Blood Dumplings and Honey

“It’s completely hardened.”

Ji-oh picked up one of the Mangdung Fruits he had left drying in the cabin yard.

“…And it’s not even yellow anymore…”

The glossy metallic sheen caught the light with a glitter that was truly the color of pure gold. Size, weight, shape—everything about it looked exactly like a particularly ugly lump of gold dust.

“Since when have I been walking the path of an alchemist?”

It was fascinating that the plump, juice-filled red fruit could change this much.

“Even the color’s similar to sunlight.”

Hardened enough to be ground into powder, the fruit no longer looked like food at all. Still, knowing it could be turned into medicine, Ji-oh tilted his head and packed every last dried fruit into a glass jar.

Back inside the cabin, he called on the system’s help for the first time in a while.

“Looking for a well-read friend who can tell me how to make blood dumplings.”

“Right. So the well-read friend was right here. My confidence had a solid foundation after all.”

Today’s content:

Making blood dumplings—good for recovering from bleeding.

“Ta-da.”

Wasting time on productive work was an absolute delight. For someone like Ji-oh, who loved making and raising things, tasks like this were never a burden.

Lounging in a sunlit cabin, leisurely kneading dumplings by hand…

It hit his tastes with perfect accuracy. Carrying the ingredients, he headed for the workshop.

“I’m not going to paint, but there’s still no better place to work.”

The workshop was spacious enough that, as long as he carefully avoided the paints, he could make full use of the worktable. He set every ingredient out on the surface he had cleaned in advance.

“……”

After washing his hands, Ji-oh hesitated.

“…Should I just grind it into powder the way I make pigments? Is this the narrow thinking of an art teacher who’s only ever handled art supplies? But calling this a ‘dried fruit’ is generous—it’s nearly as hard as a mineral…”

Caught in a mild panic, he found himself absently turning the dried fruit over in his fingers. Surprisingly, a sense of calm settled over his mind and body.

“It’s warm.”

The forest had been blessed with clear skies day after day, so sunlight always poured in freely. Just as its cozy colors suggested, the thoroughly dried Mangdung Fruit carried the gentle warmth of sunshine. It wasn’t merely warm against the skin—a subtle heat seeped all the way into the blood vessels beneath.

“So this is the power of sun-dried fruit… Incredible.”

His heart, receiving that energy, began to beat with the same slow, clear rhythm of a lazy afternoon nap. A mild, peaceful feeling washed over him, as if he were rolling around in a blanket that smelled of sunshine.

“……”

Clang—!!

Ji-oh brought the hammer down.

“Harder than I expected.”

Bang, crack!

“Next time I shouldn’t dry them whole like this…”

Crunch…

“Maybe I should grind them first and then dry them.”

Snap, tick.

“But then it would be hard to trap the juice inside like this.”

With a dull impact, the fruit that had been as hard as stone finally shattered.

“……”

That should be enough.

I’ll put it in a mortar and grind it.

Ji-oh nodded to himself. As someone who regularly made pigments from jewels, shells, and every other hard material imaginable, he was used to mortars getting scratched or broken—which was why he had prepared several in advance. He selected an especially clean glass mortar and began crushing the fruit.

Grind, grind-grind.

“What is this hardness…”

Even after being broken into pieces, the sound it made still made him wonder if he was doing this right. No matter how he looked at it, he really did seem to have awakened as an alchemist.

Maybe I should make a millstone later.

Judging by this insane hardness, he might have dried them for far too long.

“I may have gotten careless because forest ingredients never spoil.”

One of the forest’s special traits was that ingredients and crops never withered or went bad. The same held true for cooked food. A world where mold never grew on meals—wasn’t that every cook’s dream?

But this fruit had taught him clearly that the state did not last forever. Left too long, the Mangdung Fruit might not spoil, yet it continued drying until it became excessively hard.

“……”

Was that why it held an even warmer energy?

…I’ll have to think about this more carefully. The only way to know what results come from insisting on a particular method is to try it myself.

The dried fruit carried a gentle warmth ordinary fruit never possessed. Remembering that only a week ago it had been nothing more than an ordinary dried fruit, he was certain this one had its own unique properties.

Anyway, it was funny—and wonderful. Now Ji-oh could go around saying he had once refined gold.

“This should be enough.”

Rustle…

It was powder with a hint of moisture.

“It really looks like snow.”

The kind of snow that clumped together especially well. He had dried it so thoroughly he thought further drying was impossible—so where was this faint dampness coming from? Perhaps there was no moisture at all, and he was simply being fooled by a strangely sticky fluffiness.

“…Hmm.”

He tasted a little of the powder. A warming sensation spread through his body while sweetness bloomed across his tongue.

“……”

Ji-oh blinked twice.

