blueteamnovel Chapter 136 : Chapter 136
Chapter 136 : Chapter 136
The protagonist bastard turned my bag upside down and shook it out as if it had belonged to him from the very beginning.I couldn’t tell whether he was doing it simply to check inside more easily, or whether he was deliberately putting on a show just to piss me off.
There was a high chance it was the latter.
Fine. Since he’d already taken it, go ahead and rummage through it all you want. With that thought, I watched what he was doing.
Ratel looked over the belongings rolling around on the ground, then picked up one of the odds and ends.
When I saw the cylindrical something wrapped in cloth in his hand, I flinched a little.
It wasn’t that I’d tried especially hard to hide it, but I hadn’t expected him to pull that out of the bag.
Ratel unwrapped the cloth without hesitation.
What appeared inside was a biscuit that looked like a yellow lump.
“Kkwek, what’s that?”
The leader, who had been watching Ratel suddenly organize my things, couldn’t hold back his curiosity and asked.
“Kkwek, it’s food humans eat.”
I explained in his place, since I doubted Ratel would be able to understand the leader’s question.
“Kkwek, how do you know that?”
The leader asked with a puzzled look.
How did I know?
Because I’d packed it myself, that was how.
Though I hadn’t known Ratel was aware of its existence.
The reason I’d kept quiet about the emergency rations wasn’t because I’d wanted to sneak off and eat them alone or anything like that.
The reason was much simpler than that.
I watched as Ratel, wearing a suspicious look, wrapped the biscuit in the cloth again and struck it against the ground.
CLANG!
The sound rang out so clearly that it was hard to believe it had come from something a person was supposed to eat.
Ratel picked it back up and opened the cloth again, revealing the biscuit, now split in half.
Compared to the sound, the damage was so minor that open shock appeared on the leader’s face.
“......Kkwek, I’m pretty sure humans don’t have the jaw strength to chew a rock like that.”
......I know.
That was exactly why I hadn’t bothered taking out the biscuits I’d brought while calling them food.
Because I’d been wondering whether that thing could really be called food at all.
The biscuits I’d bought from the grocery store owner, baked more than ten times, were quite literally as hard as rocks.
Emergency rations, true to the name, were food you ate to avoid dying in an emergency, even if taste had to be thrown to the dogs.
If one ignored only its hardness, the biscuit was perfect as an emergency ration.
It had no smell, was light, easy to carry, and didn’t spoil easily.
After tapping the biscuit with his finger a few times, Ratel lifted his head and looked at me.
For the first time in a while, blatant distrust showed on his face.
So you were really planning to eat this?
What, you bastard? I didn’t think I’d actually end up eating it either.
I had only packed it just in case something unexpected happened.
Something like the orc subjugation taking longer than expected, or some situation I hadn’t anticipated leaving me starving.
I hadn’t thought I’d really end up eating something that looked this tasteless.
As if he found it absurd, Ratel took out the remaining biscuits and looked them over, then his hand stopped.
When I glared at the protagonist, thinking I’d at least hear what he was dissatisfied with this time, his mouth slowly opened.
“There are four.”
Only then did I realize the reason he hadn’t simply shoved a biscuit into his mouth wasn’t just because of how hard it was.
Soon, Ratel lifted his head and looked at me.
“Were they meant for four people?”
At his question, asking whether I had prepared portions for the two who had fallen behind as well as for Jing, I thought for a moment.
I wondered whether telling him the truth was really the right thing to do.
But it didn’t take long for me to decide that leaving him to misunderstand me felt even more unpleasant.
“......Kkwek, one of them was probably a bonus.”
It wasn’t a lie.
It was only the result of the shopkeeper’s bargaining, where he said he’d throw in one extra if I bought three, and the commoner spirit that had crossed over with me from modern society.
Ratel seemed to sense my sincerity too, because a pathetic look flickered across his face.
***
Neither the leader, nor even the half-wit, coveted the rock-like biscuits.
In contrast to when he had returned the fish back into the water, Ratel divided the biscuits no one had asked for equally among everyone.
The fact that my share looked particularly large was surely an illusion created by my reluctance to eat the biscuit.
After forcing a biscuit even into the half-wit’s hand despite his desperate refusal, Ratel sat down on the ground as if satisfied.
At Ratel’s contrarian behavior, the leader also gnashed his teeth and threw his own share to the half-wit.
Holding my biscuit, I quietly got up and settled down again a little away from the water’s edge.
They said joy doubled when you shared delicious food.
But with tasteless food, eating it together seemed like it would only double the misery.
There was no reason to eat something that already tasted like shit while confirming one another’s rotting expressions.
The half-wit accepted the biscuit the leader shoved onto him, but he too seemed uncertain whether it was truly all right to eat this.
He tilted his head and kept glancing at Ratel.
Ratel shoved the biscuit into his mouth without much hesitation.
Then he began chewing the food expressionlessly.
Even while making a rattling sound that should never come from the act of chewing, his expression didn’t change.
“Kkwe, kkwek?”
The half-wit, startled instead by the loud sound, even carefully examined Ratel’s jaw, as if he thought Ratel’s tooth had broken.
Well, even if his tooth had broken, it would probably grow back soon enough if it was him.
I stopped paying attention to Ratel and tossed the remaining half of the biscuit into my mouth.
Once Ratel and I began eating the biscuits one after another, the half-wit, who had hesitated for a moment, also put the rock-like ration into his mouth.
