Volume 1 - CH 29

Translated by Lickymee

Edited by General Napolean

Without Xifu, the days become immensely boring as I felt nothing, but my lonely presence in the cave.

The food gathering was also going poorly. Lurking in the forest for days yielded nothing, except for a girabbit or two. But lacking the agility of Medusa, nor the skills of Cariff, I only managed to scare them away.

As the days passed, I got slightly depressed as I thought about doing other things on my list first. But if I couldn’t stock up on food now, it would be even harder in the future. As a last resort, I would have to buy some from Nightfall town. 

In order to conserve my limited amount of revolver ammo, I used the muskets I got last time instead. It honestly felt like it had more firepower, and it could even be used as a club in a pinch. Still, getting close enough for me to actually hit something was still a problem.

“Alright, let’s get that bread……” 

I raised the musket, and placed its sights upon the prey around 7 metres away. Hoping it would help with my accuracy, I steadied my breath and told myself to calm down.

BANG!

The smoke from the musket immediately obscured my vision upon firing. Unable to confirm my hit, I could only run to where the girabbit was.

What good luck! The girabbit was lying on its side, panting quickly. The bullet went through the girabbit’s torso, probably shattering it’s spine in the process. 

As soon as I dragged this girabbit back, it would be my second out of my goal of 15 girabbits. If I could on average get two girabbits every four days, I should reach my goal of 15, just barely before winter comes.

Still, it was all theoretical. There were problems I was already facing, like how to keep the meat fresh. I couldn’t very well just chuck them all into the stream.

When I just came into this world, hunting was quite interesting to me. But just after four days of hunting alone, it wore me away, as I was faced with the reality of survival, and of my own inability.

Today the one to take a bullet was the girabbit. Who knows, it could be my turn tomorrow.

Still, my days without my wife weren’t as hard as I expected, with the only problem of my learning of the language being impeded. Still, survival for the winter took priority.

The words in the journal were getting shorter by the day, but it always ended with: ‘She wasn’t back.’

Without a choice, I could only see her sudden disappearance as a test of our relationship from God. Even though we were only a stone wall away, I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her. Thinking back of how my classmates broke up after becoming in a long distance relationship, I couldn’t help but worry.

At this point of time, what we needed was absolute trust of a husband and wife in each other. If I couldn’t even do that one bit, then I wasn’t worthy to be called her husband.

On my seventh day, I gave up on hunting. After a few days of coming back empty handed, I decided to head towards Nightfall Town to try my luck.

But as I couldn’t go into the cave to restock on gold coins, I was only left with a  very limited budget of 7 coins. Well, the prices in Nightfall Town weren’t high, but there were just too many things I needed to get.

Simon had already put on a warm-looking woollen coat, and Wolflang was still clad in this usual suit. Well, the werewolf must have alot of thick fur that helped keep him warm.

Even after not seeing them for so long, they were still as warmhearted as before. Simon poured a hot peppery drink for me that tasted weird, but it sure warmed me up. 

“Simon, your shirt, how to buy?’

“Shirt? Oh, you mean this?”

As he pointed at his coat, he called it something I’ve never heard before.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm…… okay. Wolflang!”

“What’s up?”

Wolflang was holding a cup larger than mine in his claws, filled with the peppery soup-like drink too.

“Let’s go, Mr Lou Woo.”

I followed Wolflang to an expensive looking shop with full glass windows attached, which honestly looked much more impressive, compared to other shops here. Looking inside, it looked like it was a clothing shop.

The shopkeeper was a middle-aged woman. After giving a simple greeting to Wolflang, she also waved at me, making me slightly less cautious.

During the whole process of purchase, I had kept quiet. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to say anything, it was because I didn’t understand anything. I only knew the simple word for shirt, and had no idea what a coat, jacket or a blanket was called.

If I forced myself to the limit, I could probably say something along the lines of:   ‘I need a shirt for winter.’

Wolflang obviously knew how to talk more than me. After a while of conversing, the shopkeeper quickly produced a black coat. Putting it on, it felt really nice, with it being handmade and all. It didn’t look like it was made of cheap cotton either.

(TLN: China is known for, you know, cheap fillers and cotton made of fibre.)

Well, the only downside was that it felt kind of heavy.

For Medusa, I chose a brown coat that was around the same design as mine. I couldn’t get a quilt that I always wanted, and in its stead I got a woollen mattress.

It was more expensive than I expected, with me only getting back 10 copper coins in return, after forking over 4 gold coins. Still, it made sense, seeing that the materials to make a coat was enough for 5 shirts, and the mattress itself too would have used even more.

I wanted to use my remaining three gold coins to get a heater of some sorts, but after scouring through Nightfall Town there wasn’t such a thing to be found. Everyone was still using the fireplace in their homes.

In the end, I got help from Parker, to stick two metal pots together to make somewhat of a ‘heater’ for me.

Thinking back to my old world, I didn’t need to worry so much about food and clothings, and there was central heating in our homes. Now, look how much I needed to slave away just for a heater……

Just like that, I had used up all of my 7 gold coins. Waving goodbye to Wolflang, I got onto my sheep cart.

“Mr Lou Woo!”

“What?”

Wolflang ran just like a real wolf and caught up to me.

“At this time, you must come! Mr and Mrs Lou Woo.”

As he stuffed something like a calendar into my hands, on the neatly drawn dates in it there was a day circled.

“Wait, that day, which?”

“Oh, today, it is this.”

The werewolf used his front claw and poked a few holes into another date.

“Alright, I understand. Thank you, Mr Wolflang.”

“En.Seneharella……”

“Good bye.”

Flipping through the calendar, there were 20 days and more till the date. Smiling bitterly, I thought the only person who could come as promised was ‘Mr Lou Woo’.

……

The woollen mattress still couldn’t protect me from the morning chills that I was waking up to. The cold white mists of my breaths told me that winter was already at the doorsteps of my home. Even if I didn’t open my doors for it, it would still come barging in with the wind and snow.

‘It’s raining……”

There was a reason for the cold today. The late autumn rains were never my favourite.

I had to quickly make a fire as I grabbed the matchsticks beside me, but my body was unwilling to come out of the bed. Learning from Medusa, I wrapped the fur all around me as I struck a match alight.

Within the weak yet beautiful light, it was as if I could see tons of wonderful images and memories, as if they came pouring out of my mind as they flickered about within my vision. As I struck another match alight, my fantasy of a happy life surfaced, and I imagined my wife walking out towards me from the depths of the cave, with a smile on her face. 

As matchsticks were struck again after another, my imagination was already high within the clouds, and I was stuck in my own happy world that I constructed myself.

Until the feeling of my fingertips being burned, is when only when I stopped lighting matches alight.

I didn’t want to become The Little Match Chen Lao Wu.

(TLN:Reference to the Andersen story The Little Match Girl)

But as the fire sputtered out, darkness fell too. Within the dim cave, the only thing that was conversing with me was the soft raindrops outside. No matter how many smokes I had, I was still restless inside.

Putting on my coat, I made a decision that could destroy everything——I decided to look for her.

Because I had bought so many, I decided to use the matches as my source of light. My lighter already ran out of fuel long ago anyway.

I hadn’t seen her for only 9 days, but the loneliness was unbearable. Even if Medusa just wanted to hibernate, I just wanted to be with her. I could make a fire, and just cover her with the coat.

Holding a big bunch of matches in one hand and a lit one in another, I slowly walked into the average sized cave. This felt like what happened a long time ago, but this time the roles were reversed.

“Xifu, where are you?”

My calls were met with silence.

“Xifu, you there?”

I gave another shout, this time raising my voice louder.