The Heavy Smoker and the Reaper of the Wheat Field (4)

After I single-handedly cleared an entire field bare, lunchtime arrived before I knew it.

Flap─.

Frang and I spread out a mat beside the field and sat down.

After working until lunchtime, I was hungry. As I sat on the mat, I set down the adventurer's bag I'd brought and was about to take out the rations when I saw Frang smiling silently.

“Frang?”

“Hehe. Actually, I prepared something like this today.”

At my question, Frang smiled brightly and took a cloth-wrapped basket out of her bag.

A basket? Ah, could this be…?

“Ta-da!! Sandwiches!”

Frang opened the lid of the wooden basket with a cute exclamation. It was packed with delicious-looking sandwiches.

“You made these… Frang, you?”

“Yeah! Farm work is hard, you know. We need to eat a hearty lunch!”

At Frang's words, I trembled with emotion.

A lunchbox lovingly packed by one's girlfriend was practically a dream come true for most men, wasn't it? Since I'd been a virgin until only a few days ago, I'd never even dreamed of a girlfriend's lovingly prepared lunchbox, making me all the more moved.

And that great emotion soon turned into guilt. I could feel my face growing gloomy.

“You even packed a lunchbox, Frang, but I didn't prepare anything. All I brought was some meat for us to share.”

All I'd brought was dried rations and meat Dorka had given me last time.

Even though I'd taken it into the sewer, I'd wrapped it well enough that it hadn't absorbed any smell. Still, compared with Frang, who had even brought a lunchbox, I'd practically brought nothing.

Frang shook her head as if to say it was okay.

“Don't worry about it. I'm fine, you know?”

“How can you say you're fine? This is exactly when I should make an effort.”

I was the one who'd joked about being a mama, but Frang wasn't actually my mother.

Even giving unconditional love to one's own child is difficult. That's what makes a mother's love so noble—yet to take being loved by one's lover for granted as though it were a right...

If I behaved that way, our relationship would soon end in disaster. I spoke seriously.

“I couldn't help it today since I didn't bring anything, but look forward to next time. I'll cook you a lavish meal worthy of a man.”

“Pffft. I'll wait without expecting much.”

At my words, Frang's face flushed as though she were genuinely happy, then she turned serious again.

“Still, Nord, men aren't supposed to go casually barging into the kitchen, you know? I'm truly grateful, but I don't want other people calling you spineless.”

“…What?”

Men aren't allowed in the kitchen?

I was dumbfounded for a moment, then came to my senses. Gender discrimination was still an ongoing reality in this otherworld.

There were hardly any assholes saying medieval crap like ‘A woman should be beaten once every three days,’ but in these little details, I occasionally felt the difference in the environments we'd been born into.

They say human beings are animals ruled by their environment.

Since people had been raised in that sort of environment from birth, their common sense differed from that of the twenty-first century. It wasn't as if they treated little girls as though they didn't exist, like the grandparents of my generation had, though.

Deep down, I resolved to start changing our relationship into an equal, horizontal one through these little things.

Still, forcing Frang to do something she disliked would defeat the purpose. We'd find a compromise through conversation. I was an otherworldly harem-chasing macho bastard, but surely I had at least the right to make the person I loved comfortable.

“Got it. I'll be careful. But what am I supposed to do? I want to feed my lady girlfriend a meal I made myself.”

I subtly pulled Frang into my arms for some cuddling. She scrunched up her neck, enjoying it, but tilted her head.

“Girlfriend? What does that mean?”

“My lady girlfriend. Or should I have called you my goddess?”

“Oh, Nord, honestly. How am I a goddess? Where would you find a half-breed goddess?”

Frang, held in my arms, reached out and stroked my chin. I raised my hand and covered hers, as she often did with mine, enjoying its warmth.

“There are tons of half-breed gods, too. And what does your origin matter? If you're this kind and cute, you'd be a goddess even if you were a half-breed of a half-breed.”

“Pffft. Nord, that tickles─.”

We stayed like that for a while, then started eating. We could have done it all day, but the body couldn't survive on love energy alone; it needed bioenergy too.

I bit into one of the sandwiches Frang had made.

