The World's Finest Means of Conversation (2)
I was in the middle of the longest wait of my life.
The thing I was waiting for was chicken.
I wanted it in my mouth so badly that the impatience was starting to gnaw at me. If I had to sum chicken up in a few short words, it would be this: the greatest food humankind has ever created. A dish some people have never tasted, but no one has tasted only once. A food great even in its name.
Even so, I had fasted during my training in the Heavenly Realm. Surely I could endure this much with a little wisdom.
And yet holding out is miserably hard. Back then, was it only bearable because the food was nothing but grass...?
I had to endure. Holding that thought, I called the character for patience to mind three times and barely managed to settle my heart.
And so, in the middle of all that, I was sitting on the sofa, resting beside a woman named Ju Hyeeun. Ever since we had ordered the chicken, though, she hadn't really said anything to me. Left with a moment to myself, I decided to take in the house from the corner of my eye, and that was how I confirmed that a computer and some other equipment occupied one side of the living room, on top of everything I had already noticed.
Hmm. What was that microphone on the computer for? And a camera that looked expensive, besides...
Once I had finished looking the place over, the thought that settled was this.
Is there some reason she's living alone in a house this big...?
Nothing else could possibly explain it. An ordinary young woman living by herself in a place this spacious was close to impossible. In short, she had to be carrying some complicated story. My experience meeting all sorts of people during my years in the Heavenly Realm played a part in that conclusion as well.
Even so, I couldn't ask about something like that at a first meeting. It would be rude. A person's private affairs might hide a painful memory — how could I possibly pry into that? As a Fighter who held courtesy dear, I could never make such a choice.
I was still turning it over when a voice reached me.
"I don't know what to do, welcoming you when I haven't even managed to tidy the house..."
"No...! Just being treated to a meal is already more than enough to be grateful for!"
The words she had offered me were anything but ordinary. The house looked spotless at a glance, and yet she had said that. In any case, I told her again and again that it was fine.
We were still trading those light remarks when a doorbell finally rang.
"I'll go get it."
One short sentence, and then she was already walking toward the front door.
More importantly — once I finished this chicken, what was I supposed to do about a place to sleep? I closed my eyes, folded my arms, and sank into the problem, and all the while the scent of chicken came drifting in.
"Can't you hear me? I've told you several times that everything's ready, but you weren't answering..."
I opened my eyes and found a silver-haired, blue-eyed woman right in front of my nose. I was so startled that I shot up from the sofa and went straight to a chair at the dining table to sit down. To think I had been brooding so seriously over the future that I had forgotten, for a moment, that I was even hungry, and lost myself in reverie...
Hyeeun, meanwhile, was silently opening the box of chicken. A sweet smell rose with it, so rich that simply breathing it in felt as if it could fill my stomach.
"So this is what that old folktale meant, the one where they charge you just for smelling the food.... Ah, what I mean is—!"
I had lost my mind. Words that should have stayed inside my head had escaped my mouth before I knew it. Flustered, I tried to gloss over it, but Hyeeun seemed to have heard exactly what I said, because she began to speak with a gentle smile.
"Hehe. You're a funny person. You even tell jokes that belong on a classic comedy show."
I was a little shaken. She had surely meant it kindly, but it also sounded rather like she was saying I seemed old. I'm not usually like this....
Right. This is all because I spent my time with those old immortals in the Heavenly Realm. There is absolutely nothing strange about me....
While I was rationalizing the situation to myself, the chicken's noble visage came into view. Batter that looked crisp — it must have turned out that way because they had coated it in breadcrumbs before frying it. And the color of that batter, shining gold: a hue gleaming like pure gold, more than enough to draw a sigh of wonder from anyone who looked at it.
I was alive all this time for this very moment....
