The Hot Spring Is Embarrassing
"They're late..."
Chopsticks in hand, I waited for dinner. According to Rinea, the food would take a little while—they'd only learned today that I was coming.
Every dish already prepared had been thrown out, and they'd sent word the moment we arrived so they could gather the finest ingredients instead. I'd only booked this inn on the way back, after seeing how they cultivated their plants, so there couldn't have been much time to get anything ready.
Honestly, I would have been perfectly happy with food made from whatever they already had. They were making an awful fuss. I was the sort of person who ate street food without a second thought—back in the day I'd happily munched those chewy starch snacks everyone used to call junk food, and plenty of other cheap bites besides.
I was still turning this over when the door opened and Rinea came in. Her face was flushed as she sat down beside me, and I looked at her with a sulky expression.
"I'm hungry... Can't they just cook with the ingredients they already had?"
The moment she heard me, though, Rinea's face turned stern and deadly serious.
"Absolutely not. This is food for God. We cannot use ordinary ingredients."
She was so resolute that saying anything more seemed a waste of time. Rinea clearly believed I ought to eat nothing but the very best. And to be fair, premium ingredients did taste wonderful, so I could hardly complain. The only problem was how long the preparation took.
I was sucking idly at the tips of my poor chopsticks when the meal I'd been waiting for at last began to appear. The innkeeper himself seemed to be serving us. Dressed in immaculate clothes, he set a gorgeously ornamented plate down before me.
On it rested a seafood dish that looked as if it had been alive only moments before. It was so fresh it might as well have been caught right at the door and cooked on the spot.
That reminded me—I'd heard the sea wasn't far from here. I ought to go see it sometime. I was curious how the people here caught fish. They supposedly used magic, and I wanted to compare it with the fishing I'd known back in the modern world.
"Whoa!"
I lifted my chopsticks and started in on the seafood. Some nameless fish had been grilled to a perfect golden brown, and right beside it sat a familiar grilled shrimp, so deeply red that a single glance declared it top-grade.
"Is it delicious, God?"
Rinea asked from beside me, sitting demurely. I beamed and nodded, and she had no attention to spare for anything but capturing the moment on camera. Curious, I asked her.
"What are you even taking pictures for?"
"Why, they're records to leave behind for when God returns to the original dimension."
"Records...?"
"We're going to build something like a grand museum, so there's a lasting record that God came here! And it should help gather the faithful while we're at it."
"Oh, yeah?"
I wasn't sure I was quite that extraordinary a being, but if Rinea put it that way, it was at least a sign that photos of me were somehow a good thing. Telling her to stop while I was eating food this delicious felt a little wrong, anyway.
I'd once hinted that she shouldn't photograph me, and the utterly crestfallen look on her face afterward had been enough. Since then I'd told her she could take as many pictures as she liked. It wasn't as if my face would wear away from being photographed.
"So yummy!"
I smiled happily as I ate the mouthwatering food. The moment a plate emptied, a server appeared as if from nowhere and set down a new one. It was just like a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant—finish one dish, and another took its place.
And as if they wanted me to taste as many things as possible, each plate held only a small portion. One or two bites, and nothing remained. Part of me found that a shame. The delicious things vanished after a chopstickful or two.
Still, delicious was delicious, so I ate in a frenzy. With every dazzling flick of my chopsticks, the food on the plate disappeared.
I kept going until my stomach was stuffed tight.
"Hmm..."
After dinner I stepped outside for a bit to let the food settle, and by the time I came back a plush quilt had been spread in the room. Even at a glance, it was made of luxurious material. I wouldn't be sleeping alone, either. Right beside my place was Rinea's.
"Sooo sleepy..."
With a full belly and warmth against my back, sleep was inevitable. Seeing how drowsy I looked, Rinea laid me down beneath the quilt. Lately her touches seemed to be growing bolder. At first she'd barely been able to bring herself to lay a hand on me, but now she didn't hesitate at all. If anything, she seemed almost desperate to touch me. Of course, that was probably just my imagination.
"Um, Rinea..."
"Yes, God!"
I lay under the quilt beside her, staring up at the ceiling. Outside, all I could hear were elves moving about. In front of my door, calm footsteps wandered this way and that, as if there were something out there worth seeing.
"Nothing terrible is going to happen back where I used to live just because I'm gone, right?"
Rinea listened, then answered.
"A month should be fine. The World Tree's plants are sturdy, so they'll hold out easily for about that long. Of course, if it stretches past two or three months, I couldn't say. This is the first time I've seen a case like this, so..."
"Yeah? I still feel uneasy somehow..."
Some instinct of mine was sounding an alarm, warning that something enormous had happened. This world was wonderful, but so was my original one. Each had its strengths and its shortcomings. There wasn't much to do for fun here. Right now I was thrilled by all the mysterious new experiences, but after about a month I'd probably have seen everything and run out of things to do. Did they even have the internet? I'd have to look into that later.
This civilization had nothing to be ashamed of even beside a reasonably modern age. Guns and the like didn't seem to have been developed yet, though. From what I'd glimpsed, the guards carried bows and swords.
At my words, Rinea's face crumpled as if she might cry.
"God, do you want to go back to your original world?"
I turned my head and confirmed it—an expression that practically begged for pity all on its own. Seeing her look so sad pricked my conscience. I hurried to reassure her.
"No. Like you said, I'll stay for a month!"
"An excellent choice, God!"
Watching Rinea beam, I felt I'd chosen well. And so the first week's night in this other world grew deep. Realizing I had only three weeks left made me a little wistful. If the president, or Maru, or Haru and Bora could come travel here, it would be wonderful... The scenery was so mysterious that the regret only cut deeper.
With that, I closed my eyes and sank into sleep.
Hana had not been seen for a week. It was time to admit the truth: she had returned to the other world. The one small mercy was that her hair had once stopped growing, so they had kept a generous stockpile in reserve. Even that, though, would soon be useless.
There was no supply coming in, and being frugal would not solve it. No matter how carefully they rationed what remained, the bottom was bound to show eventually.
"..."
The office, once always full of life, was wrapped in silence. The immediate cause was the lax security at the Other-Race Laboratory attached to the Starlight Research Institute—that was how Hana had gone. But no one had stopped her the whole way there, so the people working in this office could not escape responsibility either.
Assistant Manager Gu Junyeop found it hard to breathe in the frigid air. Only last week he had been living a happy company life, and now it had vanished as if the whole thing had been a dream.
The ever-lively mood of the office had frozen solid as ice. With Hana—the one who set the tone—gone, the difference was all the more palpable. It had been an everyday thing for her to drop by now and then and set laughter blooming through the room. Now, here and there, all that could be heard were sighs.
There was still work to do. The plants that had come from Hana's tooth were perfectly fine, and that alone was what kept the office from collapsing entirely. Sales of those tooth-born plants had already surpassed the sales of her hair.
But the anxiety would not leave. It would not be strange if Hana's plants withered at any moment. When that day came, a true disaster would descend upon the office.