The Boy in the Shack
Last night, I had kicked my blankets in shame, replaying the embarrassing misunderstanding in my head. It was destined to become one of the few black marks on my life that I’d remember forever. Thanks to Eve’s comfort, I had finally managed to calm my heart and drift off to sleep.
I woke up to the sound of birds chirping in the morning. The bed had felt uncomfortable when I first laid down, but once I settled in, I had fallen asleep almost instantly.
‘I usually can’t sleep when I’m in a new place, but I slept like a log. That’s strange.’
I was usually sensitive, making it hard to sleep in unfamiliar environments, but perhaps my body had changed, making it easier to rest. I rose quietly and opened the wooden window of the room. The village morning was peaceful to a fault. The sunlight streaming in was blinding, and a savory, mouth-watering aroma pricked at my nose.
‘What is that smell?’
As if in sync with the delicious scent, my stomach let out a loud growl. After tidying up the sleeping area with Eve, who had already woken up, we stepped out of the room to see the breakfast the old woman had prepared.
“Oh, sir. Did you sleep comfortably last night?”
“Ah, yes. Thanks to you, I slept very well. By the way, what is this?”
“It’s a soup made with a fresh rabbit caught just last night.”
“Ah… is this the one from yesterday?”
A sudden wave of embarrassment washed over me, and I clenched my fist, but I managed to suppress the feeling. I took a deep breath and looked at the pot.
The contents of the pot seemed to be the soup made from the butchered rabbit I had seen during last night’s commotion. I worried that she might have stayed up all night preparing the meal.
“Come, sit here. And you, please sit right next to him.”
Eve and I pulled out our chairs and sat down. The old woman opened the lid of the pot on the old wooden table and ladled the soup into small bowls. In the bowl sat a soup packed with rabbit meat, steam rising from it in soft swirls.
“Sir, I’m not sure if the seasoning will be to your liking. We used the last of our village’s salt without holding back, so please eat it while it’s warm.”
At her words, I picked up a wooden spoon. Since she called it soup, I had imagined a thick, creamy broth like the corn soup I’d had in my previous life, but the food before me was more like a clear meat stew. Still, the soup, boiled down with various vegetables and rabbit meat, smelled delightful just from the aroma.
I took a large spoonful and put it in my mouth. The broth was thin and light, but the fragrant, meaty flavor spread throughout my mouth without a trace of the gamey smell typical of rabbit. And above all, the saltiness I had been craving so desperately stimulated my tongue intensely.
‘Yes, this is it… this saltiness.’
It was on a completely different level from the bland, artificial taste of the energy bars from the research bunker. The savory, salty flavor lingering on the tip of my tongue felt like it was waking up every cell in my body. Salt, which had been so common in civilized society, was something I hadn’t tasted even once since coming to this strange world. I had craved salty food so much while eating those energy bars…. I ate the soup in silence for a while, emptying the bowl in an instant.
Looking to my side, Eve had also shed her usual indifferent expression, emptying her bowl with a surprisingly serious look in her eyes. It seemed she, too, was captivated by the vitality that ‘real food’ from this world provided. To think I could feel such great happiness from a mere bowl of soup.
“Thank you for the meal, Village Chief. It’s been a long time since I’ve had food made with such care.”
As I expressed my sincere gratitude after cleaning my bowl, the old woman smiled through her deep wrinkles, looking relieved.
“I’m relieved to see you enjoyed it, sir. I was worried it might not suit your palate since it’s humble food from a remote village. Would you like another bowl?”
Only after receiving a second bowl was I truly satisfied. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten meat for breakfast, but I ended up overeating for the first time in a while.
After finishing the meal, a sense of gratitude and guilt washed over me. Thinking of their sincerity in serving us even the last rabbit in the village, it didn’t feel right to leave empty-handed. I quietly opened my inventory and scanned the list.
‘Steel plates, steel rods, copper plates, screws, nails….’
Inside the inventory were only industrial products churned out by the factory. While the factory could produce them in near-infinite quantities, it was difficult to use them practically. Nails were about the only thing that could be considered useful.
