Taming the Fox
‘…What’s with her?’
She’d been staring at me, so I figured she wanted to eat too and generously gave her a whole leg. But then she just kept standing there, blinking blankly at me.
Was she worried it might be poisoned?
If I were going to go to all that trouble, I’d have slit her throat back when I caught her.
I’d let her go even though I knew she was following me, and I’d even given her food, and now she was fretting over useless things.
It’s not like staying dead would matter anyway when she’d just respawn.
“Uh, so… ah, damn, how do I say ‘eat this’?”
The woman muttered something in Arkish, then carefully took the meat from my hand.
And then she started inspecting it closely.
Maybe I should just take it back.
Just as that thought began to creep up on me, the woman finally bit into the meat.
Her eyes went wide, and then she started devouring it like she’d forgotten the world existed.
She was eating so deliciously that before I knew it, I’d stopped eating and was just staring.
Yeah, cockatrice meat really was good.
I’d wondered if maybe I was the weird one, but nope—my taste buds were perfectly normal.
“Ah, cough! It was just so good I couldn’t help myself….”
The woman, who’d been happily tearing through her food, noticed my gaze and gave an awkward laugh.
She didn’t need to be embarrassed when I’d given it to her to eat, but whatever.
“This is so frustrating because we can’t understand each other…. If I’d known this would happen, I should’ve studied harder. Is there anyone here who knows Granic? …Right, like there’d be anyone.”
The woman muttered in words I couldn’t understand, then looked like she’d made up her mind and pointed at herself.
“Journey.”
“…?”
“Did you not get it? Jour. Ney.”
I tilted my head slightly, and she repeated it again, carefully this time.
So… was she introducing herself?
“Journey.”
“…!”
When I nodded and said it back, the woman—apparently named Journey—brightened instantly.
“….”
“….”
“…?”
Then the silence stretched, and her beaming face slowly filled with confusion again.
When you exchange names, each person tells the other who they are.
So if one side said their name first, it was only common sense for the other side to do the same.
-But I had no intention of telling her.
Me? My name? Why?
It was a ridiculous thing for me to say, considering I was the one hiding under a cape, but I had no desire to exchange names with someone whose face I couldn’t even see properly.
And I didn’t want to get involved with anyone any more than I already was.
‘You’re way too stiff. For someone who looks this cute, you sure act like a little boy.’
Yeah, I know, Garid.
Still, no meant no.
Without meaning to, my hand started toward the choker around my neck, but I stopped myself.
Instead, I stood up and headed for the flower field.
Why do I grow flowers? Because they’re pretty. Do you need a reason for everything? You should be grateful for your looks. If your face hadn’t been cute… ugh, never mind. …Ah! I’m kidding, I’m kidding!
“…You say that and then—”
Liar.
Sulking, I deliberately snapped off a flower with more force than necessary.
I picked up one of the pink flowers Garid had especially loved and walked over to the grave.
Today, the Crimson Aegis planted before the grave seemed brighter red than usual.
“Grasis… Choi…. What comes after that again?”
Journey, who’d been trailing after me timidly with the meat she’d treasured so carefully, read the words carved into the gravestone in a halting voice.
“The finest shield of Grasis. Here lies at rest.”
Her effort was so earnest that I decided to tell her the meaning.
Don’t get the wrong idea just because I brought you here. You weren’t my friend or anything.
I only let you follow because I thought you’d like it if you could understand Granic.
I laid the pink flowers neatly in front of the Crimson Aegis.
“….”
“….”
Sadly, there was nothing left now for the shield to protect.
Nothing at all.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“No matter how I look at it, it feels like there’s some kind of story here, doesn’t it?”
Journey said as she tramped down the mountain path.
North, south, east, west, up, down—no matter where she looked, there was no one around who looked like they might be part of a conversation with her, but she wasn’t crazy.
She had viewers watching her.
“Let’s figure out what the inscription means later. For now, why don’t we decide what to do first?”
Even if the gravedigger had kindly read it aloud, that didn’t mean she could understand it.
Just because you read alien text out loud in front of someone who didn’t know the language didn’t mean they’d understand what it said.
-Supposedly it means, “The finest shield of Grasis. Here lies at rest.”
“Oh, what? Someone already translated it?”
-There are a lot of talented people here
-Well, there are this many people watching lol
-Finest shield?
“Could be worth investigating that first. The word ‘finest’ doesn’t get attached to just anyone.”
Of course, it could just have been the opinion of whoever wrote the epitaph, but….
