At twenty‑eight and unmarried, Lee Samtak quits his job and returns to his hometown, buying a field and declaring he’ll become a farmer. He even prints business cards with “Farmer” as his occupation and presses them into the hands of everyone he meets—partly to ward off nosy questions and gossip from villagers curious about his return to the countryside. But after he scatters those cards, the word “Farmer” on them stops being just a job title and becomes his name. Even when he bungles his crops, people still call him “Farmer,” with a hint of mockery. Even when he spends his days running around the mountains with a shotgun, claiming he’s hunting pests that harm the fields, they keep calling out, “Hey, Farmer!” Even if—hypothetically—Lee Samtak were to be “just taking a break,” the townspeople would still call him Farmer. Because that’s what he wanted to be called.
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