Are You Really an Immortal?

Feeding him nothing but rice felt a little too plain, I thought.

The notion struck me out of nowhere. He'd apparently been starving in the mountains for days, and a single bowl of white rice didn't look like nearly enough. If I was going to paint something anyway, a side dish on the side couldn't hurt.

I was mulling over what to draw when my mouth suddenly watered.

Dongpo pork.

The flavor I'd never forgotten after splurging on it exactly once in my previous life. Pork ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠belly braised long and slow in soy sauce until it gleamed with a glossy sheen. It collapsed into mush the moment your chopsticks touched it, melted in your mouth without so much as a chew. The fat was springy like jelly, and the rich seasoning had seeped deep into every fiber of the meat—

Just thinking about it made me drool.

That's it. That's today's dish. And while I was at it, I'd have a plate myself.

I raised my brush.

This was not the kind of thing you could dash off carelessly. With food, looking appetizing was half the battle. I worked the ink's shading to bring out the sheen first—leaving the light-catching surfaces thin and slick, pressing deep tones into the shadows for dimension. I built up the grain of the meat layer by layer, capturing at the tip of my brush that luscious gloss of soy sauce flowing in slow rivulets.

And finally, the steam curling up in soft wisps.

The moment I lifted the brush, two plates of dongpo pork rose smoothly off the paper in their bowls.

Steam rose, and the rich scent of soy sauce hit the air like a slap. That sweet, salty, fatty aroma spread until it filled the whole courtyard.

Beside me, the woman's hand froze mid-scoop of rice.

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At the scent brushing past her nose, she turned her head before she knew it.

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What the man had just painted: a mass of meat glistening with a glossy brown sheen. Steam swirled up from it in lazy curls, and between the wisps drifted a sweet, deep fragrance of soy sauce.

Gulp.

She swallowed.

No. This won't do. A Young Cult Master must remain detached from things like food. To not so much as blink before a table of mountains-and-seas delicacies—that was the dignity befitting the Heavenly Demon's daughter. To be swayed by a single scrap of meat? Unthinkable.

She forced her gaze away. Paying such things no glance at all—that was what befitted the Young Cult Master of the Demonic Cult—

"Try it. This is a quietly good dish, actually."

The man slid a plate toward her.

She meant to refuse. She truly did this time. The words I'm fine were already climbing up her throat.

And yet her chopsticks were already, entirely without her consent, reaching for that mass of meat. As though her hand had resolved to betray its master.

She picked up a piece. She hadn't applied the slightest pressure, and the meat still fell apart limply between her chopsticks.

She put it in her mouth.

…!

Her eyes went wide.

There was nothing to chew. The moment it touched her tongue, it simply melted away. The salty depth of the soy sauce, a faint sweetness threading beneath it, and then a rich, savory oiliness flooding her whole mouth—into a stomach starved for days on end, that flavor struck like a bolt of lightning.

The world turned white.

Something seemed to burst—pop—inside her head. The Young Cult Master, the Heavenly Demon's daughter, the pursuit squad hunting the traitor, the man's power she had to claim for herself—for that single moment, all of it vanished. Every ounce of that weight which had crushed her for half a year melted away without a trace before one piece of meat.

All that remained was this one blissful mouthful on her tongue.

'Th-this is… what is this…?'

By the time she came back to her senses, her chopsticks were already reaching for the plate again.

A piece of meat, a spoonful of rice. Another piece of meat, another spoonful of rice. At first she tried to eat with elegance. Slowly, with dignity. But from the second piece on, that resolution flew off to some distant place. That haughty, imperious face of hers was now stuffed cheek-bulging full, eating like a squirrel hoarding for winter.

Pretending to eat gracefully? She'd forgotten all about that long ago.

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I watched the scene with a fond smile.

This was the woman who'd been holding court just moments ago, declaring she would graciously deign to eat. And now she was shoveling rice into her face until her cheeks bulged. Eyes glazed over half-lidded, soy sauce glaze smeared at the corner of her mouth, an expression of unhideable rapture spreading across her face.

