Chapter 61
The inside of the elf’s dwelling, which I had been dragged into by her wrist in a daze, was quite impressive.
On the outside, it looked like a giant bird’s nest woven from branches and leaves, but the inside was spacious and fairly well furnished with items scavenged from around the area.
'There are two chairs too.'
A sturdy-looking wooden desk and chairs were in place, and in one corner I could also see a fluffy-looking makeshift bed piled high with soft clothes that humans had worn.
Looking at it like this, it seemed she had looted buildings pretty thoroughly too.
When she led me to the chair and looked ready to pour out another rapid stream of clear, pretty elf speech, I hurriedly raised both hands.
"Whoa, whoa..."
I met her eyes and slowly pushed both hands downward twice, meaning for her to calm down.
Fortunately, the gesture for calming down seemed to be body language that even other races understood.
The elf who saw my gesture nodded slightly, then clearly slowed down her speech and began to enunciate carefully.
"An, del... Ar. Edel..."
As I listened to it in slow fragments, the skill in my head creaked and began translating.
I couldn’t translate the whole sentence, but three words were clear as day.
Hello, nice to meet you, welcome.
Those three words alone made it clear that she was welcoming my visit.
'Thank goodness.'
My first impression wasn’t bad, apparently.
It seemed better to start by saying something and then expecting the other person’s reaction.
If I let the elf do all the talking, proper communication would be impossible.
I pointed at the miscellaneous junk strewn across the rooftop outside and asked haltingly.
"Outside, things...?"
At my clumsy attempt at elf speech, she blinked and answered briefly.
"Unknown things."
Ah.
It seemed she had roughly put inside the house the items whose uses she could tell at a glance or make use of, like the desk, chairs, and clothes, while the things she didn’t know went outside on the rooftop.
I guess it would be hard to understand things like wristwatches, smartphones, or soda cans.
"I’ll show you."
I puffed out my chest confidently and began explaining with a mix of body language and broken words.
First, the old wristwatch.
I tried strapping it to my wrist and tapping it to explain the flow of time as the sun rose and set, but when the elf saw my clumsy vocabulary and exaggerated gestures, she tilted her head.
'...Skip this.'
Explaining it was harder than I’d thought. In times like this, it was best to move on quickly to the next thing.
Next was the crushed empty drink can.
This one was easy.
I asked for a moment and bought a drink from the exchange.
Because it was an empty cola can, I bought the same cola, opened it for her, and handed it over carefully.
Then, with a quick gesture, I showed her it was for drinking.
The elf took the can and carefully drank.
Psssshh.
Was it because she was drinking slowly with her mouth open?
The distinctive fizz of carbonation could be heard inside her mouth.
Then she startled and closed her mouth.
"No, no, keep drinking. It’s fine."
She gave me a betrayed look, as if asking what I had fed her, so I waved my hands to reassure her.
After she gulped it down, her throat bobbed up and down and her expression changed.
She nodded, looking startled.
Even if the carbonation felt a little strange, she seemed to like the taste itself.
Lastly, the smartphone with a shattered screen.
This too was a case where seeing it once was better than hearing it a hundred times.
I took my working smartphone out of my pocket, turned on the screen light for her, and even demonstrated the gallery window and scrolling text myself.
I also remembered to show her a photo of herself.
When her own image popped out from the tiny rectangle, the elf stared blankly at my smartphone.
"You get it, right?"
The elf nodded and gently caressed the shattered screen of the phone.
It wasn’t just the screen that was the problem, apparently, because the phone wouldn’t even turn on at all.
So, since her gesture looked so desperate, I used the Repair skill on it.
The odds of it not being repairable were probably higher, though—
Ding.
Luckily, light came on in the phone screen.
"It actually works..."
"Ahh..."
She was trying earnestly to work the phone just like I had.
As a test, I even got it as far as the Survivor Gallery.
She couldn’t read the posts in the gallery, but she was enjoying herself in her own way.
I wonder if she even knows she’s reading those random posts praising the gallery’s darling.
...When I come back later, I’ll need to bring a phone charger for her.
After the clumsy explanation ended, I looked at her.
"Satisfied?"
The elf nodded with a very satisfied expression, then asked me in a clear voice.
"I’m curious."
When I asked, "What?" thinking there might still be another unfamiliar object, she slowly raised a finger.
The tip of her white, slender finger was pointing right at me.
She stared at me as I sat there.
"Hmm..."
I was at a loss for words.
To describe myself.
It was embarrassing, and nothing came to mind.
After racking my brain, I finally blurted out one elf word I knew that fit the current situation best and was also positive.
"Friend."
Right now, I wanted to get close to the elf.
I had a lot to ask her about, and a lot to tell her.
Above all, she wasn’t a monster, and it would be nice to be on good terms with another race.
As soon as I said the word friend, the elf looked deeply moved and sprang to her feet.
Then she leaned her upper body far across the table and grabbed my arm with both of her slender white hands.
Her face came rushing close.
All at once, a scent like fresh flowers wafted over me, and the elf’s uniquely beautiful face filled my vision.
