The Pocket Dimension and the Salt Project
Now, how did one make salt again?
“Ah... hold on, how am I supposed to carry this around?”
The question was what to do with the binyeo, the hairpin. It was fine when I had it stuck through my hair, but I kept worrying I might lose it whenever I moved too energetically or went flying around.
“Should I just keep it in my pocket?”
I casually slipped the binyeo into my pocket. The pocket couldn't have been that big, and yet the pin simply slid in and vanished.
“Huh?”
No way. It was completely gone.
“What the—! Where did it go!”
If there'd been a hole in the pocket, it should have dropped to the ground. It wasn't on the ground either.
Oh my goodness!
Was I really about to lose it in less than a day? What a disaster that would be.
I shoved my whole hand into the pocket — and wait, what? Just how far did my arm go in?
“Now what is this?”
Say there really was a hole in my pocket. If my hand could sink in all the way to my elbow, shouldn't my fingers be poking out the bottom of my pants by now?
My hand didn't come out. I was clearly wiggling my fingers around in there, but I couldn't see them anywhere.
Which is honestly terrifying...
So then, where exactly was my hand right now?
Uuuugh... this gave me goosebumps.
“What is this... another ghost?”
I opened the pocket and peered cautiously inside. There, swirling within, was a violet shadow.
“Whoa... seriously, what is this? Is this that 'subspace' thing I've only heard rumors about?”
First things first, I needed to figure out how to use it.
Even after sticking my hand back in and groping around this way and that, I couldn't feel a thing.
“Hmm. In novels, people either physically enter it or just sense what's inside. I can't exactly crawl into this tiny little thing, though.”
Just in case, I actually tried squeezing my head into the pocket, whining with the effort, before giving up on account of basic human anatomy.
Turns out a person's head does not reach their own waist.
Next experiment, then: sensing it.
Let's try applying the same connection I felt whenever I lifted objects with telekinesis.
When I linked my power to the pocket, an interior unfolded in my mind's eye.
So that was it.
“Phew. Thank goodness.”
There, in a space with no visible end, sat my binyeo all alone.
The moment I snatched it up with a thought, it appeared right in my hand.
After putting it in and taking it out a few times, I couldn't help thinking — wasn't this way too easy?
Better yet, I didn't even need to reach into the pocket at all. As long as I connected with it through telekinesis, I was good.
“Wow. This is amazing. I could become a magician someday.”
All I'd need to do was specialize in the whole 'objects vanishing and reappearing' genre of magic, right?
Nobody would ever be able to figure out the trick.
Behold, the genius illusionist of the century.
Anyway, I now had one enormous pocket. It'd come in handy someday, surely.
“Time to get ready to go out~”
There were no spare clothes to change into, nothing to wash off, so really, all I had to do was put on the binyeo.
Using it turned out to be surprisingly simple — the trick was twisting my hair into a coil and threading the pin through. My strength was still weak, but apparently my hands knew what they were doing, because I got the hang of it in just a few tries. Pat myself on the back.
“Hmm. I wonder which talent of mine the stat points got invested in?”
It crossed my mind suddenly — I had to have at least one talent, right? I'd just have to keep trying all kinds of things and find out.
With my hair wound up and the binyeo in place, I stepped out the door.
The only person in the entire village with a metal accessory — I could honestly call myself a celebrity.
And wasn't I drawing every eye in the place?
“Hi there~”
“Hello, Haneul-nim.”
Once again today, I made my cheerful rounds through the village, greeting everyone as I went.
I was, after all, this village's totem.
Wandering the village like this was essentially my main job.
It struck me anew just how much the village had grown in the span of a few months.
There had to be a couple hundred people now. Pretty soon, we'd have to start calling it a town, wouldn't we?
Off in the distance, I spotted Garungda.
He'd been given some kind of official position, apparently, because he now wore a band around his forehead, unlike ordinary villagers.
Which made him easy to spot from far away.
“Hey, Garungda. What are you doing today?”
“Today, go to big water.”
“Big water? You mean other than the river?”
“Very big. And — nomnom, ptui.”
Garungda's powers of expression had improved tremendously. I understood exactly what he meant in a single beat.
“Ah~ you're going to the sea.”
