Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Episode 14: The Meaning of a Name (1)

-Rustle.

Hm?

The late-autumn sunlight tickled my face and woke me before the alarm went off, but I felt something unfamiliar all over my body.

The blanket was much heavier than usual, and even though the stove had gone out and a slight chill lingered in the air, it somehow felt warm.

And.

“What is all this?”

Leaves.

Dry fallen leaves were piled everywhere. The coffeehouse furnishings were all buried under them, enough to make me wonder if I was in the middle of a mountain.

It was easy enough to guess the culprit(?) behind this disaster. There were only two people in the coffeehouse right now.

Pushing through the leaves as though wading through water, I went up to the second floor and finally reached the master bedroom where the culprit was sleeping.

-Knock knock.

“If you’re awake, come out.”

(Mmmnh.)

Since she had taken the form of a little girl, I did not want to just fling the door open, so I knocked like a gentleman, but there was no sign at all that she was waking up.

Couldn’t be helped.

Wondering if the second floor might also be piled full of leaves like the first, I carefully opened the door.

Fortunately, the master bedroom was unchanged.

Except for the child sleeping on the floor in a strange position, even though I had clearly laid her neatly on the bed and even taken out a winter blanket to cover her.

“Wake up. It’s morning.”

“Mmm, morning?”

“Yeah. You have to eat.”

“Breakfast! I’ve never had breakfast before!”

The child, who had been rubbing her eyes as she asked, immediately sat bolt upright at the mention of breakfast.

She had said that even having arms and legs was something that had only happened yesterday, so eating a meal was probably a first for her too.

Truthfully, after the ordeal(?) she had gone through before dawn, if she had said she did not want to eat, I would not have forced her.

But if she was this excited about it, that was a different story.

I followed the child as she bounded ahead down the stairs.

Oh, right.

“By the way, were you the one who did all this with the leaves?”

“Yes! Because it was too cold! I did a good job, right?”

“Yeah, thanks. But don’t do this again next time. The people who have to clean it up will have a hard time.”

“Okay! Hehe.”

She had done it out of kindness.

She had gone all the way down to the first floor in the middle of sleeping just to scatter leaves around.

Because she had worried that I might be cold.

The cleanup was the problem, but thanks to those leaves, I had actually slept soundly despite the uncomfortable bed.

So instead of questioning why she had done something potentially dangerous, I decided to settle for a vague admonition.

“But who are the people who have to clean it up? It’s just the two of us here...”

“They’ll be here soon.”

“What is this mess now? Are you in there?”

They arrived.

The cleaning people—no, the nine-tailed fox Elder and Director Baek Mahyeon.

Maybe because he was a monster, he could not quite become a gentleman.

“Elder, over here.”

I raised my hand high and called the Elder over toward the area I had at least cleared a little.

Because the fallen leaves were piled up like a mountain and we could not even see each other’s faces, our voices grew excessively loud and shattered the quiet morning.

“What a mess, what a mess. Good grief, did that raccoon dog give you something again?”

“No. Actually...”

“I did it!”

“Hm?”

Worried that the leaves might be hiding her from view, the child jumped up and down while waving her hands.

“You had a daughter?”

“Do you really think that’s possible?”

“Then who is she? No, wait! What is this energy now!”

“I was just about to ask the same thing.”

My original plan had been to ask her slowly over breakfast, but since things had already turned out this way, there was no reason to drag it out any longer.

“Are you that tree?”

“Yes! That’s right!”

It was a ridiculously simple answer to a question I had phrased as plainly as possible.

The deduction was simple.

She had said her body had appeared last night, which meant there had been a time when she had no body.

It was also an answer that would not have come from a child born from the Divine Tree or some kind of spirit.

“Well, apparently that’s how it is. Haha.”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s how it is’! Where are you going! Sit down and explain exactly what happened!”

“You heard it with me, didn’t you, Elder? I have to make breakfast, so if there’s anything else you’re curious about, ask the child directly. Oh, and please clear the leaves off that table over there too.”

With that, I quickly headed toward the kitchen.

I had woken the child with breakfast as bait, so naturally I had to keep my promise.

And while I was at it, I could legally dump the cleanup job on them.

But what should I make?

There was still some spicy stir-fried pork left, but I had no intention of going through another incident like what happened before dawn.

After opening and closing the nearly empty refrigerator and cupboards several times for no reason,

the only ingredients I managed to scrape together were the sweet potatoes we had roasted on the stove yesterday and some Spam I had received as a holiday gift.

Even if I simply fried the Spam, there were four mouths to feed, so there was nowhere near enough.

Was ‘that’ really the only thing I could make?

I took out a large metal bowl and mixed together the sweet potatoes, finely chopped Spam, and a generous amount of mayonnaise.

And just like that, today’s breakfast menu became sarada.

Not salad.

Sarada.

A familiar dish where you simply mix mayonnaise into whatever random ingredients you have lying around.

Without a single fancy ingredient such as oriental sauce or dressing, the rustic, old-fashioned sarada was finished in no time.

And beside it, I placed four glasses of coffeehouse milk, which I had already practiced making yesterday.

_____________

-Rustle. Rustle.

While Jinseong prepared breakfast, the coffeehouse was filled with an untimely autumn atmosphere as fallen leaves fluttered everywhere.

“What are we doing at the crack of dawn? And why is that raccoon dog never around when he would actually be useful?”

“Didn’t the two of you agree to take turns guarding the place?”

“Ah, right, we did. Damn it. As they say, even dog poop is nowhere to be found when you need it.”

“If you just leave it alone, I’ll do it.”

