Chương 27: Meeting the Hunters

Because of the strange forest air and the animal cries that came now and then through the night, Kichan never managed to sleep. Only after dawn came and his surroundings became visible did he start looking around properly. First, he checked the place where he had fallen. The grass had been pressed down in a circle, and several branches had broken outward instead of inward. They were traces left by his fall from above. Around them remained the footprints of the beasts that had come through last night.

Round pads, deep claws, marks where fur had brushed past. Kichan scratched a mark into the ground with the end of the wake-up rod.

"This is the starting point." The forest was too dense. He could not easily tell direction, or even where he had already passed. Kichan used the end of the wake-up rod to leave shallow scratches on branches and trunks as his own markers.

"Sorry for damaging nature. But I need to live too." He looked up at the sky. The constellations were different. Even while he did that, the forest kept making unfamiliar sounds. When the wind blew, leaves knocked against each other, and the sound was a little different from the rustling he knew from Korean mountains. It felt like the same score being played on another instrument. Kichan was sitting under a tree, chewing a cold piece of beast meat.

The meat was tough, and here and there it smelled faintly metallic, like blood and iron. Kichan frowned every time he chewed. Still, once it went into his stomach, his body quieted down a little. Kichan wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Salt." He muttered it very quietly, then shut his mouth at once. The scrap of Loagaeth inside his shirt warmed faintly. Kichan immediately pressed his palm over it. One wrong word had sent him flying all the way here from a square in Rome. He could not carelessly let some strange sound slip out just because he wanted salt.

"You are banned for a while." Kichan pressed the paper scrap inside his clothes with his fingertips. Dust crawled up onto the back of his hand. Until yesterday, it had been closer to a bug made from bits of wire tangled together. Now it was different. Green moss clung to the ends of its legs, and lines like leaf veins had spread through its thin body. Between the pieces of metal, something like a tiny sprout had poked its head out.

"What did you eat in the forest overnight to end up like that?" Dust did not answer. Instead, it went to a drop of grease that had fallen from the meat, touched it once with the end of a leg, and immediately backed away.

"Tastes bad, right?" Dust flicked a leg. Kichan let out a small laugh. The laugh did not last long. From somewhere deeper in the forest, another cry sounded. The leaves in the direction the sound had passed trembled belatedly, and several yellow petals in the darkness swayed before going still. He could not tell whether the beasts that had fled last night had come back, or whether something bigger was moving. Kichan laid the wake-up rod across his knees and wrapped his hand around the grip.

"Ah, damn it. Looks like those things are back. What the hell are they, anyway?" Kichan lowered his head and turned the end of the wake-up rod toward the sound. Then a light moved in the sky above. At first, he thought a star had shaken. But the light sank lower and grew larger. What had looked like a black dot slowly folded its wings above a mountain ridge. It beat its wings only once. In that instant, the whole forest swayed as if bowing flat.

Far-off leaves caught the wind late and swept all at once in the same direction. A bird. Kichan tried to think of it that way. With his head tilted back, he took one step away.

"If that's a bird, the sparrows here must be the size of cars." This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. A little later, one black feather came wobbling down. It did not land right in front of him. It stabbed into the wet soil about ten steps from the embers. Kichan stared at it for a long time before slowly approaching. The feather was not light. He brought his fingertips close, then stopped.

The feeling of living tissue and a fine metallic grain came at him at the same time. At the same moment, a very faint resonance inside his shirt brushed the inside of his throat. A sound nearly came out. Kichan immediately shut his mouth.

"... Why does this look useful?" The words were barely breath. Kichan pulled his hand away from the feather. It was not scary because this world was unfamiliar. It was scary because every unfamiliar thing looked useful. Kichan did not touch the feather with his bare hands. Instead, he set Dust down from the back of his hand and jerked his chin toward it.

"Go pick it up. I don't want to touch it myself." Dust flicked its legs for a moment, then climbed down onto the wet soil. Its tiny wire legs carefully grabbed the edge of the feather.

"If you only look at the mood, this is practically a healing trip." He licked his dry lips, and only then did thirst rise up properly. Kichan groped through the grass around him with his fingertips. He could very faintly sense things like the path water took inside the stems and the direction the leaves faced toward the sunlight. But something did not quite fit. Kichan studied the grass for a while, then took his hand away.

"I can feel something, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it." He tore off a leaf and rubbed it on the back of his hand. It did not sting. The smell was close to bitter grass. He did not want to put it straight into his mouth. Dust climbed onto his palm.

"Right. Your turn." Kichan set Dust on the ground.

