Chapter 30

The real glutton’s entrance gave the fake glutton a start.

“Hold on. Is this the one from back then?”
“Looks like it. The one that used to get beaten by the old researcher till the dust flew off it.”
“How is it here? It’s supposed to be locked up.”
“It couldn’t bear the cruel oppression any longer, so it broke out.”

Greed flickered in Moyong Rin’s eyes.

“Perfect. We catch that thing and turn it in!”

She flung herself at it without warning.

— Squeeak!

But the mini Ear Rat shot aside like a loosed arrow. What Moyong Rin succeeded in capturing was one innocent stalk of bamboo.

“Magnificent. You have achieved the splendid feat of capturing a terrifying bamboo.”
“Ugh. Are you making fun of me?”

Moyong Rin got to her feet, brushing off the dirt. The mini Ear Rat circled her, round and round.

— Squeak!

“Oh-ho. Are you taunting me right now?”

She flung herself at it again, and the mini Ear Rat slipped her far too easily. She muttered with a dumbfounded look on her face.

“How is it that fast?”
“Give it up. Like hauling in that little thing is going to win us the contest. Besides, you couldn’t catch it in the first place. It’s far too quick.”
“How on earth did General Hwa Mu-hong catch something like that alive?”
“Good question.”

Instead of running, the mini Ear Rat loitered around us, and we stood there watching it blankly.

“But why isn’t it running off?”
“Good question.”
“Now that I think about it, that is strange. Don’t tell me it followed us all the way out here?”
“Followed this, more precisely.”

I pulled the triangular shard of metal out of my pocket.

“Is this what you want?”

— Squeeak!

The mini Ear Rat rose halfway onto its hind legs and flailed its forepaws at me, as though to say hurry up and hand it over.

Ping— Moyong Rin’s eyes lit up.

“Opening!”

— Crash-bang!

The mini Ear Rat dodged her flying body-slam without effort, climbed up onto her, and waved a forepaw at me.

— Squeak! Squeeak!

“….”

I spent a while watching the historic spectacle of the lord of all creation being trampled underfoot by a mere big-eared rat, and then tossed over a scrap of metal.

“Here you go.”

— Squeeak!

Bold as you like, the mini Ear Rat put on a display of teabagging while it enjoyed its banquet atop Moyong Rin.

Chomp, chomp, chomp— gripping the scrap of metal in both forepaws and gnawing away at it, it looked thoroughly delighted.

“Tasty?”

— Squeak!

“The opening in the opening!”

Moyong Rin had been lying face down, still as a corpse. In one motion she flipped herself over and grabbed for it, but the mini Ear Rat dodged that just as easily.

Chomp, chomp, chomp— the mini Ear Rat, running a mukbang in front of Moyong Rin as though to mock her, pricked up its ears and vanished into the undergrowth.

Moyong Rin pounded the ground with a solid little fist.

“Kkh! It’s infuriating!”
“What’s so infuriating?”

I turned to see who it was, and found Moyong Cheon-bung. The rat must have bolted at the sound of Big Sis Cheon-bung coming.

“Ah, Sis.”

Moyong Cheon-bung turned a cold eye on Moyong Rin, who had scrambled to her feet.

“What sort of state is that? You’re hardly a child from some ill-bred house. Even when nobody is watching, as a member of the proud Moyong Family you should carry yourself properly at all times. What would Father say if he saw you?”

“….”

She studied Moyong Rin’s deeply bowed head with disapproval a moment longer, then turned her gaze on me.

“When will the meal be ready? The ones who went out scouting are all back.”
“It’s nearly done. Tell them to come.”
“Understood.”

Moyong Cheon-bung looked at Moyong Rin one last time. Her mouth worked as though she still had something left to say, but she gave it up at once and turned sharply away.

I stood there looking blankly at Moyong Rin with her head hanging, then picked the fallen leaf out of her hair.

“Sis Cheon-bung. She hates me a lot, doesn’t she?”

Moyong Rin muttered in a crestfallen voice.

“Yeah.”

Her head sank further.

“Still, we get hated together, so isn’t that all right?”

