Chương 31: Food in Another World Was Bland

Kichan slept in one corner of an empty storehouse. There was no bed. Instead, someone had spread dry straw and thrown a rough cloth over it. Inside the storehouse, the smell of grain, old wood, and the smoke Kichan had brought in the day before mixed together. Morning light slipped through the gaps in the wall and slanted across the dust in the air. On the roof, some small birdlike animal scratched at something. It was better than the forest floor, and better than the basement of the cathedral in Rome.

Even so, the moment Kichan sat up, he patted his lower back. No matter how fine his body was, an uncomfortable place to sleep was still uncomfortable.

"This feels unfair." Kichan pushed himself upright. Dust almost rolled off his chest, then caught the cloth with its legs. Straw dust clung all over its little wire body.

"You look terrible too." Dust flicked its legs. The storehouse door opened a crack. Three children were peeking at Kichan through the gap. The child who had been coughing yesterday was among them. Her face was still pale, but her breathing sounded much easier. Kichan raised a hand.

"Hi." The children drew back, then poked their heads out again. The word they had learned yesterday came back.

"Bapkkap." Kichan closed his eyes.

"I told you that's not it." The children laughed. Their laughter pulled the village morning in with it. The sound of fires being lit, animals crying, wooden buckets knocking together. Strange words passed back and forth everywhere, but the sounds of people living were oddly familiar. Kichan stood up slowly.

"Fine. Today, let's start with words."

The first lesson was water. One child held up a wooden cup and spoke. The children were sitting in a half-circle in the open space in front of the storehouse. The child at the front had lifted her chin slightly, as if she had become the teacher, and the children behind her had their cheeks puffed out from trying not to laugh.

"Ar." Kichan repeated it.

"Ar." The child nodded. Next was bread.

"Ben."

"Ben." Meat.

"Gar."

"Gar." Pain. The child clutched her stomach and grimaced as she said it.

"Nes." Kichan memorized that one immediately. It was more important than water, bread, or meat.

"Nes." The children clapped, delighted. Next came don't. This was a word Kichan needed to learn first. Because the children kept reaching out to touch Dust. Surprisingly, Dust did not run away. It flicked its legs on their palms, rolled its small body, and lightly touched the backs of their hands with the ends of its wires. Every time it did, the children burst into giggles. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Kichan's heart dropped.

"Don't. If parts fall off, I can't fix him." The children reached farther.

"Tana." Kichan repeated it at once.

"Tana." The children stopped.

"Oh." Kichan put Dust back on his shoulder.

"Tana. That's an important one." All that morning, Kichan learned words. Not sentences yet. Water. Bread. Meat. Pain. Thank you. Don't. Come. Go. Danger. Beast. When he heard the last word, the villagers' faces stiffened a little. Kichan memorized that reaction too.

Lunch was grain porridge. It was bland. Kichan held his spoon and stared into the bowl for a long time. There was grain, small root vegetables, and a very small piece of meat left over from yesterday. It was not inedible. Someone had put care into it too. But it was bland. Really bland.

"Is salt noble food in this world?" Kichan muttered quietly. Ren, sitting beside him, imitated the sound of "salt."

"Sogeum?"

"No, that's Korean." Ren laughed. Kichan looked at the beast fat and a few root vegetables they had brought back from the forest. The villagers had been about to throw them away because they were tough and smelled strong. When he felt them with his fingertips, he could more or less tell which parts made the smell and which parts made the bitterness. When he sharpened an old knife along the grain of the metal, the edge came back a little. The villagers gathered around to watch. Kichan felt burdened.

"No, this isn't something to stare at." He sliced the fat very thin and placed it at the edge of the hearth. As the smell rose, several people wrinkled their noses. Kichan stripped away the bitter peel of the root and tore a few leaves into tiny pieces. It would have been better with salt. Still, once the fat melted, the smell changed. The children reacted first. The villagers each tried one piece carefully. The faces that had been wrinkling their noses stopped, one by one.

One man pointed toward the hearth before he had even swallowed. It seemed to mean, Is there more? Kichan was the one who looked more surprised.

