episode_0009

“Here, give this to me.”

The innkeeper said as he placed a plate of food on the counter. A large piece of grilled meat was placed on top of a thick, mashed potato-like paste, and steam rose from the plate.

Carefully carrying a plate with both hands, he walks to a corner seat and places a dish in the middle of the table. A dark-skinned man pulls the plate with a fork-like utensil with two ends and brings it in front of him. The meat, slightly burnt at the tip but glossy overall, tears along the grain as he dips it. The man puts a generous amount of white paste on the bottom of the plate and brings it to his mouth.

“I want one more drink, haha… .”

A woman who smelled strongly of alcohol, as she kept blowing her bangs back with her mouth while advertising that she was already drunk all over her body, smiled at Ray’s face. It was the woman who had been laughing and clapping while making dirty jokes earlier.

“Drinking is closed today.”

Ray turned his head to the innkeeper to ask for his consent, and at the sight of the innkeeper nodding in his direction, Ray turned his head back to the woman and nodded again, repeating the action as if they were playing a family game.

“Really…? Just looking at your face, I think I could drink three glasses without any side dishes. Do you want to sit here?”

He lifts up the bottom of his pants that go down to his knees, exposing his bare thighs, and taps them with his palm. When he takes a step back from her, who looks cute by her previous life standards but who is showing off her uncle-like creepiness, the thought suddenly pops into his head that Sooyoung would also laugh like this when she got drunk. He never expected that he would end up picking on a drunk woman again.

“If you want to get moving early tomorrow, how about going upstairs and going to sleep?”

A man who is kicking the leg of a woman who is flirting with Ray and poking his subordinate who is sleeping leaning against the back of the seat next to him.

“Aya, I got it… .”

Then he blows his bangs again, wakes up his colleague who is sleeping across from him, and goes up the stairs.

“Thank you for your hard work. Here’s your pay for today’s work.”

As he enters the kitchen and takes off his apron, the innkeeper approaches him and hands him a small bag. He opens it and finds about eight metal coins with unfamiliar patterns. Ray doesn’t know how much they are worth, but he takes them and puts them in his tunic pocket.

“By the way, then why did you say you were going to Fraua without any money? Even if you were a country kid… .”

A red-haired merchant who kept his mouth shut and thought deeply for a while, then leaned out and spoke to me from beyond the counter.

“Are you still talking about that? You want to say that somehow that kid gave you the hint first.”

A man who mumbles and talks back behind her back while keeping his eyes fixed on the food.

“Then, you guys, you should fix your habit of confusing people and saying things vaguely!”

She shrugged her shoulders and said something to no one,

“I just… I wanted to meet someone so badly. My mom works at Fraua.”

Both of Ray’s statements are true, except that they are completely unrelated. The innkeeper responded to Ray’s words as if he had seen a kitten on the street.

“Yeah, I was bad. You’re right. I guess I’m a little lonely.”

The merchant, who was fooled by the tricky words, kept apologizing while washing his face repeatedly. He paid the innkeeper for the drinks and food he had, got up, and trudged up the stairs.

“Would you like some of this? If you’re hungry.”

The man behind me spoke, pointing to the dish that was about a third of the way through. Ray, who had been serving all night and was most curious about the taste of the dish, sat down next to me and put food in his mouth without hesitation. Even though the meat had cooled down a little, the meat juices burst in my mouth, and the fat that was fatal and addictive at night coated my tongue. The texture of the sauce underneath the meat was just like a potato, but it tasted like barley tea. As I emptied my plate in the blink of an eye, the man next to me looked at me with satisfaction. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Ray.

“You have to watch out for sly women wherever you go, because they only think about that.”

Ray, who had absolutely no confidence in the sight of him as an oil tycoon with a harem, tried to convince him anyway.

“My name is Ray. Thanks for the food. It was delicious.”

“I’m Memer, I guess I was hungry.”

“Is Mr. Memer from Frauen?”

“Yeah, I’m working there delivering stuff. It’s gotten a bit bigger though.”

“Have you ever heard of the name Algae? ”

“Algaet? Hmm… I don’t know. I think it’s a girl’s name. Algaet, Algaet… I don’t know.”

It was a girl’s name.

Ray rubs his sleepy eyes and enters the dark room, closing the door. He then feels around for the blanket on the shelf and pulls it out.