'...I’m glad I’m a woman.'
Fortunately, I wasn’t charmed.
I barely managed to hold out.
"Later. I’ll come again."
I stood up with an awkward smile.
The elf was sorry to see me go, but she came out to the rooftop railing to see me off and kept waving until I had gone down from the building.
True to her chatty nature, she kept brightly babbling something from above, but sadly all I could hear was just a pretty foreign language.
'Ah, right. I need to tell her to watch out for the bad guys.'
In case some guys who had taken a job from an evil-aligned constellation came looking, I turned around.
But my worry turned out to be unnecessary when I happened to see a spider monster climbing up the building’s outer wall get its head blown off by a single kick from the elf.
"...Right."
I turned back with a relieved heart and headed for the train.
***
As soon as I stepped into the train, a delicious smell hit my nose.
"Mr. Sowon, you’re here? Perfect timing."
Ha-seon greeted me warmly.
After getting the Cooking skill, Ha-seon became the one in charge of meals.
At the table, the children were already waiting, spoons clenched tightly in their hands as they swallowed hard.
They could have started eating already.
I patted the kids on the head and sat down.
It was grilled ham and steamed egg, piled high in a ttukbaegi.
"...Where did you get this ttukbaegi...?"
"Huh? It was in the cupboard..."
"Ah."
Since we’d mostly been cooking with just pots and frying pans, I hadn’t even known there was one of those in the cupboard.
We all sat around the table together and started eating.
The Cooking skill did seem to work.
It was ham we ate sometimes anyway, but somehow the texture was better, and it felt as if it had been grilled nicely.
Halfway through eating my rice, Ha-seon brought me some interesting news.
"News about the Yeouido safe zone had spread through the gallery."
"Yeouido?"
"Yeah, they say a vote will be held in about two weeks."
"A vote...?"
An apocalypse and a vote.
It was a story that somehow didn’t quite fit, but since it was the Yeouido safe zone, the faces of the two old-timers naturally came to mind.
Was something really about to start changing thanks to those two?
As Ha-seon organized the information she’d read from the posts, she began to speak.
"It’s an election to choose the new minister of the Administration Department. Since the safe zone is getting bigger, they’re probably trying to get the system firmly in place. There are... four candidates in total."
"Who are the candidates?"
"I don’t know the details, but... two existing politicians who’d been running the Yeouido safe zone from the start, one representative of the Awakened Alliance, and the last one seems to be the person you escorted from Suwon to Yeouido."
My chopsticks froze in midair.
"How on earth did they manage that...?"
I was amazed that, after only a short time since entering Yeouido, they were already running for the post of minister of the Administration Department.
The same went for the representative of the Awakened Alliance.
A minister of the Administration Department who isn’t in the Administration Department makes no sense... So had the Awakened Alliance and the old-timer been folded into the Administration Department for now?
"So now the gallery is turning into a sudden faction war—"
"Ahahaha..."
If they were voting, there was no avoiding the sides splitting apart.
...Maybe I’d get to hear some campaign promises for the first time in a while.
I took a sip of water and looked out the window.
"...Maybe I should go take a look around the Yeouido side for the first time in a while..."
""Yes, let’s go!""
The answer came from the siblings in front of me.
I grinned as I polished off my rice bowl.
Clatter! Clatter!
At that moment, the artillery golem that had been watching the marimo in the tank from the corner of the second carriage suddenly made a clanging racket and dashed toward the first carriage’s control cabin.
"Huh? Why all of a sudden...?"
Last time, too, the golem had tapped in front of the system panel to point out an upgrade direction, so I figured it was about to tell me something else, and I set down the water glass I’d been drinking from and followed after it.
At the control cabin, the golem tapped the hologram panel with its blunt claws and legs, then pointed at exactly two items.
[1st Carriage Ladder Hatch Modification]
"A ladder? You want me to make a hatch that leads up to the roof of the train?"
I tilted my head.
Was there really any need to climb onto the roof of a magic train that sped along at full speed and even carried turrets?
And that modification didn’t require all that much fuel or mana stones either.
Thinking there had to be some reason or meaning behind it, I pressed the modification button without hesitation.
Screeeech—clunk!
A thick armored hatch opened in the ceiling and a ladder was newly created beneath it.
"Now, what’s the other one...?"
The second item the golem pointed at wasn’t a train modification, but a tiny consumable.
[Nutrient Supplement (For Marimo Only)]
"...Oh, there was something like this too?"
I let out a dumbfounded laugh.
How did the golem even know about this?
"Yeah, after all the marimo has done for us."
For a marimo that had healed not only the siblings and the golem, but even my own mind, a nutrient supplement costing ten minutes of fuel was nothing.
I caught the nutrient supplement as it fell from the air.
The golem trembled with delight, its steel body quivering, then carefully snatched up the nutrient supplement with its claw and hurried off to the second carriage where the marimo was.
"Hmm..."
Watching that strangely excited back, I had a ridiculous thought.
At that level of dedication and effort.
"Could it be... in love?"
A golem and a marimo.
I wondered whether a love transcending all that could really exist.