Chương 74: I'll Learn to Look Human

The morning mist slowly lifted from the valley. Only flattened grass and broken stones remained where the dragon had lain through the night. The spicy fish stew in the stone bowl by the water had cooked down to almost nothing. The scent of red herbs still lingered in the valley air. One of Kichan's eyes remained swollen and blue, and his wrist had not fully loosened. Still, he could move. Kichan opened the magic bag and checked yesterday's materials one more time. Valley rock salt. Hot seeds. Red herbs.

Garlic-flavored roots. Rainbow fish scales. One bottle of strange black water. The inside of the bag was cool, and none of the smells had mixed. The black horn fragment rested quietly beside them. The problem was the fellow who planned to follow him out of the valley. Argaon stood in the middle of the valley in human form. His black clothes looked almost dry, yet still carried a damp sheen. Drops of water fell slowly from the ends of his hair. He was barefoot. His face was human, but the way his gaze moved was not.

Everything from the turn of his head to the movement of his eyes was slightly off, like an ancient beast borrowing a human shape for a while. Kichan looked him up and down for a long time.

"You're going like that?" Argaon asked calmly,"Is there a problem?"

"A lot of them. Start with shoes. Humans don't walk around barefoot." Argaon immediately looked down. He was serious. This was not the face he wore when teasing someone.

"Humans cover their feet."

"Because it's cold, because they get dirty, and just because." Riphiel cautiously added,"The soles of your feet can be injured on a stone road." Without a word, Argaon lifted one foot and set it down again. He did not so much as blink when the rough gravel pressed into it. That reaction made him look even more suspicious. Kichan sighed. Teaching someone to imitate a human was more troublesome than packing the luggage.

"Walk first." Argaon nodded and walked. It was strange. His first step copied Riphiel. His back straightened and his footfall went silent. The second copied the saber-toothed tiger. His shoulders moved low, and his weight gathered over his toes. The third copied Kichan. He walked loosely, only for strength to return to his waist in the next instant. He copied them too well, which made it worse.

From the side, he looked less like a human than a fake stitched together from the traces left by several humans passing by. Kichan frowned.

"Hey. That's not right."

"What is wrong?"

"Just now, you were a cat." Riphiel finally spoke after trying to hold back.

"That was not human. It was feline." The saber-toothed tiger growled at Riphiel for no reason. It did not seem pleased to see its walk imitated. Argaon looked at Riphiel. A faint water-blue glint passed through his narrowing eyes.

"You meddled in other people's affairs as a child, and you remain the same now." Riphiel's face froze. Even her neck went rigid, as though she had stopped breathing. Kichan saw her reaction and nodded to himself.

"You really have known her for a long time." Riphiel swallowed quietly.

"That wording is a little… too specific."

"Were you like that as a kid too?" The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Answering that question would only make this more humiliating." Kichan let it pass and went back to Argaon. The barefoot problem was still unsolved. Argaon understood why his feet were a problem, but that did not produce a pair of shoes. There were no human shoes in the valley. Kichan dug through the bag and found some worn cloth and a leather strap. The strap had originally been used to tie fish together.

"Give me your foot." Argaon silently held it out. Kichan ran a hand over the sole. It looked like a human foot, but felt different. Neither hot nor cold, it was as hard as stone that had held its place for years. For an instant, a faint texture unlike scales surfaced beneath the skin over the top of the foot, then vanished.

"You're seriously strange."

"Is this uncomfortable?"

"My hands are the ones suffering. Your foot looks fine." He could at least wrap it. Kichan laid the cloth under Argaon's sole, looped the leather strap around it several times, and tied it at the ankle. It was too crude to call a proper shoe, but better than letting him walk barefoot.

"What is this?"

"Something like a shoe."

"Humans walk in these."

"Normally, they wear something much better than this." Argaon lifted one foot, then set it down again. This time he walked more slowly. It was better than before. His gaze was still strange, but at least he no longer looked like a human-imitating monster someone had picked up off the roadside. Only then did Kichan close the magic bag. He rearranged the materials inside once more so they would not strike one another.

