When darkness fell, sleep early; when morning came, rise to tend the wasteland—farming was truly exhausting, and speaking of it brought only tears. The sky had only just begun to brighten when Chiwako, an old farmer all his life, opened his eyes and climbed up from the bed of dry grass. But the moment he got up, his brow furrowed, his old face twitched, and he could not help clutching one side of his teeth as tears of pain welled from his aged eyes.
"Main God, my tooth! What torment! I shouldn't have been greedy for that bite of Old Wood's rabbit meat... It hurts!..."
Chiwako pulled a bitter old face, fetched water to rinse his mouth, then rummaged two cold flatbreads out of the clay pot. But as soon as he took one bite, the pain made him cry out again.
"Hiss! My father!..."
"Eh? Old Chiwako, what did you just call me?..."
The Cedar Shaman came strolling in from outside the wooden hut, smiling, carrying that Pine Wood staff of his. As he walked, he was still chewing something, clearly having been up for a while too.
"...I called you grandson!... Hiss! Ah! It really hurts!..."
Chiwako grimaced and cursed irritably. The dry flatbread was too hard; half his face hurt fiercely, and he truly could not chew it. Helpless, he could only take out a flint, light a small pile of old firewood, toss the flatbread into the pot to boil in water, and keep groaning through the pain.
"Ah! So it's a toothache? No wonder you've got such a bitter face, hurting like an old monkey... Does it really hurt that bad? Ahaha! Don't curse me. If you curse, you have to open your mouth, and then it'll hurt even more!..."
The Cedar Shaman glanced at