A Sweet Taste
He reached up, then back down again.
Small hands kept fidgeting, drifting up and down in restless uncertainty. Looming in the dark was a boxy structure, square and rigid. It was smaller than a wagon, but to the owner of those tiny hands it looked more fearsome than the giant, savage beasts that appeared in legend.
A sigh escaped those equally tiny lips.
The distance between her hands and that monster-like square structure was barely a handspan. And yet she could not make herself cross even that short span.
In the end, the owner of those hands let her arms fall and turned around with all the energy drained out of her.
“Eek!”
Realizing someone was standing behind her, Arin let out a sharp cry.
“Shh!”
The person behind Arin lifted a finger to his lips.
“You’ll wake everyone up.”
“Oh? Yes...”
“You came looking for me, didn’t you?”
“I-I did.”
“Then why were you about to go back?”
“Well, I mean, that is...”
Yoon Sang-hyuk rested a hand on top of Arin’s head. He wasn’t pouring any great force into it, but she still felt her heart soften and warm beneath his touch.
“Do you like sweet things?”
“Sweet things...?”
“Hmm.”
It seemed she did not understand what he meant by sweet things.
“Come in.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk opened the door of the container box that Arin had thought looked like a monster. Bright light rushed out and made her flinch. She hesitated at the entrance, but after he patted her head once more, she followed him inside.
Yoon Sang-hyuk took a short stool from his subspace and set it down.
“Sit.”
He filled a kettle with water, then gathered his energy. Before long, steam began to rise in little curls from the spout. He poured the boiling water into a cup, added a dark powder, and stirred.
“Try it.”
“What is this?”
“It’s not poison or anything. So relax and drink.”
Arin’s eyes trembled as she held the cup of dark brown liquid. Maybe it was because she had endured all the hardships an old soul could endure despite her young age. The emotions she showed before something she had never seen were wonderfully varied.
Just as she had lifted and lowered her hand earlier, unsure whether to knock on the container door, she raised and lowered the cup a few times too. At last, as if she had made up her mind, she brought it to her lips.
“Hehe.”
The sight of Arin holding a cup of cocoa with a solemn expression was so adorable that Yoon Sang-hyuk burst out laughing before he could stop himself.
After taking a sip, Arin’s eyes went wide.
“Well?”
“...”
She answered by taking another sip.
“Hey, hey. If you drink too fast, you’ll burn your mouth. Take it slow. Blow on it first. How is it? Tasty?”
Arin nodded hard.
“Something like this... is my first time.”
“That’s what sweet tastes like.”
“Sweet taste.”
“Yeah. I’ve got plenty of other sweet things to eat too. If you get your hands on candy or chocolate, you’ll be hooked.”
“Candy? Chocolate?”
“Ridiculously sweet stuff.”
“Sweeter than this?”
Arin asked, lifting her cup.
“Of course. If you put it in your mouth and close your eyes, all the happiness in the world comes flooding in.”
“Wow!”
Earlier, before dinner, she had tried so hard to act solemn and dignified, as if she truly were the Arian Clan’s Star of Prophecy. In the end, though, she was just a child through and through.
Arin looked up at Yoon Sang-hyuk with shining eyes. She seemed curious about the taste of candy and chocolate.
“If you eat something sweet and then eat something sweet again, you won’t be able to taste it properly. So you have to finish that first, and only then eat the next sweet thing after the flavor in your mouth is gone.”
“Ah!”
“More importantly, why did you come looking for me when everyone else is asleep?”
Arin’s face, drunk on the sweetness of the cocoa, stiffened. She had suddenly remembered what she had nearly forgotten in that brief haze of delight.
“I have something to...”
“Speak up. You’re too quiet for me to hear.”
“I have nothing to give you.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk nodded as if he understood.
Arin bit her lower lip, then set the cocoa down. Her eyes were full of regret as she placed down a cup that still held half its contents.
“A very long time ago... before our clan was cursed, I mean. Back then, when a Star of Prophecy was born in our clan, wars broke out over who would take them.”
If one could know even fragments of the future, it was surely something worth fighting for.
“So?”
“I’ll... I’ll give myself to you.”
“Hmm.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk leaned back in his chair and looked at Arin in silence.
“You know I’m human.”
“Yes.”
“Once I’ve finished everything I need to do, I’ll leave this place. I’m not interested in what happens to the Demon Realm after that, not one bit. So I don’t need a Star of Prophecy either.”
Arin’s face crumpled. It looked as though if someone touched her, tears would spill right out.
“I don’t need a Star of Prophecy, but there is something I do need.”
“What is it? Is it something I can give you?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk smiled and nodded.
“But I don’t have anything to give you...”
Her voice had shrunk to a whisper.
“No. You do. I need a good little sister who listens well and smiles a lot.”
Arin blinked, apparently not understanding what he meant.
“A good little sister. You know what a little sister is?”
“I do.”
“Good. If Arin becomes my little sister, I’ll seriously consider your clan’s request.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So? Will you accept my condition?”
Arin nodded vigorously.
“Good. Then my good little sister, Arin, who listens and smiles nicely, should finish that cocoa quickly. It won’t taste as good once it’s cooled off any more.”
