Chương 30: Just Pay for the Meal

The child's mother did not trust Kichan. She stood just outside the hearthlight with the child in her arms, and the shadows of dried herbs swayed long against the wall behind her. Her face was exhausted, and around her eyes remained the redness of someone who had not slept properly for days. He was a stranger she had never seen before yesterday. He had shown no light on the measuring stone, yet apparently he had taken down a forest beast and treated a hunter he had only just met.

It would have been stranger if she trusted someone like that right away. Kichan took one step back. He slowly raised both hands and showed his palms. Then he touched his own chest with his fingertips, pointed at the child, and opened his palm as he lowered it gently.

"I'm not trying to hurt her. I just want to hear her breathing." The child's coughing continued. The elder brought the smoke from burning herbs close to the child's face. The child coughed even harder. The mother panicked and pushed the smoke away. Kichan grimaced.

"I don't think that's the right thing right now." Ren stepped forward. He spoke quickly to the child's mother. He pointed at Tarok's leg, pointed at Kichan, and pressed his palm against the side of his thigh as if to show that the bleeding had stopped. Tarok also nodded beside him and added a few short words. The mother's eyes wavered. Her hands wrapped tighter around the child's shoulders, but her gaze kept moving between the herbs and Kichan's hands.

When the child coughed again, the strength went out of her fingers. Kichan knew those eyes. People calculating hospital fees. People asking the price of medicine. People checking their wallets before asking whether something would really work. He had seen those eyes even in the neighborhood where he used to live. He slowly went to the side of the hearth. He examined the bundles of herbs. They were all plants he did not know, but his fingertips vaguely caught their general directions. A leaf that cooled heat.

A root that seemed like it would ease coughing a little. And a stem that felt too harsh to use on a child. Kichan pushed the last one aside. The elder said something in surprise. Kichan shook his head. The elder looked at Kichan's face, hesitated briefly, and stepped back. Kichan received a little water. He tore a very small amount of the herb leaf into it, then scraped in a thin shaving of the root vegetable's peel. He could not feed it to the child immediately.

First, he got a bit of the medicine on his fingertip and touched it to the tip of his tongue. Bitterness rose first, followed by a cool settling sensation in the back of his throat. His tongue did not go numb, and his stomach did not turn. Kichan waited a little longer, then swallowed a tiny bit more. It was fine. Only then did he turn back toward the child.

"Just a little." The mother looked between Kichan and the medicine bowl. The child's coughing broke out again. That decided it.

The child did not become fine immediately just because she took the medicine. She swallowed one mouthful and immediately grimaced. Her small nose wrinkled, and the corners of her mouth pulled down. It seemed bitter. Then she coughed again. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. The villagers' expressions darkened. Kichan felt relieved instead.

"Right. If the cough stopped instantly, that would be scarier." He slowly patted the child's back. Not hard, just enough to match the rhythm so her breathing did not break. The mother watched him and copied it. Kichan nodded.

"Like that." The mother's hand followed Kichan's rhythm. An hour passed. Kichan barely moved during that time. He watched the child's breathing, the heat on her forehead, the color of her lips. With his fingertips, he only felt around very shallowly. If he touched an unfamiliar body too strongly, he might break something instead. Slowly. Little by little. The child's breathing became less rough. The intervals between coughs grew longer. The heat on her forehead went down. The mother noticed it first.

She touched the child's face, put the back of her hand against the forehead, then looked at Kichan again. Her eyes were wet. Kichan stepped back.

"She's not all better yet. We need to watch her tonight." The woman grabbed Kichan's hand. Kichan froze. She said something. It was a long sentence. The strength in her hand alone was enough to carry the meaning. Kichan looked away.

"Ah, please don't do this kind of thing." The woman gripped his hand harder.

"Really, please don't. This makes me uncomfortable." Then the child said something in a very small voice. The child smiled. That was enough.

The villagers brought more bread and soup. As the tension around the hearth loosened late, someone wiped the corner of their eyes with the back of a hand, and someone else poked at the firewood for no reason. The children who had been holding their breath until a moment ago began whispering again in low voices. Kichan waved his hands.

