s peppers or whatever—just tell me we’re there already…!”

He’d never thought his stamina was bad, but this morning hike-in-all-but-name was killing him.
When they first set out, there’d been a breeze, so he’d thought it wouldn’t be too hard.
Once they started moving, the wind disappeared completely.

Deciding this wouldn’t do, Yu Hiro stretched his shadow long to create shade over Sung Ji-woo.

“Do you want to go back to Seoul with me right now?
If you say the word, we can leave immediately.”

“……No.
I promised to do this.
Let’s finish this first.”

“If we finish this, we’re going, right?”

“…Yeah.”

It helped a little, but at this moment, Sung Ji-woo desperately needed Shin Yoon-jae.
Now he understood why Lee Hye-rin kept Shin Yoon-jae glued to her side.

“We’re here.
We need to finish before ten and head back.”

Koo Min-ah, who had been about twenty meters ahead, stopped.
Before them stood rows of trees as tall as she was.

“Wait…… are those really peaches?”

Sung Ji-woo’s face lit up as if he’d discovered paradise, and he ran over to her.

“I said peaches.”

“……Can I eat one?”

Without a word, Koo Min-ah handed him a small fruit knife she’d had in her pocket.
Excited, Sung Ji-woo dashed under the trees and started looking around.
He looked like he’d pluck one immediately, but his movements were strangely slow.

“Which one of these is…… ripe?”

With a sigh, Koo Min-ah stepped over and plucked a peach right in front of his nose, handing it to him.
Yu Hiro, standing nearby, asked her,

“Do we pick everything here?”

“Not the small ones or the green ones.”

Yu Hiro nodded, then split his shadows into several strands and began picking peaches.
The near-mechanical precision and speed made Koo Min-ah look surprised.

“You’re good at working.
……As long as no one sees.”

In fact, Koo Min-ah herself had once tried to use her ability to deal with this tiresome farm work.
She’d tried several times……
Each time, she was painfully reminded that divine beasts were incapable of delicate labor.

Yu Hiro shrugged.
Leaving the work to his shadows, he walked over to Sung Ji-woo.

Sung Ji-woo was still wrestling with his peach.
It looked like he’d peeled about half of it successfully, but the slippery flesh kept trying to fall apart, giving him a hard time.

“You’ll hurt yourself like that.”

When Yu Hiro held out his hand, Sung Ji-woo immediately handed him the knife and half-peeled peach, then licked the juice running down his arm.
Yu Hiro narrowed his eyes at him, and Sung Ji-woo turned his head away, pretending not to notice.
It might have looked gross, but he couldn’t help it.
There was nothing to wipe with……

‘It’s my body.
I’ll lick it if I want.’

The sweet peach fragrance lingered on his tongue.

“It’s good.”

Maybe because he’d tasted it after such a grueling climb, but it was ridiculously sweet.
In that moment, he understood why peaches appeared in paradises and why immortals loved them.
With skilled knife work, Yu Hiro peeled the peach into neat rounds, sliced it into crescents, and fed one into Sung Ji-woo’s mouth.

“Mmm… mm!”

Sung Ji-woo gave Koo Min-ah a thumbs-up.
It meant it was delicious.
She turned her head away with the expression of someone who’d bitten into an unripe peach.

“What kind of luxury am I even chasing……
I should’ve kicked them out at dawn….”

As she muttered, a basket neatly piled high with peaches arrived in front of her.

“……I guess I can tolerate this much.”

The work time was reduced to one-tenth of the usual.

“Huh……?
I only ate one peach.
Where did they all go?”

Distracted by peaches, Sung Ji-woo stared at the now-empty trees in confusion.

“I finished everything.
We can go home now.”

Yu Hiro had already picked up another peach and was peeling it neatly.

No one had told him to eat two.
But Koo Min-ah didn’t bother pointing that out.

“What?
You’re already done?
……You should’ve been there for yesterday’s labor.”

