American: Native Empire

Chapter 18 <First Vacation>

“I need a break.”

“…!”

In the dark night, Straight Tree’s face turned to surprise at Kim Kiwoo’s sudden words.

“Haha. Why do you look like that?”

“Ah, no. Have you finally decided to take a rest?”

“Yes. I think I should work more leisurely from now on.”

He had been working non-stop for ten years.

It was an unbelievable workload from the perspective of a modern person.

He had pushed himself too hard. He was starting to feel mentally exhausted. So Kim Kiwoo made a decision.

‘Let’s take a break regularly from now on.’

He thought it was the only way to avoid going crazy.

‘There are still a lot of things to do before the founding of the nation, but…’

He could do them after he came back from a good rest.

“It’s a very good idea. Too much work is bad for your health.”

“Haha. You’re always the same, Straight Tree.”

“When are you planning to take a break?”

“I can’t just go on vacation right away, so let’s take a break after ten days. Five days should be enough to relieve my fatigue.”

“You can take more time if you want…”

“No, that’s enough. Five days is a long time, don’t you think?”

“Well, if you say so…”

That’s how Kim Kiwoo’s five-day vacation was confirmed.

And finally.

The morning of his first holiday dawned.

*

“Why are you here on your day off?”

Kim Kiwoo looked at Straight Tree with a bewildered look.

“I’m resting.”

“In my room?”

“Yes. I wanted to rest with you, so I came here.”

A meeting with your boss on your day off. Kim Kiwoo’s body shivered involuntarily.

It was a common practice in many companies in South Korea, but it was happening here too, across the ages. Of course, it was not Kim Kiwoo’s intention.

“Do I make you uncomfortable?”

“…”

Straight Tree’s face quickly became gloomy.

He was clearly acting. There was no way Kim Kiwoo wouldn’t notice that.

But his sincerity in coming here was obvious.

Kim Kiwoo decided to pretend not to know.

“Sigh. Fine. Let’s rest together if you have nothing else to do.”

“Thank you, sir.”

After saying that, Kim Kiwoo lay down on the bed again.

He looked out the window and saw that the day was fully bright.

‘It feels awkward.’

Lying around like this when it’s bright outside?

It felt very awkward. As if he had done something wrong.

‘No, what am I thinking?

Kim Kiwoo shook his head vigorously. He should rest when he can.

But.

‘…What should I do?’

He felt bored just lying there and doing nothing.

He didn’t want to waste his time like this on his first vacation. It was too precious for him after ten years.

He wanted to do something, but he didn’t know what to do.

“Ugh!”

When he didn’t know what to do, he had to get up first.

As Kim Kiwoo got up from the bed, Straight Tree, who was sitting quietly on a chair, opened his mouth.

“Do you want to eat?”

“Let’s eat… eat?”

Eat…

Something flashed in his mind at that word.

Squeak!

Kim Kiwoo smiled meaningfully.

He finally thought of something to do.

“Right. Let’s eat!”

*

Kim Kiwoo headed to the kitchen.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the kitchen.”

“You don’t have any reason to cook, sir. But why are you here?”

“Why did you come to the kitchen? Of course, I came here to cook.”

“Really? You could just order from the cook…”

“Haha. There’s no food that I want to eat yet.”

“Oh. You’re trying to develop a new dish.”

“Well, something like that.”

Kim Kiwoo had already developed several dishes.

The most representative one was kimchi.

Kimchi had spread widely in the eating habits of the Creek tribe. It was because it could last for a long time once it was fermented, and it had a decent taste.

They ate it not only with rice, but also with bread, sweet potatoes, or potatoes.

The latter cases were more common than rice. It was an ironic situation.

‘No matter how I think about it, kimchi bread is too hybrid.’

Kimchi bread was the most popular among them.

Well, it had its own flavor, though.

He also made soy sauce, red pepper paste, and soybean paste before.

Maybe it was because he had a strong Korean DNA, but he wanted to eat Korean food.

He had planted most of the seeds of the crops he brought in his bag, so it wasn’t difficult.

‘The climate is perfect, from tropical to temperate.’

Thanks to that, he was producing some sugar by growing sugarcane in the modern Florida area. Of course, it wasn’t a generous amount.

“Wait and see. I’ll make you a delicious chicken dish.”

“Ho-ho. A new chicken dish…”

“How about it? Don’t you want to try it?”

“Don’t you know that I like chicken?”

Chicken was the only livestock of the Creek tribe.

So they got most of their protein from chicken and eggs. The size of the poultry farm was huge now, and it was still growing.

Since reality was like this, there was no way that chicken dishes wouldn’t develop quickly.

But most of them still ate boiled chicken. It was the easiest way to eat it.

‘At least there was no attempt to fry chicken.’

Oil was very precious here. The only way to get oil was to press plant seeds.

The efficiency wasn’t very good either.

But…

‘I’m going to eat it today.’

Fortunately, there was plenty of vegetable oil in the kitchen.

Kim Kiwoo organized his thoughts and went on to make fried chicken and soy sauce.

‘I’ve fried chicken in modern times before.’

His memory was a bit vague, but once he tried it, he could cook it well enough.

Of course, there were some ingredients that he didn’t have, but he cooked them as much as possible.

“These precious things…”

Straight Tree muttered regretfully as he watched the chicken being fried. He poured out precious oil generously to fry the chicken!

If the person cooking wasn’t Kim Kiwoo, he would have said something.