"Don't go far. If you find anything weird, run. No, how am I supposed to know you're running?" Dust paused briefly, then moved toward the forest floor. The tiny wire bug disappeared between the fallen leaves faster than he expected. Kichan held the wake-up rod and slowly followed. The sensation Dust left behind was clearer than before. Even in soil that held no metal, a tiny leaf-vein-like resonance came back toward Kichan. Something from this world had attached itself to Dust.

Kichan did not know whether that was good or bad.

"For now, let's call it good because you're alive."

The first thing Dust brought back was a broken arrowhead. Kichan narrowed his eyes at the small piece of metal lying on his palm. The grain of the metal was unfamiliar. The impurities inside were different from what he commonly saw on Earth. It was an object someone had made. It carried traces of having been hammered by hand, heated in fire, then cooled again.

"Good news, I guess. There are people here too." The second thing Dust brought was a scrap of leather cord. A little dried blood clung to the broken end. As soon as Dust set down the leather cord, it turned in another direction. It scratched the soil with its tiny legs, walked a few steps, stopped, and looked back at Kichan.

"You want me to follow?" Dust scratched the soil again. Only then did Kichan look at the spot where Dust had stopped. A long sunken line had been gouged into the dirt, and a faint sensation like metal powder remained around it. It was a cartwheel track. Kichan followed the trace. The wheel tracks split into two messy lines. One side was relatively clear, while the other was mixed with beast footprints. Around the footprints, drops of blood continued, broke off, then continued again.

Kichan crouched and looked at the blood. He could not tell immediately whether it was human blood or animal blood. But the feeling his fingertips read from it was different from the blood of the beast he had hunted last night.

"Is there an injured person this way?" Kichan chose the direction the blood continued. Dust flicked its legs in front of his shoe.

"What. Does it look dangerous?" Dust did not answer.

"I know." Kichan adjusted his grip on the wake-up rod.

"But I can't live in this forest by myself forever."

After following the cartwheel tracks, Kichan only left the forest and reached a valley when the sun was overhead. It was not wide. Clear water ran between the rocks, and dense clusters of blue leaves the size of his palm grew along the bank. Kichan did not immediately throw himself down and drink. He had at least that much common sense. He felt the water with his fingertips. There was some unfamiliar sensation mixed in, but it did not feel like water that would immediately ruin him if he drank it.

Even so, Kichan stopped while scooping water into his hand. There was a person between the rocks. That was what Kichan thought. His eyes met someone's. For a moment, neither of them said anything. The next instant, it slid under the rock and vanished. It barely made a sound in the water. On the rock, it left only a thin trace that might have been transparent scales or slime. Kichan stood there for a while with his hand lowered. A thin, slippery feeling lingered on his fingertips.

Water, breath, skin--sensations he could not separate were tangled together. Kichan immediately withdrew his hand.

"... I'm passing on this water." He went a little farther upstream, chose water away from the place where that being had vanished, and checked it for a long time with his fingertips before drinking only a little from his hand. It was cold. Once that one mouthful went down, his body relaxed late. He drank a few more times and washed his face. As water ran past his eyes, the sunlight and gun barrels in the Rome square surfaced for a moment, then disappeared. While he had his head lowered, Dust returned to the rock.

Its tiny wire legs scraped up the transparent trace. Mechanically, as if gathering pieces of metal, it tucked the thin film left between moss and slime beneath its body. Kichan took the scrap out from inside his clothes. Blackened edges, a few unreadable characters, parts that looked like blanks. Strength entered his fingers on its own. Honestly, he wanted to throw it into the embers as it was. One wrong word had brought him here. If he opened his mouth again, he had no idea where he might be thrown next.

Even so, he could not throw it away. For now, this scrap of paper was the only clue that might lead him home. Kichan clenched his teeth and folded it back inside his clothes.

"I want to burn it, but I can't." Dust flicked its legs on his shoulder.

"You watch me too. If I look like I'm about to say something weird, bite me or something." Dust had no mouth to bite with. Then a human scream came from the edge of the forest. It was a place where the sunlight between the trees suddenly widened. Beyond it, wheel tracks that had torn up the earth and broken shrubs continued in a chaotic line. Kichan lowered his body. He could not understand the words. But screams were similar in any language. He pushed through the brush and went forward.

Beyond the thicket, a broken cart had tipped onto its side. Two bleeding hunters had been driven back behind the wheel, and a horned beast was scraping the ground in front of them. One hunter saw Kichan and shouted something. His hand pointed toward the forest, and his eyes were stretched so wide they looked ready to tear. Kichan adjusted his grip on the wake-up rod.

"Talk later."