The Great Swordmaster’s Happy Meal
Geom Mujin walked into the tavern with the child in tow.
- Three apple pies here! And one order of seasoned fries!
- When’s the drink refill coming?!
- Waaaah!! Buy it for me! Buy it for me!
- Mom’s leaving, so Dambi can just live here!
"Welcome!"
As we stepped into the noisy shop, the martial-arts-world version of a kiosk—the waiter—shot us a greeting at lightning speed.
The way his waist bent to a perfect forty-five degrees told me this wasn’t his first rodeo.
Right near the waiter’s eyebrow was a dark mole the size of a five-hundred-won coin.
What people called a lucky mole. Even among waiters, that was a rare talent.
Yep, definitely a big corporation.
Even their waiters were clearly handpicked.
"Got a seat?"
And I tossed that rare talent a curt, casual question.
It wasn’t that I lacked manners. It was just the social climate.
After all, in Murim, talking down to a waiter was basically the law of the land. (It wasn’t.)
Waiters were one of the three worst jobs in Murim, and if you showed them any respect, people would look at you like you’d lost your mind.
"Ah, we do, but it’s a bit out of the way. Will that be all right?"
I looked at the table he pointed out.
Sure enough, it was so tucked away it didn’t even have a window beside it.
I wasn’t thrilled, but it was lunchtime and the tavern was packed to the second floor, so we didn’t have much choice.
"Doesn’t matter."
"Yes, sir! This way, please!"
We followed the waiter to our seats.
"Here’s the menu, sir."
"I’ll take one Great Vein set."
I was tempted by those hamburgers they’d developed over in some place called Shanghai in Jiangnan, but today I was feeling this instead.
"Kid, for you... ah."
Geom Mujin froze when he saw the child’s face as she stared at the menu with a look that said, I don’t know about any of that.
She’d lived as an experiment until now. Of course she wouldn’t know how to read.
Not that I was looking down on her. It was just how things were.
To an illiterate kid, colored pictures were drawings and black marks were letters.
We still had a long way to go.
I swallowed a sigh and looked back down at the menu.
"Huh?"
"......"
Just as I was about to pick for her, something caught my eye.
The child was staring intently at one corner of the menu.
The menu wasn’t just text; it also had food illustrations, so even if you couldn’t read, you could choose by picture.
Yep, definitely a big corporation.
I could practically feel the iron-clad determination to squeeze money out of illiterates, too.
This was how they made money, huh?
But what was she staring so hard at?
I craned my neck and checked the menu myself.
Happy Meal?
A happy meal?
[This Month’s Happy Meal!]
Next to the item labeled Happy Meal were little drawings of a kid-friendly hamburger, drink, and other value-packed foods.
But what stood out wasn’t that.
It was what was printed below it.
[Eat a Happy Meal now and meet the heroes of Murim, the Seven Martial Stars!]
Beneath the food illustration were seven silhouettes with question marks over them.
So that’s why the tavern was weirdly full of kids.
Still, whatever else happened, this body was one of the Seven Martial Stars, so there was no way I could pass this up.
"Get the kid one Happy Meal."
I hope they gave me a toy of myself.
"Yes, sir!"
The waiter answered with vigor, then lowered his head with a satisfied smile and walked off.
And there goes another one.
It was the smile of a spider watching prey fly into the web it had already spread.
The Happy Meal, which was supposedly meant to make children happy not just in their mouths but in their hearts too, had another name among parents.
A meal so harmful to a parent’s leather wallet that it made them desperately want to avoid it—Happy Meal, also known as the Wallet Destroyer.
- Buy it! Buy it! Aaaahhh!!
- I’m not going home!
- Happy Meals must be collected in full. Unite! Fight!
Once children saw the Happy Meal toys, they’d undergo a dark evolution beyond even “problem child” status and become the full-blown nightmare child from hell.
And parents who weren’t chosen by fate to straighten those little monsters out had no choice but to surrender their wallets.
The Happy Meal was deadly not only to children but to adults too.
Anyway, the assailed guardian of child-rearing known as Geom Mujin had now stepped into that cycle of suffering.
"......"
Across from me, the child shifted in her seat in tiny jerks like a puppy with a bellyache, sneaking looks at me.
Jiggle— jiggle—
She was unconsciously drawn to the Happy Meal, but she couldn’t even bring herself to ask for it... no, she couldn’t even bring herself to think about asking.
Then he saw straight through her feelings and ordered it for her.
Instead of happiness, what she felt first was worry—was this really okay?
"What’s wrong?"
"..Is it okay...?"
It was a question without a proper object, but Geom Mujin understood what she meant.
He’d built up a fair amount of insight into her on the way here.
"Ha. You’re asking all sorts of things."
I gave the child a laugh, half-amused and half-astonished, and smiled at her.
If I had to put it into words, it was the kind of smile an uncle gives when he sneaks his niece out without her parents knowing.
"I can buy a hundred things like this."
I was the sort of guy who saved on taxi fare and wandered around with no home and no money to my name—though to be precise, I wasn’t lacking much except a home and money to my name.
It wasn’t like I was so broke I couldn’t afford one lousy Happy Meal.
"So when stuff like this happens, you just say thank you. Got it?"
She was the type to constantly read the room and refuse everything, so I had to nail this down firmly.
"......"
At that age, kids absorbed everything like a sponge, and after working her lips for a moment, she followed his lead and gave her thanks.
"...Okay. Thank you."
"No, that was too casual."
Only she took it so literally that it became a problem.
"You’ve got to say thank you properly to adults."
"Thank... you...?"
"Yeah."
I nodded, feeling strangely drained by the conversation.
Huh?