Arin brightened and brought the cup back to her mouth.
* * *
“Thank you.”
The elderly clan chief of the Arian Clan bowed so deeply that his head nearly touched the ground.
“Don’t misunderstand. I didn’t make this decision because your people are cute or anything.”
“Of course not. Even so, we are truly grateful. Our Arian Clan will never forget Lord Sang-hyuk’s kindness, no matter how many generations pass.”
“Do what you want with that. From now on, Arin will be riding with me in the wagon. And no, I’m not planning to do anything strange to her, so don’t get the wrong idea.”
“We would never dare misunderstand. Ah, but...”
He seemed to be trying to raise a difficult point.
“Stop trailing off and say it straight.”
“Could the other children ride in the wagon as well?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk looked toward the place where the Arian Clan had gathered.
There were four children there, Arin among them. Arin was saying something to the others, and every time she spoke, the children burst out with little cries of wonder, going, “Wow!”
The distance wasn’t far, and even if it had been, he could have heard her if he focused. Arin was telling her friends about the cocoa and candy she had eaten inside the container box the previous evening.
“Fine. Do that.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Enough with the thanks. You’ll throw out your back. Put the children in the wagon and have the rest of you ride on top.”
“Pardon?”
At Yoon Sang-hyuk’s unexpectedly generous words, the old man stared blankly at him. Yoon Sang-hyuk pointed at the animal that pulled the wagon.
“It’s stronger than it looks. Even if the whole clan rides up there, I don’t think it’ll collapse under the weight. And for the record, I’m not doing this because you people look cute. I’m doing it because I don’t want our travel speed to slow down.”
* * *
Ten days had passed since the Arian Clan joined them.
Yoon Sang-hyuk listened as the four children riding with him, Arin included, chatted nonstop. They were young, so perhaps that was to be expected, but they had so much to say that their mouths never seemed to stop.
The children had filled out quite a bit compared to when he first met them, and they looked much cleaner too. It was hard to believe they had once been wearing rags. They had changed far more than one would expect in such a short time.
He had even torn up two unique-grade robes to make the clothes they were wearing now.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
At Yoon Sang-hyuk’s sudden question, the children who had been chattering changed in an instant. But none of them answered.
“I guess you’re not hungry. I was going to give you some strawberry drinks and chocolate-covered snacks.”
“I’m hungry!”
“Me too!”
The children shouted in unison.
Yoon Sang-hyuk snorted and pulled four cans of strawberry juice and some snacks from his subspace, distributing them evenly among the kids.
“Wow! It’s so good. Strawberry? This drink is delicious.”
“This snack is delicious too.”
Watching the children gorge themselves on the drinks and snacks with gleeful faces, Yoon Sang-hyuk merely smiled.
During the assault on the Demon King’s Castle, the subspace carried by the Masked Mercenary Group members had been too small to hold everything, so he had stored the excess in his own subspace. After setting aside the spare equipment and consumables that absolutely had to be kept on hand, what remained was mostly food and drink, alcohol, and snacks.
He had packed not only for the Masked Mercenary Group, but for the expedition members who had accompanied them as well, and he had also prepared for the possibility of the campaign dragging on longer than expected. As a result, the quantity was enormous. After waking in the Demon Realm and checking the contents of his subspace, he had wondered what on earth he was supposed to do with all of it. It turned out he had found a very useful answer.
“Oppa.”
Arin called him.
For a few days, she had struggled to get the word out naturally, but now she was already using it with ease.
“Yeah?”
“What are we eating tonight?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk snorted.
Asking a question like that meant she probably had something in mind.
“Let’s see. What should we eat? Want something spicy?”
The faces of Arin and the other children drooped.
“Or should we have jjajang ramen?”
In an instant, their expressions changed. They must have been craving jjajang ramen. He had made it once two nights ago in place of dinner, and it looked like they had fallen in love with it.
“You want jjajang ramen?”
The children all nodded at once. The two boys looked ready to leap on Yoon Sang-hyuk right then and there.
“All right. I’ll make jjajang ramen. But in return, when we set up camp, go gather firewood from around the area. Got it?”
“Yes!”
“You have to work if you want to eat.”
“Yes!”
“That’s a very good answer. Haha.”
While he was talking with the children, the wagon came to a stop.
“Lord Sang-hyuk, we’ll spend the night here today.”
At Zephyr’s words, the Arian Clan members riding on top of the wagon climbed down. The wagon Yoon Sang-hyuk and his party rode in was more than ten times larger than the kind of wagon common on Earth. That was why it could carry all thirty members of the Arian Clan on its roof.
Each person immediately started doing whatever they were supposed to do. As they had for the past ten days, camp would be set up in no time.
Meanwhile, the children dashed off to gather the firewood Yoon Sang-hyuk had ordered them to find.
“Lord Sang-hyuk.”
“Yeah?”
Zeronia approached him.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes. Tomorrow we’ll enter the Valley of Despair.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk grinned.
Seeing that smile, Zeronia gave a faint shiver. The image of him riding a Hell Worm and shouting with delight flashed through her mind.
“So I’ll get to see the Banshee Queen, then?”