He stood the bottle of black water in a corner, tied the red herbs separately, and put the horn fragment deepest inside. Dust clung to the opening of the bag through the entire process. Its small body leaned toward the black horn fragment. It twitched its legs as though guarding it from thieves. Kichan said,"That isn't yours." Dust pretended not to hear. If anything, it planted itself over the horn as though claiming a seat.

Valkyrie stretched its droplet body thin from the edge of the bag and peered inside the horn. A blue pattern rippled across its watery surface. The watery glow within the dragon horn tugged lightly at Valkyrie. Argaon watched and said,"Valkyrie? That child would like it. The horn carries a strong water affinity." Kichan closed the bag.

"That makes it even better."

"Your standards remain simple." Riphiel could not argue. Kichan was already checking the horn fragment's position again. When they were ready to leave, Kichan took the lead. The saber-toothed tiger followed, and Valkyrie climbed toward his sleeve. Argaon tried to blend in among them, only to take another strange step. He placed his feet too quietly and too precisely. Kichan looked back.

"Loosen up your feet. Stop sneaking around." Argaon followed the instruction exactly. This time, he relaxed too much. His shoulders swayed until he looked drunk. Riphiel could not bear it and covered her face with both hands.

"That is strange even by human standards."

"Humans are difficult."

"They are. Everyone just muddles through being a little awkward." Argaon stopped for a moment at Kichan's words.

"Muddles through being awkward."

"Right. Being too precise makes you more suspicious." Only then did Argaon relax his shoulders slightly. This attempt was passable. It looked more natural because it was not perfect. At the narrow path leading out of the valley, Argaon looked back once. He showed none of the reluctance of someone leaving a place where he had lived for a long time. He simply listened to the water one more time. The valley stream still flowed. The moss on the cliffs remained wet.

The valley was not a place that would follow merely because its master looked back. Kichan watched Argaon's profile for a moment, then turned his eyes toward the northern mountains again. Peaks touched by dawn rose in layer after layer. It looked like a cold, hungry, troublesome road. It also looked like the kind of place that held materials he had never seen. Before setting out, Kichan made one final sweep of the valley for anything they might have forgotten. Half-burned branches lay beside the water.

A thin film of red oil had hardened at the bottom of the stone bowl. Kichan scraped it up with one finger and smelled it. Even though the fish stew had gone completely cold, the scent of garlic-flavored root remained.

"Next time, I can boil another batch with this water." Riphiel asked with an incredulous expression,"Are you thinking about the next meal even as we are about to leave?"

"Of course. The water tasted good yesterday." Argaon surveyed the valley once, then looked at the red oil on Kichan's fingertip.

"That broth was the first food to leave a fishy smell in the water of my valley." Kichan did not look sorry in the slightest.

"It was delicious."

"That is the problem." Words like that from a dragon should have sounded like a threat. Instead, they sounded like the grumbling of someone who was truly leaving his valley empty to follow them. Riphiel opened her mouth, then closed it. The dragon who had guarded this domain until moments ago was now complaining about the smell of spicy fish stew in the water. Kichan had no interest in the strange mood. He pulled a hardened piece of fish from the rim of the stone bowl and tossed it to the saber-toothed tiger.

The tiger smelled it once and swallowed. Valkyrie had been dozing beside the bowl with its droplet body curled into a ball, but climbed back onto Kichan's sleeve when he dusted off his hands. Dust circled the horn fragment until the very end. Only after Kichan tied the bag securely to his waist did it seem to relax and lie across the piece. Its tiny body looked like the lid of a storage box.

"Are you a guard?" Dust answered by twitching its legs. Riphiel watched it, then glanced at Argaon. She wondered whether he minded seeing a piece of his horn treated that way. Argaon said nothing. If anything, he seemed interested in the way Dust guarded it.

"Such a small thing, yet so possessive."

"It wants anything that shines in a weird way."

"Does it take after its master?" Kichan turned at once.

"Why me?" Argaon did not answer. Instead, he looked toward the northern mountains. His face changed slightly as he studied that direction. He wore an old look he had never shown inside the valley—the look of someone remembering a road and the scent of winters he had crossed many times. Then Argaon spoke low.

"There is a place with horns and teeth you would like." Kichan's gaze snapped toward him.

"Horns?"