“…This would taste great mixed into bread dough.”

In the old days when sugar was precious, common folk were said to grind the chestnuts that lay along the roadside into powder and use it in place of expensive sugar or strongly scented honey. That nutty flavor and subtle sweetness paired well with all sorts of food; people even made crêpes with it.

“No reason I can’t do the same.”

The powder of Mangdung Fruit that had been thoroughly steeped in sunlight had almost entirely lost its original tartness. Only the rich, mellow sweetness unique to dried fruit remained. The sweetness was deep, yet it also carried a mild, grain- or egg-like plainness. It was a quality he had never tasted in a fresh Mangdung Fruit, enough to make him wonder, Is this the taste of sunlight itself?

“The fruit flavor is strong enough that it might not work for regular meals, but it would pair beautifully with sweet pastries—crêpes topped with whipped cream or ricotta cheese, or madeleines. It would also go well with the cool lemon scent of Mangdung Fruit.”

Only someone who thought about food while washing, eating, and sleeping could truly be called a pig. In that sense, Ji-oh was definitely a pig.

“I’ll have to dry plenty of these ahead of time.”

Mangdung Fruits packed solid with flesh held even more moisture than that. It felt a bit like trying to dry a grape-jelly the size of a Kyoho grape.

If I want to use this powder in cooking as well…

It would be wise to dry large batches in advance.

It’ll take quite a while, after all.

Having turned every fruit into powder, Ji-oh lifted the glass jar.

“I might fail, so I’ll set most of it aside and only try with a little. A person should always keep failure in mind. That’s the true path to longevity.”

He left only enough powder to form a sphere smaller than the beads sold at stationery shops.

After finishing with the Mangdung Fruit powder, he picked up the bottle next to it. Something inside shimmered with the deep, liquid brilliance of a transparent galaxy.

“……”

It was Lurupu juice—the juice of the spring flower—that he had prepared earlier.

“…Of course it wouldn’t have spoiled…”

The Lurupu juice in the glass bottle somehow resembled the spring water where it had grown. Like water holding sunlight—or perhaps a slightly warm moonlight. The juice of a Lurupu that had materialized the light it carried its whole life and turned it into its own blood was far beyond mere glittery water.

…It really does look like a galaxy. I wonder if this is how the Milky Way would look reflected on the shallow water of the white-tree spring.

Perhaps because it was simply so beautiful to look at, Ji-oh gazed at it for a long time before finally murmuring,

“Magnificent.”

He dripped the Lurupu juice onto the finely ground powder filling the mortar. He had barely added a few drops before the powder was already thoroughly soaked, taking on a deep golden hue. Combined with the cool cyan moisture unique to Lurupu, the powder held a strangely chilly quality.

“…It looks like wet gold dust.”

After a moment’s thought, he pressed and kneaded the powder, then carefully rolled a portion between his fingers. Because he had been cautious with the attempt, the result was tiny—but a dumpling had been completed all the same.

“……”

It looked exactly like a bead made of real gold.

“…?”

At this point, shouldn’t he call it a gold dumpling instead of a blood dumpling?

“Well, whatever.”

Having gotten a feel for the powder’s moisture and the juice’s dampness, Ji-oh went on making dumplings one after another. Thanks to all the experience tearing sujebi dough and shaping honey rice cakes at home, the results turned out rather decent. In the end he managed to produce a total of fifteen dumplings.

“……”

Watching the carefully ground Mangdung Fruit powder completely disappear left him with a brief sense of emptiness. Life was bitter. There was a profound lesson in that.

“…Still, there’s juice left.”

Because the powder itself already held so much moisture, the absurdly spreadable Lurupu juice refused to be used up. In the end he had consumed only about a third of the bottle—nowhere near half.

“What am I supposed to do with the rest?”

The very moment he was wondering that—

“……”

“……”

“Uh…”

His eyes met those of a water bird perched on the workshop windowsill.

“Hey, wait—”

Clatter clatter clatter!!

“No.”

Splash—!!

The Lurupu juice had been stolen.

“……”

What was this?

The water bird had puffed itself up as large as possible and was wrapping its entire body around the big glass bottle, sealing it off.

“……??”

Faced with that greedy, slime-like shape that looked as if it had stepped straight out of a game, Ji-oh could only stare in bewilderment.

“What do you even plan to use that for?”

Watching that stubby little body try to swallow a bottle three times its size was entertaining, but he genuinely wanted to know why it was doing this.

“You can’t even swallow the whole thing. What are you being so aggressive for?”

Clink…

“This isn’t something you can solve by being stubborn. I’m telling you the glass bottle is bigger than your body.”

Clink!

“Do you see this bottle sticking out? See it? I hereby declare that you possess the qualities of a pig.”

