Cool Water
"Mmm..."
Inside the carriage, I clutched my swollen belly. Cooks with five hundred years of experience were extraordinary indeed. I almost never ate until I was full, and yet I'd overdone it this badly.
"Did it taste good, God?"
Rinea sat across from me. At her words, I nodded.
"Yeah! Of all the duck I've ever eaten, I think this was the best!"
I meant it. Even in the modern world, I'd never tasted duck like that. The cooking here didn't seem all that different from back home—if anything, this place might have been further ahead.
"Then I'm relieved! I was worried it wouldn't suit your palate!"
"You were? You didn't need to worry... I'll eat just about anything."
I really didn't turn much down. Since coming into this body, fresh vegetables were a little hard to take, but even those were fine if I ate them with meat. Nothing else gave me any trouble.
We talked, and before I knew it we'd arrived at the next place. The carriage was very fast, yet the ride inside was wonderfully soft, as if thick cushioning had been laid beneath us. It felt like sitting in a car with an absurdly well-tuned suspension. There was hardly a sound, as if we were gliding over smooth asphalt.
"God! Please step down!"
Rinea took my hand and gently helped me out of the carriage. I could have managed perfectly well on my own; her hovering seemed a bit much. What could possibly happen if I went around by myself? This was the elves' kingdom, perfectly safe, and I was the World Tree besides.
Unless some madman or an outsider showed up, nothing was going to threaten me—and still Rinea clung to my side like a cicada.
I set the useless thought aside and climbed down. The place we'd come to was restricted to anyone who wasn't authorized. Plants that only elves could cultivate grew here, they said. Plant them anywhere else, and they wouldn't grow properly; they'd wither and twist.
"This is a place you'll love, God!"
It was the sort of jungle I'd seen in a movie once—Avatar. Vines hung between trees that speared up into the sky, and the plants crowded in so thick it looked as if someone meant to open an entire botanical garden. I'd thought of the elves' country as something like a modern city, so finding a stretch of land left this wild and untouched was a surprise.
"Follow me, God!"
Rinea took the lead and drew me off somewhere. The other elven faithful trailed along at my side as well. Ever since I'd arrived, elves seemed stuck to me whenever I wasn't asleep. Did they get anxious if I was alone, like a child left at the water's edge? Or was there some other reason? I'd asked out of curiosity, but Rinea only gave an empty little laugh and dodged the question.
When we got there, what stood before me were elves hard at work.
"Heave-ho!"
A powerfully built male elf, looking as if his muscles might burst just from being looked at, hauled on a rope. He'd put so much strength into it that the tendons stood out sharply along his arms beneath his short sleeves.
As he pulled, an enormous plant bound beyond the rope rose into the air. It was immense. I stared, mouth hanging open. Rinea had said she would show me places where the elves did all kinds of work, and from the very first it was a sight beyond anything I'd imagined.
Using a pulley rigged high in a great tree, the male elf was drawing up the body of that huge plant with relatively little force. It was a plant an ordinary man's strength could barely budge, and seeing him haul it alone, I could guess this elf possessed tremendous power.
Working the pulley and pulling the rope, he brought into view a plant whose countless roots were tangled together. Those roots belonged underground; he was ripping them out by force.
"What's that...?"
Watching an elf at work that looked exactly like farming, I asked Rinea. She answered slowly, and in careful detail.
"It's a magical ingredient that grows only in the elves' forest. Its name is Dreaming. Dry these roots, grind them, stir them into water and drink, and you can dream whatever you wish."
"Really? But is there a reason anyone would need to dream like that...?"
"You have no idea how many people long to dream what they want. We sell out faster than we can keep it in stock. Elves hardly use it themselves, of course. It's mostly humans. They're a race that hopes to fulfill, if only in dreams, the desires they can never achieve."
"You trade with humans, too?"
"Yes. Unless it's a secret material the state has to manage on its own, we mostly sell to humans."
Wasn't the effect of Dreaming practically a drug? Letting someone dream whatever they wished was an enormous power all by itself. Everyone harbored a desire to become a hero, or else a person of power, and this filled that desire at least halfway.
But looking at Rinea, she didn't seem to think much of it. I decided to treat it as nothing more than a curious ingredient to look at. I was going back in a month, after all. I had no intention of getting deeply involved in this world. Perhaps she sensed as much; she did her best to show me as much as she could.
Wandering here and there, I got to look at mysterious plants. It felt like watching a movie. Seeing plants shaped nothing like the ones where I'd come from, I found myself wanting to take some along. If only I could raise plants like these in my greenhouse...
"Rinea, can only elves grow these plants? I couldn't?"
At that, she made a great fuss.
"Not at all! There isn't a plant you can't grow, God! If you're nearby, these plants will shoot right up!"
"Really?"
I licked my lips, eyeing the plants. I was getting the itch to sneak one away and raise it.
After roaming all over, my throat went dry. I'd eaten plenty of duck earlier and my stomach was full, but I hadn't had any water yet. Feeling the burn in my throat, I told Rinea I was thirsty. Her eyes went huge, and she dashed off somewhere in a flurry and vanished.
A moment later she came back with something that looked like water. Proud as anything, she held it out to me.
"Drink it straight down, God!"
I gulped the water she'd given me. Then I couldn't help but go wide-eyed.
"Huh...? What is this?"
I'd thought it was plain water, but it was unbelievably sweet and delicious. Unlike simple sugar water, the taste refreshed me all the way to my heart. The coolness didn't stop at my stomach; it felt as if it swept me clean, large intestine and small intestine alike.
"It's water made by gathering dew from lanin flowers and mixing it with valley water. Even two hours after the lanin dew falls, the taste and the scent are gone, so this is water you can taste only here. There are humans who pay a fortune just to come and try it."
Just as Rinea said, water with a flavor like this was something I'd pay a fortune to drink. After tasting it, I didn't think I could put any other drink to my lips. Anything else would feel like drinking sewer water.
"Can I have more of this?"
"Of course! Drink as much as you like, God! It's only hard to come by outside. Here it's as common as water!"
"Hana... Where's Hana gone!"
The moment the call came, Kim Sehee raced to the Starlight Institute. Flew there, more accurately. She'd torn down the national highway as if it were a freeway.
The office was bleak. Department Head Kim Jaeman had no choice but to speak for the rest of them. Responsibility for Hana going off somewhere lay with the department that looked after her. Of course, her disappearance itself had been a calamity no one could have stopped.
"She's missing... We're searching with everything we have, but as for how this turns out..."
Department Head Kim Jaeman couldn't get another word out. Kim Sehee had fainted.
"Call an ambulance!!!"
"Aaaah! Chairman, please wake up!"
Thanks to the untimely fainting, the Starlight Institute grew noisier still.
It had been only a day since Hana vanished, and already a disaster like this. The longer time went on, the harder it was to imagine how things would change. A little longer, and the Starlight Institute, along with the food and cosmetics businesses, would be gutted.
They had been running everything on the assumption that Hana was there, and once she disappeared, the hole she left felt enormous. There wasn't a single venture among them that didn't depend on her from first to last.