Patrick, who lived in an island village, really had no choice but to roam forests and fields digging soil and pulling weeds.
To him, fish were something he could only see when lending a hand at the communal workshop or when the parents of his students brought some along.
Of course he couldn’t even think about catching fish on an island surrounded by sea—he simply had no tools for it.
He’d even checked the shared storage for farm implements on the off-chance they had something, but all he found were large nets and ropes meant for going out by boat, nothing he could use.
“Are you really giving these to me? For real?”
“Yes. Father even re-threaded all the fishing hooks. Here’s some extra hooks.”
“Whoa!”
Patrick kneeled and threw his arms to the sky in celebration as he opened the pouch containing a handful of hooks.
“…Teacher, what are you doing?”
“Shh. He said he’s happy.”
“Right, don’t disturb him. He’ll start nagging for no reason.”
These kids knew Patrick too well by now.
“I’m in the mood! Today’s lesson is at the sea!”
“What? All of a sudden?”
“I just want to try using a fishing rod, that’s all!”
“You little squirt, you don’t appreciate the master’s grand plan. Now look: learning to read and write—by itself it’s useless! You’ve got to put it to use, right?”
Ben, who’d learned letters long ago, and the other children, though slower, were all capable of reading and writing simple words now.
“Time to graduate from word cards! You’ve learned letters, so prove their worth!”
“How do we do that?”
“What does that have to do with going to the sea?”
“From today on, we’ll “commute” to the sea every day. We’ll record what fish we catch in our waters and what sea creatures live there. What do you think?”
“What’s good about that?”
“Right? The grown-ups already know, don’t they?”
“What I know isn’t important, you innocent little brats. What matters is whether others recognize it.”
The children looked at Patrick with puzzled expressions.
“Now think: if we present to the merchants our parents deal with a complete list of our island’s specialty products—with their characteristics—what would happen?”
“…What would happen?”
“They’d want to buy them!”
“Correct! Who said that? Oh, Tommy. I’ll give you an extra boiled potato later.”
“Wow!”
Since Patrick was tired of plain boiled potatoes, he’d recently started making bulky “rest-area style” baked potatoes.
With a little butter and honey added, he’d shared them with the kids, and they’d quickly become a favorite snack after the candied sweet potatoes.
“So get ready to go to the sea.”
“Whoaaa!”
“Let’s go!”
“Teacher, teacher! I want to draw a picture too!”
“Sure, drawing would be great.”
“But, you guys.”
“Yes?”
“What’s the best bait for fishing?”
At Patrick’s words, Ben muttered to himself.
“See? We’re really going fishing.”
When they reached the shore, the children immediately scattered, each eager to find creatures they knew best.
Tommy—who’d earned himself another boiled potato—rushed over to Patrick, who was fiddling with the fishing rod.
“Teacher, over here!”
“What is that?”
“It’s a ragworm! For bait. Hehe!”
“…….”
Tommy offered a handful of ragworms easily a span long—four or so of them wriggling together—and Patrick froze in shock.
“Tea-teacher?”
“This is bad! The teacher fainted while standing!”
“This is ridiculous! Why is the adult acting like this?”
The kids who had been catching clams or crabs dropped their wooden writing boards and ran over.
“Are you okay, Teacher?”
“How can you fish if you can’t even look?”
“We’d better use a trap instead.”
“That’s right.”
Patrick hadn’t actually fainted—he was only frozen with shock—so the children sighed in relief and started scolding him.
“I-I’m sorry, Teacher… I thought you’d like it…”
“No, Tommy. You know the teacher’s from the city.”
“That’s right. Ragworms are amazing bait when you’re fishing!”
The older kids, including Ben, comforted Tommy, and Patrick finally regained his composure.
“Sorry, Tommy. I’ve never seen ragworms before. …Hey, could you drop that a little farther out? Eek!”
“Oh, come on. Here you go. I’ll thread it onto the hook for you.”
Ben stepped in to bait the hook, and Patrick’s pale face regained color.
“I’ll catch a monster fish now!”
“Aren’t you embarrassed to say that now?”
“Quiet, won’t you?”
“You jerk!”
“Eek!”
As the ragworm flew far out on the long bamboo rod, Patrick finally struck a pose. But then he got startled again by Ben shaking the container of remaining worms.
“You know how to fish?”
“Nope.”
“……”
“Well, aren’t you talkative now?”