Undoubtedly the face of someone who'd just taken a round trip to paradise.

Well, she had been starving for days—of course it'd hit hard. Maybe she'd simply never had anything this good even growing up. If she was going to enjoy it that much, she should have just been honest and said she was hungry from the start.

I picked up a piece of my own dongpo pork and asked, casually.

"…Good, isn't it?"

"…….!"

The woman froze, chopsticks stopped midair. Apparently she'd only just become aware of her own state. Cheeks still stuffed, her face went bright red.

She chewed, chewed, and finally managed to swallow.

"…It's, it's merely adequate."

Straining to sound imperious, she smoothed out her voice.

"This one has tasted far greater delicacies from the mountains and seas, time and again. This is simply… a light snack, nothing more."

And even as she said it, her chopsticks had already picked up the next piece of meat.

She could put on all the dignified airs she wanted—it was far too late. The soy sauce stain at the corner of her mouth, and those chopsticks that never stopped moving, were betraying her entire majesty, root and branch.

Holding back a laugh, I picked up my brush again.

Delicacies from the mountains and seas, was it.

Come to think of it, something had just surfaced in my mind.

A few days ago, when this woman had asked me to paint her father. I had looked at her face and painted the man from it. My hand had moved on its own, drawing out a single old, worn-down fellow.

I'd brushed it off without much thought at the time.

But looking back now, that face seemed oddly familiar. No—not ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just familiar.

…The Heavenly Demon.

The final boss of my manhwa. The devil of the heavens who held the entire martial world beneath his feet. The face of that demon god, into which I had packed ten full years' worth of menace and dread in every stroke.

The old father I had drawn resembled the Heavenly Demon.

No—not merely resembled—

'…Could it be. This woman.'

I glanced sideways. At the woman who was eating dongpo pork with a haughty face, then froze mid-bite as she felt my gaze.

Looking back, nothing about her had been ordinary from the very start. She'd been desperate enough for power to throw her life away for a single brush. She'd treated killing people as a triviality. And above all, her eyes had gone strange whenever her father came up.

The Heavenly Demon's daughter.

—Seol-ah.

Han Seol-ah.

That girl I'd drawn for ten years.

My chopsticks stopped too.

Why hadn't I recognized the name when I heard it? Why had I let it slide when her face seemed familiar? I'd had my excuses. The girl in my manhwa was supposed to be seated as Young Cult Master of the Demonic Cult—not some girl in black wandering the mountains.

Besides, a face drawn in my art style and a real face of flesh and bone were similar without being the same face. So I'd let myself off easy and decided she was just someone with the same name.

And yet this woman was now wandering outside the Demonic Cult alone. A straw hat pulled low over her head, mooching meals off a painter's cottage in the mountains. With the face of someone who looked to be about twenty.

…That was a scene I had never drawn.

Over my ten years of serialization, there had been a few places where I skipped far ahead in time. From when she ascended to the Young Cult Master's seat, all the way until just before the Great Orthodox-Demonic War—same thing. Years passed within a single chapter. What she did and where she went in between, I never drew. And what I didn't draw, I don't know.

The present was precisely that gap.

In the blank space I hadn't drawn, the girl I had drawn was out there living. The girl I'd done nothing but push into deeper and darker depths for ten years, never once managing to pull her back up—she was now sitting beside me, stuffing dongpo pork into her cheeks.

…I didn't know what to say about that.

I'd thought that far, then hastily shut the thought away.

Let it be. What was I going to do about it here and now? If I pried into why she'd wandered into the mountains, or what had happened with her father, I'd only get tangled up in troublesome business.

I had never, by nature, liked sticking my nose into other people's affairs.

It was just—

The sight of her sobbing her heart out at that painting of her father, it bothered me a little. Whether she was the Heavenly Demon's daughter or the girl I'd drawn, a child crying because she missed her father was simply a child.