“Enough with acting like a master. You are growing old right alongside me, and it looks unsightly.”

He said that, but most of the hands diligently clearing leaves belonged to Baek Mahyeon.

The child’s tiny hands could hold literally only a handful at a time, while the nine-tailed fox merely flapped his palms side to side like fans and stirred up a breeze.

“This is enough. You stop too and sit down. We have much to discuss.”

Once most of the leaves piled throughout the coffeehouse had been pushed outside, the nine-tailed fox dropped into a chair and called the other two over.

“Now then, let us hear it. Are you truly that Divine Tree?”

“Yes! I got arms and legs like this!”

“Hmm.”

“Elder, has a tree ever turned into a person before?”

“It happens occasionally. Trees possess life as well, so over enough time, principles gather within them. Since it is a Divine Tree, it probably did not even need thousands of years. Still, this is strange. It was not enough that it grew in a single day, but now it has taken on a perfectly human form as well.”

The child ignored the gazes of the two adults and amused herself by flapping her palms to make little gusts of wind.

The nine-tailed fox looked her up and down repeatedly, murmuring, “How fascinating,” again and again.

“Have you finished asking everything you wanted? Please take this.”

“Even with all this chaos going on, do you really have to make sure you eat like this?”

“If I skipped meals every time there was some kind of disaster, I wouldn’t have eaten a single meal by now.”

“You say that like it’s something to be proud of, you brat!”

Jinseong lightly ignored the nine-tailed fox’s criticism.

Instead, he gave the nine-tailed fox sitting on the outside a look, silently telling him to move the bowls over.

“I came here as your guest, yet every time you treat me like a servant. Heaven will punish you.”

“If you start invoking divine punishment over carrying one bowl of food, the child will hear you and learn from it.”

“Exactly! Well said. So what are you going to do now? The Divine Tree turning into a child cannot be undone, but are you planning to raise her?”

This time, everyone’s attention turned toward Jinseong, who had sat down with them.

Until now, Jinseong had shown surprisingly little hesitation when dealing with problems like this.

And as an added bonus, he always gave bold answers.

Just like now.

“Is there any other choice?”

“You are not even married, and you are saying you’ll take in a child?”

“It’s not like I can send her to an orphanage.”

“Well, that is true, but... ahem.”

The child was clumsy with a spoon and kept splattering food around her mouth, clothes, and even the table.

Jinseong casually wiped her mouth beside her, looking as though he had already made up his mind long before they arrived.

“Still, you have only known her for a single day. Saying you have grown attached enough in that time to take her in makes no sense.”

“If we’re talking about short periods, it hasn’t even been a month since the four of us reached the point where we could sit around comfortably and talk like this.”

“Huh? Is that really true? At least three months...”

The nine-tailed fox trailed off while counting on his fingers with his thumb.

‘Ha, can that really be right? It has only been two weeks since the day I met this fellow at the coffeehouse. And yet somehow he feels like a friend I have known for years.’

With a newly startled expression, he glanced over at Director Baek Mahyeon, only to find him wearing much the same face.

The hardships they had gone through had all been so overwhelming that they had temporarily forgotten that fact.

Which was precisely why it surprised them even more.

It was the moment they realized anew that Jinseong had already come to occupy a large place in both of their hearts.

“Why are you staring at me like that? The milk is getting cold.”

“It is nothing. Yes, let us eat. Everything we do is for the sake of eating and living, after all.”

-Sip.

“This is good.”

“It’s delicious.”

Because they could not light the stove due to all the leaves piled inside the coffeehouse, the cold that had seeped into their bodies melted away like snow beneath the warmth of the milk.

Once warmth spread through them, their chopsticks naturally moved toward the sarada.

Because the amount had been misjudged and too much mayonnaise had gone in, the rich savory flavor spread thickly through everyone’s mouths.

Calling it healthy food would have been a stretch, since aside from the sweet potatoes, the ingredients were rather destructive.

“The sweet potatoes are delicious too! They’re really sweet and savory!”

“Heh heh, between this and the spicy stir-fried pork from last time, if your cooking is this good, you could open a restaurant.”

“Do you know how many people hear that, open a restaurant, and go bankrupt every year? The coffeehouse alone is already more than enough for me.”

“You hardly even open it properly.”

“Even so, every cup of coffee you demanded was served on time.”

“Ah, that is only natural when I am paying you that much. You should actually conduct business, proper business.”

“Would you like some more?”

“I have been preaching to deaf ears. I am fine, so give the child another serving.”

And so, sitting around the old dining table, bickering as they ate, they looked no different from any ordinary family enjoying a peaceful breakfast.

If not for the nine-tailed fox’s question that broke the warm atmosphere.

“But the child has nowhere to stay right now. You said you slept down here today too, didn’t you?”

“There is one more room on the second floor.”

“How can you call that a person’s room? Between the wardrobe and bedding cabinet, there is hardly any space left.”

“We’ll handle that on our side. We can either extend the building or construct another one in front.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry you keep having to help.”

“At least wet your lips before saying that. You could pretend to refuse once out of courtesy. You shameless thief.”

“Haha, the family has grown, hasn’t it? I should gratefully accept the help.”

“What does ‘family’ mean?”

“It means people who live under the same roof and eat meals together.”

“Then are we family?”

“Yeah.”

A gentle smile filled Jinseong’s eyes as he stroked the child’s head.

And so the Dangsan-ri Coffeehouse was preparing to grow a little larger, just as its family had grown.

It was an ordinary morning missing only the raccoon dog, who not only failed to eat the sweet milk and savory sarada, but also failed to become part of the child’s family.