Welcome. First Time With Dural?

“Oh, what am I to do!”

Delma thumped her on the back and thrust a palm out under Chloe’s mouth, her eyes brimming with tears. Her voice shook as she urged her to spit it out, quickly, and her feet, at a loss what to do with themselves, hopped so they would not stay on the floor.

Ah… Delma really does care about me.
All right — the joke ends here!

Dong-hui hurriedly got her face under control and looked at Delma as though nothing whatsoever had happened.

“Delma! I’m fine. I was only startled because it’s so good!”

Her back was smarting from how hard she had been hit. Delma, still not grasping the situation, asked without taking her palm off Chloe’s back.

“Beg pardon…?”

She looked like a woman whose wits had gone clean out of her. Those blank eyes made Dong-hui feel worse than ever. Never again would she play at being hurt in front of Delma.

“I’m fine, I said. Look. There’s nothing wrong with me at all.”

To prove she was in one piece, Dong-hui spread both arms wide like a scarecrow and threw in a great beaming smile for good measure.

Tears rolled down out of Delma’s round, wide-open eyes. Ugh. Guilt jabbed at Dong-hui just under the breastbone.

Delma wiped the tears away fast with the back of her hand, then circled round and round Chloe, going over her inch by inch. She could be told her lady was fine any number of times; nothing would settle her until she had seen it for herself. Worry clung to her eyes through every corner of that quick survey, and the sighs came one after another, with a muttered ‘this will be the death of me’ slipped in between them the way a refrain drops into a song.

“Are you truly all right?”

Chloe stood in front of her perfectly sound, and still Delma could not seem to believe it, repeating the same question over and over.

“Mm. I’m fine. Try one.”

Dong-hui grinned again and held out a Dural fry, and Delma’s whole body leaned away from it, as if bracing to flee. Then, embarrassed at having flinched, she straightened up and brushed her spotless skirt down briskly with her palm.

“It really is good, I’m telling you!”

Dong-hui pressed it on her once more.

These were on a different plane altogether from the French fries she used to order as a side at burger places. The potatoes being the size they were, a single French fry came to nearly thirty centimeters. And the moment she bit down, a nuttiness that seemed to burst inside her mouth met the crispness you only get from a potato straight out of the oil, so that little cries of admiration kept escaping her the whole time she ate. She had never much cared for French fries before, but she felt she could sit right where she was and go on eating these forever.

“Ketchup would be the icing on the cake. Delma, do they really not grow tomatoes anywhere around here?”
“They grew them in the village of Rasen, but with the drought the crops did badly this year.”

It seemed the word “tomato” meant the same thing here, since Delma understood at once and answered.

“And Rasen tomatoes are truly exceptional.”

Delma sounded regretful, and even smacked her lips over it.

Enormously relieved that soil fit for growing tomatoes existed somewhere on the estate, Dong-hui picked up another French fry.

Next time I’ll make potato pancakes — no, Dural pancakes!

Just thinking about it made her mouth water. Delma’s eyes had gone twice her usual size with shock, and Dong-hui gazed wide-eyed straight back at her, munching away at the long Dural fry the way you eat a Pepero stick.¹

By the time she had polished off her second Dural fry and stuck up a thumb into the bargain, Delma hesitantly picked one up. She could not quite bring herself to take proper hold of it, though, and used only the tips of her thumb and forefinger. The look on her face was a bonus. Anyone watching would have taken her for a woman being made to pick up an insect.

Delma looked at Chloe and raised her thin eyebrows. The look asked am I really to eat this?, so Dong-hui nodded as hard as she could.

To think it takes this much effort just to get one Dural fry into somebody!

Left to herself she would have told Delma not to bother, but the estate’s food problem had to be solved, and that ruled it out. If she could not win over even Delma, who was fond of her, nobody on the estate would ever be willing to eat Dural.

“Go on, try it. Mmm! It’s good!”

She felt like a nursery-school teacher performing for a fussy child, insisting that vegetables were every bit as delicious as chocolate cake.

Delma, looking thoroughly bewildered, glanced over at the two standing in the kitchen doorway, and then slowly put the Dural fry in her mouth.

Yes, yes! Just like that! Aaah! Open wide!

Dong-hui’s own mouth rounded open along with hers, like a mother spooning baby food into a child, and she watched Delma eat. The nearer the Dural fry came to Delma’s mouth, the wider Dong-hui’s eyes grew with anticipation.