The half-wit’s face, which had been chewing with a doubtful look, crumpled with a dry crunch.
“Kkwek......!”
I probably didn’t look much different.
Thanks to an orc’s developed jaw, I could chew the flour dough baked as hard as a rock without much difficulty, but there was nothing I could do about the horrible taste.
The biscuit, without a trace of sweetness, had a flavor that made the space between my brows shrivel up on its own.
A hard lump of flour with neither butter nor yeast, seasoned only with salt, offered nothing but saltiness and the damp taste of flour.
The choking dryness delivered by the dense biscuit came as a bonus.
It was the moment the shopkeeper’s lie was exposed, when he had claimed that his own secret method of adding sweetness made these easier to eat than other biscuits.
“Kkwek......!”
The half-wit, who had been enduring the dryness, eventually left his seat and ran to the water’s edge.
Then he hurriedly scooped up water and added moisture to his shriveled mouth.
Watching the back of his head as he moved away, I belatedly recalled the shopkeeper’s face as he clung to his last bit of conscience by saying they absolutely had to be eaten with water.
That old man, the next time I see him......
“Kkwek, I’ll kill him.”
That was definitely not my inner voice slipping out.
No matter how much he had cheated me with food, I wasn’t the kind of person who staked my life on something to eat to the point of making him pay with death.
I looked at the leader, who had come up beside me at some point and arbitrarily finished my inner thoughts for me.
“Kkwek, if you wanted some, you should’ve said so earlier. Kkwek, here. Eat this.”
For his sake, I gladly offered him the remaining biscuit.
“Kkwek, that’s not it!!”
My kindness was rejected at once.
When I wondered whether announcing murder during mealtime was some kind of etiquette among orcs, the leader’s face twisted more and more.
“Kkwek, I mean that human! Kkwek, that bastard is turning the half-wit weird!”
He gestured with his eyes toward the half-wit, who was diligently drinking water as if frustrated, and Ratel, who was sitting not far away.
He had made him drink water because the biscuit was dry, but I wasn’t sure about turning him weird.
“Kkwek, the half-wit has never once not been weird from the beginning until now.”
“Kkwek, he was stupid, but he wasn’t that bad! Kkwek, at least he listened. Kkwek, but now......”
The leader paused for breath, as if his temper had boiled over.
I looked at the leader pathetically as he shoved the responsibility onto Ratel.
“Kkwek, now what? Kkwek, you don’t like that he’s rebelling against you? Kkwek, just accept it. Kkwek, all living creatures eventually become independent.”
The leader looked at me as though I was talking complete nonsense.
“Kkwek, what are you misunderstanding? Kkwek, do you think we’re the same as other things?”
“Kkwek, of course you’re different.”
You have worse tempers than any animals I’ve ever met.
“Kkwek, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t similar parts.”
According to my experience moving back and forth between both bodies, they could never be considered the same as humans.
But they couldn’t be considered completely different either.
If I had to express it, it would be to the extent that if someone suddenly told me to live the rest of my life as an orc, I’d think, This isn’t something I absolutely can’t do.
Yes, it was exactly that much.
Their ways of life were different, but wasn’t that a gap that existed among humans too?
I heard that in some faraway land, cannibalistic cultures still remain even now.
Of course, the difference was that this side was full of some inexplicable rage toward humans.
“Kkwek, most things are similar as long as they’re breathing. Kkwek, there are parts of you that resemble the humans you hate so much too.”
Unlike what I expected, the leader didn’t immediately answer with something like crazy bullshit.
He merely looked at me for a very long time, and very closely at my face.
The old orc’s cloudy eyes slowly swept over my pupils.
Unable to know what this old orc wanted to find in me, I quietly waited for him to open his mouth.
“Kkwek, you really aren’t the one who attacked me.”
Compared to his long observation, what he gave me was only an empty conclusion.
All the strength left my body.
Where had you been listening to my words until now?
“Kkwek, you really don’t listen to a single thing other people say.”
“Kkwek, I thought something was strange. Kkwek, you knew nothing about humans.”
Unbothered by my jab, he muttered to himself.
“Kkwek, I think I probably know humans better than any orc.”
If there were an orc who knew humans better than me, who had originally been human, that would be terrifying in its own way.
“Kkwek, I know very well. Kkwek, all human bastards are the same.”
“Kkwek, do you know that in the human world, they call that prejudice?”
The leader snorted.
“Kkweeek, thoughtless bastards like you don’t know. Kkwek, only I can know.”
“Kkwek, why? Because you’re the leader?”
At the question I tossed out lightly, the leader gave no answer.
The lengthening silence led to the one issue that had been bothering me all along.
Humans, the promise, and royalty.
In other words, did the content of that promise mean there was something only the one who became the leader could know?
They said fear of predators and threats could also be inherited through chromosomes, but the hatred of humans he possessed seemed different from that kind of thing.
The link between leaders was different in that it involved being eaten and eating, but more than anything, what was being passed down didn’t seem to be only a vague emotion.
It was hard to imagine some kind of knowledge about humans being passed down the moment one became the leader.
Was I supposed to think of it like an heirloom passed down from generation to generation?
There were still many gaps that hadn’t been filled, such as the principle, the process, and the conditions, but the thing I was most curious about was one thing.
The reason, or perhaps the purpose.
Why had the orcs started passing something like that down?