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Chapter 49: Stas Polis (2)
“Anagin, is it….”
The checkpoint captain muttered quietly to himself, then copied the name down onto the paper.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
For a moment, Sphinx’s heart lurched. She thought to herself: Had word of Anagin’s wanted notice really not spread to this city?
It was entirely possible.
The influence of the Ascetic Families wasn’t as far-reaching as one might think. There was a chance it simply hadn’t reached this place, sitting as it did on the border between Hellas and Anapic. And the article about Anagin had only run in the Regional News, besides.
“And you?”
The checkpoint captain asked Sphinx.
“Ah, I’m….”
“Pinku Pinku.”
Before Sphinx could answer, Anagin answered for her. With that ridiculous name, Pinku Pinku.
The checkpoint captain narrowed his eyes.
“…That’s a person’s name?”
“Surprisingly.”
Sphinx glared at Anagin, her golden eyes wide. Her look said, ‘What kind of guy is this?’
The guard wore a similar expression, glancing back and forth between Sphinx and Anagin, but in the end, he wrote it down.
‘He’s just going to write that?’
Sphinx stared in disbelief at the checkpoint captain, who jotted it down without a single complaint. Was he just the type to do his job sloppily?
“The kids are Cori and Pais. Anything else you need to ask?”
Anagin placed his hands on Cori’s and Pais’s heads as he gave their names, then asked. The checkpoint captain shook his head.
“No. Welcome to Stas Polis. Keep your head down while you’re here.”
Anagin gave a slight nod in place of a reply, and the checkpoint captain called for the next visitor.
Anagin led Sphinx, Cori, and Pais deeper into the city.
“Welcome, sir. Right this way.” “Oh, this is so pretty!” “Mister, could you buy me a flower? Just one?”
Inside, the city was livelier than it had looked from the outside.
If anything, walking into the city made its prosperity truly sink in.
The streets were a jumble of outsiders, residents, paupers, and people who were doing just fine, and new buildings were going up all over the place. That meant plenty of laborers—and plenty of merchants doing business with those laborers.
“Watch out, now.”
Sphinx grabbed Pais, who had nearly wandered off while gawking at everything, and scolded him. It wasn’t as if letting go of him for a moment would get him lost, but you never knew.
“Sorry, sis.”
Sphinx accepted Pais’s apology without complaint.
Honestly, she understood why he’d gotten distracted.
Cities had a power to bewitch people.
The particular bustle and vitality born of countless people tangled together, the wealth and desire—it genuinely had the power to enchant, and not just as a figure of speech.
A kind of magical phenomenon, perhaps? That was why strange incidents tended to happen in cities now and then.
“All right, decided.”
Anagin, suddenly deciding something again.
Sphinx trembled with unease.
“Oppa, could you please ask our opinion before you decide? Just once?”
“You’ll like this one too.”
“I don’t believe you, but I’ll ask out of courtesy. What is it?”
“Let’s eat first.”
Food.
It was one of the things Anagin considered most important.
For one, you needed to eat to have any strength.
And it was also a personal hobby of his. Whenever he visited a city, he’d eat his way through every item on the menu at its best restaurant.
A kind of compensation for being dragged onto an ascetic path he’d never asked for, maybe?
Anyway, for that reason, Anagin suggested they eat first.
Naturally, not everyone welcomed the idea.
“Food is fine and all, but shouldn’t we find an inn first? That seems like the proper order.”
Cori and Pais didn’t openly show it, but their silence signaled agreement with Sphinx. And for good reason—Cori and Pais wanted to sleep more than they wanted to eat.
Walking all the way here with a child’s body was hard enough, and on top of that, they’d been practicing slinging at least a hundred times a day, so they were beyond exhausted.
Their shoulders ached, their legs ached…
Slightly exaggerating, they felt like they’d pass out the moment they lay down.
But their opponent was Anagin… and he had no mercy to spare!
“Order doesn’t matter. What matters is who’s paying.”
“Aren’t you ashamed, throwing your money around to boss kids around?”
“Not at all. I’m proud of it.”