With that comfort that was no comfort at all, I handed her a meat stew made with venison and got to my feet.

This right here is Venison Stew for the Soul, is what I’m saying.

“Eat.”
“Thanks….”

Then I welcomed the next customers.

“Mm!”
“The flavor is outstanding.”
“How is there not a trace of gaminess…?”
“I’ve never eaten anything like this. Is it a kind of meat soup?”
“It’s awfully thick for a meat soup….”
“Gwang-seon. You’re the best!”
“Could I have just a bit more!”
“There’s plenty, so just say the word.”

Grinning, I ladled generous helpings of stew out to them.

The slight awkwardness left over from the earring business last time lasted only a moment; cooking for them had brought us a great deal closer. No mystery there. Cooking is a kind of bond, the strongest cord there is for tying me to other people.

Back at the Moyong Family I only ever fed the ones who happened to drop by now and then, but out here we were on a mission. Nobody could avoid the cooking of the Moyong team’s exclusive chef. Like it or not, they had to eat. So I got to feed every last one of them, and that led naturally to a rise in affinity.

So this is why they make you train together.

Eating and sleeping and living alongside one another, you might call it comradeship. I could feel something tight-knit like that wrapping itself around us.

“Gwang-seon.”
“Yes, Big Bro Gun-ak. Shall I give you some more?”
“Give more to the kids than to me. They’ve worked hard today.”

The big brothers and sisters who used to look at me with such displeasure had a good deal more softness in their eyes now, and I could feel it. Only now, it seemed, had I been recognized as one of the Moyong Family, instead of an outsider who came from nobody knows where.

So this is… family?

“What are you staring at like that?”
“….”

Though of course that didn’t mean everyone had accepted me completely.

“If you’ve something to say, say it.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Hmph.”

I turned my head away from Big Sis Cheon-bung, ladled out a bowl of the meat stew, and headed around the back.

A woman in Mount Hua Sect Daoist robes stood there leaning against a bamboo stalk, chewing away at a fasting pill. As I came near, a faint scent of plum blossom reached me.

“Big Sis Yeon.”

Still chewing, she spoke to me.

“You must be the only one who calls me Big Sis.”
“Sounds like something special. I like it.”
“I don’t.”

Yeon Seo-ha, a Plum Blossom Swordsman of the Mount Hua Sect, had come along as guardian to our Moyong Family team. At first the kids were curious about their new companion and tried striking up all sorts of conversation with her (Moyong Rin especially), but she answered almost entirely in one-word replies, and before long nobody spoke to her anymore (Moyong Rin, glum). For all her looks, she was quite a cold Big Sis.

So she drifted out of the kids’ interest and followed us quietly from a little way off.

There and not there. Like a ghost.

The other kids would see her as nothing more than a cold Mount Hua Daoist, but to me it looked like an effort to carry out the mission she had been given, down to the last detail.

The grown-ups had told them never to step in unless the children’s lives were in danger. Did she think that if she grew close to us, she would end up stepping in when she ought not to?

She shared not one private word with us, and allowed not an inch of slack. She even took her meals apart from us, which is saying something. All of it told me how thoroughgoing she was.

Was that how she became a Plum Blossom Swordsman?

They do say the pro and the amateur are divided by the little things.

But not even a Plum Blossom Swordsman of all people could stop Moyong Gwang-seon the Persistent:

“Big Sis Seo-ha. Venison stew. Have some.”
“I said I’m not eating.”
“At least have a taste.”
“I’m not eating.”
“Why not?”

The Plum Blossom Swordsman swallowed down the fasting pill in her mouth and said,

“If I start taking food out of your mouths that’s one more mouth to feed, and that much more work on top. And it isn’t as if I can help you hunt in return. It isn’t fair. So don’t offer. I won’t eat it.”

I blinked, slightly taken aback.

She had thought it through that far?

Yeon Seo-ha was a far more meticulous sort than I had imagined.

“Is that so?”
“That’s right. So stop being a nuisance and coming round here all the ti— what are you doing?”

