Manga Story

During my travels across the continent, when I was twenty-nine years old, I found myself crossing the eastern mountains on my way back to Theria. It was a miserable journey. The roads were little more than narrow trails cut into stone, the weather seemed determined to make every step unpleasant, and I had spent so many days walking that I had started talking to myself just to hear another voice. That was when I met him. A demi-human, at least that is what I later learned he was called. At the time, I only knew he was unlike anyone I had met before. I no longer remember what kind of animal traits he had. Memory is a strange thing. It keeps some details forever and steals others without explanation. What I do remember is that I liked him almost right away. We talked for less than an hour before it felt like we had known each other for years, the way certain strangers fall into a rhythm that takes most friendships a decade to find. He told me he was an Ascendant on the Path of the Earth God, and that his Form was known as the Cook of Creation. I laughed. "What kind of Path is that?" "The best kind," he replied. "You use divine power to cook?" "I do." I remember spending the rest of the road making fun of him for it. By then I had already spent six years traveling the world. I had crossed deserts, fought demons, talked with priests, scholars, and kings, and I believed, with all the confidence of a young fool, that I understood far more than I actually did. My friend listened patiently to every joke I made at his expense, until he finally shook his head. "You have very literal eyes." "The world you've seen so far," he told me, "is only the peak of a mountain seen from far away." I thought it was an insult. Years later, I realized it was a lesson. I still think about those words more often than I expected to, usually right when I'm sure I finally understand something. When we reached his village, he showed me the garden behind his tavern, tucked away where the morning light hit it at just the right angle. To this day, I have never seen anything like it. The tomatoes looked ready to burst. The carrots were a deeper orange than any I had ever seen, in a market or in a king's kitchen. The lettuce looked impossibly green, like the color itself had gotten richer just from growing there. Even the air felt different. Cleaner. Healthier. More alive, in a way I still can't explain, and have never found again anywhere else I've traveled since. With all the confidence of a man about to rob me, my friend promised to make the best soup I would ever taste. Naturally, I laughed. A bet was made. If the soup really was the best meal of my life, I would pay him five gold coins. If it wasn't, he would owe me free soup forever. I said yes right away. I had made decent money hunting demons along the way, and more than that, I thought I had already found the hole in his plan. I could just lie. A while later he came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of soup and a cup of wine he had made himself, both of us pretending the other didn't already know how this was going to end. The smile on his face should have warned me. I took a big spoonful, fully ready to say it was terrible. The moment it hit my tongue, I forgot every lie I had planned. The soup was unreal. That's the only word I have for it. The vegetables tasted brighter than vegetables should. The broth felt like it carried warmth straight into my bones, the kind that usually takes a fireplace and an hour to get. Then I drank the wine, and my whole body shook. I remember sweating. From soup. My friend nearly fell over laughing at the look on my face. I wanted to tell him it was awful. I really tried. Instead, my mouth betrayed me and started praising every single ingredient like a priest reciting scripture, and no matter how hard I fought it, I couldn't say one dishonest word. To this day, I still think putting that much divinity into a meal works like some kind of truth serum. When the meal was over, I handed him the five gold coins. He pushed them back. "The look on your face was worth more than that." That's what he said. Then he added that if I ever came back, the food would always be free, as long as I paid with stories instead of coins. It seemed like a fair deal, and that night we drank, laughed, and traded stories until sunrise, the kind of night that feels, while you're living it, like it might never end and doesn't need to. The next morning I kept going. Two years later, I passed through those lands again. I looked for the tavern. I never found it. At first, I thought I had taken the wrong road. Then I asked the people who lived there, and what they said unsettled me. There had never been a tavern there. The building I described had supposedly stood empty for decades. No demi-human had ever lived in that village. One old man even laughed and said something like that would have never been allowed, that the villagers would have driven him out long before, or worse. I stood there in silence. The night was still clear in my memory. The laughter. The soup. The stories. The garden. Every detail felt real, and yet the place where it happened seemed to have never existed at all. I still don't know what really happened. Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe some roads lead to places that don't stay where you left them. Whatever the answer is, it's one more question I carry with me. And after all these years, I've learned that questions travel farther than answers ever do.