“Sea?”
“The salty water, right?”
“Salty water?”
“The nomnom-ptui you just did — that's what 'salty' means.”
“Ah! Salty!”
These language lessons were secretly pretty fun.
No matter how gibberish-like their attempts were, I could always decipher them perfectly.
The villagers marched toward the downstream end of the river at a half-running clip, harpoons in one hand and potatoes in the other. It was a pace I'd have to sprint at full effort to keep up with.
Though I flew, of course, so I can't say I know exactly.
As I glided along after them, that distinctive briny, sticky smell of the ocean began drifting over.
“Huh? The sea's closer than I thought.”
Down by the shore sat several log boats, presumably the ones the villagers used — simple hollowed-out trunks of thick trees.
“Aza-aza!!”
They gathered, raised a rousing shout, dragged the boats down, and climbed aboard — only for the boats to keep flipping over, being nothing more than hollowed-out logs as they were.
Oh dear. Oh, my friends. I found myself running both hands down my face before I even realized it.
I hurried over to Garungda.
“Garungda!”
“Glub! Salty!”
My primitive friends were in quite a state, getting an impromptu saltwater shower.
“Look, if the boat does that, it's going to capsize. Let me show you.”
“Ah... okay. Very salty.”
I pulled my friends out of the water and back onto the beach. Once they were catching their breath on the sand, I hurried off toward the nearby forest.
There, I chopped down a few trees and stripped off some vines that looked sturdy enough.
“Huh? Wait — if I connect things with my superpowers like this, will they go into the pocket?”
Still holding the wood and vines, I focused on the pocket — and sure enough, the trees and vines vanished.
On inspection, there they were, stored inside.
I got the feeling I'd just acquired something enormous.
“Wh... what is this... it's scary... stuff like this.”
Anyway, I hurried back to my friends, who by then had caught their breath and were waiting for me.
“Everyone, come over here a second.”
“Okay.”
Aaah. I want to pinch my nose. My hard-to-approach friends. Please, let's all bathe a little more often, guys.
“Now, with a boat like this, you lash the trees across it sideways, and then tie one log at the end. Like so.”
I sketched it out on the ground in a few quick strokes. A simple drawing meant to be simple to understand.
“Ooh. Got it.”
“You got it?”
“Easy.”
When I pulled the logs and vines back out of the pocket, they had the whole thing modified in no time flat. And at last, my primitive friends set out onto the open sea.
Seriously exhausting. So exhausting.
My friends didn't venture out very far, it turned out.
They waded into the water near the shore, harpoons in hand, and seemed to be spearing fish hiding among the rocks.
“Ugh! Salty!”
“Ow!”
That's right, my friends. Seawater is salty, and salt stings like crazy when it gets in your eyes.
“I can't do anything about that part. This is the path you've chosen, so you'll just have to grit your teeth and bear the pain.”
Still, I did one thing for them — I made a huge tub, filled it with water, and set it on the beach so they could wash off when they were done.
Oh, but wait. Wasn't the whole point of the sea that you could make salt from seawater?
Might as well scoop some up and try drying it.
I slipped past my busy, fish-spearing friends and made my way out to the open sea, thinking the water might be a bit cleaner out there.
“Yeah, no. Not particularly clear at all.”
Still, it looked better than the shallows, so I scooped up a handful of seawater and stowed it in the pocket.
“Pfft. Hahaha.”
Come to think of it, it was hilarious.
Was I just... carrying water around in my pocket now?
When I got back to the shore, my friends were still in the thick of their fishing.
“Garungda! Heading out first!”
“Yeah! Haneul, go ahead.”
Before I could even see where the reply came from, he'd already plunged back underwater. My friends were busy, busy people.
Back home, I set my plan in motion.
Boil seawater, make salt. Simple.
Potatoes deserve to be dipped in salt, after all!
On the way home I'd picked out a boulder about as tall as my torso from the riverbank and carved it into a rounded pot.
So would this be a stone pot, then?
My primitive friends fired clay to make their dishes, but I don't know how to do that.
Carving stone to make cookware. Honestly.
Sheesh. All brawn, no brains.
Since our house had no chimney, I built a hearth out front, set the stone pot on it, and got a fire going.
