Little Red Riding Hood Teaches You How to Behave

"..."

Kas was utterly speechless at this bizarre tradition. Under Seneya's expectant gaze, he shook his head and raised the wooden spoon brimming with food to his mouth.

His lips moved slightly, parting into a narrow gap, but he abruptly stopped just as they touched the rounded tip of the spoon.

Why did this meat look a little familiar?

He picked out a slice of meat as thick as his little finger from the mushroom soup. It looked like beef.

He held it beneath his nose and sniffed. It smelled wonderful, rich with the sweet fragrance of cheese and the fresh scent of mushrooms. A pinch of salt was all it would take to bring out the ingredients' natural flavor.

Yet that powerful fragrance concealed the taste of the ingredients themselves.

As he pondered this unfamiliar meat, a cheerful melody suddenly surfaced in his mind.

The rhythm was simple and clear, yet incredibly catchy, as though enchanted—it could repeat endlessly.

[Plan: Mysterious Meat Fragrance]

[Status: In Progress]

[Inspiration: I think I've heard this music before...]

He lifted the wooden bowl filled with fresh mushroom and meat soup. His eyes were drawn to the mushrooms, matsutake, and meat slices blanketing its surface, as though they were a vortex pulling his soul inside.

In his daze, the hallucinatory sensation from drinking mushroom soup when he crossed over surged into his mind. The food in the bowl vanished, leaving only a pool of crystal-clear water.

The wooden bowl became the land surrounding a lake. As Kas blew upon it, ripples spread across the clear water.

Within the ripples, he saw a girl in a red velvet hood picking mushrooms in the forest.

He could not see her face because of the angle, only her back.

The girl placed the mushrooms she picked into a wicker basket, soon filling it to the brim. The sun gradually dimmed, and dusk shone over her like molten gold. She was probably about to head back.

But suddenly, more than a dozen shadows appeared where she had been picking mushrooms. Hyenas with tawny fur covered in distinctive black spots and green-glowing eyes pounced upon the mushroom-picking girl.

Kas heard a scream.

At last, he remembered what music had been echoing in his head.

"Fuck!"

Kas hurled away the wooden bowl in his hand. Fury ignited in his ice-blue eyes as he finally realized what that piece of mysteriously fragrant meat was.

He had nearly committed the greatest taboo.

After taking several deep breaths and forcibly suppressing the rage in his heart, he reached out and snatched the wooden bowl from in front of Seneya. He growled at Ancestor, who seemed to be smiling, "You knew."

Morse's skull could not convey expressions, but he was definitely mocking him. "I've been dead for a long time, Kas. How could I possibly smell anything?"

Ancestor's tone shifted, becoming stern and full of rebuke. "Yes, I knew...

"You knew that there was something wrong with that girl, yet you still entered this strange house like a fool without any guard up. Compared to the taboo you nearly committed, I would rather the clan's last descendant learned a lesson.

"A beautiful appearance is merely a disguise covered in flower petals. The roots that support its exquisite bloom, the nourishment that lets it grow, can only be rotting chunks of flesh and foul-smelling mud.

"A true warrior does not rely solely on an axe to settle disputes. You have never considered learning our ancient and profound wisdom, believing a few clever tricks could solve every problem.

"Now, do you see...

"If that girl had not revealed the truth, if she had not begged through the torment she endured after death, you would have committed the most forbidden act among us.

"And all this help came from the spirits you refuse to believe in, Kas."

Kas was momentarily speechless. Perhaps most of what the old thing said was nonsense, but that final reminder truly made him realize—the spirits existed.

If spirits did not exist, then there was only one explanation for the scene he had seen in the mushroom soup.

He had hallucinated. A tune had suddenly played in his head, making him associate it with the mysterious fragrance.

But for that theory to hold, Kas had to admit that he suffered from persecutory delusions.

Otherwise, he could only include the invisible, incomprehensible spirits among the conditions of his reasoning. The girl who had continued suffering after death had become a spirit and pleaded with him, turning the moment of her death into a memory displayed in the bowl.

Yet introducing an incomprehensible concept into a line of reasoning completely violated the principles of logic he had learned in his previous life.

He thought of a crucial question. If it was a spirit that had told him all this—

Who was Nosa?

More precisely, who exactly was that lively, adorable Little Red Riding Hood?

Was she the girl in the red velvet hood who had been killed by the hyenas, or was she the Nosa he had met today?

Kas shook his head and abandoned this line of thought, which had no clues to support it. Under Miss Seneya's reluctant yet resolute gaze, he covered the pot of delicious thick soup.

He picked up the Woodcutter's Axe beside the door and headed toward the stairs leading to the second floor.

With his back to Morse, he spoke in a low voice.

"Old thing, you do have a point... But compared to invisible spirits, I'm more used to solving problems with my own hands."

Veins bulged along the hand gripping the Woodcutter's Axe. Kas was angry, and not merely because he had nearly eaten it.

After the thick soup had turned into a memory just now, he realized that he had to learn to adapt to the traditions of the Rishiman People.

Preparing a plan based only on shallow understanding could easily lead to failure when inspiration failed to complete the logical loop.

He climbed the stairs step by step and pushed open the door.

Moonlight seeped in through the open window. Skinned and bled cattle, sheep, and wolves hung from the ceiling beams, their hemp ropes swaying in the breeze and scraping against the pillars with soft rustling sounds.

The room was clean and tidy. A parchment map lay on the table by the window, and beneath the moonlight, the terrain lines drawn in ink were clearly visible.

It was the map of the Sorrow Mountains Kas had been searching for, but he did not immediately reach for it. Instead, his gaze swept back and forth across the room.

Nosa was gone...

Just as he was about to search the wooden crates piled in the corner, several muffled barks accompanied by the wind's moan drifted in through the window and wooden walls.

The barks were low and short, faintly carrying the air of a command.

He hurried to the window. Beneath the cold moonlight, several pairs of ghostly green eyes moved through the Deep Forest at incredible speed.

When the leading hyena emerged at the edge of a clearing in the woods, Kas's knuckles around the Woodcutter's Axe turned white from the force of his grip.

He remembered clearly. It was this hyena, the one with claw marks on its forehead, that had carried away the red velvet hood in its mouth...