“… Why did you come in? I thought you wouldn’t hang out with me anymore.”

Ray, who thought he was sleeping, flinched and then spread the blanket again and laid down on the floor with his back to the bed.

“That’s not it. And I have something I want to ask you, sister.”

“… … .”

“I got paid after working today. I don’t know if it’ll be enough for Fraua, but here you go.”

Ray places a sack on the bedside table.

“… … .”

As expected, he just lay there and didn’t say anything.

In the still room, the only sound is the faint whistling of the wind through the cracks in the window.

“Excuse me, do women really relieve their loneliness with that?”

It wasn’t a question that I necessarily wanted an answer to. But I was curious. The games that women in this world, whose morality has been reversed, enjoy are a little different from the ones they used to live in. Well, there’s no need to worry about contraception or diseases, and I think women in this world have maternal love, too. Instead, it’s maternal love combined with aggressive sexual desire… That kind of maternal love is what’s special.

“… … .”

There was no word for a long time, so Ray thought that the merchant who had woken up early today and pulled a cart all day must have fallen asleep because he was tired. He also wondered if what he had heard when he came in earlier was just a snort.

“Well… I guess it’s not like it can’t be done to that extent.”

Ray mutters to himself as he absentmindedly thinks about the nutrition pouch of his older sister, who had been catching his eye all day, and then falls asleep.

“… … .”

A dark and quiet room, what is that one word? The merchant spends a long night with his eyes wide open, unable to finish the eventful day.

It was a quiet morning at the wharf that was once bustling with ships and sailors as if it were a lie. His brown hair fluttered in the salty sea breeze. He was a greenhouse flower born in the city and died in the city, so he instinctively felt suffocated in the narrow gaps between buildings and ran out as soon as he woke up because his new body in this life had grown into a proper country boy.

As Ray walks along the dock, squinting under the bright sunlight, two coins jingle in his pockets, which he had taken out and put aside in a bag he had left by the merchant’s bedside the night before. Ray greets the owner of a bookstore that has just opened its doors and enters the store.

“Mila Arsul.”

As the merchant took out the cart from the warehouse and checked to see if anything was missing, he heard a sound from behind and turned his head to see Memer leaning against the wall. Mila, who had been crouching, stretched her back, untied the string tied around her wrist, put it in her mouth, and tied her red hair back.

“I even did a background check, I told you that money is damn convenient. But the spelling is wrong. It’s Ar-Ju-Ul.”

“Then let’s say you dyed that hair too.”

“How did you know? I fell into a barrel of alcohol when I was young.”

“There’s no fool who would go around pretending to be royalty so clumsily.”

“… … .”

“There’s a song like that too.♫Holy and great Arshul♫, aren’t you Arshul the nanny?”

A nanny, a woman who breastfeeds and raises a baby who is not her own. In terms of common sense, it can also mean something like a debaucher. A pun using pronunciation similar to the lyrics of a song.

“What do you want with me?”

“I didn’t come here to see you.”

“If you’re talking about boys, you said you went out somewhere. … You said you didn’t do anything yesterday.”

Mila replied, putting the tent she had put down back on the cart, then turned around and added.

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“If it’s like that, why don’t you take him and raise him?”

At that moment, Ray appeared in the back alley of the inn with three books tucked under his arm and said.

“Sister? I’m back. Mr. Memer is here too. … Nothing happened last night!”

Ray added to reassure him.

“Really? Hey, would you like to help me with my work today? I’ll make sure you have enough to go see your mom. I’d love to help, but I’m a businessman too. ”

“Huh? Oh… Thank you, but… .”

I turn my head and look at Mila. I heard she is leaving this city today.

“I think it will be over by 5pm and there will be plenty left over.”

Memer, who speaks precisely of the time five o’clock in the afternoon when Mila had booked a carriage to Frauah.

“You must be foolish, I’ll be waiting.”

Mila shrugs her shoulders as she locks eyes with Memer.

“Okay. Can I ask you this… !”

Ray quietly places the books he bought on the end of the cart.

“Then shall we go? Oh, right. Why don’t you go down to the dock?”

Memer walks to Ray’s side, grabs his shoulder, and starts to walk out of the alley, but turns his head and blurts out a word to Mila.