Night fell.
Stars blanketed the sky.
"Such a fine child—how did he become an idiot? We should take him to the veterinarian tomorrow. He cured Old Pick's loss of appetite last time. Maybe he can do something about Dago's problem too?"
"Yes, and he demanded half a pig's innards as payment! I don't have any extra food to pay for another visit, and this time it's a person he's treating."
"But we can't just watch Dago turn into an idiot, can we? My poor child... sob..."
"As long as he learns to be a proper pig keeper, what does it matter if his head works or not? Go to sleep. Damn it, life is miserable enough already. Don't make me miserable over something so trivial."
The man's complaints and the woman's sobs drifted from the pitch-black mud hut. Dago lay in the filthy, foul-smelling pigsty, his head resting on damp straw as he stared up at the night sky.
His expression was as still as water, but his mood had sunk to the very bottom.
Everything around him felt incomparably real. Half a day of "exploration" had also allowed him to understand his current identity.
His name was Dago, the son of Dago the pig keeper. He had no family name. No one in this poor, backward village had one.
Once the man in the house, who was unwilling to trade half a pig's innards for his own son's healthy mind, died, he would inherit the prefix "pig keeper" and become the new Dago the pig keeper.
By then, perhaps he would have a son of his own. The boy might also be named Dago, or perhaps something else. None of that mattered.
What mattered was that during this half-day, he had tried meditating and every basic method available to