The Story of Becoming a Married Man in Another World

036 Dorothy and Oz, Toto

Joo-hwan, who had fallen asleep as if dead, woke up when the sky was still dark. It was so early that even Lizzie hadn’t woken up yet.

Dorothy, who had been sleeping by the hearth, had somehow crawled between Joo-hwan and Lizzie’s legs and was sleeping there.

She was curled up like a snail under the blanket. Seeing her bury her head under the blanket, Joo-hwan felt worried before he could laugh. Could she breathe properly?

Thanks to the straw they had bought, the bed was puffed up. For Joo-hwan, who knew modern mattresses, the straw poking his body under the cloth was quite uncomfortable, but for Lizzie and Dorothy, it was well-received. Dorothy kept rolling around in the blanket, saying it was soft.

Joo-hwan quietly slipped out of bed. Only the sound of the firewood crackling could be heard. He dressed quietly and went outside so as not to wake Lizzie.

Gus said he wouldn’t be able to come for a few days. He seemed busy for some reason.

Joo-hwan, who had come outside, stoked the campfire a bit and started making the fence gate that he hadn’t finished yesterday.

It was harder than he thought. Trying to make it smooth enough for Lizzie and Dorothy to open, his skills were quite lacking.

Just before the sky brightened, Lizzie woke up. There was a faint trace of sleep on his wife’s face as she came out to check on him.

He paused his work and went to fetch water from the spring.

In the meantime, Lizzie was doing the laundry.

In this world without washing machines, doing laundry was a big task.

The laundry that had been soaked in ash water overnight was rinsed and washed again with clean water from early morning and hung out to dry by the time the sun rose.

Small clothes were manageable, but large items like blankets were difficult for a woman to wring out and hang on bamboo poles to dry.

Without a spin dryer, wet cloth was much heavier than expected.

Whenever Joo-hwan was around, he always helped, but for some reason, Lizzie tended to handle the work without his help. Every time, Dorothy would insist on helping, making the task bigger and more troublesome.

Fortunately, today’s laundry was small. One of Dorothy’s dresses and Joo-hwan’s clothes.

Joo-hwan resumed working on the fence gate. By the time he finally managed to hang the gate, the sun was high in the sky.

He hadn’t checked the traps yesterday. Since there were no rabbits caught the day before, he thought it wouldn’t be necessary to check every day.

Dorothy had been very disappointed. The child seemed to think that two or three rabbits would be caught every day.

To be honest, Joo-hwan was also somewhat disappointed. He had thought they would catch at least one rabbit every day. He hoped at least one would be caught today.

Before going out, Joo-hwan cast a healing spell on the baby rabbit that had woken up and was wriggling around. Although fur hadn’t grown on the wounded area yet, the flesh had somewhat healed. The internal organs should have mostly recovered as well.

Just when he thought he had infused enough magic, a faint light seemed to seep into the baby rabbit’s forehead. It was where the horn was. The light didn’t come out, but it felt like a light bulb was turned on inside the fabric.

—

But when he blinked and looked again, it had already returned to being an ordinary rabbit. The rabbit stared at Juhwan with its black eyes wide open.

‘Gus didn’t say anything like this.’

Strange. Yesterday, while learning archery, Juhwan asked Gus about the rabbit with horns. Whether it was dangerous, whether it could be raised, things like that.

He didn’t understand everything, but according to Gus, the horned rabbit is an animal called “masu” that lives in the forest or fields. From what he roughly understood, it was like the monsters or beasts on Earth.

From what Gus said, it seems that horned rabbits living in the wild are dangerous. If you get close, they might bite and kill children.

But if you raise them from a very young age, it’s okay. Gus explained with gestures that there are actually people who raise masu.

Still, even after recalling, there was no mention of it glowing. If Gus had known, he would have definitely mentioned it. Maybe there are different types of horned rabbits.

Juhwan spoke to the baby rabbit staring at him with wide eyes.

“You, you don’t know why you’re glowing, do you? Are you really a horned rabbit? You better not be a strange one. You mustn’t endanger Lizzy and Dorothy.”

“….”

The baby rabbit, which had been silent, moved its mouth and made a small sound.

“Beep.”

“….”

Strange. Do rabbits make a beep sound? Masu may look like a rabbit but could be a different kind of animal.

Juhwan lowered his body and quietly looked into the horned rabbit’s eyes.

“Can you understand me?”

“Beep.”

“You can’t understand?”

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“Beep.”

It seems it can’t understand. Just in case, he cast a healing spell on the baby rabbit again, but it didn’t glow again. He thought it might have been an illusion, but it wasn’t. The light definitely came from the spot where the horn was.

‘Next time I meet Gus, I should ask if there’s such a masu.’

Juhwan gathered his bow and arrows and went outside. He didn’t pack a lunch. The place where he first set up the rabbit snares was far from home, but now he wandered alone and found rabbit tracks nearby. There was no need to go far.

Out of the five snares he set up, three had caught rabbits.

After quickly dealing with them and putting them in a cloth bag, Juhwan wandered around for a while, looking for other animal tracks or droppings.

He didn’t know all the animal tracks. He had learned to recognize rabbits and deer from Gus, but not much else yet.

Still, it’s important to see and learn often. That’s how Gus taught him. Even if you don’t know right away, it’s important to get used to seeing them.

There was still a lot of snow, so he could occasionally find tracks. Most were small.

Strangely, some animal tracks looked just like human ones. For example, squirrel tracks. They looked like human bones had left the marks. Fortunately, they were small and had a different number of fingers and toes, otherwise, it would have been creepy.

There were no particularly noticeable tracks. Most were traces of small animals.

Juhwan wandered around the mountain for a while, looking at the ground, checking if there was anything he could catch or eat. But aside from the rabbits, there was no harvest.