Well, anyway. That was that.

What mattered right now was something else entirely.

Delicacies from the mountains and seas, she'd said. Exotic dishes and expensive liquor by the dozen—the Heavenly Demon's daughter surely hadn't lacked for any of it.

And yet.

She'd never tasted this, surely.

I dipped my brush in the ink.

Honestly, I doubted it would work.

Sofas and recliners had come out fine despite being absent from the martial world. But food was a different question, wasn't it? It wasn't enough for the appearance to be right—the taste had to come through too. Could a flavor that existed nowhere in this world really manifest properly?

Ah, whatever. If it works, it works.

I drew a single transparent glass. Filled it with a jet-black liquid, dotted in the tiny bubbles fizzing up from the bottom, and added a cool sheen of condensation beading on the glass's surface.

Cola.

That black, fizzy, biting drink I'd gulped down so obsessively in my previous life. The exact taste that came to mind, without fail, every time after eating something rich and greasy. There was nothing better to pair with dongpo pork.

I lifted the brush.

Fzz—

In the glass, tiny bubbles really did begin to rise, bobbling and popping.

"Oh. It actually worked."

The admiration slipped out of me before I knew it. So this kind of thing worked too. Carbonation popping in tiny bursts across the surface of that black liquid—without a doubt, that was real cola.

I nudged the glass toward the woman.

"Have a sip of this too."

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She looked down at the thing before her with suspicion.

A black liquid, in a transparent glass.

The near-black color looked deeply suspicious. Worse, the fine foam rising ceaselessly to the surface made it look as though some poison were boiling away. In the Demonic Cult, a liquid of this color was, nine times out of ten, a lethal poison meant to kill a man.

'…Soy sauce, perhaps?'

She surmised it must be that soy sauce from the dongpo pork, thinned with water. Try as she might, no other explanation came to her.

She raised the glass to the tip of her nose and sniffed.

An unfamiliar scent. Sweet, yet sharp and biting somewhere underneath—a fragrance she had never smelled before. Not soy sauce. Not liquor, and not tea, either. A scent she had never once encountered anywhere in the martial world.

A flicker of wariness crossed her mind.

But the memory of that dongpo pork pressed the wariness back down. If the man had painted it for her, then at the very least the taste was guaranteed.

She tilted the glass and took a sip.

That instant.

Fizz— something sharp and biting burst across her tongue.

"…?!"

Her eyes flew wide open.

Cold, ‍‍‌‌⁠⁠‌‍‍‌⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠‌‌‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and sweet, and yet sharply stinging. Thousands of tiny droplets burst in her mouth all at once, prickling at her tongue like needles. And the moment that cool sensation slid down her throat, she shivered without meaning to.

Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.

Such a taste existed in this world? Such a sensation? Neither hot nor cold, neither spicy nor sweet. All of those things at once and none of them at all—something entirely, completely new.

Her mouth, heavy and coated from the fatty pork, was washed clean and refreshed by that single sip. And that freshness was already calling for another piece of meat.

'…This is…'

As if under a spell, she took another swallow.

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Watching her reaction, I smirked.

Figured. I knew she wouldn't have had this.

That's usually how people react to their first taste of cola—jolted wide-eyed by the fizzy bite, then quickly bewitched by the coolness afterward. Even that haughty woman was no exception.

"Ever had anything like this before?"

I asked, just a little needling.

The woman flinched, glass still in hand. She'd been caught drinking it in a trance.

"…No. This is my first time seeing it."

This time she admitted it freely. None of the bluster from before, none of that I've tasted far greater things nonsense. Fair enough—no amount of insisting could make this something she'd tried before. It didn't exist in this world.

She gazed quietly down at the black liquid in her glass.

Then, abruptly, she stared straight at me.

Her eyes were gravely weighing something. A man who conjured food that existed nowhere in the world, sent a dragon soaring into the sky, and turned a martial technique away with an umbrella. It was as if she were trying to measure his true nature all over again.