The homestead was several kilometres across. His house, the pond, and most of the trees were all clustered near the centre. That left an enormous amount of empty land between the centre and the perimeter walls — grey, flat, unused.
Time to fix that.
He'd been foraging in the forest for weeks now, cataloguing what he found. The variety was staggering — dozens of fruit species, nut trees of every size, berry bushes, hardwoods, softwoods, ornamental species. More than he could ever use in one area. But spread across the entire homestead, organised by type...
He started planning. The homestead was roughly circular, so he divided it by cardinal direction. North, east, west, south — four quadrants, each dedicated to a different category. Organised. Deliberate. Every tree planted for a purpose.
The north got nuts.
He spent a full day in the forest, scouting for the best specimens. He found trees bearing hard-shelled nuts similar to chestnuts — fat, spiny casings that split open to reveal glossy brown nuts with dense, sweet meat. Others produced clusters that reminded him of walnuts — rough, wrinkled shells encasing rich, oily kernels. A third species bore smooth, pale nuts the size of his thumb that tasted like a cross between almonds and pine nuts.
He transplanted them in groves. Not random scattering — deliberate groupings, each species clustered together with enough spacing for the canopies to spread. Dozens of trees, teleported in rapid succession, filling the northern quadrant with neat rows of nut-bearing hardwoods. Irrigation channels ran between the rows. Rich forest soil packed around every root ball.
The east got citrus.
He'd found the orange-like trees first — a grove of them deep in the forest, their branches heavy with bright fruits that burst with sweet, tangy juice when he bit into them. But scouting further turned up more. A species with fruits like lemons — small, yellow, sour enough to make his eyes water. Another that produced large, thick-skinned fruits with pink flesh, close enough to grapefruit that the comparison was automatic.
He transplanted most of the orange grove — fifteen trees, carefully spaced, their canopies already heavy with fruit. The lemon-types went in beside them. The grapefruit-types anchored the far eastern edge. Walking through the east quadrant felt like entering an orchard. The air smelled sharp and sweet.
The west got stone fruits.
Trees bearing round, firm fruits with a flavour profile somewhere between apples and pears — crisp flesh, subtle sweetness, a clean finish. He'd been eating these since his early hunts and they'd become a staple. Beside them, he planted a species with soft, fuzzy-skinned fruits that tasted remarkably like apricots — fragrant, tender, almost overwhelmingly sweet when ripe. A third variety produced small, dense fruits with a floral quality he couldn't place but liked immediately.
Rows and rows of them, filling the western quadrant. Stone fruit orchard. His future self would thank him when harvest season hit.
The south got berries and hardwoods.
This was the most complex quadrant. He wanted ground-level production — berry bushes — shaded by large canopy trees. A layered system, like the forest itself.
He started with the hardwoods. Trees similar to maples — broad, spreading canopies with leaves that were already starting to shift colour, suggesting they were deciduous. Oak-like trees with massive trunks and dense crowns. Tall conifers resembling pines, their needles dark green and fragrant. He planted them in a loose, natural arrangement — not the neat rows of the orchard quadrants, but something closer to a managed woodland.
Underneath, he planted berries. Bushes bearing small, dark fruits almost identical to blueberries — sweet, slightly tart, bursting with juice. Low-growing plants with bright red fruits that could have been strawberries' cousins — smaller, more intense in flavour, growing in dense clusters close to the ground. A trailing vine that produced clusters of purple berries with a grape-like sweetness.
The berry bushes thrived in the dappled shade of the hardwoods. Within days of planting, they were already putting out new growth — reaching into the enriched soil, spreading along the irrigation channels, filling the gaps between trees with low, productive greenery.
Standing at the centre of his homestead, Yuki could see it all. North — the dark, sturdy shapes of nut trees, their canopies forming a dense crown. East — the bright greens of citrus, dotted with orange and yellow fruit. West — the softer silhouettes of stone fruit trees, their branches elegant and spreading. South — the layered woodland of hardwoods and berry bushes, dappled shade and ground-level colour.
Four groves. Four quadrants. Each one a deliberate, curated ecosystem designed to produce food, materials, and something worth looking at.
That's satisfying.
It really was.
While scouting for berry bushes near a stream, he found the bamboo.
Not bamboo exactly — nothing in this world was exactly anything from his. But close enough to stop him in his tracks. Tall, straight stalks with segmented joints, pale green, growing in a dense stand near water. They swayed in the breeze with that distinctive rustling sound — papery, rhythmic, calming.
He stared at them for a long moment. Then he started digging.
The root system was aggressive — a tangled rhizome network that spread laterally through the soil. He extracted a large clump, roots and all, and teleported it directly into the Japanese garden.
He planted it along the eastern edge of the pond, between the cobblestone and the water. Within the enclosed space of the garden — the arch, the pond, the almost-cherry-blossom, and now the bamboo — the effect was immediate. The stalks rose above the water's edge, their reflections wavering on the surface. The rustling blended with the sound of water flowing through the feed channel.
Now it's a garden.
He sat under the arch and listened. Water. Bamboo. Wind through pink petals. Fish breaking the surface.
Over the following days, something unexpected happened.
The homestead started growing on its own.
Not the transplanted trees — those were doing fine, settling into their new soil, putting out cautious new growth. What surprised him was everything else. The patches of grass he'd laid down were spreading — runners reaching outward from each transplanted section, creeping across the moistened dust, knitting together into larger and larger lawns. Wildflowers were appearing in places he hadn't planted them — seeds must have come in with the transplanted soil, dormant until water and sunlight woke them up. Moss was colonising the canal banks. Insects — small ones, harmless ones — were showing up in increasing numbers, drawn by the flowering trees and berry bushes.
The canal network had turned the dead dust into soil that could support life. The transplanted greenery had provided seeds, roots, and organic matter. And nature, given half a chance, was doing what nature always did — filling every available space with as much life as it could manage.
The grey patches between his groves were shrinking daily. Green crept outward from every planted area, meeting in the middle, merging. What had been a scattered collection of transplanted trees in a wasteland was becoming a cohesive landscape — rough, young, unfinished, but alive in a way that felt self-sustaining.
I don't think I need to keep planting. I just need to manage what's already here.
That was the real shift. He'd gone from building an ecosystem from scratch to maintaining one that was running on its own. The canals kept the water flowing. The soil kept improving. The plants kept spreading. His job now was guidance, not creation — deciding what grew where, pruning what he didn't want, encouraging what he did.
And the walls made all the difference. Beyond the perimeter, the forest pressed in with its usual aggressive abandon — fast-growing vines, invasive root systems, opportunistic saplings that would choke out anything deliberately planted within a season. Inside the walls, none of that could reach. Every plant on his homestead was something he'd chosen. Every tree served a purpose — food, material, shade, beauty. The wall wasn't just defence against monsters. It was a filter. His homestead was a curated space, and the wall kept it that way.
He stood on his roof at sunset and looked out over a landscape that barely resembled the dead zone he'd woken up in.
Green. In every direction, green. Young and sparse in places, dense and established in others, but unmistakably alive. Groves of fruit and nut trees. Berry bushes under hardwood canopy. Grass filling the spaces between. Canals glinting silver. The Japanese garden a jewel of colour and calm near the centre.
And at the heart of it, his house. Stone walls, arched roof, smoke from the workshop chimney. A place that was his.
Not bad for a dead zone.
He sat down, cooked dinner, and watched the stars come out over his homestead.
Not bad at all