Chapter 16: What the Stone Said

On Christmas Eve he thought the word Status, mostly to find out what day it was.

[Ju Gyu-ho. Keeper of an unlisted floor. Day 65.]

[Sow, Level 5. XP: 31,353 of 45,000.]

[Health: 74 of 100. Stamina: 60 of 100.]

[Hunger: none. Thirst: none.]

[Coins: 15,224. Lots per Market: 3.]

He did the sum sitting on the doorstep with the Busan blanket around his shoulders.

Three lots a Saturday at one coin each came to three hundred and three points a week.

The thirteen thousand six hundred he still needed came to forty-five Saturdays.

He would reach Level 6 some time after next year's rating day, if Yook was still buying.

His stone hadn't added a seed to its list since the ginseng, and at this rate it never would.

Grandpa had bought a cake every Christmas Eve from the bakery by the Geumsan bus terminal.

Nobody in the house went to church, and Grandma called it a waste of good flour.

She ate two slices anyway, every year, standing up.

This year she was on the sixth floor of a building in Yuseong, with her seed tins on the sill.

He went out and worked on the tomatoes, because his hands needed something to do.

The open rows froze every night now, and the mist came down heavier, and grass covers weren't enough.

So he had been building a low wall of split gray blocks along the north side of each row, knee high.

The stone soaked up the day's light and gave it back through the night, the way the house wall had saved the perilla.

On the coldest night yet, the walled row came through green, and the one he hadn't walled yet went black to the root.

He stood between the two rows and laughed, because the wall worked, and because it made no difference to him.

Every tomato on the floor would go to Hanbat for one coin.

The hall was half empty on the Saturday after Christmas.

The Seoul master hadn't come, and neither had the Busan men.

There was no point bidding at a Market where the best lots went to one man for one coin.

Gyu-ho sat in the stone seat and watched his own vegetables go by.

Tomatoes went to Hanbat for one coin, and then the radish, and then two more roots of ginseng.

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