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Chapter 5
“Shh. No.”
Baberi gave the same warning sound she used whenever Kongtteok tried to steal her food.
“Watch your mouth. How dare you call your king a thug?”
She shot him a warning glare, as if telling him not to get cocky, then waved her hand again.
“Stop with the excuses and hand over the money. Your king has somewhere important to spend it.”
Baberi tried to convey her dignity by putting more force into her voice.
What a load of crap.
Kure looked at Baberi as though she were utterly ridiculous.
“I said, give it to me already.”
That was when it happened.
A loud grrrrrowl came from Baberi’s stomach.
Come to think of it, when was the last time she had eaten something?
She couldn’t remember.
Grrrrowl. Grrrrrrrrowl.
The moment she realized how hungry she was, her stomach went wild.
Baberi had no choice but to prioritize getting something to eat.
“I won’t punish you for calling me a thug, so bring me a meal.”
“I said I would help you become king. I never said I’d carry your meals to you.”
So go order someone else around.
Kure refused to prepare Baberi’s meal.
But in the end, he had no choice but to get up.
What else could he do? There was no one else to order around.
Kure intended to find a piece of bread and toss it to her.
However, after searching every corner of the kitchen, all he could find in the abandoned house was a handful of oats.
“Eat.”
Kure held the oats in his fist and offered them to Baberi.
Baberi frowned and glared at him.
“You could at least cook them into porridge.”
“I’ve never cooked before.”
“Then this merciful king shall grant you the opportunity to try your hand at cooking.”
In other words, she was ordering him around after all.
With a deeply dissatisfied expression, Kure entered the kitchen.
What should I do first?
He looked around the kitchen until his eyes landed on the hearth.
“Fire first.”
Kure easily lit the fire with magic.
But that was where the trouble began.
Kure was at a loss.
He had seen people cooking before, but he had never actually done it himself.
“Do I put them in the pot?”
With a puzzled expression, Kure placed a pot on the hearth and poured the oats inside.
Then he simply stared down at them.
No matter how long he waited, they didn’t turn into porridge.
Instead, a smell like something burning began to rise.
Only then did Kure hurriedly pour in some water.
The charred oats floated to the surface.
After waiting for quite some time, he finally heard the bubbling sound of boiling water.
Kure smiled in satisfaction.
But he soon realized something had gone terribly wrong.
“Is oatmeal supposed to be this color?”
As the water evaporated, the grayish cooked oats were revealed.
Most of the oatmeal he had eaten before had been a pale, whitish color.
Realizing that the cooking was going badly, Kure immediately tried to salvage it.
He searched through the kitchen and began adding various things, one by one, whose identities he couldn’t even determine—spices, perhaps.
The more he added, the stranger the smell became.
“……”
Kure stared blankly at the oatmeal, which had somehow become even blacker than before.
Anyone looking at it would have known it was a complete disaster.
“……Well, I only used things that are edible, so it should be fine.”
It might taste terrible, but it probably wouldn’t be inedible.
Kure extinguished the fire and grabbed the steaming pot with his bare hands.
“Why is this color?”
As expected, Baberi reacted the moment she saw his black oatmeal.
“As it turns out, these were black oats.”
Kure said it with a perfectly straight face.
Still suspicious, Baberi leaned closer and sniffed the porridge.
Maybe it was just her imagination, but even the smell seemed strange.
“This is actually safe to eat, right? Did you taste it?”
Kure’s brow twitched guiltily.
It was obviously a failed dish, so of course he hadn’t tasted it.
“I went to the trouble of cooking for you, and you’re still complaining. Do you really think you’re in a position to be picky about food right now? There’s nothing else to eat in this house. If you want to starve, go ahead.”
Kure spoke as though he were annoyed, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Baberi.
Something about this was suspicious.
But in the end, Baberi picked up the spoon.
She blew on the steaming porridge to cool it, scooped some up, and put it into her mouth.
“This is better than I thought it wou—”
She didn’t even finish the sentence before she passed out.
That made twice today.
“Gasp!”
Baberi shot awake, desperately gasping for breath.
Kure looked at her in surprise when she woke, then quietly let out a small sigh of relief.
“You little bas—!”
Enraged, Baberi lunged at Kure and grabbed him by the collar.
“You pretended to form an alliance with me just so you could kill me!”
Her hands trembled with betrayal.
There was a hint of guilt in Kure’s eyes as he tightly pressed his lips together.
But Baberi was too furious to notice.
“That’s why I said I’d never cooked before……”
Kure muttered, avoiding her gaze.
Baberi grabbed his collar with her left hand and shook him.
“I only did my best.”
“You did your best to kill me?”
Kure insisted that he hadn’t intended to kill her, but Baberi’s distrust had already solidified.
“An alliance where I never know when I’m going to be assassinated. How reassuring.”
Baberi climbed out of bed, dripping with sarcasm.
“You passed out because you were already in poor condition. The food wasn’t the problem.”
Kure presented a new argument.
But there wasn’t much confidence in his voice.
“What?”
Baberi’s furious momentum seemed to overwhelm him.
His lips, which looked like they still had more to say, firmly closed.
“I should’ve just eaten the raw oats.”
Baberi shot a sullen glance at Kure, who looked rather dejected.
She would never eat anything he made again.
Even if she were so hungry that her stomach stuck to her spine.
“I’m starving.”
Her stomach continued to growl.
But Baberi didn’t even look at the black oatmeal.
For some reason, she was especially nostalgic for the tteokbokki Yoo Chaerin used to buy her.
Leaving the oatmeal behind, Baberi walked out of the cabin and counted on her fingers as she listed what needed to be done.