Everything else was food, but all I had were energy bars that tasted like dirt. Giving those as a reward was something I couldn’t bring myself to do. I asked Eve, who was standing beside me, in a low voice.
“Eve, I want to repay the villagers somehow…. But all we have are these industrial products. Would these be of any help?”
Eve scanned the village’s shabby tools for a moment and whispered back to me.
“Metal itself is very rare in this village. Even if they could work with it, they lack proper smelting facilities, so they likely heat up rusted, bent scrap metal to use. Therefore, whatever you give them will be a decent reward. Even if they can’t use it, they could sell it.”
Encouraged by Eve, I gained some courage. Thinking of the village’s worn-out farming tools and broken wooden fences, I decided to take out ten steel rods of a suitable length.
“Village Chief, this is a small token of my appreciation for the meal.”
As I finished speaking, I first took out five steel plates and five steel rods.
Clatter.
The moment the heavy steel plates and rods were placed on the table, the air in the room froze cold. The old Village Chief, as well as the women helping nearby, stiffened without even being able to scream. Their eyes were filled with shock and bewilderment.
‘Ah, right.’
Come to think of it, the concept of an ‘inventory’ didn’t exist for ordinary people. Since metal had suddenly appeared out of thin air where there was nothing, it must have looked like I was suddenly using magic.
“W-wait, let me explain!”
“S-sir….”
The old woman’s voice trembled uncontrollably. She bowed lower and lower until her head touched the floor, and she knelt down.
“No, Village Chief! Please, get up. This is just a function of the equipment I have. It’s nothing that grand.”
“To think you were someone who enjoyed the benefits of ancient civilization. We… we dared not recognize someone like you and caused you trouble.”
I was flustered and tried to help the old woman up, but her attitude became even more deferential. The sight of me suddenly pulling items out of thin air seemed more shocking than anything she had seen in her entire life. The Village Chief now seemed convinced that I was a person of such high status that she dared not even look at me.
“We dared not recognize someone like you and caused you trouble. Please, forgive us.”
“I told you, it’s not like that. I just wanted to give you a few steel plates and rods as a reward, so please, just take them. Use these steel rods for the village tools. It’s fine to sell them, too.”
The steel rods and plates I held out were flawlessly refined without a single impurity, emitting a subtle glow. They were high-purity items that couldn’t even be compared to rusted, rough scrap metal. The old woman looked at the steel rods with eyes full of awe, then shook her head.
“Sir, I am grateful for your heart, but we dare not accept such high-grade metal. Such precious things are too much for country bumpkins like us to handle. If it becomes known that such treasure is in our village, it might even bring disaster. Please, take them back.”
The old woman was genuinely afraid. She was telling me that items too perfect could sometimes become a catastrophe for the poor. I tried to offer a reward, but the old woman adamantly refused, and the tug-of-war continued.
Eventually, when I made a troubled expression, the old woman seemed to make up her mind, and while still prostrate on the floor, she opened her heavy lips.
“…Sir, if you truly wish to bestow grace upon us, may I ask for a different, earnest favor instead of this precious metal? It is something only you can do, something only you can resolve.”
The old woman’s voice became serious. I stopped trying to put the steel rods back into my inventory and looked at her.
“What is the favor? If it’s something I can help with, I will try.”
“Yesterday, I told you there were no men in the village, but in truth, there is one single man in the village.”
“Yes?”
The old woman had clearly said yesterday that there were no men at all, but suddenly she confessed that there was one.
“I am truly sorry for deceiving you. Even if I said there was a man in a poor village, it would only give others an excuse to invade, so I was hiding him.”
“No… it’s fine.”
Hearing that, it made sense. In a world where men were rare, there would certainly be people trying to kidnap them from other villages. If they didn’t have the ability to protect a man, hiding him was the best option.
“In our village… there is my only grandson. He is not my biological grandson, but I have cherished him like my own.”
The old woman was fidgeting, wringing her hands.
“He is the village’s only blessing and, at the same time, its pain. I cherished him dearly and treated him as precious, wanting for nothing. But for a few months now, he has refused to come outside and hasn’t left the house.”
