The Mid-Autumn Festival (1)
“……”
“……”
Today, just like every other day, I ended up sprawled across the floor after an inexplicable staring contest with Seo Hui, who was nestled in my arms.
Perhaps humans really were an ever-evolving species.
Unlike her mother, who averted her eyes and mumbled something about being embarrassed, Seo Hui was a truly formidable opponent.
As I lay there splayed out on the floor, my gaze drifted to the calendar hanging on the wall.
Well, it was an ancient calendar, so no wonder it was a damn pain to decipher.
I should ask for one that's a little easier to read next time.
I'd heard that in ancient China, people built something called a calendar system off the movements of the heavens to calculate their dates—and naturally, I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
The extent of my astronomical knowledge was that the constellations in the night sky changed with the seasons, and that the days and nights grew longer or shorter.
But come on—longer days in summer, longer nights in winter? That's common knowledge for anyone from the modern era.
Even when I pored over the books said to codify the calendar systems, it all sounded like grasping at clouds. Not a word of it stuck.
What even is the Taichu Calendar? What's the Sifen Calendar supposed to be?
Why do you people keep talking about things only you understand?
...Well, it wasn't really a problem, seeing as there happened to exist a supremely talented expert on the subject of the heavens.
Zhang Jue.
The Taoist among Taoists, who read the skies, divined the will of Heaven, and was said to wield every manner of mystic art.
If I genuinely wanted to learn the calendar systems, studying under her would be one way to go about it.
Though I had my doubts whether someone with zero academic passion like me could keep up with her teachings.
How long had I been staring at the calendar, lost in these worthless thoughts?
“...Ah.”
Checking the date, I suddenly realized a holiday was fast approaching.
Chuseok.
The grand festival held on the fifteenth night of the eighth lunar month.
Since this was China, I supposed it ought to be called the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The meaning behind the name was nothing special.
The characters simply meant "the middle of autumn."
It was said to be the day of the year when the full moon rose at its brightest and roundest.
...Honestly, though, I had my doubts about the "roundest" part.
The Mid-Autumn Festival—Chuseok, in other words—was a celebration common to the whole of East Asia.
A holiday observed not only in Korea and China, but in Vietnam, Japan, and all sorts of other countries besides.
The festival's origins were fairly simple, too.
In ancient times, monarchs would gaze upon the perfectly round full moon and offer sacrifices, praying that their affairs go well hereafter, and the commoners who watched them joined in the offerings of their own accord—and so it became a holiday.
You can see from that just how much influence the people seated in high places have over culture, can't you?
And this was precisely the era when those ancient monarchs offered up their sacrifices.
The Mid-Autumn Festival only became a nationwide celebration in the Tang Dynasty, so in the Han Dynasty—far earlier than that—it was more of a "sure, why not" affair where the common folk simply tagged along with the rites.
After all, a sacrifice was normally something conducted in a solemn, dignified atmosphere.
“What are you pondering so intently?”
Lü Bu, who had been tending to Yeo Hwa nearby, asked as she looked down at me sprawled out in a daze.
“A holiday.”
“...A holiday?”
A holiday. A word for an occasion that comes around at the same time every year, to be enjoyed and commemorated.
...I really couldn't resist the holidays.
If no one else was going to get into the holiday spirit, then I would simply have to conjure it myself.
As Lü Bu tilted her head in confusion, I shot upright and declared:
“Let's go buy some hubing!”
“Out of nowhere?”
A question mark practically floated above Lü Bu's head at my sudden outburst.
Hubing.
In other words, mooncakes.
Just as Koreans make and eat songpyeon—half-moon rice cakes—during Chuseok, the Chinese made and ate mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
To a modern person, "mooncake" is probably far more familiar a name than hubing.
The name "mooncake" was only attached much later; the pastry itself had existed among the common folk since the Han Dynasty under the name hubing.
So who was it that rechristened hubing as "mooncake"?
None other than Yang Guifei, one of the Four Great Beauties of China.
She complained that hubing wasn't a pretty name and took to calling it "mooncake" instead, and Emperor Xuanzong went, "Well, that does sound better," and changed it on the spot.
The Mid-Autumn Festival became a nationwide celebration in the Tang Dynasty, and hubing gained the name "mooncake" in the Tang Dynasty as well.
Judging by that alone, it really did seem to be a country as sweet as its name.
...Of course, the "Tang" in Tang Dynasty and the "tang" that means sugar are different characters.
But then again, don't the characters look nearly identical anyway?
I turned to Lü Bu, who still had that question mark hovering over her head.
“Explaining it all would be a hassle, so I'll just run out and buy some!”
“W-Wait a moment! I'm coming too!”