"No, it's fine. No, if you give it to me, I'll eat it, but still." In the end, he accepted it. This soup was a little thicker. Someone must have added a precious piece of meat. It was still bland. Kichan instinctively started to look for salt, then stopped. There was a good chance salt was valuable in this village. He quietly lifted his spoon. Ren laughed beside him and repeated Kichan's word.

"Bap?" Kichan nodded.

"Right. Bap." Ren thumped his own chest and pointed at the soup.

"Bap."

"That's soup."

"Bap."

"Fine, let's call it bap." The child followed too.

"Bap." The pronunciation was oddly cute. Kichan let out a small laugh. Then the mother offered him a small pouch. Inside were several coins and dried herbs. She pushed the pouch toward Kichan's hand and pointed at the child's chest. Kichan immediately waved it away.

"No. I don't need medicine payment." He pointed at his own bowl.

"Just cover the meal." The villagers stared blankly. Kichan held up the bowl, patted his stomach, and raised his thumb as if satisfied.

"Meal payment. Done." The child's mother carefully repeated it.

"Bap... kkap?" Kichan grimaced.

"That's not my name." The child laughed and said it.

"Bapkkap." Ren laughed too.

"Bapkkap." Laughter spread among the villagers. The air that had been heavy until a moment ago became just a little lighter. Kichan lifted his spoon and muttered,"I'm screwed. I got a nickname here." Then someone across the hearth began humming softly. At first, Kichan thought it was children playing. One short note slipped through the laughter, and soon the woman sitting beside that person took up the next line. Ren clapped twice.

Tarok could not even stretch his leg properly yet, but he tapped the bottom of his empty bowl with his finger. A rhythm formed. Kichan stopped with his spoon in his hand. Someone from one of the houses brought out something like an old string instrument. Its body was too small and its neck too short to call it a guitar, but it had strings. The man plucked them a few times, then slowly followed the note someone had hummed. Kichan could not understand the song. Even so, he thought he knew what kind of song it was.

A song about a sick child breathing, people sharing food, and a stranger who took only meal payment instead of medicine payment. The lyrics were not even properly fixed yet, and no one had said they should begin, but people added one line after another. The child's mother sang softly too. The moment Kichan heard her voice, he pressed his lips together. Something tried to rise inside his throat.

Like the remaining shard of the first phrase that had slipped out wrong in the Rome square, it trembled thinly in time with the rhythm of this unfamiliar village. The scrap of Loagaeth inside his shirt grew lukewarm. Kichan set down his spoon and wrapped both hands around the bowl. Do not sing. Absolutely not. He lowered his head and only breathed in the smell of the soup.

The smell of meat broth with almost no salt, the smell of damp firewood, the sound of the child swallowing a cough through laughter, the sound of old strings missing the rhythm little by little. The song continued. The villagers did not know why he had suddenly gone quiet. Ren smiled and tilted his head toward Kichan, and the child laughed again at the part with the word "Bapkkap." Kichan did not open his mouth to the end. Instead, he clapped twice, very softly. For now, that was enough.

That night, a messenger left the village. Kichan did not see it. He was sitting in one corner of an empty storehouse with the wake-up rod beside him. The child's breathing was still not even, but it was far better than it had been during the day. The villagers took turns bringing him food, and Kichan refused, then ate most of it anyway. He was tired. Really tired.

He had run from Rome, fallen into a strange forest, hunted beasts, fought through gestures with people whose language he could not speak, and even seen to a child. The day had been too long. Dust curled its body on his knee.

"Do you sleep too?" Dust moved its legs a little. Kichan leaned his head against the storehouse wall.

"I hope tomorrow's a little quiet." He said it and did not believe it himself. On the road outside the village, hoofbeats were growing distant. The messenger's destination was the nearby estate office. The report was short. A stranger who made no light appear in the measuring stone had defeated a forest beast. And opened the breath of a coughing child.