The old woman’s story was heartbreaking. The boy’s mother was an outsider who had come from elsewhere. Since they had lived in a city with many people before coming here, the population was much larger, and it seemed there were many women in the city who had targeted the boy.
In a world where men were extremely scarce, the boy’s mother had injected him with the fear that ‘women are beasts that will harm you’ every single day, with the sole intention of protecting her son. At the time, it was a valid method of discipline because women were indeed targeting her son, but unfortunately, a firm stereotype had formed in the boy’s mind.
‘Women are dangerous.’
The boy and his mother, who had moved to the village after living in the city, seemed to be living happily as members of the village, but the mother’s overprotection never stopped. His mother usually got along well with the villagers, but whenever the subject of her son came up, she would become sharply defensive and refuse to speak further.
The villagers were taken aback by her reaction, but they understood to some extent. They knew about the circumstances before she came to the village, and they understood the scarcity of men. They knew of the boy’s existence, but they lived as if he didn’t exist.
However, not even a few years after the two of them arrived in the village, terrible news was heard. The boy’s mother had died while out gathering food.
“A few months ago, the boy’s mother fell from a tree while picking fruit, and she broke her neck and died….”
After his mother’s death, the boy became even more reclusive, and now he had become a patient with social phobia who wouldn’t even make eye contact with anyone in the village.
“Since his mother died, the villagers have been taking special care to help him so he wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but it seems it was very hard for him to live without his mother. For the first month or two, he ate silently and learned work well, but one day, he stopped coming out of his room. It’s already been three months since he locked himself away. I don’t want to force him out. I just want him to open his heart, but since you are a man like him… could you please show him that the world is not a scary place?”
“…Should I be the one to get him to come out?”
“It’s fine if he doesn’t come out. I’m just pinning a small hope on it.”
At the old woman’s earnest request, I fell into thought for a moment. In truth, what this village needed most might not be a few steel rods; the existence of the only man left in a gender ratio where men were overwhelmingly scarce might be more important than I thought.
“…I understand. I’ll try talking to him.”
“Thank you!”
At my answer, the old woman bowed her head again and expressed her gratitude repeatedly. As soon as I said I would grant her request, she led me to the boy immediately after the meal.
The place we arrived at, guided by the old woman, was a small shack built in a secluded corner on the outskirts of the village where even sunlight barely reached. Built with much sturdier timber than the other houses, it must have been where the boy and his mother had lived together.
The inside of the house had a strangely eerie atmosphere. There was almost no sense of daily life, and it smelled musty, as if it hadn’t been maintained for a long time. Eve and I followed the old woman to a door. The old woman knocked carefully and said.
“It’s Grandma…. I’ve brought a precious guest. Would you open the door for a moment?”
The old woman asked the boy in a trembling voice, but no answer came from inside. Only a heavy silence hung around the shack.
“Are you sure he’s inside?”
“…Yes. It’s not just coming out, he won’t even talk to me.”
Eve, who was behind me, whispered quietly in my ear.
“I can sense a presence inside. It’s a faint sound, so it’s hard to hear, but it’s certain that someone is in the room.”
At Eve’s words, I took a deep breath and grabbed the doorknob. Honestly, I had never even tried to counsel someone about their troubles in my life. Would I really be able to resolve his deep-seated aversion to women? I wasn’t sure.
Still, it was sincere that I wanted to do something for the villagers who had treated me kindly. Since I had come this far, I would at least try, even if I failed.
I slowly pulled the doorknob I was holding.
Creeeeeak.
With an unpleasant friction sound, the scene inside the dark room was revealed. It was the moment a shadow, huddled tightly in the corner of the room, entered my eyes along with the musty smell of dust. I signaled to the old woman and Eve standing behind me and quietly closed the door again.
I approached him carefully so as not to provoke the boy who was curled up in a small ball. When I actually got close, the boy was smaller than I thought. I couldn’t see his face, but was he roughly 11? 12 years old? I was about to pat his head for a moment, but I pulled my hand back.
‘I shouldn’t provoke him rashly.’
Putting my hand behind my back, I sat down in front of the boy and greeted him.
“…Hello?”