Summer Escape (2)
They say a teacher’s authority is the sum of their everyday conduct, but watching Patrick in his current state made it hard to imagine him ever becoming an authoritative mentor.
“Uweeegh!”
After being swept up by the waves for that brief moment, he kept retching, expelling seawater, yet still managed to boast, “Did you see? I was the first one to jump in! Tommy, this is the kind of person your teacher is! You know that, right? Huh? U-urgh!”
He was laying it on so thick that it was difficult to feel genuinely impressed.
“He would’ve looked cooler if he’d just stayed still.”
“Right. Hearing him say it himself just makes it annoying.”
Everyone would have been properly moved and impressed on their own if he hadn’t opened his mouth.
“Aigoo, I’m dying, I’m dying.”
Having finished retching, Patrick flopped back down onto the sand. Coming here to escape the heat had nearly made him escape life itself, and the once-beautiful beach now felt utterly repulsive.
“I should’ve just stayed home slicing fruit.”
“Come on, it was nice until you fell in.”
“If the ending’s bad, the whole thing’s bad.”
“Then how about trying some fishing?”
“Fishing? Didn’t you say there aren’t any big fish here?”
“With your skill, Teacher, you wouldn’t catch a big one anyway. Besides, there are plenty of small ones. If you drop a line by those rocks over there, you’ll catch a lot.”
“When we play here, we catch fish and grill them! They bite really well.”
“Really?”
Patrick had looked ready to pack up and leave at any moment, yet the mention of easy catches had him hooked again in an instant.
“I brought a fishing rod just in case, you know?”
A fishing rod even emerged from the pile of luggage.
“I can’t tell if Teacher is prepared or not.”
Thwack!
Ben, who had offered that heartfelt assessment, received an unprovoked smack on the head, only for Patrick to get one in return.
Thwack!
“Ow!”
—Don’t hit my contractor!
Patrick had been repaid in kind by a spirit who failed to understand the subtle complexities of human affection.
“Are those sauries?”
When they reached the fishing spot the children had mentioned, schools of fish could be seen wriggling beneath the clear seawater. Pointed snouts, slender blue bodies—definitely sauries.
“They’re a bit small, but it’s fine, right? They bite really well!”
The children dangled makeshift rods—twigs with string and needles—into the sea.
“You think you’ll catch anything with that?”
Plop!
“Let’s grill them all together later! By the way, Teacher, what did you just say?”
“……Nothing. Just keep at it.”
“Okay!”
Born on the island, the children seemed blessed by the Dragon King himself, pulling in fish the moment they dipped a twig into the water.
“How many are you planning to catch?”
“Hmm, maybe enough to take some home too?”
Look at them. ‘They don’t even consider the option of not catching anything.’
Having attempted fishing countless times on the island without ever achieving a satisfying haul, Patrick felt genuine envy watching the children.
—How was the test? I think I got them all right.
—Same here. It wasn’t that hard, was it?
—Want to compare answers?
It reminded him of the advanced class show-offs gathering right after exams to have such conversations.
“Life……”
Life really was unfair……
Flop flop flop!
“Huh? Huh?!”
“Teacher, now! Pull it up now!”
“Not too hard, or it’ll get away!”
“R-right!”
The best way to escape envy was to focus on one’s own task. The moment he felt a bite, all those childish feelings toward the children vanished.
“Got it! I caught one!”
A plump saury traced a perfect arc through the air before landing at Patrick’s feet, flapping about.
“Whoa! Look at this!”
His excitement was at maximum. It wasn’t a premium fish, just a saury the size of a handspan. He would later learn that the villagers didn’t even bother eating them unless the children caught them as play. Still—
“We should grill it over charcoal as a snack!”
Everything tasted good when grilled over charcoal! ‘Ah—this is exactly when soju would be perfect.’
Having bacon instead of pork belly, wine instead of soju, and wild chives instead of garlic was tolerable once or twice, but today the memory of past meals felt especially vivid.
“So this is where you were, Mage!”
Just then, a familiar voice called from afar.
“Oren?”
“I finally got what you asked for! Haha!”
The good-natured merchant held up a single flowerpot from a distance.
“……!”
Things one yearned for even in dreams had a way of catching the eye no matter the physical distance. Patrick was experiencing that now.
“Th-that’s……!”
He tossed aside the fishing rod he had been cherishing and began walking as if entranced, soon breaking into a run. That was how much he had wanted it.
A plant with lush green leaves bearing long, red fruit!
“My gochujang! My gochugaru!”
Patrick nearly howled.
***
“It really existed……!”
Oren had even brought garlic.
“Still, it’s fortunate there are more places handling it now compared to before. A few years ago, unless you were near a trading port, only high-end ingredient shops carried small amounts, so obtaining seedlings would have been nearly impossible.”
Oren explained that it was thanks to the expanding palates of the nobility, which had brought in new spices and vegetables from not only the Eastern Continent but beyond. Patrick didn’t particularly care about the details.