I answered while tipping the bowl of venison stew toward the ground.

“This was going to be thrown out anyway. So if Big Sis Seo-ha eats it, that wouldn’t be taking food out of anyone’s mouth, would it?”
“Where do you get such nonsense?”
“I made a bit too much stew this time. Getting rid of the leftovers is work in itself, you know. Help me out just this once.”
“I told you I’m not eating.”
“Then there’s nothing for it, I’ll have to throw it away. The bamboo hereabouts is going to grow uncommonly large.”

The broth began dripping onto the ground. A few more seconds and the earth would have eaten its fill.

“Haaah….”

Yeon Seo-ha sighed like a woman throwing up both hands and both feet in surrender.

“Fine, I lose. Bring that here. Don’t waste it.”
“Ohhh. You’ve saved my life, Big Sis. I had a mountain of worry about what to do with the leftovers.”
“Don’t get cheeky.”
“Yessir.”

Yeon Seo-ha scooped up a spoonful with great care and brought it to her nose.

Sniff, sniff— she smelled it and muttered,

“The smell is certainly good….”
“The taste is good too.”
“Be quiet. I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Yessir.”
“What did you say this dish was?”
“Venison Stew for the Soul.”
“That’s quite a grand name.”

She put the stew in her mouth, carefully, and even closed her eyes as she savored it.

“…Mm.”
“Good, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
“Be quiet a moment.”

Only after she had emptied the bowl completely did Yeon Seo-ha open her mouth.

“…I see now why that lot were making such a fuss.”

She must have been privately curious, watching us eat. She had been making do with meals of tasteless fasting pills, and watching her eat with relish at last, I felt something in me finally settle.

“But you. Why do you keep acting friendly? It won’t get me helping you lot, you know.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what?”
“It’s because I have a sickness.”
“What sickness?”
“The kind where I can’t stand watching somebody pick at their food alone.”
“There’s no such sickness.”
“Turns out there is. I don’t know why, but I can’t stand to see somebody on their own. And I can stand it even less when they’re on their own and not eating properly. Me, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Who knows. Maybe because it’s like looking at how I used to be.”

Yeon Seo-ha gave a snort.

“What. Were you abandoned by your parents as a child or something?”

Her tone was sharp. She seemed to be bristling like a hedgehog on purpose, telling me not to come any closer.

“Yes.”
“…Huh?”
“That’s right. I don’t even know my parents’ faces. A kind-hearted innkeeper took me in, and that’s the only reason I lived. Otherwise I might have starved to death out in the street with the cold wind howling.”
“Don’t lie. You’re one of the Moyong Family.”
“I was adopted.”

“….”

Come to think of it, that was how it was. All this pressing food on people, trying to build some closeness. Isn’t it because I’m afraid of being thrown away?

I got up and held out my hand.

“Give me the bowl. Still, it makes me happy that you ate it all up.”

She snatched the bowl back out of reach.

“?”
“I-I’ll wash this and give it back.”
“Huh? There’s no need. I can just do it along with the rest of the dishes anyway.”
“No! I’m going to wash it and return it. Putting a burden on you lot isn’t fair!”

— Tak!

Before I could stop her she shot straight up and was gone.

“….”

A while later, while I was clearing up with Moyong Rin,

“Th-thank you for the meal.”

Yeon Seo-ha handed the bowl back, unfolded the lightness arts on the spot, and vanished.

“What was that just now? Did I mishear?”

Moyong Rin blinked blankly at the spot where she had disappeared.

I looked at the bowl she had left behind. She had scrubbed it so squeaky clean that my own face seemed to shine back out of it.

The third day of the monster hunt. At last we found traces of a monster.

“It’s here.”

Scorched bamboo stood there, as though a great fire had swept through once. Moyong Pae-cheon examined the traces closely, then spoke.

“It seems to be a Firespit Lizard.”
“A Firespit Lizard?”

It meant a lizard that spits fire.

Does that mean it’s aggressive to match?

I turned to Moyong Rin with a face demanding an explanation, and the answer came straight back.

“It’s exactly what it says. It’s a lizard, and it spits fire.”