While we waited for the food we’d ordered, one question suddenly popped into my head.
If you make merchandise like this, shouldn’t you get permission from the people involved and pay royalties?
Was this just the kind of era where copyright hadn’t even been born yet, so they made and sold whatever they wanted?
Tsk. Savage bastards.
Geom Mujin clicked his tongue inwardly, but he was speaking from ignorance.
Aside from him, the other six of the Seven Martial Stars were receiving annual dividends from the Happy Meal line.
It was an age without copyright, sure, but it was also an age where self-help was rampant.
They were making money by merchandising Murim legends like the Seven Martial Stars however they pleased?
Then it was time for self-help—specifically, collection.
And their target was one of the most famous heroes in all of Murim.
If even one of them made a move, there’d be no need to wonder how things would end; they’d be forced to shut the whole operation down.
To avoid that disaster, they naturally signed contracts that gave the Seven Martial Stars a share of the profits.
So what about Geom Mujin?
While the others sat back and counted coins with their toes, why was he out here saving taxi fare to prepare for retirement?
Contracts were something made between people and people—not between people and some barbarian who merely insisted on being treated like a person. (That was basically the majority opinion in the Central Plains.)
He’d simply been barbarianed upon by other barbarians.
* * *
About twenty minutes later, the food finally arrived.
"Here’s your food, sir!"
The waiter set a rectangular tray on the table, one in each hand.
"Enjoy!"
"Oh, wow."
The smell of the hamburger and fries tickled my nose.
It had been a while since I’d had a burger, but my attention was elsewhere.
It was the small box that had come with the Happy Meal.
"H-hey, open it already."
"Okay."
With Geom Mujin urging her on like he was more excited than the kid, the child tore open the seal on the box.
Riiip—
At last, the toy revealed itself inside.
"Huh?"
His wish had come true: out came himself.
But once he saw the toy’s appearance, his face hardened quickly.
A man in a black bamboo hat and black rain cape stood there in a bizarre horseback-riding pose.
Somehow, he looked like he’d have excellent balance.
Is... is that me?
Of the Seven Martial Stars, I was the only one this dark, so there was no way it could be anyone else.
"The Great Swordmaster Somersault?"
After reading the instructions included in the box, Geom Mujin wore a look of utter bewilderment.
I examined the toy with faintly trembling hands.
But holy shit.
Setting the pose aside, they hadn’t even bothered to draw a face beneath the bamboo hat.
At least I should be grateful it came with a sword at the waist.
Press— flick!
Following the picture on the instructions, the child pressed down on the Great Swordmaster toy’s head and let go, and the toy somersaulted backward.
"Hehe..."
Apparently she liked it quite a lot, because she even let out a rare laugh.
Meanwhile, the person it was supposed to represent was deeply, profoundly, spectacularly dissatisfied.
Why the hell did the Great Swordmaster do somersaults instead of using his sword?
"Whoa! The Divine Sword Beauty is out!"
"Yap-yap! Take this! Hundred-Step Divine Fist!"
Just from a quick glance, the other Seven Martial Stars had all kinds of gimmicks too—some shot fists from their hands, others swung swords around.
Even that bald bastard, basically a one-trick pony with his indestructible body, got something decent, so why was mine this absurd?
"...Let’s just eat."
Geom Mujin swallowed his directionless anger and tore into the hamburger.
* * *
"Munch, munch... yum, yum...."
The child worked her little mouth diligently, eating the hamburger with great concentration.
"Is it good?"
"Mm. Thank you. No, thank you very much."
"Sure."
It wasn’t enough to make me feel full just by watching her eat, but seeing her eat so well brought a strange sense of warmth.
It was a different feeling from the one I got when I made blood soup for someone and forced them to eat it.
"Kid... do you know how that hamburger you’re eating right now was made?"
"....."
The child shook her head.
It was her first time ever eating a hamburger today, so how would she know?
Since just eating in silence would be boring, maybe I should do a little TMI session.
"You see, hamburgers go way back to the days of the Yuan Dynasty..."
After Genghis Khan unified the steppe, the Mongols became a world-class gang of thugs and went on a full-scale beating spree across the globe.
- Arararai! Kill everyone bigger than a wagon wheel!
- Kill the women and rape the men... no, the other way around!
- Ah, this is what you call a braided topknot!
They spread across Asia and even into Europe.
The Mongol army, a killing machine by any definition, smashed every country that stood in its way.
- This is fucking insane! They crossed the line with the braids!
- A man’s worth is in his hair!
- Don’t you dare touch a single strand of my hair!
Back when the Korean peninsula was under Goryeo, our ancestors managed to survive as a vassal state thanks to their tearful struggle to avoid the braided topknot.
Anyway, since they were nomads who fought from horseback, the Mongols also prepared their field rations on horseback, and one of them was pressing minced meat inside the saddle of a galloping horse and eating it.
It was also called Tatar steak, and later spread to Europe through Russia.
In Europe, Tatar steak came to be called Hamburg steak, and after a while, someone came up with the idea of putting it between buns, and that became the hamburger.
"...That’s the origin of the hamburger."
"Oh...."
After Geom Mujin finished his explanation, the child nodded vigorously.
Honestly, maybe she’d understood less than ten percent of the Yuan Dynasty part, but her instinct told her she should at least react to the guy talking so earnestly.
She drank blood and turned people into her retainers, sure, but at her core, she was a good kid.
"Th-that’s not right, though..."
"What?"
At the small voice coming from beside us, I turned my head.
"Are you talking to us just now?"
There, looking down at us, stood a young woman with green hair.
"Th-that story’s been twisted..."
She muttered in a somehow gloomy voice.