Chapter 194

Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

“Mmm, haha.”

It had been a succession of truly delightful days.

When my parents first entrusted me with that vineyard, I thought my luck had run dry. I spent nights lamenting how the damned pandemic had ruined my bright future, but that was all in the past now.

“Just look at all this money…”

Since returning to the land, I had applied myself with steady investment, rigorous study, and bone-breaking effort. The result? I had secured dozens of private households who regularly purchased grapes from our farm. In the world of high-end fruit distribution, the department store is the holy grail. Although the department stores took a significant cut, they served as the essential intermediary to brand ‘Kim Lee-sang’s Orchard’—a name passed down from my parents—among elite fruit connoisseurs.

Once a customer tried our grapes from a department store and thought, ‘Oh? This is delicious,’ the game was over. Those housewives would search ‘Kim Lee-sang’s Orchard’ on Naver and call my number directly. As the number of direct-to-consumer links grew, my profits became practically guaranteed, since I no longer had to pay a middleman’s commission.

The whole world might be suffering because of COVID, but for me, while the Shine Muscat craze lasted, this was the golden age of my life. The world was beautiful, and life was a joy! Ah, a life as sweet as a Shine Muscat!

Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

—”Delicious white rice has finished cooking. Please stir the rice well.”

Ah. Perfect timing. Dinner was ready. Lately, I had even upgraded to the expensive rice—a variety even better than Koshihikari…

Click.

“Wait, what is this?”

Something was wrong. I was certain I had only put in white rice before pressing the cook button, so why did it look like this? It looked like dirt. Had the rice cooker broken?

As I stirred the contents with the paddle, a terrifying realization dawned on me. There was nothing but oats and barley in the pot.

Feeling an ominous dread tighten around my throat like a noose, I turned toward the dining table. The braised short ribs and mapo tofu had vanished, replaced by a few meager greens and a bowl of lentils.

I forced a hollow laugh and checked my phone, only to find debt collection texts from the bank. Seriously? Just wait until the Tanghulu trend hits—I can pay it all back once I sell the Black Sapphires! And who the hell was that knocking on the door? ‘Nemo’? Who was that?

“Lord Nemo! Lord Nemo!”

Wait, who did they mean… Ah.

It’s me.

With that realization, I opened the rice bin. I lifted the veil and caught a glimpse of the future, but there was only…

“Aaaaagh! Why… why is there nothing but oats?!”

“Are you alright, My Lord? Did you have a nightmare?”

No. I was not alright.

Of all the times to have such a dream, it had to be the first time I fell asleep after returning to Japan. I had undertaken a grand adventure that spanned half the globe just to get here, so why did I have to dream of falling from the peak of my life into the abyss? And right as I neared home, no less.

I took a deep, steadying breath to calm my mind. After a while, someone slid open the paper door and entered the tatami room, kneeling respectfully.

“Would it be alright if I prepared breakfast for you?”

“…”

Breakfast. My first breakfast back in East Asia.

Fully aware of the gravity of that moment, I nodded silently. I was wound tight with tension, swallowing hard, which drew puzzled looks from the servants. But I didn’t care. I didn’t want to think about anything else except the meal that was about to arrive.

Clatter. Clink.

The servant carefully placed the tray on the table. Even more cautiously than the servant, I reached out and lifted the lid of the rice bowl. My hands were trembling. ‘That thing,’ which I had waited decades for, was finally waiting for me.

“…Ah.”

Hin-ssal-bap. White rice.

That three-syllable compound, ending in a soft plosive, felt like a caress. It took me thirty years to realize the true value of the stickiness hidden beneath that pearly sheen. In the end, everything had turned out well. The battle was over. I had triumphed over myself.

…Actually, enough with the nonsense.

I scooped a large mound with the paddle and took a massive bite.

Mmm…

…Mmm.

I savored the texture—the way it held its shape with the perfect amount of stickiness before melting away in my mouth. I lingered over that flavor, perfectly soft, sweet, and nutty, for a long time before finally letting it slide down my throat.

Thirty years ago, these were sensations I had taken for granted, as essential and unnoticed as oxygen. Every sensation I felt now symbolized the precious things I had lost when I fell into this era: my family, my friends, delivery food, Hanwoo omakase, the cinema, and the endless stream of dramas and variety shows.

I flipped the switch in my mind, deactivated my abilities, and surrendered my entire body to that overwhelming, aching human nostalgia. In that moment, I was completely happy.

Before I knew it, the side dishes were gone, the rice had vanished, and I had washed it all down with the soup. Not a single grain remained in the bowl.

Haaaa. So peaceful. So serene. To think I would feel a fragment of twenty-first-century Korea here. Even though… what I just ate was actually just brown rice.

…

…

…

That’s right. It was just brown rice.

By the standards of this era, it qualified as ‘white rice,’ but it was still brown rice. It was likely what we would call 5-bun-do rice—partially milled. This was the first Japonica rice I had eaten in thirty years.

I should clarify something here. What exactly is ‘brown rice’? Literally, it means ‘dark rice.’ It’s rice that still has the bran layer attached, giving it a somewhat dusky appearance. To be precise, it is rice that has had the husk removed, but the inner skin has not been ‘sufficiently’ polished away.

Until the invention of the rice polisher in the modern era, there was no such thing as ‘white rice’ that was polished as thoroughly as what modern people imagine. The history of the white rice we know is only about a hundred years old. Until the development of the rice milling machine, people ate what we today call brown rice, calling it ‘white rice’!