I had guessed as much from its appearance, but sure enough, it was incredibly delicious. I swallowed the sandwich and gaped in amazement.

“What the hell? What did you make this with for it to taste this good?”

“Don't exaggerate. I put in chicken and vegetables. Ms. Beinya lent me the ingredients for the sauce. It turned out pretty tasty, didn't it?”

“Pretty tasty… this? Then ‘incredibly’ tasty must mean something on the level of royal cuisine.”

I was speechless at Frang's high standards.

In this otherworld, sandwiches were an extremely common convenience food because they could be prepared without using fire. They were roughly the equivalent of instant ramen… no, soy-sauce egg rice. I'd eaten them until I was sick of them for three years.

Even so, I'd hardly ever eaten a sandwich this delicious.

This was tastiness that went beyond soy-sauce egg rice, on the level of fried rice with beef jangjorim topped with a poached egg.

“Hehe. I made it with love because I thought of you eating it, Nord. Maybe that's why it tastes even better?”

“Ughhh… I feel guilty….”

My heart hurt at Frang's bashful smile. She was cute, made me feel guilty, and was amazing—just... everything.

What couldn't she do? She was good at cooking and survival, could sew at a professional level, and could fight almost as well as I could.

She was terribly timid, but Frang's attack power, combining a dwarf's strength with nimble movements, was at a level where I couldn't guarantee victory without Beast Regression either.

Even if I won, one of my limbs would probably have been knocked off by her hammer first.

Maybe the luckiest thing that had happened to me since coming to this otherworld wasn't the awakening of Dickaconda, but becoming Frang's lover.

“This won't do. I have to succeed somehow and make sure Frang lives in comfort and luxury. I'll let you live in a house with a garden without ever having to get your hands wet.”

As I declared my resolve while stuffing a sandwich into my mouth, Frang laughed as if I'd tickled her.

“Hee hee. I'll pass. I enjoy handling things and moving around more than just sitting around being waited on.”

“Really? Then I take it back.”

“What an anticlimax.”

Frang was cute and sweet-and-sour, so I could afford to be bland.

Anyway, let's work harder. I had to become a man Frang wouldn't be ashamed of. As I was thinking that, Frang looked at my clothes and spoke.

“That reminds me, Nord, you barely broke a sweat.”

“Huh? Oh, it's because the weather's cool. The work wasn't that difficult, either.”

“Farm work wasn't difficult?”

Frang, holding her sandwich in both hands, looked a little surprised. With the little thing eating like that, she looked like a hamster. Fuck, she was so cute it could kill me.

I wanted to pull her into my arms and rub my cheeks against hers, but I held back because surely she'd hate it, no matter what.

Frang was considerate enough that she might have laughed it off with a giggle, but they said paying attention to these little things was the secret to making a relationship last.

“Then, Nord, were you a farmer back home too?”

At that moment, Frang asked curiously as she ate her sandwich.

“A farmer? Me?”

I blinked while chewing a mouthful of bread.

“Heh heh heh. Hahahaha! No way!”

The novel question made me burst out laughing. Me, a farmer? If my grandfather heard that, he'd get angry and say some good-for-nothing bastard was sullying the good name of farmers.

I'd heard jokes from my paternal family about graduating from veterinary school, moving to the countryside, and looking after animals, though.

“Hehe. No. Back home, I was a student. But why do you ask?”

“Hmm. You know, I deliberately avoided asking about your past because I thought it might sound like prying, but isn't it strange? You studied a lot and are good at farm work too. I kept wondering about it even while we worked.”

Frang said this with a look that said I didn't have to answer if I didn't want to.

I bit into my sandwich and thought about how to answer.

My girlfriend treated the past as the past, but to other people, a guy like me probably did look fucking strange.

Even at Carmine University, there had often been people who found it strange that I was the kind of guy who focused solely on language studies. I noisily chewed and swallowed the sandwich in my mouth before answering.

“My father's family were farmers. It wasn't a field this big, but I sometimes helped them too.”

“Ah─. So that's why you're used to farm work.”

“Well, yeah. Though I only did it a few times when I was young.”

In fact, my paternal family had never put a scythe in their young grandson's hands. I had built my skill in the army.