For a moment I doubted my own ears.

“It spits fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”

A rat that gnaws through rock looked like an ordinary nobody beside this thing.

Spitting fire. There’s no end to the outlandish monsters in this world.

Only now could I understand why the Ear Rat is called one of the weaker monsters.

“We track it.”

Moyong Pae-cheon took the lead and followed the trail. We went along behind him, keeping watch on every side without letting up for a moment.

Moyong Rin muttered under her breath.

“I hope it’s a big one.”
“If it’s a big one, wouldn’t it spit that much bigger a fire?”
“Probably, yeah?”
“….”

Moyong Rin caught my collar as I was quietly trying to edge backward.

“Where are you going? We catch it together.”
“I’m not feeling well….”
“What are you worried about? If it comes to it you can just use ‘that thing’.”

She glanced around her and whispered it in a small voice.

I gave the ring a light tap, and the battery’s remaining charge came up. I had come in with a generous two and a half bars charged, but at some point all three bars had filled right up, so the night before I used Sleep of Non-Action. Thanks to that, only two bars were left.

Maybe I should have held off.

But how was I supposed to hold out without using it? The gauge was full and wouldn’t charge any further; that much would have been pure loss. Nothing I could do about it.

I glanced back behind me. Yeon Seo-ha the Plum Blossom Swordsman was following along like a ghost.

I can’t use the laser carelessly.

The Moyong Family kids were one thing, but the Plum Blossom Swordsman was watching. If the laser were found out, it would not simply blow over. But right now we were on the verge of a monster hunt. Fearsome creatures made of metal, that was what they were. Any number of perilous situations could arise.

Still, two bars is enough.

Even if a dangerous moment came, I would manage to break through it somehow.

The truth was, I had no great interest in this exchange match. The prizes were said to be tremendous things, but the odds were high that the honor of receiving one would never come to me. Moyong Pae-cheon and the rest of the big brothers and sisters were the ones leading it, so even if we won this exchange match they would be the ones dividing it among themselves. Anyone would say the greatest share of the merit was theirs. That was the plain reality.

My own aim lay elsewhere. Namely, the ruins.

I had to get into the ruins and gather one more star. And so, in the end, complete the constellations.

Let my big brothers and sisters have the prize. I shall take something else in its stead.

Once we drew near the ruins I would watch for a gap, slip away in secret and get to them. That was the plan.

Last time I met Ishtar.

Who would I meet this time? What relic would I come away with this time? What memory would I win back this time?

Maybe I’ll even learn the secret of the ruins.

That was the moment.

— Boom…

A faint vibration came from far off. Moyong Pae-cheon, at the head of the line, stopped in his tracks.

— Boom… Boom… Boom…

The vibration drew steadily closer, then cut off dead with an abrupt snap. Moyong Pae-cheon gave the order in a low voice.

“All hands, draw your swords.”

— Shhing.

The sight of twenty swordsmen drawing their blades as one was quite something. We held our swords out and fixed our eyes ahead.

Gulp— I heard the sound of somebody swallowing hard. Breathing had gone rough with tension. Every one of those signs pointed to one thing.

A battle is upon us.

— Krrrunch—

The moment the bamboo up ahead came toppling down in a rush, Moyong Pae-cheon shouted.

“It’s coming!”

The Firespit Lizard made its entrance, felling bamboo as it came. It was in front of us before the broken bamboo had even touched the ground. Its body ran a good two meters and more in length, and for its size it moved at a tremendous speed. Its long tail ended in what looked like a hanging ball, exactly like a mace.

The lizard swung that tail and brought it down on the ground.

— Boom!

So we finally learned what the booming had been. A few of the ones standing at the front lost their balance in the shockwave and staggered.

— Eeeeee—

A ringing spread through my ears. In that instant, it opened its mouth wide.

The moment the Firespit Lizard’s mouth opened, the frill around its neck spread wide and sparks flew.

I grabbed the shoulders of the ones around me and dropped straight down.

“Get down!!!”

— Fwoooosh!

The flames burned everything in their path to ash.