—

—

Around lunchtime, Juhwan returned home.

The gate was locked from the inside. Juhwan had instructed it to be so.

As Juhwan reached the gate, he opened his mouth to call out Lizzy’s name. But before he could make a sound, he heard Dorothy’s voice from the crack in the door.

“Daddy!”

“Dorothy?”

Startled, he looked at the door, and through the slightly open crack, he saw the child’s eyes.

“Daddy, Dorothy is opening the door!”

With the shout, he heard the sound of the wooden latch being removed from the inside. The door immediately opened, and the child burst out.

“Daddy, Dorothy opened the door!”

“Were you waiting for Daddy?”

“Yes! Dorothy was waiting. Waiting for Daddy. A lot, a lot!”

Dorothy showed ten fingers, then showed them again. It seemed she had been going back and forth, watching the crack in the door to open it.

“Thank you, Dorothy.”

“Yes! Dorothy is busy!”

The child smiled brightly and then ran back inside. This time, she called out loudly for Lizzy.

“Mom! Daddy’s here! Daddy’s here!”

She seemed really busy. Juhwan locked the gate again and went inside.

Since Dorothy had opened the door, she now demanded names for the rabbit and the doll. He had said he would think of good names for a while, but somehow it had suddenly turned into a condition for exchange.

He named the rabbit Oz. If there was Dorothy, there had to be Oz. The doll’s name became Toto. It was the name of the dog Dorothy kept in the novel.

“Dorothy and Oz, Toto.”

Dorothy’s eyes sparkled. She seemed to like it.

“Dorothy, Oz, Toto!”

Dorothy wandered around the house for a while, shouting continuously with the baby rabbit and the doll in the basket.

*

The village was noisy inside and out. Even with just two people gathered, they were engrossed in talking about goblins with anxious faces. They had heard before that goblins were like this, and grandfathers had told stories from long ago, and so on…. They would look at each other, and as soon as they opened their mouths, it was about goblins.

Everyone was uneasy and restless because Gus had discovered a goblin. This atmosphere would probably continue until the adventurer arrived.

In reality, adventurers were nothing special, but to the uneducated and powerless villagers, those who dealt with monsters seemed impressive.

The village chief looked at his wife entering the house with a sullen face. Bang, bang, she deliberately stomped her feet loudly and closed the door roughly. She seemed quite dissatisfied.

The village chief sighed and asked his wife, looking at the back of her head.

“Is the carriage cleaning all done?”

—

“Alright.”

My wife answered, glancing back. She still had a dissatisfied expression. Her voice was grumpy, her mouth was grumpy, and her lips were sticking out like a duck’s beak.

“What’s making you so dissatisfied?”

I asked irritably, and my wife seized the opportunity to speak.

“I’m already overwhelmed with work, so why are you suddenly asking me to clean a carriage we don’t even use? It’s not even ours, do I have to do everything?”

“That’s because.”

The village chief tried to answer, but my wife quickly cut him off.

“Oh, what does it matter if I’m the village chief’s wife? Even if I’ve kept it carefully, if the village asks for it, I have to give it up. I have to do all the communal labor alone, and that carriage hasn’t been used in decades. Does it even work?”

She still seemed bothered by the fact that she had to give the fabric to the forest keeper’s wife. Really, this wife of mine is so annoying.

The village chief sighed again and opened his mouth.

“I told you earlier. That carriage is.”

But he couldn’t continue. His damn wife interrupted again like a chatterbox.

“I know. In case goblins come to the village or there are more than expected, we can escape in it. But Gus said there would be only about a dozen goblins at most.”

“Listen to me!”

The village chief shouted, and his wife flinched and fell silent. Finally, some peace. Really, if you stay quiet, people think you’re a pushover. The village chief took a deep breath again.

“Of course, Gus said that. But there might be goblins he didn’t see. They could be from multiple tribes, and if they attack the village without any preparation, what will we do?”

“….”

“Not everything in this world goes as predicted. How many things have I experienced as the village chief? I have my reasons for doing things, so stop nagging.”

“But honey, then we can load our stuff onto our cart. Why use that big carriage we don’t even use?”

His wife still seemed unhappy about cleaning and maintaining the big carriage alone. Her voice grew quieter, but she continued to complain.

The carriage she mentioned was one the village had bought and used communally long ago.

In good times, it was used to transport goods produced in the village to big cities for sale, and in hard times or during famines, it was used to sell people.

Occasionally, it was used for daughters getting married to or from distant places, or for men being taken to war, truly a multipurpose communal carriage.

But as time passed, the carriage became old, and as the village population dwindled and life became harder, it was rarely used. Now it stood abandoned behind the village chief’s house.

But even though it was old, it was still a communal property, so every few years, villagers took turns cleaning and repairing it. They checked for any broken parts and maintained it.

It was always ready for use.

“Our cart is completely exposed without a roof. If we suddenly load it with stuff, people will see and think the village chief is trying to escape alone.”

“….”

“Stop talking nonsense and load some food onto the carriage when no one is looking.”

“….”

—

“Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Load it up generously. If nothing happens, we can just unload it again, so don’t be stingy with the goods.”

“…Enough, stop talking. I understand.”

His wife pouted and stomped off to the kitchen.

‘Really, she doesn’t understand people.’

The village chief frowned deeply.

The last time he went to the city to meet the informant, things didn’t go well.

Healers were said to be very rare these days, but the informant didn’t readily offer to connect him with a noble from another territory. He only asked which village it was and how powerful the healer seemed.

‘He said he’d contact me later, but I feel uneasy.’

At least he made a promise not to sell the information to another informant and received a small amount of money. It was a slight relief, but he couldn’t help but sigh at the thought that it might not be worth as much as he had expected. Truly, things in this world don’t go as predicted.

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