Chapter 68

Chapter 68

Chapter 68 Transformation Art (2)

-Ring, ring, ring.

After the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox had repeated, "No, that's... No," four or five times as though something inside him had broken, a video call came from Sani.

(I finally transformed into a human! Now I can eat at the buffet!)

The face on the screen wasn't Sani's usual one. A little boy who looked about Lia's age was grinning broadly.

"Wow! You really look like a human!"

"Good heavens, did he truly succeed?"

That settled it. After all, the Dragon Pearl had even created a soul for Lia. There was no way its power would be inadequate.

"I'll be there soon, so wait for me."

(Hurry up!)

Knowing how eagerly Sani must be waiting, I had no time to hesitate.

"Well then, I'll be back."

-Tap.

Just as I was about to get up, the Elder grabbed my shoulder and pushed me back into my seat.

"Why did you do that?"

"You're asking why I made such a trivial wish, aren't you?"

"Yes. Your actions are always so peculiar that I've generally let them pass, but I simply cannot understand this. Surely you knew what power the Dragon Pearl possessed. Why did you do it? That object could be exchanged for enough gold to let your descendants live in luxury for generations. So why..."

"Because to Sani, getting to come to this buffet is worth just as much as all that gold."

He was such an innocent child that it was difficult to believe he'd lived for countless years. I'd heard that throughout those long years, he'd guarded the Divine Tree and survived on whatever grew in the mountains.

He must occasionally have had opportunities to eat human food. But those occasions had been exceedingly rare.

Even the shamans had believed that divine beasts were noble beings who could survive on nothing but dew and sunlight, and therefore must never be served human food tainted with impure energy. That said it all.

Apparently, after the Haedong Divine Maiden was chosen, she'd begun bringing him food offerings from a nearby temple, but compared to spicy stir-fried pork and hamburgers, such food hardly stood a chance.

That was why I always tried my best when it came to the food Lia and Sani ate.

What troubled me even more than the pain of being unable to eat something they wanted was the possibility that they didn't even know such foods existed.

Though perhaps that wasn't a sufficient answer for the Elder.

___________

After driving back as quickly as I could, I arrived at the coffeehouse to find Sani waiting with his arms crossed and a triumphant expression.

"You really have turned into a human."

"Ahem! Raccoon dog spirits are naturally masters of transformation arts!"

The Dragon Pearl's effect was unmistakable. Or perhaps it was because Sani's desperate wish had been added to my own?

Sani looked exactly like a little boy. There was nothing about him that gave the slightest reason for suspicion.

"Shall we go eat, then?"

"Let's hurry!"

"No, you're human now, so you can't ride in there."

"Ah!"

Sani, who had been sticking his head into the pet carrier as he usually did when riding in the car, finally sat properly in the passenger seat.

I fastened his seat belt and drove back toward the buffet.

"What do you want to eat most when we get there? Lia sent you pictures, didn't she?"

"I'm going to eat everything there! I'll eat fried food and bread too!"

Oh, no. The pictures Lia had sent reflected her very personal tastes.

Tastes that were precisely what one should avoid indulging in too much at a buffet.

"There's plenty of other food too. All kinds of meat, and seafood as well."

"Ooooooh!"

"And you can fill your plate with as much as you want, as many times as you like. Isn't that amazing?"

"Can I eat a hundred times?"

"Of course."

"Ooooooooooooh!"

Giving Sani information about the buffet beforehand was partly an educational measure.

After all, if he ate too much and ended up with an upset stomach like last time, I'd be the one who had to deal with it.

I wasn't sure what difference telling him in advance would make, but at least he might avoid getting indigestion from eating too quickly.

Of course, judging by how excited Sani had become, overeating was an unavoidable fate.

But what was that hat?

As I rummaged through the passenger-side glove compartment to see whether any of the digestive medicine I'd bought last time remained, I noticed Sani's hat.

It wasn't one I'd seen before.

"Sani, what's that hat?"

"This helps with transformation arts! I was practicing when I found it in front of the coffeehouse!"

"Hmm, really?"

Apparently, even the almighty Dragon Pearl hadn't been able to teach Sani transformation arts directly.

Not if he still needed the help of a tool like that.

____________

Even after Jinseong left, the Nine-Tailed Fox could hardly bring himself to pick up his chopsticks.

'The Dragon Pearl is a divine treasure that grants eternal life to those who desire it, and fulfills even wishes one would sacrifice one's life to achieve. That fellow is wiser than I am, so he must surely know that.'

Yet Jinseong had used that Dragon Pearl for nothing more than another spirit's transformation arts.

Even more absurd was his reason.

He'd dressed it up as concern that Sani might be discovered when customers visited, but after coming all the way to a buffet, Jinseong's true intention was clearly food.

Hadn't he himself spoken of its value being worth a thousand pieces of gold?

It was just food.

With a little effort, one could buy it to take home or prepare it oneself.

The Nine-Tailed Fox quietly gazed at the plate before him.

It was a small feast he'd assembled by taking a little of each side dish that looked reasonably appetizing.

The same was true of Jinseong's plate, Lia's plate, and Dohyeok's plate.

Dohyeok's plate contained noticeably more dishes and considerably larger portions, but nowhere was there anything that could possibly be worth a Dragon Pearl.

'The power of his Divine Eyes must have grown so strong that it's shattered his mind. Otherwise, he would never do anything so foolish.'