In other words, if I wanted to eat true white rice, I needed a rice polisher! It was a shocking realization!

Thump!

“W-what is that?”

“It’s called a ‘rice polisher.’ It’s what makes delicious rice possible.”

And because I had anticipated this, I had already built one. The principle of a rice polisher is simple enough—it’s all about creating friction between the grains to strip away the outer layers. It was the result of grinding down the labor of engineering professors who had never even seen a bowl of rice in their lives.

So, if I turn this handle with everything I’ve got…

Whirrrrrrr!

Pure white rice would come cascading out in no time!

The Japanese servants waiting in the corner were wide-eyed with shock, and even Oitotan blinked in wonder. Panting from the effort of turning the handle, I handed the rice to a servant and told them to cook it for dinner, then waited for evening to come.

Someone might ask me why I was doing something so ridiculous. If they did, I would answer that ‘Koreans run on the power of rice.’ The idea that a person needs rice to live is a cultural truth that billions on twenty-first-century Earth would agree with.

And someone else might ask why, if I had the machine, I didn’t just make white rice for my first meal. Well…

“Dinner is served.”

It was so I could experience this ecstasy in a perfect gradient.

With my heart pounding just as it had that morning, I opened the lid of the small rice pot. As expected, those glistening white grains I had missed so dearly were waiting for me.

***

Time flowed on, and by early April 1623…

Nom. Nom. Munch. Nom.

While Oitotan was still walking a tightrope among the rebels, planning his ‘rebellion within a rebellion.’

Clatter. Clink. Snap.

“Look at that man. Are you sure he isn’t truly from Joseon?”

“When I went to Joseon during the Bunroku era (1592-1595) in my youth, that’s exactly how the Joseon people ate—piling their rice high! They’d fill a bowl the size of a washbasin…”

“How is the rice as white as snow? It’s marvelous.”

While Kim Lee-sang was staying in Hirado—one of Japan’s only two open ports—he was engrossed in a single hobby.

“Haaa… I’m stuffed.”

Gourmandism.

Actually, calling it gourmandism might have seemed a bit petty and monotonous to an observer, considering he was devouring three or four bowls of rice (by Japanese standards) at every meal. When Kim Lee-sang first arrived in Japan and sat down for that joyous first meal, he had cautiously asked the person who served him:

—”Mmm, should I pour the tea water in here? I see the teacup, but where is the rice bowl?”

—”…That is the rice bowl.”

That was the catch. Kim Lee-sang had overlooked one thing. From this era all the way to the twenty-first century, the Japanese have always eaten significantly smaller portions than Joseon people—and later, Koreans!

Of course, looking at it the other way, from this period to the twenty-first century, the Korean people have always been unusually large eaters compared to their neighbors, but that was how Kim Lee-sang felt.

‘These people eat so incredibly little. Are they that poor? Do they not grow much rice?’

Of course, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Japan’s rice yield per unit of area was higher than Joseon’s. The Japanese simply ate less.

However, the craving for rice that had grown over thirty years was now dominating Kim Lee-sang’s thoughts and actions. To the surrounding Japanese, as well as the accompanying Covenant members and Dutchmen, it looked as if he were possessed by a starving ghost.

And he didn’t just eat a lot. Thinking he had to make up for decades of not tasting properly milled Japonica rice, Kim Lee-sang tried every possible way a human could consume rice. He ate it plain, boiled it into porridge, made fried rice, and even grilled it with sauce. He pounded it into rice cakes, made Yak-bap (sweet rice with nuts), and cooked pot-rice with pheasant meat or mushrooms.

When he grew tired of that, he used ingredients sourced from all over to create dishes that 17th-century Japan had never seen: mushroom risotto, curry rice, scorched rice snacks, and Tarak-juk (milk porridge).

He was even considering making rice noodles until he remembered that he didn’t necessarily need Japonica rice for that.

Then, Kim Lee-sang realized something.

‘…Why am I getting tired of this?’

It was strange. There is no such thing as a Korean who gets tired of rice. It’s for the same reason there are no mammals tired of breathing or fish tired of swimming. It’s just natural. The Korean people are one of the few on Earth who use the words ‘meal’ and ‘rice’ as synonyms. No one in their right mind counts the rice first when deciding how many side dishes are on the table.

As Kim Lee-sang looked at the spread before him—pickles, sashimi, tofu, and miso soup—the realization hit him.

When counting side dishes, you don’t count the Kimchi either.

“…Ah!”

That was it. Something was missing. What he was tired of wasn’t the rice.

Modern Kimchi, which uses chili powder and fermented fish sauce, wouldn’t appear until after the Great Kyung-shin Famine of 1670. There were still nearly fifty years to go. During that famine, as vegetation withered and firewood became scarce, salt—which was made by boiling seawater—also became expensive. As a result, people began adding chili powder and fish sauce as substitutes for salt.

That was it.

In this era, there was only one person capable of creating modernized Kimchi.

Kim Lee-sang realized he had a grand mission. A mission to spread the quintessentially Korean combination of white rice and Kimchi to the world. Lamenting a world without a decent piece of Kimchi to put on his rice, Kim Lee-sang gladly accepted that mission.

…

…

…

Or, you could just say he was full and bored after stuffing himself with white rice.

Before long, a letter arrived from Oitotan.

Like a shot from a gun, Kim Lee-sang bolted toward Joseon. After more than thirty years, he was finally setting foot on his home soil. It was the land where his great mission would begin.

Before long, the people of Joseon would witness a foreign prince giving orders for Gimjang—the winter Kimchi-making.