When I had first returned, I had been crushed that I had not come back as a man. But looking at the chicken now, I felt that coming back to South Korea had been a blessing no matter how it had happened. After all those twists and turns, I was about to eat chicken, the pinnacle of meat dishes. Of course it still rankled that I had not returned from woman to man, but what did that matter? Chicken was the priority now, so I picked up a drumstick between my index finger and thumb and brought it straight to my mouth for a bite.
The crisp texture of the batter and the chicken juices pouring out like a waterfall formed a heavenly harmony.
"S-slowly...! If you're not careful, you'll make yourself sick...!"
But I, lost in the taste, could not slow down. As I had said, it had been ten years of forced vegetarianism. Put bluntly, if vegetarian cooking had advanced far enough to offer even a tofu steak, I would never have fallen this far. Even so, I had not completely lost my mind. We were splitting one chicken between the two of us, so I was leaving one piece of each cut.
Once that first meal after my return — a meal of pure emotion — had filled my stomach to some degree, I finally had the leisure to look around.
"H-huh... Hyeeun, why aren't you eating?"
I had been the only one eating with any enthusiasm. Through it all, Hyeeun had simply been watching me. I felt as if I had completely reversed host and guest, and a deep sense of apology began to settle in.
"I can't really handle hot food. I'm just letting it cool, so you don't need to worry."
She said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Since there was a deeper reason, I could relax, thankfully. After she had spoken, Hyeeun checked with her hand that the chicken had cooled, then began to eat. As expected, she knew how to eat. She was not using chopsticks or tongs — she was eating with her hands. Would a first-rate chicken connoisseur not be right to enjoy it together with the greasy feel on their fingers?
About twenty minutes after we had started eating together, a mountain of bones had piled up.
"But Siyeon, why are you wearing clothes that old? Do you not have anywhere to go back to...?"
An accurate deduction. I was wearing clothes even a homeless person might refuse, so it would have been stranger if she had not thought so. For the record, of course the house I had lived in had existed in South Korea ten years ago. The chance that it still remained now, however, was nonexistent. The me who had been a man would naturally have been processed as deceased.
Truly, it was one mountain beyond another. I had only just thought I had solved my hunger, and a bigger problem was crashing down into reality. Still, a person has a conscience. I could not ask Hyeeun for a place to live on top of having saved her, even if there had been an incident in which she had nearly been assaulted by a stalker.
"I-I'm fine. Even if I don't have anywhere to go. I can just sleep rough somewhere suitable."
"Even so, I can't send the person who saved me out onto the street. And more than anything, how dangerous is it for a woman to sleep outside...?"
To think I would be the one on the receiving end of unsolicited advice. And advice that I was not conducting myself properly as a woman, at that. The words were so unexpected that my mind went blank for a moment. In the Heavenly Realm, sleeping rough had not been much of a problem so long as you had the strength to protect yourself. And a benefactor who had saved her — it seemed my years in that harsh Heavenly Realm had left me a little numb in that regard. In South Korea, a crime like assault was no ordinary matter.
Putting it all together, Hyeeun must have been saying this because she wanted to repay the kindness I had shown her. The spirit of noblesse oblige — sharing what one possesses — had surely played a part as well. In that case, the proper thing now was to gratefully accept the pure goodwill she was offering.
"Then I'll impose on you for a while. I'll be in your care...?"
"Whew, that's a relief. Then I'll give you a change of clothes, so come to the dressing room with me."
"Pardon......?"
What did she mean? Was she telling me, right now, to change into the clothes women wore around the house? The shock of those words made my head spin all at once. To think there would be this much I had to adjust to, returning to South Korea after ten years.
"Oh, and you seemed very interested in that capsule device. That's the equipment for playing Battle Mania, a virtual reality competitive fighting game."
My mouth fell open at those words. Unbelievable things had piled up one after another, and I was stunned. Being told I had to wear women's clothes was shocking enough, and to think science and technology had advanced that far in ten years. Someone like me, with nothing left but a bare identity — what in the world was I going to do to get by in the world I had returned to...?