Chapter 39. The Old Mercenary and Seaweed Soup (1)
“Please, get a hold of yourself! Please!”
Yukgap raised his voice desperately in front of Sunhyeong.
But Sunhyeong only stared blankly ahead and weakly called for his mother.
“Mom... where is Mom...?”
“Please snap out of it! I have so many things I need to ask you!”
Unable to endure it any longer, Yukgap shouted.
Sunhyeong immediately burst into tears like a child.
“Waaaaah! Bring Mom! Mom! Mom!”
Because of his dementia, he seemed unable to even tell who the people in front of him were.
Victoria, who had been watching from the side, shook her head.
“This isn’t working. I don’t think he recognizes us at all.”
“Damn it! Do you know how far I came to get here?!”
Yukgap was close to losing his mind.
He had finally managed to find someone who might hold a clue while avoiding Abraxas’s pursuit, yet all they had done since arriving was repeat this meaningless conversation.
Even Yukgap was beginning to feel exhausted.
“Mom?”
Then Sunhyeong suddenly looked at Victoria with sparkling eyes.
Victoria instinctively recoiled.
“Ugh.”
Yukgap hurriedly pleaded with her.
“Victoria, just play along for a bit. Maybe it’ll trigger something and help him come back to his senses.”
“Ugh... fine.”
Victoria clearly did not want to, but she reluctantly agreed.
“Y-Yes, m-my good son. W-What’s wrong?”
She forced an awkward smile.
Sunhyeong’s eyes widened.
Then he suddenly rushed straight toward Victoria’s chest.
“Mom, give me milk!”
Victoria’s face instantly twisted in fury.
She punched him straight in the face.
“You crazy old man!”
“Ghk!”
Sunhyeong screamed and collapsed.
That made twice.
Yukgap shouted in horror.
“Victoria! What the hell are you doing?! He’s an old man with dementia who doesn’t know what he’s saying!”
“Old man or not, sexual harassment is a serious crime worthy of death! I refuse to tolerate it as a woman!”
Victoria’s face was bright red, but she refused to back down.
While the two argued, Sunhyeong suddenly curled up in the corner and began sobbing.
“Sniff... Mom, please don’t hit me. I only did it because I was hungry.”
His crying filled the room.
Yukgap cautiously asked,
“You’re hungry?”
“The thing Mom used to make... that... I wanted to eat it again... so...”
Sunhyeong muttered weakly as tears streamed down his face.
Victoria’s eyes lit up.
“That’s it!”
“What is?”
Yukgap looked confused.
Victoria calmly explained.
“Right now, because of his dementia, he’s trapped in an unhappy part of his childhood. If we give him a food connected to a comforting memory from that time, it might naturally help bring him back to himself.”
“You really think that’ll work?”
Yukgap looked doubtful.
Victoria, however, was serious.
“I’ve read research showing that matching dementia patients with familiar memories from their past can sometimes help. It might work better than you think.”
Yukgap slowly nodded.
“All right. At this point, we have to grab at any possibility.”
Once they settled on that plan, Victoria carefully asked Sunhyeong,
“All right, my son. What do you want to eat?”
“Seaweed soup.”
The answer was surprisingly ordinary.
“Seaweed soup?”
“Mom said... when the time came around when she gave birth to me, she always wanted seaweed soup... The seaweed soup she made back then... it was really good...”
Sunhyeong trailed off.
Yukgap immediately answered with confidence.
“Good. Then we know the menu.”
“Seaweed is actually only commonly eaten in parts of East Asia.”
Victoria explained while watching the seaweed boil vigorously.
“They say people on the Korean Peninsula have eaten it for around fifteen hundred years. Apparently, people began using it as food after seeing whales eat seaweed after giving birth. From commoners to the royal family, it became widely loved as food for postpartum recovery.”
Yukgap adjusted the seasoning and looked impressed.
“You actually know stuff like that?”
“For an alchemist, this is basic knowledge.”
Victoria puffed herself up proudly.
Then she added calmly,
“The problem is that because seaweed is such a widely used ingredient, there are countless ways to make seaweed soup. The recipe changes depending on the region and even the family.”
“It’s still just soup.”
Yukgap casually pulled a chunk of beef from the refrigerator.
It was premium-grade beef he had specially obtained for this occasion.
“Beef broth is supposed to be the most common version, so I’ll start with that.”
“You sound confident.”
“How hard can making one soup be?”
Yukgap gripped his monomolecular cutters in both hands.
Then he rapidly chopped the beef.
In an instant, the meat was cut into perfectly bite-sized pieces.
Yukgap dropped the chopped beef into the boiling seaweed.
“I just hope this old man comes back to his senses and tells me what he knows about me.”