“So, can we get enough of these seedlings?”
He was tempted to clear his entire garden and grow nothing but chili peppers and garlic.
“That might be difficult. While obtaining them has become easier, not many places carry the seedlings.”
“Then how many……?”
Urgency filled Patrick’s green eyes.
“About this much? This is probably the best I can do for the garlic.”
After checking the quantities, Patrick fell into thought. ‘Is this enough? Sigh—I don’t know. To make a whole jar of gochujang, I need to know how many peppers it takes.’
He couldn’t even make gochujang with just this. Gochugaru didn’t exactly fall from the sky.
“You’ll need to decide quickly. For rare seedlings, you have to confirm the quantity now if you want them delivered next spring……”
“What? Next year?”
“Yes. The seed merchant said these need to be planted in spring.”
Whoosh— Patrick’s face crumpled with all his might. ‘What? I have to wait another year?’
He had thrown away his fishing rod thinking he could finally taste spice again, only for this. ‘There’s nothing worse than having something given and then taken away.’
From irritation to anger, anger to despair, despair back to sorrow—Patrick’s expression shifted transparently with each passing second.
Yet instead of offering sympathy, Oren and the Village Chief, who had come with him, merely wore meaningful smiles as they watched his face.
“……?”
When the two men, who would normally have been as distressed as if it were their own problem, seemed to be holding back laughter, Patrick finally noticed something was off and blinked.
“We’re already past the middle of summer, so turning back time to spring is impossible. However, what about this?”
At the Village Chief’s words, Oren signaled his attendant. The cover draped over the carriage was pulled away, revealing a large sack.
Swish.
When the sack’s mouth was opened, inside was—
“……Gochugaru!”
“Achoo! Cough cough!”
“Ugh—it’s spicy!”
A breeze blew toward the children who had followed along, and the distinctive spicy aroma filled the air. Unaccustomed to the smell, the children teared up and began sneezing.
“Seedlings are hard to come by, but spices are fairly available, so I picked some up on my way back from the capital. Haha.”
At Oren’s explanation, Patrick’s eyes grew dreamy.
“With the money I have…… I want to buy as much as I can! How much is it, Oren?”
He quickly calculated how much money remained in his possession, then collapsed to his knees in despair once more.
“Right, I don’t have any money!”
“Pfft!”
“Quiet, you’ll make Teacher cry!”
Someone once said life was a tragedy up close and a comedy from afar. The children thought their teacher looked exactly like the protagonist of a play they had seen at a city festival.
‘Building the village hall was a mistake…… My kimchi jjigae! Bibim-guksu! Dakdoritang!’
Yet if one endured tragedy, hope would come.
“I promoted men’s cosmetics in the capital this time, and the results were quite good.”
“Pardon?”
“Since our merchant group doesn’t have distribution channels in the capital, we had no choice but to work with another group. And here……”
The contract Oren produced listed an advance payment for technical consultation rights. It wasn’t enough to change one’s life, but—
“With this much, you should be able to purchase as many spices as you’d like after a bit of consideration. Haha.”
***
Excited by the sack of gochugaru, Patrick immediately set up a makeshift kitchen on the beach. Word spread that he was boiling a strange soup with an unfamiliar red spicy powder, and villagers who had finished their work began gathering one by one.
“Ah, just try it once, I’m telling you.”
Bubble bubble—
“Cough cough! I’m not eating it!”
“This is the taste of adulthood, you brats.”
“Even our dad probably couldn’t eat that.”
“Here, here—Teacher, have a drink first!”
“You kids want some of this?”
He cleaned the sauries, cut a large radish into chunks, and braised them with plenty of gochugaru and garlic. Adults whose faces turned bright red from the unfamiliar spiciness poured drinks to extinguish the fire in their mouths, and the gathering instantly turned into a boisterous festival of “Pour!” and “Drink!”
Hearing rumors that several village men were drinking with the teacher, the women also began to gather, preparing snacks and meals for the children. With treats in one hand and drinks in the other, the children ran about while the adults shared food and alcohol to their hearts’ content. The scene was enough to stir the hearts of the Village Chief and the middle-aged merchant who had long ties to the island.
“Such an abundant summer.”
Summer in the countryside was neither this leisurely nor this beautiful. Though it was the season when trees bore fruit and crops ripened, this was a small island village where money had always been scarce. For them, using precious spices generously in cooking or frying snacks in plenty of oil for the children had been unimaginable luxuries.
“It’s all thanks to the teacher.”
“……By the way, what exactly is the teacher doing right now?”
“……I’m not sure either.”
The two men, who had been watching the villagers with warm expressions, now wore awkward smiles.
“Want some? Should I fillet it for you? No, it’s not a bother! How could it be? What I want? No, I just want to get closer to you all. Ah, you want this? I’ll cool it down first, cool it down. The radish is so hot.”
The mage was flat on his stomach in front of the spirit, desperately currying favor. It was a sight so pitiful that it was hard to see him as the village’s benefactor.
That was how summer passed.