The sound of the two in the kitchen doorway sucking in their breath carried all the way to her.

“What are we to do! Butler, do try to stop her. Something dreadful is going to happen!”

The head cook urged Scrooge on, voice on the very edge of tears.

“They are hardly the sort to listen because I tell them to stop, now, are they. And besides — looking at it now, it seems it may be all right.”

His young lord handled Dural as though it were nothing at all, had even cooked it and eaten it, which left the butler ashamed of all the fuss and terror he had made of it. Scrooge was well past fifty, and he thought himself pathetic for having stood there shaking, far more frightened than a lord not yet twenty. Come to think of it, he had never once heard of Dural harming anybody.

Why had I been so afraid of it?

The question had come up out of nowhere, and he was still turning it over when the sound of Delma chewing a Dural fry reached him.

— Crunch!

The room had been brimful of taut tension, and it was as though the sound had cracked clean across it with a snap.

“Hm?”

Delma’s chewing got faster and faster.

— Crunch. Crunch.

The shorter the fry in her hand got, the wider Delma’s eyes grew. It felt as though a status window might pop up out of nowhere to announce that the length of the fry and the size of Delma’s eyes stood in inverse proportion, and then vanish again. Before anyone knew it, her shining gaze had moved on to another Dural fry.

“See? I told you it was good, didn’t I?”
“Good heavens! Dural was this delicious all along?”

The Dural fry was gone from between Delma’s thumb and forefinger. Chewing away without pause, she gestured urgently at the two standing in the kitchen doorway, and with her other hand she was already reaching for a fresh one.

“What are you doing? Come here and try it, quickly!”
“Try the steamed potato — the steamed Dural, I mean — as well.”

Saying it over and over like that — Dural, Dural — it starts to sound wrong.
Dural buddies. Hehehehehe

Dong-hui shook her head at the useless gag that had come into her mind.² Crack a joke that cheap in front of the three of them and they would look at her strangely, that much was certain.

She was getting quite enough strange looks as it was.

Scrooge and the head cook came slowly over, watching the excited Delma with deep suspicion.

Welcome. First time with Dural?³

Having cleared the Dural fries and then the fluffy steamed Dural clean off their plates, the three of them patted their round, full bellies and gazed up at Chloe.

Never mind the applause — give me an ability or something, some points or something.

Every bonus the status window had handed her so far had amounted to nothing more than Hidden Points doled out in dribs and drabs. Dong-hui chewed a Dural fry without much anticipation and waited for the window’s next words.

Hm? What’s that supposed to mean?
Expanding the area around my Activity Radius!
Surely not!

Dong-hui had been lounging back and rubbing her full belly; at the window’s explanation she shot to her feet.

“My lady, what is the matter?”
“You are not ill anywhere, are you?”

The head cook had watched Chloe eat her fill and then shoot upright, and the fright was back in his face. The corners of his mouth were so glossy with oil he might have been wearing lip gloss.

“No, nothing like that. I’m just full, so I thought I’d walk a bit.”

The head cook’s face relaxed visibly at that, and he plumped back down into his seat. For all the times he had muttered that he was fit to burst, his hand went out for another Dural fry.

Leaving that scene behind her, Dong-hui went out into the corridor and turned her attention back to the status window.

What does it mean, expanding the area around my Activity Radius?

Wow!

The first sentence she could have done without, but the explanation that followed it was fantastic, and Dong-hui picked her activation-expansion site without a moment’s hesitation.

In that case it obviously has to be Borimdang.

The alley Borimdang stood in was a whole street of old jeweler’s shops, after all.

However?

Borimdang had come with a time restriction the last time as well, so that much was nothing new.

And what happens if I break the time limit?

Oh, come on!
Dammit!
How much time do I get?

Dingy?

If the status window had a mouth, she would have liked to take hold of it and stretch it right out of shape. A basement studio it certainly was, and dingy with it, but it was also a precious space with the whole of her twenties packed into it.

The window’s needling was getting worse by the day. It might have been taking private lessons in how to be obnoxious.

Dong-hui huffed and puffed for a while, then settled down to think it over properly.

Ten minutes, is it.
That’s not bad at all.
I came out of Borimdang with plenty in ten minutes, so it should be the same anywhere else.

The Activity Radius had changed to 3, and favorability among the residents of the village of Morta had climbed a great deal. But there was also an entry that had never been there before.

Next village unlock available?