Once the flames grew strong, I started ladling in the seawater from my pocket bit by bit. If I just kept it boiling, salt should come out... right?
I boiled it for a long time. A really long time.
I threw in an absolutely mountain of firewood too!
Yet no matter how hard I stared at the bottom of the pot, not a speck of white powder appeared.
“What... is this not how you do it?”
“Haneul, what doing?”
A powerful fishy odor was rolling in waves off of Garungda — apparently he'd returned from the sea.
So these people genuinely have no concept of washing...
“Do you know what salt is?”
“Salt?”
“Salty powder.”
“Powder?”
He didn't seem to know what powder was, so I crushed a pebble from the ground into dust to show him.
“Salt? This make salt?”
“It's supposed to... but it's not working.”
“Haneul not know?”
“Nope. More or less clueless.”
Wasn't salt-boiling supposed to be a real thing? I vaguely remembered something about collecting water with a high salt concentration first, but I had no memory of the details.
Boiling it, then, was apparently a failure.
So how about a salt pan instead? Everything I knew involved pans lined with something like compacted flooring, though.
Pouring seawater onto plain dirt and drying it didn't seem like it would amount to much.
I mulled it over for days, but a thing you don't know isn't going to magically come to you.
“Heh heh heh. Then let's just build it.”
All I had in abundance was muscle. If the brain's no good, put the body to work. That's the rule.
I roamed all over the mountains, and whenever I found a rock that looked suitably big, I splashed water on it and gave grinding it a try.
From among the results, I started collecting the smoothest stones — and lo and behold, there they were, glossy stones that seemed like water just wouldn't seep into them.
Having no talent for splitting stone prettily, whenever one seemed decent I'd shape it into a square and pop it into the pocket.
And so I spent an entire month on this. That, my friends, is the depth of my obsession with obtaining salt.
“Keh heh heh. Today's the day!”
I stepped out of the house with a springy, confident stride.
If the experiment worked, I'd have to teach my primitive friends too.
But the moment I thought about showing them, I remembered — a salt pan needs seawater poured into it, doesn't it?
If I built one near the village, I figured I'd hear complaints every single night. So off toward the beach I went.
Flying alone today, I arrived in the blink of an eye.
Ahh, the smell of the sea.
The puzzle assembly inside my pocket was already done; all that remained was to set the pieces into the ground.
Now. Time to focus.
I linked every last rock with telekinesis, and — extract!
“Huh? Wha—? What is this?”
Normally things materialize at chest height when I pull them from the pocket, but this time the far end stretched away so far I couldn't even see it.
“Did I make it too big?”
I'd put in plenty of fairly large boulders, but — this wide, seriously?
No helping it. I floated up to look down, and even estimating generously, the thing had to be over a hundred meters — big enough to fit five or six giant logs across.
“N-n-no idea!”
Well then. Let's just slam it into the ground.
GRRRRUMBLE-CRACKLE-BOOM
With a sound like something out of a horror story, the stones sank into the earth — and it felt as effortless as poking tofu with a fingertip.
Seriously, how smoothly did that just go in?
When I came in for a closer look, I saw thin streams of soil trickling up through the tiny gaps between the stones.
“Ah! Of course — I need to seal the seams, don't I?”
Even the tiniest gap would leak water.
I was thinking I'd plug them with something like mud and reached out to touch them — but what's this?
The soil oozing up through the seams was hard as rock.
“Whoa... what on earth is happening here?”
Had it all been compressed so intensely that it just forced its way out like that?
This is why being strong means your brain never has to suffer.
How wonderful is it to never have to think?
For the finishing touches, I scraped away the little mounds of dirt that had squeezed out, and there it was — a perfectly respectable salt pan.
It was colorful and, if anything, almost too pretty.
Since I'd carved the outer border out of stone as well, it looked a bit like a giant bath.
I really should have made my friends' bath like this. I'll fix that for them sometime.
“Heh heh heh. Time to fill it with water.”
River water seemed like it would carry too little salt, so I went a fair distance out to sea and hauled back pocketful after pocketful until the pan was brimming.
And now... the waiting begins.
Although — huh? The salt pan looked a little crooked.
The water at one corner was slightly deeper. Just a tiny bit.