“Shall I prepare a meal, Second Young Master?”
The Head Steward asked me that as I was unpacking my things.
“Food... In a situation like this, can you really make something right now?”
“Oh, come now. Of course I can. If Second Young Master wants it, then I should prepare it this instant.”
“...Haha... Then I’d appreciate something simple.”
“We do have guests, so I suppose I’ll have to put in some effort for the first time in a while.”
The Head Steward was old, but he cooked from time to time.
It couldn’t be helped. Sometimes we had a cook, sometimes we didn’t.
Hell, even I cooked once in a while. Bang Seojin and Bang Yuseong were both hopeless with their hands.
Sometimes I’d wonder whether it really made sense for someone of the family bloodline to cook for himself, but—
With this family looking the way it does, who cares.
With the memories of my past life still in me, I never found it especially troublesome or bothersome. Even without that, Bang Seojin and Bang Yuseong had both been about the same.
I just happened to be the one who could make food that actually tasted like food.
“Let’s do it together for the first time in a while.”
“Ahem. Second Young Master, you’ve come a long way. Please get some real rest. This old steward can handle it himself. If worst comes to worst, I can ask the eldest son.”
“...”
That wording was seriously strange. Since when did it make sense to make my brother do it?
Then again, the Head Steward had always been like that. He was especially cold to Father and my brother.
More precisely, maybe it would be more accurate to say he treated me differently.
Well.
Maybe that was only natural. In this lunatic household, I was the closest thing to normal.
“No. I want to do it. Let’s do it together. I’ll help.”
“...If you insist...”
The Head Steward smiled with his usual kindly face.
It made old memories stir a little.
*****
The Bang Family kitchen was small. The reason was simple: several people in this house barely ate to begin with, and there weren’t many servants, so there had never been any need to build it large.
“At least we have all the ingredients.”
“We happened to restock everything not long ago. We also put away everything you brought back, Young Master.”
“Ah.”
The food supplies I’d brought. Luckily, those had all been put away properly too.
I picked up a knife for the first time in a while. The Head Steward had maintained it well. There wasn’t a trace of rust on it.
I used to hold one often enough, and the feeling was strangely nostalgic.
“By the way, where’s Father?”
“The Family Head said he was stepping out to the county town for a bit, and he still hasn’t returned. It’s been about seven days and nights now.”
“...”
If someone said they were stepping out and then vanished for seven days and nights, that sounded less like going out and more like going missing. But if it was that man, it was entirely possible.
Back then, too...
There had been a time he’d claimed he was just going out to have some fun, then disappeared for a full month.
This kind of thing happened all the time.
Clatter. Clatter.
I boiled the thin noodles and made the broth. It was about as simple a dish as it got. Beside me, the Head Steward was stir-frying something loaded with vegetables and very light on meat.
“Ah, Head Steward.”
While we cooked side by side, I spoke.
“Yes, Second Young Master. Did you have something to say—”
“It turns out I’m of the Zhuge Family bloodline. Did you know?”
“...”
The Head Steward’s hands stopped for a moment. He clearly did know.
“My, my... So you finally found out.”
“...It doesn’t look like it was something anyone was really trying that hard to hide.”
Judging from Thousand-Mile Divine Eye’s reaction, and everything around him, it didn’t seem like something people had been living their lives desperately concealing.
If I hadn’t known until now, then it was probably—
Because they were ashamed.
The Zhuge Family had probably been ashamed of what happened between Father and Mother. If that was why they hid it, then fine. That was their business.
It didn’t really bother me.
My life’s been too rough for me to get depressed over something like that.
There hadn’t been enough room in it for petty little cracks like that to open up.
“Does the Family Head know as well?”
“Yes. He knows.”
“...I see.”
“While I was there, I also met the Zhuge Family Head.”
“...Hah!”
The Head Steward jumped when I said I’d met Thousand-Mile Divine Eye.
“Even the Zhuge Family Head... Nothing happened to you, did it?”
“What do you mean, happened to me?”
Well, something did happen.
...It took way too long to finish all those letters.
He’d shoved his own work onto me, and that had turned the whole thing into absolute misery. Thinking back, he’d handed work to me pretty often. Sometimes he looked like he liked me, but then I’d remember things like that and start thinking maybe not.
“I’m doing fine.”
“...That’s a relief. I was very worried. I heard you abruptly left the Murim Alliance and became a martial artist of the Azure Moon Sect.”
“Life really is impossible to predict.”
“...Heh heh.”
Shhhk. I dumped the boiling broth roughly over the thin noodles. By then, the Head Steward’s dish was finished too.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
We carried the food out. Everyone was already gathered.
“Eat.”
Not all of them, apparently. Silver Moon Sword was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’d that bastard go?”
I asked Poison Dragon, who was already seated.
“He said he had something to do and went to look around for a bit.”
“...Something to do? What business could he possibly have in Liaoning?”
It bothered me, but he was already gone, so there wasn’t much I could do about it.
Bang Yuseong wasn’t there either.
That, I didn’t care much about. It wasn’t like that man was ever in the house much anyway.
“Let’s eat first.”
I set down the noodles and brought out a few side dishes. Life lit up Yu Yeon’s face.