I guess I’ve got no choice but to grab at a straw.
At the same time, she found it oddly thrilling, like she’d become a detective in a mystery novel, pipe in one hand and magnifying glass in the other.
More than anything, walking at the very front of a road no one had ever traveled before was far more exhilarating than she’d expected.
The wildly inflated viewer count was a little overwhelming, but Journey had long since given up on that.
-Why are you coming down? Can’t you just stay there?
-Fr, I wanted to see the gravedigger more
“Even staying over at a friend’s house feels awkward. There’s no way I can crash at someone’s place when I don’t even know them. And if I say I want to stay, does that mean I can? The gravedigger has to agree.”
More importantly, how was she supposed to talk to someone who gave off that kind of vibe?
Journey recalled the gravedigger’s back as he stood before the grave of someone unnamed.
Unlike the cold, ruthless air that had driven countless players to despair, he’d felt so fragile he looked as if he might blow away in the wind.
Sometimes people needed time to sit alone with their thoughts, without anyone interfering.
That was why Journey had turned silently and come back down.
“Granic study, Grasis history research, information gathering… wow, I’ve got a ton to do. I’ve been buried in work.”
Journey clicked her tongue as she ticked items off on her fingers.
No one was holding a knife to her throat and forcing her to do it, so if she didn’t want to, she didn’t have to.
Duration: 1 week
…It’s not a knife, but it does feel like they’re pointing something similar at me.
If she retreated here, she could open a new chapter of her life.
Goodbye, streamer Journey. Hello, ordinary person Shin Daeun.
Something like that.
Obviously, that wasn’t a good thing.
Maybe if enough time passed and she got a little older, but Journey had no intention of retiring from streaming yet.
Though the momentum had died down a lot, the sky was still bright with sunlight.
As Journey wandered through the mountain, darkened slightly by the thick trees, her eye caught on a single flower she didn’t recognize.
A red flower with spiky thorns along the stem.
“If you come at four in the afternoon, I’ll start being happy at three.”
Her sudden remark sent the chat room into a chorus of confusion.
Journey ignored it and grinned.
“Starting today, my goal is taming the fox!”
If you wanted to get close to someone, linger around them.
Depending on the situation, you might get branded as a nuisance, but if you did nothing at all, the chance would never come.
“And I’ll study Granic whenever I get the chance.”
Journey had experience learning multiple languages, so she was fairly confident she could pick up Granic too.
Besides, she couldn’t possibly stay cooped up on the mountain with the gravedigger forever, so time wasn’t exactly in short supply.
“And I trust you guys to help with information gathering.”
“You’re curious too, aren’t you? We help each other out, that’s all. Money? We’ll make do with passion.”
“Ahem. No bad words.”
She’d expected it to get heated, but the blaze was fiercer than she’d imagined.
Still, the other objections all dropped away fast enough.
Even after clearly saying she wasn’t going back up, the ones throwing tantrums vanished.
Journey smiled where the camera couldn’t see it and cleared her throat.
“Fine. I’ll send gifticons to anyone who posts useful information in the fan café. Not everyone—just about fifty people who are more helpful than the rest.”
The public reaction was pretty good.
No one disliked the idea of getting a gift from a streamer they liked.
And with fifty winners, the pool was large enough that a little effort gave them a decent shot.
“But what kind of gifticon?”
“Mm… good question. What should I give them? Ideally something related to Silia Online. Ah, right!”
After thinking for a moment, Journey’s eyes lit up as she hit on a good idea.
“How about a Silia Online access pass? A ten-month pass.”
The monthly subscription for Silia Online cost 10,000 won.
Even with discounts for multi-month purchases, ten months came out to nearly 100,000 won.
The viewers’ reaction grew heated when she said she’d be handing those out to fifty people.
It was no small sum for Journey either, but when she considered the goodwill she’d gain through the investment, it was definitely not a loss.
It was a clever move that might even bring in new regular viewers through the event, so in the long run it was a profit.
But there was one thing she hadn’t considered….
That meant there were far more people watching her broadcast than she’d realized.
Not just Koreans, but people from East Asia and even the West.
No matter their nationality, anyone interested in the gravedigger was watching her stream.
Not every single viewer took part in the event she held, but even a fraction of them was an enormous number.
People who rushed in for the prizes, people desperate to uncover the gravedigger’s identity as quickly as possible, people who simply wanted to help Journey out of fan devotion.
With all sorts of people converging for their own reasons, perhaps it was only natural that Journey’s fan café would become a borderless one.