Anagin declared it with the utmost confidence.
Cori and Pais couldn’t figure out what expression to make—they’d never met this type of adult before.
Meanwhile, Anagin sniffed at the air and walked over to a certain shop.
The one that smelled the best.
When Anagin sat down at an empty table, a server came over with a menu.
“Welcome, sir! Our shop has a wide variety of dishes, so order whatever you like.”
Just as the server said, there were a great many items on the menu.
From cheap barley porridge to boiled eggs, cheese made from goat’s milk, fried fish, honey-soaked almonds, meat soup simmered with onions and leeks, rice stir-fried in oil, grilled beef, trotters braised for a long time, and sweet-glazed grilled eel skewers—there were expensive dishes too.
A menu clearly aimed at both poor and wealthy customers alike. Perhaps for that reason, the large dining hall had people eating all sorts of different dishes.
“Pick whatever you want to eat.”
“Hmm, I’ll….”
Pais looked over the menu together with them. Proof that he could read. The Old Man had taught him early on.
“Hyung, can I get meat—”
Cori gently covered her little brother’s mouth. Then she whispered quietly.
“We ate plenty of meat on the way here. Overeating is bad for you.”
Outwardly she called it overeating, but it was really a consideration for Anagin. She’d seen how much money he’d spent earlier…
Even if that weren’t the case, she and her brother had already received so much help from Anagin. So she wanted to at least keep him from spending more.
Pais seemed to read his sister’s feelings too, because he just switched his order to barley porridge with garlic. The cheapest item on the menu.
“I’ll have this too, please.”
“Yeah? Sphinx, what about you?”
“…I’ll have the same.”
It wasn’t that she was watching Anagin’s mood, but to respect the children’s choice, Sphinx also just ordered the barley porridge with garlic.
Hearing the answers, Anagin nodded and raised his hand.
“Order.”
“Ah, yes! Go ahead, sir.”
Anagin placed a finger on the first item on the menu, then slid it all the way down. Then he slid it down the next column too, and stopped at the last item.
“One of everything.”
“One of everything?!”
The server shouted without meaning to, he was so shocked.
Anagin looked like he’d just realized something and corrected himself.
“Ah, make it four barley porridges. These guys say they only want barley porridge.”
“…”
Sphinx, Cori, and Pais all looked at Anagin with expressions that said, ‘This bastard?’
“Wait!”
Sphinx grabbed Anagin’s hand just as he was about to finish ordering.
“I… I want to change my order. This, and this, and this.”
Sphinx picked out grilled beef, a whole roasted chicken, and eel. All expensive dishes.
Pais and Cori grabbed Anagin’s hands right after.
“I-I want to change mine too!” “May I change mine as well?”
Cori asked shyly, looking embarrassed.
Anagin answered as if they were being ridiculous.
“Do whatever you want. I told you to pick what you want to eat.”
Hearing that, Cori and Pais ordered exactly what they wanted.
“Then, this and this, please.”
Pais and Cori had added a few meat dishes to their barley porridge.
Anagin relayed the combined order to the server.
At first, the server was aghast.
“You really want to order all of this?”
No matter how fat a customer’s coin purse was, no one had ever ordered every item on the menu. As mentioned before, the shop had a wide variety of dishes, with plenty of expensive ones alongside the cheap ones. He even began to suspect they might be planning to dine and dash. This was a city where all sorts of people came and went—there was someone trying to skip out on the bill practically every other day, after all…
Of course, there were ways to deal with that, but even then, if the amount didn’t match up, the shop lost out.
“Ah, don’t worry about the money.”
Anagin pulled yet another coin purse from his subspace bag.
At the sight of the bulging coin purse, the server, who’d been entertaining all sorts of wild thoughts, scolded himself for his foolishness and immediately went to place the order.
“So that’s why everyone’s crazy about money.”
Anagin said, watching the server’s swift change in attitude.
“If I’d known it’d be like this, I should’ve saved up more seriously.”