I remembered how she’d kept asking for noodles. Maybe that was why I’d given her a bigger serving than everyone else.
“Let’s eat.”
Mealtime began.
And at that moment—
“...This is what you call a meal?”
Bow Ghost muttered from her seat in the corner.
Unfortunately, her voice carried especially well.
“Yeah, it’s a meal.”
“There are only this many side dishes...?”
“Quit whining and eat. If somebody gives you food for free, you should be grateful. You talk too much.”
“...”
I saw a vein jump in Bow Ghost’s forehead. She clearly didn’t like the casual way I was talking to her, and she didn’t like getting needled either, but what was she going to do about it? There was no way I was going to start being polite to her looking like that.
We already reached an agreement, didn’t we?
It had been a one-sided notice, but still, that counted.
“You brought back an interesting child. A foreign-looking person...”
“She looked like a lost kid. She seemed mentally unwell, so I picked her up for the time being.”
“Ahh...”
The Head Steward looked at Bow Ghost with pity in his eyes. Just like that, she’d become some poor girl with something wrong with her head. Bow Ghost gripped her chopsticks so hard it looked like she might snap them, but in that feeble body, she couldn’t even manage that.
In the end, all she could do was quietly eat. Bow Ghost looked exactly that miserable.
Yu Yeon, meanwhile, was too busy wolfing down the noodles like she’d been starving.
The others all ate without saying much.
The food should have been decent. I was fairly confident in my cooking.
Once the light meal was over, and everyone was resting through the first evening back—
“All right, then...”
Twilight faded, and just before night fully settled in, I stepped outside.
“Time to go.”
It was time to deal with the most urgent thing first. My destination was the mountain behind the Bang Family estate.
I started walking toward it.
Whoooooosh—!
The wind blew through.
That distinct scent of trees and grass brushing together slipped past my nose.
Whether it was fragrant or just full of life, it felt like something in between.
It was familiar enough. Back when I lived in Liaoning, I used to climb this mountain now and then.
“Mm.”
I followed the mountain path upward. It wasn’t very high. I’d made sure of that myself, so even as a child I could go back and forth without trouble.
The last time I’d climbed it was before I headed to the Alliance, so... a year or two ago?
My body felt unmistakably different from back then.
I’m light.
Light beyond belief.
There was none of the panting I used to fall into after climbing just a little, and I had more than enough strength to make it straight to the top in one go.
Ridiculous as it was, this was how I could physically feel just how much I’d changed.
Pushing the thought aside, I kept climbing.
Not long after, I reached my destination.
A small cave beside a boulder. I slowly approached the damp opening.
“...Damn, this is cramped.”
It hadn’t used to be this tight. But after the rebirth, my body had gotten bigger, and now getting inside was a pain.
I forced my way in somehow.
The interior was dark. Normally, the sensible thing would have been to bring a lamp, but I didn’t need one anymore.
Woooong—!
Moon Eye opened, and my vision brightened.
The inside of the cave came into view.
“...Should’ve cleaned this place up before I left.”
I sighed at what I saw.
Dust had piled up everywhere. My own fault for leaving without adjusting things properly.
I pulled a cloth from my sleeve and stepped forward.
Then—
“...What in the world is this?”
“...”
The voice behind me made my body go still.
I turned immediately.
And there, standing behind me, was the last person I’d expected to see.
“Bow Ghost...”
“...”
It was Bow Ghost. She stood behind me, staring ahead with a blank expression.
When did she follow me?
I hadn’t noticed.
Was the problem that I hadn’t sensed her presence?
No, I just came up too slowly.
I should have picked up the pace. Since it had been so long, I’d come up the mountain like I was out for a walk, and that was probably the problem.
Tch.
Even so, the fact that I’d failed to notice Bow Ghost following me was absurd.
“What is this... What in the world is this?”
Meanwhile, Bow Ghost’s eyes shook as she stared at what stood before her.
Watching her reaction, I turned my head back with a bland expression. I could let the following part go—nothing to be done about it now.
But I still had things to do.
“What does it look like?”
“If I knew, would I be asking?”
“...Hmm...”
I reached out and wiped at it.
There wasn’t actually that much dust, but there was so much damp in here that there was still plenty to clean off.
If she was asking what it was...
“It’s an altar.”
“...An altar?”
“Yeah. An altar.”
If someone imagined an altar, they’d imagine something much larger and far more orderly. If it was meant to enshrine something, then it shouldn’t have been in a place like this at all. There was a perfectly good forest outside, so why place it here of all places?
Bow Ghost looked like she couldn’t make sense of it in the slightest.
And the more important point was something else entirely.
There was an altar in a place like this. That alone was strange enough.
“...What in the world... What exactly are you enshrining here?”
What was the being this altar was meant to serve?
An altar existed to enshrine something.
Just what kind of god was housed in this absurd place?
That was what Bow Ghost asked.
I let out a faint laugh.
“Enshrining something, huh.”
Well.
“I don’t worship anyone.”
A god wasn’t a being worth worshiping. At least not by my standards.
“If there’s anything I do worship...”
If I had to explain the reason this altar existed, then there was only one answer.
“I suppose you could say I worship myself.”
An altar for myself.
A frame meant to divide up and manage a soul too burdensome for this small body to endure.
That was what this altar existed for.
