“That friend and his damned stubbornness.”
“Once that Layton man decides on something, he never gives way. Tsk, it is a shame, but let us yield to him this time.”
“Well, if it is Layton... considering what he went through, it is right for us to step back here.”
In the end, the others withdrew their proposals, and I decided to receive a meal at the blacksmith’s house.
It felt strange to be invited and treated to a meal by someone I had no connection with at all, someone I had only just met.
It felt as if I was smelling the scent of people living again for the first time in a long while, and it also felt a little burdensome... As expected, there was no way to describe my current mood except with the word strange.
Come to think of it, I had heard that while traveling overseas, people were sometimes invited to local homes and treated to meals.
The blacksmith did not look at me even once as he strode ahead along a road familiar to him.
“.......”
I was on my way to receive a free meal, but with silence hanging between us, I felt a needless sense of obligation.
Judging by appearance, he was old enough to be my father.
The me inside myself urged me to speak first.
I widened my stride, caught up to the blacksmith, and walked beside him.
“The others called you Mr. Layton earlier. May I call you that too?”
Layton exhaled shortly through his nose and spoke in a thick tone.
“None of that Mr. Layton business. Mister is fine.”
“Understood, Mister. By the way, you are giving me equipment and dinner too. I feel as if I am imposing on you too much.”
“If you are on a diet, you can go to another house.”
“Pardon?”
“The others’ home cooking is bad.”
For some reason, his blunt tone felt familiar.
It felt like I was talking to my father.
The way he was blunt and spoke indirectly, forcing the listener to interpret his words, was exactly the same.
So, if I interpreted it, he was telling me not to go to another house.
Once I thought he resembled my father, this situation that had felt burdensome gradually began to feel comfortable.
After following Layton for a while, we arrived at a brick house with a chimney, sitting all by itself on the outskirts of the village.
The brick house was divided into two buildings.
One was a blacksmith’s workshop, with a wide entrance and farming tools and weapons neatly displayed inside and outside the entrance.
The other was an ordinary home.
Layton passed through the blacksmith’s workshop and headed straight for the back door connected to the house.
“I will get your equipment ready tomorrow, so go inside and unpack first.”
Tomorrow......
“Has it already been decided that I am sleeping here?”
“There are plenty of empty rooms. Why waste money? Wasteful.”
“If I suddenly say I am staying the night, your family may feel uncomfortable.”
“Is this their house? It is my house.”
All fathers with blunt personalities in this world were truly fascinating.
Even though this was an entirely different language, an entirely different environment, and an entirely different dimension, their intonation and lines were identical.
As if you all had a textbook of your own.
I smiled soundlessly and looked around the inside of the blacksmith’s workshop.
There was a furnace, an anvil, and a whetstone.
Beside the tools were gloves, a work chair, and protective gear made personally to fit the blacksmith’s build.
Two of each.
The two sets of work clothes hanging on the wall, one large and one medium-sized, told me something.
There were two people working inside this blacksmith’s workshop.
The large size was probably Layton’s, and the medium size likely belonged to some fellow blacksmith I did not know.
When we passed through the blacksmith’s workshop and entered the side door leading to the house, we came out into a yard paved with gravel.
Just then, a woman around Layton’s age was coming out through the front door of the house.
She was short and thin, so when Layton stood beside her, they looked like a giant and a dwarf.
Perhaps because their sizes were so opposite, they suited each other even better.
The woman was holding a bowl filled with bread dough, and she leaned her body to the side, showing interest in me.
“Oh my, welcome. Please look around at your leisure before you go.”
Layton furrowed his brow and corrected the woman’s misunderstanding in a brusque tone.
“He is not a customer.”
“Then what is he?”
“A friend who is traveling. He said he had not decided where to sleep, so I told him to sleep at our house.”
“Come now, that makes him a guest.”
“I mean he is not a customer of the blacksmith’s workshop.”
The woman introduced herself as Arte and considerately told me to stay comfortably, as if I were in my own home.
Afterward, Layton took me into the house and went straight into a room adjacent to the entryway.
The room was small, about thirteen square meters, and it was a simple room containing only a desk, a bed, and a single-person wardrobe.
The arrangement of the furniture would not have been strange even if someone were using the room right now, yet heavy curtains unsuitable for the season were drawn across the window.
When Layton pulled the curtains aside, the rings at the top that held the curtains in place creaked with difficulty, letting out a scream.
As if they had not been used for a long time.
The room itself was clean, but for some reason, a gloomy atmosphere hung over it.
Layton opened the window wide for ventilation and spoke.
“Use this room today. Tell me if you need anything else.”
“Nothing comes to mind yet. I’ll tell you if I think of something.”
“You know how to drink?”
“I can drink about as much as an ordinary person. If you give me some, I’ll gladly drink it.”
Since it was the first day, one light drink should be fine.
This was not a trip with a fixed number of nights and days, so there was no need to rush around on a tight schedule as if collecting stamps in a rally.
It would not be too late even if I rested sufficiently, made every preparation, and then headed to the next exploration point.
As if timed to match the end of the room tour, a voice looking for Layton faintly drifted through the open window.
“He~y! Layton! Make me a few cow hoof-trimming tools! Layton? You are in there, right?”
It seemed a customer had come.
Layton told me to rest comfortably and went out to receive the customer.
I dragged the chair over in front of the window and settled into it, then stacked my arms on the windowsill and rested my chin on top of them.
Outside, the sun was setting, and a cool breeze suited to a late-summer afternoon cooled the sweat gathered beneath my bangs.