But it felt awkward to tell the whole truth. Saying ‘I was in the military’ meant something very different in this world from what it did in twenty-first-century Korea.

Maybe saying I was from the guard would get the general idea across.

I moved my lips, then simply shut them. I knew little about Kitai culture─Carmine University didn't even have any relevant books─so if I said something without knowing what I was talking about, the lie might be exposed later.

So let's just settle on Nord the dashing farmer. It would be ridiculous to tell a lie just to hide another lie.

“Nord, you're good at everything.”

“Hearing that from you, Frang, somehow feels like you're teasing me.”

“Aw, it's a compliment.”

“Heh heh. Then that's fine.”

That was how Frang and I finished our meal while chatting.

We had finished eating and cleaning up, but the bell signaling that it was time to return to work still hadn't rung.

Since we still had time to rest, I decided to hug Frang. I was just about to reveal my lecherous intentions and cling to her.

Kwoooaaah─!

Along with a sound like gas leaking in the distance, a massive plume of smoke began to billow up. For a moment, I was startled, thinking a fire had broken out because of the smoke's fierce force, but it gathered as if it possessed a will of its own and rose into the sky.

“W-what?! What's going on?!”

Frang clung to my arm in fright. I embraced her and glared at the cloud. My mana-awakened, sharpened senses detected the immense mana contained within it.

“That's… the <Cloud Summon(Summon Cloud)> spell.”

I knew that spell too. Cloud Summon. It was a low-tier spell that summoned and manipulated clouds made of water vapor.

Even so, summoning and controlling that much cloud must have been difficult.

Who was it? With worry and surprise mixed in my gaze, I looked toward where the cloud had originated. The elf in a straw hat was holding the staff he'd had on his back and chanting a spell.

“Hotulusil?”

Once I knew the mage's identity, my tension immediately drained away. Even from this distance, I could easily imagine his bored expression.

Fwooooo─.

Smoke rose from the long-stemmed pipe clenched in Hotulusil's mouth. The straw-hat elf finished the incantation without removing the pipe from his mouth.

Shwaaaaaaa─.

Then rain began falling from the cloud.

It wasn't ordinary rain but magic that restored the soil's fertility. He must have cast a recovery spell over the land, depleted from growing wheat, like spreading fertilizer.

The Mages' Guild also sold this spell in condensed potion form. Diluted several hundredfold, it was the high-grade fertilizer of this otherworld.

Wealthy farmers and lords favored the stuff, but it seemed Hotulusil replaced it by casting the spell himself.

Hotulusil wasn't some fucking straw-hat fuck-elf; he was Smoker. Damn that billowing-cloud elf.

“Oh, so Mr. Hotulusil did this? Thank goodness…. You startled me.”

Frang seemed relieved after realizing the mage's identity too. I stroked the back of the startled Frang to calm her down and sighed.

“You could at least say something before using it.”

That fucking elf bastard had scared the hell out of people by smoking while walking.

Shwaaaaaaa─.

Hotulusil's spell poured raindrops over the harvested wheat field and continued showering the area for quite some time.

They say American farmers spray their fields with water by helicopter, but that guy was going big too, like the landowner he was.

Still, he hadn't sent the cloud all the way up to the troposphere. It seemed he was simply pouring down special rain from somewhat high in the sky. It probably wasn't possible to manipulate the weather from ground level all the way up to the troposphere.

If that were possible, he wouldn't be a fucking farmer but a strategic weapon. If he gathered raindrops and dropped a one-ton water droplet from the stratosphere, that would be orbital bombardment, wouldn't it? Even a dragon would die if hit by that shit.

“Anyway, he's a truly incomprehensible guy.”

Why the hell was an elf with a Kitai-style name, from some rural backwater country, spraying agricultural magic over another country's farmland?

It was striking enough that a guy who looked like he could reach Gold class even as an adventurer was standing there in a straw hat and vest.

Even if swarms of harmful vermin and all that shit came rushing in, wouldn't he just wipe them out in one shot with magic? Being strong didn't mean he had to do physical labor, but honestly, it was still amazing.

Still, even a mage that incredible couldn't finish the harvest alone and had to seek out laborers.

It made me realize anew just how weak a creature humanity was in the face of nature.