Anagin thought back to the cargo from the Bander Peddler Band and the Monster carcasses he’d gotten at the Ruins Village. He hadn’t thought much of it back then and just handed them over, but on reflection, that seemed like a mistake. Should he go back now and ask for them again?
“Hyung! You’re so cool…!”
Pais’s eyes sparkled after witnessing Anagin’s money-slinging.
Like any young child, Anagin’s reckless spending made him look like a true man to Pais.
Anagin nodded.
“I’ve always been cool.”
“Oppa, don’t you feel embarrassed saying that about yourself out loud?”
“I can’t lie. It was officially recognized in my village that I was the coolest.”
“How?”
“I beat up everyone who said otherwise.”
“…”
Sphinx, who’d asked the question, looked at Anagin with a gaze mixed with contempt, and Cori flinched. That answer was far from anything she’d imagined.
Meanwhile, the food began to arrive.
Starting with the barley porridge on the menu, then boiled eggs, goat’s milk cheese, grilled beef and braised trotters, eel skewers grilled with sauce, and so on.
Countless dishes were set on the table one by one.
There was so much food that eventually they had to bring over another empty table and attach it.
For a restaurant where the number of tables meant revenue, it was a painful expense, but the revenue Anagin had brought in was more than enough to make up for it, so they gladly obliged.
“Only eat what you ordered.”
Anagin warned them as he shoveled barley porridge and grilled beef into his mouth. Calling it petty would be a stretch, since they’d ordered plenty themselves, so Sphinx and the children had no choice but to say yes.
“Whoa…” “Is this for real…?”
With enough food to resemble a feast, not only the people inside the restaurant but even those outside gawked at Anagin’s group like circus animals.
It wasn’t every day you saw just four people order dozens of dishes, after all.
Anagin paid them no mind and focused on his meal. He didn’t like doing other things while eating. And Sphinx, Cori, and Pais had all found themselves focused on eating before they knew it.
At first, they’d been so tired they wanted to just lie down rather than eat, but once the delicious food hit their mouths, their appetites kicked in.
“Hyu-Hyung! Can I try just one of those?”
Pais asked, pointing at the fried eggs.
He hadn’t ordered them because he’d been busy ordering meat, but now that he saw them, he wanted some.
Anagin shook his head as if he didn’t want to give up his eggs. Instead, he ordered new fried eggs.
“If there’s something you want to eat, order more. I’ll order more too if I need to.”
Sphinx smirked and did as she was told. She also asked Cori if there was anything else she wanted. Cori hesitated for a moment, glancing around, but soon let herself be persuaded by Sphinx and asked for another plate of grilled meat.
The plates stacked up layer by layer. Looking at them, it seemed not just Anagin but Sphinx, Cori, and Pais all had healthy appetites.
As the small feast was winding down, the owner came over personally, beaming.
“My goodness! Was the meal to your liking?”
Anagin nodded without a word. He’d felt it in Disis Polis and the Ruins Village too, but the food here was definitely better than back home.
“I’m glad it suited your taste. The bill is…”
When the owner named the price, even Sphinx and Cori, who’d been eating happily, couldn’t help but widen their eyes. The price was beyond anything they’d imagined.
But Anagin paid it without a care.
“Here.”
“Hahaha! My, you’re generous!”
The restaurant owner laughed heartily as Anagin paid up briskly. Then he glanced around and whispered quietly.
“Um… you seem to have quite a bit of money, so please be careful. There are people who target greenhorns visiting the city for the first time. Ah, I don’t mean you’re a greenhorn, of course!”
When his eyes met Anagin’s, the owner hurriedly tried to cover his words.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, yes. Be careful of thieves on the streets and at the inns.”
“Hm, can you recommend an inn?”
“An inn?”
“Yeah. An inn.”
“Ah, well…”
The owner glanced around, choosing his words carefully.
Just then, Pais, who’d gone outside, called for Anagin.
“Hyung, come out!”
“I’m coming.”
Anagin said that and walked out without even waiting for the owner’s answer.
The owner tried to say something, but Anagin waved a hand as if to say it was fine.