“First, I need medicine and some proper food. Not poison.”
Kure frowned at her sarcastic tone but didn’t argue.
The two of them headed north along Pony Gorge toward the village of Tosen.
But when they arrived, the atmosphere of the village was strange.
Some people were hurriedly packing their belongings and preparing to leave, while many houses had already been abandoned.
Baberi looked around and muttered,
“Why is the village such a mess?”
“Looks like they’re evacuating.”
Kure answered indifferently, sounding strangely irritated.
At the word evacuating, Baberi nodded in agreement.
The people really did look as though they were fleeing from a war.
“Ah.”
Baberi suddenly looked at Kure standing beside her and realized the reason.
They were leaving the village because a dragon—an existence every bit as terrifying as a war—had appeared.
“I wonder if we’ll even be able to get what we need.”
Baberi hurried to find medicine and food before everyone left.
If she went any longer without eating in her current condition, she felt like she would simply collapse.
As she wandered through the chaotic village, Baberi finally found a shop selling bread.
[Bread baked yesterday — 3 gold]
A sign was stuck in front of a loaf of bread that had gone hard.
“Why does this bread look like this?”
Baberi thought three gold was ridiculously expensive.
But there didn’t seem to be another bakery open.
This has to be better than that oatmeal.
Giving up, Baberi held out her palm toward Kure.
“Give me money.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Quit joking around and give it to me.”
Irritated by hunger, Baberi frowned and impatiently wiggled her fingers.
But Kure calmly shook his head.
“I’m not joking. I really don’t have any.”
“You must at least have enough to buy a piece of bread.”
No matter how desperately Baberi looked at him, she received the same answer.
“Don’t say you have money and then claim you don’t.”
“Why would I have a reason to say I don’t have something I have?”
The shopkeeper, who had been watching Baberi and Kure argue, cleared his throat.
“If you don’t have money, get out. I’ve got to close up and evacuate too.”
Thrown out of the shop, Baberi and Kure had no choice but to trudge away without even a piece of bread.
Baberi still couldn’t believe that the dragon had no money.
Even to someone as ignorant about clothes as Baberi, the clothes Kure wore looked expensive.
And yet he didn’t have a single coin!
“Then let’s sell those clothes.”
“These aren’t clothes. I used magic to make my skin look like clothing.”
“Then we can peel off your skin and sel—”
“How far are you planning to take this thug act?”
Kure accused Baberi of suggesting they tear off perfectly healthy skin and sell it.
Baberi admitted that, yes, perhaps that had been taking things a little too far.
But what else were they supposed to do when they didn’t have a single coin?
“Why don’t you have any money in the first place? It’s weird.”
“It’s even weirder that someone who loudly declares they’re going to become king doesn’t have a single penny.”
Baberi bristled.
Was she supposed to have money after being exiled and then immediately thrown into an evil-dragon hunt while still tied up?
Of course, she hadn’t exactly saved any money beforehand either.
She had always been poor.
There was no way to escape poverty when no one would hire a traitor.
On top of that, traitors were legally prohibited from owning private property in the first place.
Baberi had always had to hunt rabbits or foxes in the forest herself to get something to eat.
If she failed to hunt anything, she simply went hungry.
So going without food for a day wasn’t exactly a big deal.
“Beggar! Beggar lizard!”
But after two years of living a lazy life surrounded by material abundance in Korea—
having someone else prepare all three meals a day for her, whether through restaurants or delivery—
not being able to eat like that now felt almost as despairing as receiving a death sentence.
Baberi suddenly remembered just how wealthy Yoo Chaerin had been and cursed Kure.
So what if you’re a dragon? You’re still a penniless beggar.
At being called a beggar, Kure, who had been acting indifferent until then, snorted at Baberi.
“Why would you expect me to have human money in the first place?”
“Then how have you been surviving all this time—!”
Baberi raised her voice, then stopped.
How else would he have survived?
He must have hunted, just like Baberi.
The real question was what he had hunted.
Foxes?
Rabbits?
No.
She kept forgetting because he had remained in human form for so long, but Kure was a dragon.
Thinking about it carefully, this wasn’t the time to whine about being hungry.
If the dragon got hungry, he could simply eat her.
He was the terrifying creature on the other side who could hunt her when he was hungry.
“I’m warning you, I’m too skinny to taste good.”
Baberi cautiously stepped backward, keeping an eye on Kure.
Kure frowned in displeasure.
“I don’t eat humans unless I’m exceptionally hungry.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t taste good.”
If he knows they taste bad, doesn’t that mean he’s eaten them before?
Baberi still couldn’t lower her guard and took another step backward.
“Even if I were starving, I wouldn’t eat something as unappetizing as you. I’d rather starve to death than ruin my tongue.”
Kure sounded so disgusted at the thought of even putting his mouth on her that Baberi finally relaxed.
Though, for some reason, being told she was that unappetizing also made her a little irritated.
“Forget being hungry. At this rate, we can’t even get medicine.”
Baberi looked at her still-aching right arm.
“The king is ill. As her subject, come up with a solution.”
“……”
“A shameless subject who won’t even answer his king. What is happening to this country?”
Baberi clicked her tongue.
Kure’s brow twitched silently.
But apparently he had no brilliant solution either, because he simply kept his mouth shut.
Seriously, what do we do?
With no solution coming to mind, Baberi trudged toward what was apparently the only apothecary in the village.
“They’re trying to leave too.”
In the distance, a man who appeared to be the apothecary was packing his belongings.
I need to figure out how to get medicine from that man before he leaves.
And I need to do it without money.
Baberi thought hard.
Then, suddenly, a brilliant idea occurred to her.
“What do you know? I might actually be a genius.”