Ttak!! Kkak!!

“Such a clear ttak-kkak—what original performance art. You really are my child.”

Mostly because of the completely casual way it drove him up the wall. Apparently these days even paint could pass on genetics.

“How exactly do you plan to use that?”

He had been wondering what a water bird could possibly need it for when the bird, as if to show him, slipped straight into the glass bottle. In the blink of an eye it folded itself into the shape of the bottle.

“Huh?”

And just like that, the water bird fused with the Lurupu juice.

“What the…”

“Kkureureuk.”

“Did you just speak?”

“Kkureuk.”

“You’re making sounds?”

Had it evolved?

“……”

You really are my child after all.

Nothing ever goes the way I expect.

When Ji-oh turned the bottle upside down and shook it hard, the water bird—clinging on with what might have been pride or pure stubbornness—finally slid out in a long stream.

Slooorp, pop!

Splash—!

“……”

“……”

Landing with the cute, liquid-monster sound of a stationery-store slime, the creature was now thoroughly soaked in Lurupu juice and sparkling all over.

“……”

“Kkureuk.”

It could talk—and more than that…

“…It’s warm.”

He could feel heat coming from it.

“How did this happen?”

“Kkureureuk.”

“It’s absurd and fun, but I have no idea what kind of phenomenon this is. Life really is just one piece of content after another.”

“Kkurung.”

“Does drinking Lurupu juice make animals evolve? Nothing happened when I took a sip. Discrimination?”

Perhaps the change was possible only because the water bird was a species born from Ji-oh’s own hands. Common sense said a creature whose entire body was made of water couldn’t possibly make kkureuk sounds as if it had vocal cords.

“I hope growing all of a sudden isn’t a bad change for your body.”

“Kkureureureureu.”

“Well, that’s a relief, but…”

After a brief moment of existential egg-related contemplation, Ji-oh decided to view the entire situation positively.

It’s fun, so it’s fine.

Yes. The truth was that Ji-oh hadn’t been thinking about anything at all. He had successfully finished every last worry.

“Talking, flying water—that’s truly amazing.”

“Kkureuk?”

“Your body color seems a little different too…”

The once-transparent body had turned a soft yellow, like water mixed with gold dust. Perhaps because this water bird often carried gems around, its sparkling form was now filled with yellow and transparent stones. They matched beautifully with the sunlight-and-moonlight glitter unique to Lurupu.

“Hmm.”

This color had the same visibility as a yellow traffic sign—you could probably spot it even from a passing high-speed train. A creature overflowing with brilliant yet gentle color. This would definitely set it apart from the others.

“If you’re going to stand out this much, I can give you a name.”

“Kkureureureul?”

“You like that? Good.”

Then Ji-oh said,

“Geumjjogi…”

“……”

“The second I said it I knew it was wrong. Your dad occasionally misspeaks.”

It was the first time Ji-oh had ever seen water look offended. Even as a parent, there were things one could and could not say to one’s child. The naming sense of “Little Goldie” clearly fell into the latter category.

“……”

The Seo family had never possessed talent for naming across the generations. He put a little more force into his brain and seriously turned the gears.

“Then… how about Honey?”

“Kkureuk?”

“Because of the sweet color.”

The bird holding warm golden light resembled both sunlight and moonlight—but it also looked like honey, the kind that might release a rich fragrance at any moment.

Stroking the slightly firmer, squishier golden bird, Ji-oh said,

“My naming sense ends right here.”

“Kkureureuk.”

“You’re truly merciful for not hating it.”

Honestly, he had expected the bird to dislike being named after honey.

Maybe the meaning didn’t get across and it doesn’t even know what honey is.

The thought crossed his mind for a second, but if the bird itself was happy with it, what could he do?

Ji-oh watched as Honey wriggled back into the glass bottle.

“Cute.”

Just looking at it was healing.

“A cat squished into a box…”

“Kkeureureung.”

“When your body gets squished, does the sound get squished too? Even cuter.”

“Kkyuryung.”

“This is the very essence of cute.”

Once Honey had finally stuffed its entire body into the bottle, Ji-oh picked it up. The glass was faintly lukewarm and just the right size—exactly like a hot pack.

It even smells sweet.

His mind grew hazy, the way it did while staring into a crackling campfire.

“Hmm.”

Simply gazing at the warm, pretty glass bottle that smelled of sweetness brought on the same drowsy languor he used to feel during afternoon classes after lunch on a spring day.

Eating and sleeping were a pig’s sacred duties. And Honey seemed to share that philosophy.

“……”

Without capping the bottle, Ji-oh slipped it inside his outer clothes.

“I’ll take that as agreement.”

“Kkeurung.”

The two of them collapsed like laundry left in a heap and fell asleep just like that.

(To be continued)