Anyway, Kim Kiwoo fried the chicken with abandon.

And finally.

The soy sauce chicken was done.

“Wow!”

He couldn’t help but admire it.

How beautiful it looked! Chicken in a pre-modern society!

He felt like he had come back to modern times for a moment.

Gulp.

His mouth watered at the smell of fried chicken.

“Haha. How about it? Doesn’t it smell good?”

“Hmm. It looks delicious.”

“It’s not just the smell. Here, try a piece.”

Kim Kiwoo picked up a leg of soy sauce chicken and handed it to Straight Tree.

Straight Tree looked at the chicken leg from all sides and then took a big bite.

Crunch!

Chew chew.

“Wow! Wow!”

Straight Tree’s eyes widened.

“How is it? Does it taste good?”

“Sir, it’s really delicious!”

He said that and tore off the flesh of the chicken leg as if he were possessed. He even sucked on every piece of meat stuck to the bone.

“Here, then I’ll have one too.”

Kim Kiwoo quickly grabbed another leg and put it in his mouth.

Crunch!

‘Yeah, this is the taste!’

The salty and sweet soy sauce flavor and the greasy chicken’s splendid collaboration.

Of course, it was a bit disappointing. It was because he lacked some ingredients, and the cook’s skill level was different from the ones sold in the market.

But still, this was something. Kim Kiwoo was satisfied enough.

That’s how Kim Kiwoo’s first day of vacation.

The day that later got a grand name as the birth of fried chicken.

The world’s first fried chicken was developed.

*

After eating chicken to their fill, Kim Kiwoo and Straight Tree went to the city. 

Of course, they didn’t come out alone.

There were quite a lot of guards disguised around them. If you looked closely, they were scattered around Kim Kiwoo.

‘I can feel the reward of working hard.’

He usually ran around so busy that he couldn’t look at the scenery of the street carefully. But as he walked around the city with leisure, the scenery was very nice.

The three-story brick houses that were built in the beginning didn’t look very good, but they weren’t bad by the standards of this era.

And even if they looked worthless as one building, these buildings were connected in a straight line, even matching up to five and ten. It had its own charm.

The beauty of order, shall we say?

“The people’s faces look very happy. This is all…”

“Hey. Stop talking nonsense and just follow me.”

“Tsk.”

“Hmm? I think I heard something strange.”

“You must have heard it wrong.”

Straight Tree’s expression was slightly sour.

‘That guy. He has a cute side.’

Kim Kiwoo chuckled and hastened his steps.

He then looked around the market that had grown quite large.

‘Money. I need money.’

Money economy was the driving force that developed human civilization leaps and bounds.

But right now, the Creek tribe had no money.

They couldn’t introduce it.

‘Silver or gold, or at least enough copper, this is what…’

Gold and silver were concentrated in the west. That’s why the famous American westward expansion happened.

There wasn’t much precious metal buried in the Mississippi River area where Kim Kiwoo was.

‘I don’t have enough people to send to the west to mine gold or silver.’

So now the market was formed by bartering. Naturally, economic growth was very slow.

Kim Kiwoo looked around the market and finally arrived at his destination.

“It’s well built.”

Kim Kiwoo uttered a short impression as he looked at the colosseum-like circular stadium.

Of course, he had come once when he had his first completion ceremony. But then he just congratulated him and left right away, so it didn’t leave a deep impression.

But today he came as a spectator. So it felt very different from then.

Kim Kiwoo entered the stadium.

Clang! Clang!

Swoosh!

“Wow!”

“Kill! Kill!”

“Smash his skull!”

The fierce shouts echoed in the stadium. Kim Kiwoo looked at the battlefield where swords were flying fiercely.

On the stadium, the gladiators looked similar to the Creek warriors when Kim Kiwoo first came here.

They wore enough leather to cover their vital parts. They had no upper clothes.

‘Their blood would spill if they just grazed those steel swords.’

The audience liked their appearance very much.

Kim Kiwoo knew it. It was a kind of superiority complex that they were different from gladiators.

One of them will surely die. They could both die. The audience was thrilled by the sight of human life being cut off in a safe place.

It was a space where human madness could be felt clearly

‘It’s not a good sight.’

Then why did he make this slaughterhouse?

Did he make it for the leisure life of the imperial people like Rome?

‘No. I don’t want to do that.’

He didn’t make it because he wanted to, but because he had to.

Most of the imperial people believed in spirits. The most common spirit they believed in was the spirit of earth.

But among the tribal people, there were many who thought that they had to offer human blood to the spirit of earth.

So some chiefs harmed themselves and spilled blood, or some fierce tribes killed men from other tribes and soaked blood on earth.

But Kim Kiwoo couldn’t stand to see such things. And if he tried to get rid of this behavior altogether, there would be obvious resistance from tribal people.

They had lived like this until now.

‘I had no choice. If there are no teeth, you have to solve it with gums. It’s not allowed for them.’

The people who came out of the stadium were all death row inmates who were sentenced to death.

One of them would surely die, but if they didn’t die, they could survive as gladiators until they died.

The imperial people regarded this slaughter as a ritual of offering blood to the spirit of earth. And they also saw a thrilling game that made their fists clench.

Thanks to that, they didn’t spill any blood except for the death row inmates.

‘But I have to get rid of it someday.’

If he slowly reformed their minds, someday this barbaric custom would disappear.

< First Vacation. > The end