Chapter 14: By His Own Hand

After Yook said Grandma's name, Gyu-ho didn't sleep properly for four nights.

He lay in the grass bed by the banked stove and listened to a floor where nothing ever made a sound.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw the black sedan at the bottom of the lane, and its little red light.

Yook knew his name, and where his grandmother slept, and that she lived alone.

Gyu-ho could do nothing about any of it from a field inside a rock.

So he did the one thing he could, which was work.

The first ginseng had gone to seed on Thursday, a cluster of red berries at the top of its stalk.

He dried the seeds on a warm slab beside the stove through Sunday, turning them with a fingertip every morning.

On Sunday at dusk he worked ash into the soil under the lean-to and planted them with stream water from the pot.

In the morning the roots were thicker than the first, and so pale they almost glowed in the dark under the grass.

[Tower ginseng. Quality: Prime.]

[Growth: dusk to dawn. Keeps: never spoils.]

[Eaten: wakes a faded or broken skill, whole, at once.]

No XP came with it, because the Tower had already paid him for his first Prime.

He didn't care.

Whole and at once was what Bom's lance needed, and what the hammer twins needed, and he had a row of it.

He needed to know Grandma was all right, and only one person could walk through his door and tell him.

So on Wednesday night he set a Prime root on the stone and put his door on it.

It was the biggest lot in the Market, the one Hanbat would send its bidder to win.

He had made sure of that much.

On Saturday Yook sat in the bidder's place on the Hanbat bench, with his camel coat folded on his knees.

Gyu-ho saw it the moment he sat down in the stone seat.

Bom was at the very back of the hall by the dark gap of the stairs, and she didn't look up.

The term was sealed in the rock, and he couldn't take it back.

It was the twelfth, he thought, and in Geumsan it was market day.

Grandma would be at her spot by the hardware store with her peppers, if the black sedan let her get that far.

Before the first lot, the Busan men carried a sack of salt and two of flour to the lot door.

An army blanket was rolled on top.

No term had asked for the blanket.

[Term met. 3,000 XP.]

"Lot one," said the crier.

"Ginseng, one root," the crier said. "The Tower's word: wakes a faded or broken skill. Grade: none."

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