“I’ve heard enough of an answer.”
“What were you two talking about?”
Pais asked Anagin, who came out a little late.
“He said there are a lot of people who target greenhorns with money like me, so to be careful.”
“Huh?”
Pais frowned.
He was upset that Anagin, whom he thought of as the coolest, had been treated like a greenhorn.
“So what? It’s my first time in a city like this too.”
“Still…”
“More than that, this is a problem. I’m full, so I want to sleep, but now I have to find a place to stay.”
“Can’t we just go into any inn? There’s inns everywhere, aren’t there?”
As Cori said, inns were everywhere.
Anagin wiggled a finger.
“I said a clean and safe inn. You never know who might really be after our money.”
“Oppa, are you serious?”
Sphinx’s look asked, You think you’d get robbed? Anagin nodded.
“I do have a cautious side, you know.”
“Um, excuse me…”
Just then, someone cut in.
It was a young man, plainly but cleanly dressed, with ingredients in a sack tucked under his arm as if he’d just been shopping.
“Are you travelers, by any chance? Are you looking for a place to stay?”
The young man introduced himself as an employee of the Bed Inn, and suggested that if they had nowhere to stay, they might consider lodging at his establishment. It might be a bit pricey, he said, but when it came to things like hygiene, they prided themselves on being the best in the city.
“Let’s go.”
Anagin accepted immediately.
“Haha, an excellent choice. Come, come, follow me.”
Perhaps pleased that his solicitation had succeeded, the young man happily led Anagin and his group away.
Not far from the restaurant, an inn appeared—neither large nor small. Just as the young man had said, the interior was clean.
“Boss, I’ve brought you customers. Me!”
As he shouted, making sure his contribution was known, a man who appeared to be the owner burst out from inside the shop.
He had dark, sun-baked skin, thick curly hair, and a beard that left an impression. He was built so solidly it was hard to believe he was an innkeeper.
“You little—raising your voice in front of customers!”
The owner smacked the young man on the head and apologized to Anagin.
“My apologies, sir. I hope this one hasn’t been rude?”
“He hasn’t. I happened to need a place to sleep, so he actually did me a favor by speaking up.”
“That’s a relief, then. How many are you in total?”
“Four.”
“Ah, then I’ll guide you to a large room. It’ll be cheaper than taking two rooms.”
“Sounds good.”
“There is one problem, though. The room is spacious, but it only has three beds.”
Four people, three beds.
Anagin placed a hand on Sphinx’s shoulder as if it were no big deal.
“She likes sleeping on the floor, so it’s fine.”
Sphinx asked,
“I like sleeping on the floor? Since when?”
“Can’t you just start liking it now?”
Sphinx cursed at Anagin with her eyes.
At that, the owner nodded.
“If that’s alright with you, I’ll show you the way. This way.”
The innkeeper guided Anagin’s group to the largest room at the top of the third floor.
Just as the young man had said, the inn was clean, and though there were only three beds, the cushions looked extremely plush.
‘The beds are bolted to the floor with screws…’
“Rest comfortably.”
Having finished the tour, the innkeeper left without hesitation.
“Pick wherever you want to sleep.”
“Really? Then I’ve got this spot!”
Pais threw himself onto the spot by the window.
It must have been soft, because he bounced up and down on the bed, and Cori claimed the spot furthest in.
That naturally left the middle bed.
Anagin claimed the middle bed without a moment’s hesitation.
“Am I really sleeping on the floor alone?”
“Because you like sleeping on the floor.”
“Oppa, I—”
—Click.
A sound of a latch locking, suddenly audible.
Anagin and Sphinx turned their heads toward the direction of the sound.
It had come from the inn’s entrance.
Before they could grasp what was happening, smoke poured in through the cracks in the walls.
“Huh?” “Anagi—, urgh.”
Pais and Cori, who had been delighted at the thought of a good sleep in bed, collapsed as if falling asleep.
Only Sphinx and Anagin, their noses covered by their robes, met each other’s eyes and exchanged a brief remark.
“So they really did come.”
“They did.”
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