He’d never fished himself, but he’d watched plenty of shows about fishing.
A devoted viewer of fishing variety programs and someone who dreamed of living like a “natural man,” the YouTube algorithm had often recommended fishing videos to him.
“Just watch, kids. You’ll respect me after today.”
“Don’t snap your line.”
“Ssshh! Go do your homework with the others. Shoo, shoo!”
“I’m going!”
Waving Ben off, Patrick sat on a rock he’d scoped out and dropped the fishing line.
“This is what living is all about. Ahh, it feels like a resort here.”
A warm spring day, a calm blue sea, a gentle breeze.
“What if I catch a sea bream? I don’t know how to slice sashimi. Well, no dipping sauce or wasabi, so I’ll have to stew it instead. Stewed sea bream—how luxurious is that?”
Muttering to himself and sipping kimchi soup from a bowl, he looked every bit the rookie fisherman.
Plink, plink!
But beginner’s luck is a thing. Not long after casting, he got a bite.
“Oh, what do I do? What do I do!”
“You lift it up!”
“Uh? Oh, okay! Huh!”
Taking Ben’s impatient shout as a cue, he yanked the rod with all his might; it bent into a beautiful arc.
“I caught it!”
It was a sea bass as thick as his forearm.
“This is amazing, amazing! Wahahaha! Did you see that, you little brats!”
“Uh, uh! Don’t shake it! I said don’t shake it!”
“No!”
Splash!
……
Patrick, whose prized sea bass slipped from his grasp, stood pale and stunned, staring at the sea once again.
“You’ve got to reel it in right away, not shake it around!”
Ben’s reproach went unheeded as Patrick trembled and whimpered.
“You saw it, right? Huh? I caught it! It was huge!”
“…You can catch another.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Want me to bait it for you again?”
“…Okay.”
Their conversation made it impossible to tell who was the adult and who was the child.
But if beginner’s luck struck that often, it’d be skill, not luck.
Unfortunately for Patrick, another huge sea bass did not return.
His first fishing attempt ended with two horse mackerel and one herring.
The children lavished him with praise—“For a first try, you did great!”—but his mind was on the one he lost.
“Outdoor lessons for a while, then!”
“What? Again?”
“Have you catalogued all your fish yet?”
“No, not yet…”
“We’ll keep going until you do! Didn’t I say? Knowing letters is useless by itself! What matters is how and where you use what you’ve learned. This is a lesson that will become your lifeblood! Um, um!”
“…Are you sure?”
Crack!
“Ouch!”
Who would dare contradict the master?
Once Patrick and the children started roaming the shore, the villagers working at the communal workshop began bringing out simple snacks to share.
To the adults, seeing the kids—now able to read and write—observing fish, asking about their ecology, and taking notes was utterly heartwarming.
“Don’t you think the kids have changed since the teacher arrived?”
“Right, Tommy’s mother! My child’s been scribbling on his wooden board as soon as he got home!”
“Better than parents, I say! Someday our kids might become merchants on the mainland or apprentices to craftsmen!”
“That would be the dream, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, Teacher. Do you have any vegetables left at home? I should bring you some!”
“Take this too, Tommy’s mother. My child says you often make soups—you’ll need some salty fish sauce.”
The mothers’ fondness for Patrick grew by the day.
As they chatted over fish processing, a long-absent merchant from the mainland finally arrived.
“Good work, everyone!”
“Oh my! Welcome!”
“Quick, fetch the village chief.”
Though he didn’t visit on a strict schedule and made little profit, the merchant’s willingness to come to the island to trade earned him cheers from the women.
“There are plenty of flounder! That’s good—flounder’s popular these days.”
“Is that so? Hoho!”
The merchant smiled appreciatively at the flounder the women were processing.
“I’ll buy all the flounder. Anything else to show me?”
“We have some herring processed, and rockfish too. Would you like some clams?”
As the merchant nodded approvingly, something caught his eye.
“What’s this?”
“This? Oh, the children have been studying lately.”
“Studying?”
“Yes. The wizard teacher has been teaching them letters.”
“Oh! The one who came here in exile?”
He’d heard from a fellow merchant traveling with the soldiers during the human-trafficking fraud incident that the wizard had sold some of the seized goods.
“That’s wonderful. May I take a look?”
“Of course.”
Seizing the chance to boast about their children, the mothers eagerly handed over the wooden boards the kids had written on.
“…Oh-ho.”