"Seriously, if we only had salt." Someone copied that word too.

"Sogeum." Kichan pressed a hand to his forehead.

"At this rate, salt will become my name too."

In the afternoon, the elder took Kichan to the front of the storehouse. He counted sacks with his fingers and pointed at the empty spaces. The people standing beside him lowered their heads. Ren pointed at the forest and said the word for beast. Then he mimed going hunting and shook his hand sideways. Tarok held up a bundle of herbs and placed a few coins in his palm. Then he acted as if half of them were being taken away. The elder showed Kichan the inside of the storehouse.

There were only a few sacks of grain left. Kichan could not take his eyes off the empty spaces. This was the same storehouse where the children had laughed that morning. But once he stepped inside, the empty floor was more visible than the sacks. He did not even know what he could do. He had no idea how to get back, and he could not take on another village's problems too. Then came the sound of dry wood twisting outside the storehouse. Crack. The curse that followed was short.

Kichan did not know the meaning, but the feeling of waste was clear. When he went outside, the elder was holding an old hoe. The metal head was half loose, and the end of the handle had split like wood that had been wet and dried too many times. Beside it sat a cart wheel. The ring that held the axle was worn down, and it looked ready to twist if the wheel grew even a little heavier. The creak in the metal reached his fingertips first. The metal itself was not bad. It was metal that had endured for too long.

Kichan took the hoe and felt the place between the handle and the head. The grain of the wood had been set in the wrong direction, and only the thin side of the metal ring had kept wearing down. He looked at a piece of beast horn lying beside the cart.

"This." He fitted a thin piece of horn inside the ring and tapped it with the tip of the wake-up rod. If he hit it too hard, it looked like it would break, so he pressed little by little. The horn piece was like bone, but it spread thin like metal and became a core supporting the inside of the ring. The hoe head no longer wobbled. The elder took it back and shook it a few times. His eyes widened. Kichan fixed the cart wheel the same way. It was not a perfect repair.

If they used it for a long time, it would open again, but it would make it to the field tomorrow.

"I'm not a blacksmith though." When he muttered that, one child clapped. This time, the villagers' gazes turned not to wounds, but to tools. Only then did Kichan let a little tension out of his shoulders. As the sun began to slant, the elder took Kichan to a small field behind the storehouse. At a glance, the grain looked fine. The stalks were upright and the leaves were green, but when the elder twisted open one head of grain, the inside was empty. Where kernels should have been, there were only thin husks.

"... There's nothing inside." Kichan touched the soil. Under the smell of earth, there was a strange sweetness. Not the scent of ripe grain, but a sweetness like something had chewed and spat out syrup. His fingertips caught a trace similar to the saliva of a small animal. Kichan looked down at the empty ear of grain.

"Tomorrow, we should start with the field." Before he had even finished speaking, the village entrance grew noisy. A cart came in. Two farmers lay on it. One was holding his arm, and the other had a cloth wrapped around his thigh as he gritted his teeth. Words Kichan could not understand burst out all at once. Kichan brushed the dirt from the hand that had been touching the field and stood. That night, Kichan hardly slept.

He bound the wounds of the farmers brought in on the cart one by one, cooled the forehead of a man whose fever was rising, fixed a broken arm so it would not move, and pressed herbs against a wound that would not stop bleeding. He did not go as far as sealing the wound further. Kichan pulled back the sensation that had tried to push deeper. At one point, his fingertips tried to move on their own. The edges of torn flesh began to pull toward each other. Kichan swallowed a breath and took his hand away.

"This is as far as I go." No one understood the words. Still, Ren looked once at Kichan's wrist and did not ask anything more. Only near dawn did the smell of blood fade a little. In front of the storehouse hearth, cold grain porridge was left over. During the day, it had smelled so bland, but after the smell of blood, it somehow smelled like proper food. Then Dust dropped something at his feet. It was a white fragment a little larger than a grain of rice. Kichan picked it up and froze for a moment.

The powder left on his fingertip tasted strangely salty.