The instant I bolted from my seat, Lü Bu deftly scooped Yeo Hwa up in one arm and snatched the Sky Piercer Halberd with the other.
Naturally, Seo Yeo rose to her feet as well, ready to guard me and the Seo Hui tucked in my arms.
And so, striding toward the door, I flung it wide open—
“……”
—and found myself eye to eye with Diaochan, standing right there in the doorway.
...That gave me a start.
What are you doing standing there?
With my blessing, the woman wore the Seven-Star Precious Sword at her waist—a striking sight, that.
From the look of it, Diaochan had been standing there because she had something to say, only to collide with me as I flung the door open.
I wasn't so oblivious that I couldn't take a hint, so I addressed her.
“...Did you need something?”
“I do, my lord.”
Diaochan answered with a courteous bow, her manners impeccable.
“If it is hubing you wish for, I could make some for you...”
“Is that so?”
With Diaochan's cooking skills, that certainly seemed plausible.
The prospect of leisurely enjoying fresh hubing at home appealed to me far more than the hassle of trudging outside to buy them, so I nodded along.
“Then I'll leave it in your hands.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The woman who would one day be famed as a beauty to topple kingdoms bowed calmly and withdrew.
A woman both gorgeous and skilled in the kitchen...
She's got every quality a man could ask for.
As I nodded to myself, still mulling over Diaochan, Lü Bu—who had been watching the whole exchange—posed a question.
“...Jeong Reung, do you like women who can cook?”
“Hm? Well, sure, I do.”
Taste occupies an enormous share of human happiness, after all.
People get so worn down by stress that they eat themselves sick—what does that tell you?
Cooking is grueling work, labor in everything but name, so being good at it earns you points before you've even started.
They even say a woman who cooks well is one you could spend your whole life with.
On that note, I'd seen men hold dead-serious debates over which was better—a beautiful woman or one who could cook—more times than I could count.
Hearing my answer, Lü Bu seemed to come to some decision, her face hardening with resolve.
“Then I should practice cooking too!”
“Uh-oh...”
Staring at Lü Bu as she tightened her grip on the Sky Piercer Halberd, I let my dismay show plainly.
...Lü Bu? Cooking?
My brain began spinning at full speed the moment those words combined into a deeply ominous sentence.
'Aaagh! I smashed it again!'
Misjudging her strength and shattering cutting boards and kitchen knives.
'Peeling? That's easy! Look, just... huh?'
Reducing a potato or an apple to less than half its weight in the process.
'...Why did it turn pitch black?'
Performing miraculous alchemy that transmuted perfectly good ingredients into lumps of coal.
No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't see a good future here—an uneasy premonition was only natural.
...But then again, picturing Lü Bu cooking well did stir up a strange flicker of anticipation, I had to admit.
Right. Maybe it's nothing but my own baseless prejudice?
Viewing the world through crooked lenses is never a good thing.
I turned to Seo Yeo, who stood nearby.
“What about you, Seo Yeo? Any urge to practice your cooking?”
“...No. I am fine.”
Seo Yeo answered flatly, her face as expressionless as ever.
“Nothing matters more to me than your safety, my lord.”
“Hmm...”
I mulled over her answer for a moment, then blurted out:
“What if the two of us got stranded somewhere, all alone?”
“……”
“What if I was wasting away from hunger, or keeled over from eating something bad? What then?”
“...!”
At those words, Seo Yeo's eyes widened to the size of oil lamps.
In my case, every time I so much as tried to practice cooking, the people around me rushed to stop me, insisting I was liable to hurt myself.
Thanks to that, you could safely say I know absolutely nothing about the subject.
And in this era, there's nothing so convenient as instant ramen, which only makes the problem graver.
Not that a scenario where Seo Yeo and I ended up stranded alone together would ever actually happen.
If that situation truly worried me, I could simply carry jerky around with me.
...The problem is that ancient jerky tastes like absolute garbage.
It has the texture of chewing on tree bark, plus a saltiness that leaves you wondering whether you're eating jerky or a lump of rock salt.
Think about the jerky you had back in the modern era, and the regret will hit you like a ton of bricks.
Trust me. I've been there.
It's less a food and more something you force down your throat, gagging, purely to stay alive.
The northern nomads who made this stuff their staple diet honestly frightened me.
Apparently their dry, frigid climate meant they didn't even need to salt-cure it, so it was supposedly a fair bit more palatable up there...
“...I will strive to learn.”
Whether my offhand remark had landed as a critical hit or not, Seo Yeo, too, declared on the spot that she would practice cooking—just like Lü Bu.
Would I finally get to taste my wives' homemade cooking?
I had no idea how the future would unfold, but for the moment, I felt a small spark of anticipation.