“I knew you’d need me.
But hyung.”

“Hmm?”

“If I’d been there yesterday, hyung wouldn’t be here today.”

If that sounded ominous, was it just his imagination?
Koo Min-ah turned to look at them, but Sung Ji-woo seemed oblivious.

With a peach slice in his mouth, he was too busy chasing away bees drawn by the sweetness.

‘Feed him lunch and send him back to Seoul.’

Thinking that, Koo Min-ah picked up the basket full of peaches and stood up.
She’d planned to work Sung Ji-woo harder, but Yu Hiro had done everything, leaving nothing else to assign.

“Stop eating and get ready to go.
I’ll make hwachae when we get back.”

“Hwachae…?”

At the word hwachae, Sung Ji-woo’s face brightened noticeably.
Beside him, Yu Hiro’s expression darkened just as clearly.

“……Hyung, we said we’d go to my place after this.”

Sung Ji-woo answered quietly.

“We can eat hwachae before we go.”

To be honest, Sung Ji-woo was deliberately avoiding things.
Yu Hiro.
The guilds.
Everything connected to him.

It was a cowardly method, but physical distance made it easier to bury his worries for the time being.

He wasn’t ready to make any choice yet.

So he couldn’t say anything to Yu Hiro right now.
He’d spent the entire dawn trying to untangle the mess in his head, but it was far beyond what he could handle alone.

Where had it all started?

The end of the world.
The returned time.
His first meeting with Yu Hiro.
The mentoring.

Graduation.
The general store.
The X-Gate subjugation.
The return.

Finally, Yu Hiro’s letter, becoming a Hunter, and the guild chaos.

Maybe the first button had been fastened wrong from the start.
He’d never calculated for things to become this tangled.
He needed time to think.
Time to fix things.
Or maybe to accept them.

Either way, he was afraid.
If he’d been like everyone else, knowing nothing, he could’ve made a choice and lived with the regret.
But the things he’d believed he understood perfectly were unraveling one by one, and now he couldn’t jump to conclusions about anything.

Even if he made a choice now, what then?
And after that?

Maybe it would’ve been easier to leave for good after graduation.
To hole up in some countryside like this, feeling relief that the world had survived, quietly holding onto memories no one else had.
He shouldn’t have clung to pointless regrets, running a little general store and joking around.

The Knocker Guild.
Koo Min-ah.
Shin Yoon-jae.
Lee Hye-rin.

They were never connections meant for him in the first place.

They didn’t remember the life before things changed.
They didn’t remember how the world had ended, or how fiercely he’d lived to stop it.
They enjoyed peaceful days without a second thought.

And they would continue to do so.
As if nothing had ever happened.

No—nothing had happened.
It really hadn’t.
Only now did Sung Ji-woo realize that this was no longer his world.

Yu Hiro not destroying the world.
Yu Hiro not becoming a villain.

He’d thought that was all that mattered.
It wasn’t.

Stopping the X-Gate explosion didn’t trigger some game ending with a “Congratulations!” and rolling credits.

There was no <Stop> button or <Exit> button for him.
It felt like the system window had deceived him.
Across two lives and nearly ten years, the goal he’d chased had been safely achieved.

Then…… what was he supposed to do now?

He had to live on through an endless afterward.
In an uncertain world.
Alone, bearing a different timeline.

Flap-flap-flap!

At that moment, a flock of birds burst into the air above them, blackening the sky.

“f*ck, what is that?!”

Koo Min-ah shouted.

“What is this…?”

It seemed the cruel world had no intention of giving Sung Ji-woo time to think.

Kugugugung.

The ground suddenly began to shake.
This wasn’t even a dungeon.

[Attention, residents of Dohwari Village.
An earthquake has occurred nearby.
Elders currently in the fields or paddies, please hurry to the village hall.
Once again, an earthquake has occurred nearby, so all residents are asked to quickly gather at the village hall.]