I could see a small oven installed separately beside the side door of the blacksmith’s workshop.
Layton’s wife, Arte, brought pieces of charcoal from inside the workshop, already burned down and dying out, and used tongs to stack them neatly inside the small oven.
By the time the inside of the oven had heated properly, she placed the bread dough inside.
Then she moved to the vegetable garden on the other side of the yard and skillfully harvested vegetables such as carrots and broccoli.
Right next to the vegetable garden was a waterway with clean water flowing through it, and she took the harvested vegetables there and washed them clean on the spot... Every step of the process was steeped deeply in nature’s blessings.
As I sat watching quietly, I felt as if I were watching a live version of those videos I used to enjoy, where a former chef cooked in a mountain village overseas.
My eyelids slowly grew heavy.
My eyes closed comfortably, without a single idle thought.
For the first time in a long while, I fell asleep with no stray thoughts at all.
***
I woke up an hour later.
Layton, who had returned after finishing his work, woke me and took me to the living room, saying it was time for dinner.
The living room was as narrow as the small room where I had stayed, and even then, a dining table for four occupied more than half the space.
On the table were freshly baked bread, cream stew filled with plenty of vegetables, a chicken omelet topped with cheese, and three charcoal-grilled beef ribs.
There was wine too, as a bonus.
Arte boldly separated the ribs one by one with a long knife and placed one of them on my side plate.
“I am embarrassed that it is so simple because I prepared it in a hurry. There is more meat, so please eat plenty.”
“Simple? This is a feast.”
“It has been so long since I prepared food for three people. I was always bored eating with this man alone, so it is nice and lively now that we have a guest.”
The medium-sized work clothes hanging inside the blacksmith’s workshop crossed my mind.
They were medium-sized, but they were still too large for Arte to wear.
I guessed that the owner of those medium-sized work clothes had once eaten dinner with them, meaning meals had been shared by three people, but at some point, that person stopped participating in dinner.
Arte served me a portion of each kind of food and chattered without pause.
“You look very young. How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-seven this year.”
“Oh? You absolutely do not look like you are in your mid-thirties. If you are thirty-seven, you must be married. Right?”
“Er... unfortunately, not yet.”
“Oh my, people must have no eye for quality. You are so handsome. Right, dear?”
Layton let out a heavy breath that was difficult to distinguish as either breathing or an answer, then silently tore a piece of bread in half with his hands, placed stew on it, and took a bite.
Even after that, Arte’s chatter showed little sign of ending.
Amid a barrage of various questions, one that was awkward to answer finally popped out.
“You said you are traveling, yes? Where did you come from?”
The manager of the Cypher Village Adventurers’ Guild had said it.
Possessing aptitude in every field might become cause for a commotion, but saying I was a dimension traveler itself was not a problem at all.
I was not particularly fond of telling lies either.
Especially not to people who had shown me kindness.
Just as I was about to plainly reveal where I came from, Layton spoke for the first time during the meal.
“Is there more wine?”
Arte frowned and scolded her husband.
“You want to drink more? You must not overdrink in front of a guest.”
“We received a bottle of good wine last time, did we not? Let this friend taste that too.”
“Phew. Young man, this man is always like this. He never simply says something tastes good. He always makes up some excuse and bothers people.”
“Do not make my head noisy. Just go get it.”
“Let me make this clear. I am not getting it for you to drink. I am getting it for our guest. You get not even one sip... no, exactly one sip.”
Arte snapped at him playfully, then hummed as she went outside the house.
It seemed the equation of mothers remembering this dish and that dish during a meal and going to bring more food remained valid even in another world.
At my house, whenever my mother sat down at the table and then stood up again, we would jokingly stop her and tell her to quit her hobby and sit still.
After Arte left her seat, Layton noticed that my glass was empty and took hold of the wine bottle.
Inside the wine bottle, exactly one glass worth of wine sloshed violently, as if raising storm waves.
I quickly held my wineglass with both hands and pushed it forward to receive the wine.
As the glass filled with wine, Layton spoke.
“It is better not to bring up dimension travelers in front of my wife.”
“Ah, so that is why you sent her out on the pretext of getting something. Then I hope I have not been rude by coming here.”
“Do not misunderstand. My wife and I are both deeply grateful to dimension travelers. It is just that when talk of dimension travelers comes up, my wife thinks of our son and becomes depressed.”
Was it because he had drunk quite a bit?
Layton suddenly became talkative.
And while he was at it, more honest too.
“I am grateful you visited today. It has been who knows how long since my wife ate in such a good mood.”
“Then when she said it had been a long time since she prepared food for three people.......”
The medium-sized work clothes hanging in the blacksmith’s workshop.
The small room that had been cleaned all along, yet showed no sign of use.
All the clues merged into one.
Layton raised his head and looked up at the upper part of the living room wall.
Where Layton’s gaze reached, a metal bow boasting an extraordinary majesty hung on the wall.
Layton’s gaze as he looked at the bow was endlessly wistful.
“It was all because of the war. War must never happen again. That is why I was relieved when you said you had only crossed over to travel.”
Perhaps he was truly relieved, because comfort settled over his face, flushed from intoxication.
I had said it with a light heart, but to the people of this other world, it had been an important message that let them stroke their chests in relief.
Around the time my meal with Layton had deepened.
A message suddenly flowed into my head.
-Traveler Package activated.
-For tomorrow morning only, ‘Cypher Village Blacksmithing Experience Event’ is unlocked.
-During the event period, experience points gained from blacksmithing work increase thirtyfold.