The questions that continued to arise one after another eventually led him to a conclusion of his own.

"Hm? But why aren't you eating? Why are you just sitting there staring at your food?"

"Sani isn't here yet, hehe."

"And Hyung isn't here either."

"What does that matter? If you just start eating..."

Yet his own chopsticks remained clean, having touched none of the food.

He had been waiting.

Because Sani might return having mastered transformation arts.

Until Jinseong said he'd used the Dragon Pearl, the Elder hadn't even entertained such a possibility, yet even he hadn't picked up his chopsticks.

In a way, it was only natural.

They were a family that sat together and shared meals.

If someone couldn't attend because of their own circumstances, that couldn't be helped. Otherwise, it was right that they eat together.

This small consideration, something no one would have felt hurt about even if they had eaten alone, had gradually become a natural rule among those who had joined Jinseong's coffeehouse family.

That was what eating together meant to them.

How long had they waited before the food, growing cold and dry in front of them, when a familiar voice finally rang out from the entrance?

"Wooooow! There really are mountains of food! Over here too! And there's this much over here!"

The owner of the voice was a boy of about five, but his manner of speaking and movements were unmistakably Sani's.

"Look, it's Sani!"

"I can see him too. It seems he really has succeeded in transforming."

The excitement of seeing Sani somewhere other than the coffeehouse for the first time lasted only a moment. While Jinseong was briefly distracted at the counter, paying the bill, Sani dashed into the restaurant.

And began piling food onto his plate.

"But shouldn't we stop him?"

Dohyeok, who knew all too well about Sani's enormous appetite, asked worriedly.

"Leave him be. If he foolishly takes too much, he'll only have himself to blame."

"No, I'm worried he'll bring all that food back and then say he can't eat it."

If that happened, the responsibility for dealing with the leftovers would ultimately fall to them.

Furthermore, the kimchi and stuffed cucumber kimchi Sani had already piled onto his plate amounted to far more than the four of them could possibly manage.

"Aaagh! Stop serving yourself!"

"Sani! That's enough!"

"Was everyone over here? Look at this! There's so much kimchi!"

The reason the taste of salt filled their mouths during this touching reunion wasn't because tears had run down their faces and into their mouths.

It was because of the enormous quantity of kimchi Sani had piled up in that brief moment.

___________

An office in the Palace of Yama.

A nameplate reading "Judicial Department" hung on the glass door. Inside, documents lay messily piled on desks separated by partitions. There was nothing particularly unusual about the place, yet tension had filled the office since morning.

That was because, just like any ordinary company's office, it was echoing with a superior's shouts over a subordinate's mistake.

"Hey, Oh Changsik! Are you staging some kind of protest against me because I demoted you?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"Then what? A grim reaper comes back saying he's lost his hat, and you expect me to believe that? You idiot, where do you leave your brain when you go out?"

"Your Majesty, well, there have been precedents, and... it only has the ability to make someone look like an ordinary human, so even if a regular person picks it up and wears it, it won't cause any particular problems. Deputy Manager Oh is reflecting on his mistake as well, so perhaps we could leave it at..."

"Leave it at that and cover it up?"

"N-No, that isn't what I meant..."

At Yama's sarcastic tone, the attendant beside her hurriedly bowed his head.

In appearance, she was a woman who looked barely thirty, but within her dwelled an ancient deity who had existed since before the underworld itself, one so old that even discussing her age would be disrespectful.

A deity whose thinking was as antiquated as the years she'd lived.

"This is all because we gave Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva whatever he asked for, going on about a modernized underworld and whatnot! If we'd just kept using the traditional gat instead of these fedoras, would he have lost it when it was tied under his chin? And this thing, huh? This computor or whatever it's called, all this clicking instead of using paper and brushes! Using things like this is why everyone's become so careless. Isn't that right?"

Using Deputy Manager Oh Changsik's lost hat as an excuse, Yama vented all the grievances she'd been harboring and unnecessarily tapped at the keyboard on an empty desk.

But her attendants were duty-bound to speak the truth, however unpleasant, so none of them flattered her by agreeing with her unreasonable complaints.

After all, the very King Yama who was demanding a return to paper and brushes was dressed in a stylish business skirt suit and high heels, a perfect twenty-first-century professional outfit.

"Ahem. How many reinforcements do you need?"

"It was an energy so powerful that no one except General Ma or General U could defeat it."

"What? You're saying a mere evil spirit is strong enough to rival the gatekeepers of the underworld?"

She'd changed the subject out of embarrassment, only to hear something entirely unexpected from her subordinate.

'He could beat most evil spirits to a pulp on his own, so I can't simply dismiss what he's saying. This is troublesome.'

If such an evil spirit was in the mortal world, she had even less reason to send General Ma or General U.

There was no guarantee that an evil spirit capable of knocking on the underworld's gates at any moment would remain where it was. If it entered the underworld while the two gatekeepers were away, it would be a disaster.

And throughout the entire underworld, there was only one being whose power surpassed that of the two gatekeepers.

"Show me where the evil spirit is. I'll go myself."

"Your Majesty, you must not! There are still many souls awaiting judgment!"

"Tell them to wait a little. They're already dead. What could they possibly be in such a hurry for?"

"But, Your Majesty!"

"Enough. Important matters come first."

Her low voice silenced any further objections.

It was a historic day.

King Yama, judge of the Hell of Tongue Extraction and ruler of the underworld, was heading to the mortal world for the first time in five hundred years.