TFOA Chapter 3

In the kitchen cupboard was olive oil of unknown purchase date and an old pepper bottle.

Niksi uncapped the oil and smelled it. It had a nutty and appropriately fragrant scent that didn't seem like it would kill her if she ate it.

Thanks to this, Niksi was relieved that she didn't have to extract sunflower seed oil from the remaining ten or so sunflowers due to lack of oil.

Because she'd come with just the clothes on her back, she didn't even have money to eat.

Niksi, clutching her hungry stomach, marveled at her own recklessness as she rinsed herbs with water.

She transferred chicory that had been soaked in water to remove bitterness into a bowl. The bowl contained finely chopped jerky, chicory gathered while pulling weeds, and wild oakleaf.

After sprinkling rinsed rosemary and olive oil, a decent meal for a late morning was complete.

"I thought it would be a meal full of only bitter tastes, but it's quite edible."

Niksi muttered as she picked up a handful of salad with her freshly washed hand.

When she found green mustard among the weeds while digging chicory, Niksi couldn't hold back her tears.

What was going to be a bitter morning meal became a refined, healthy diet with just one more spicy flavor added.

The smell of potatoes roasting on the fireplace wafted gently through the room.

Wondering what to do with the chicory flowers, Niksi blanched the flowers in boiling water and sprinkled them over the salad.

Niksi took her 'oakleaf chicory salad with chicory flowers (green mustard added)' and 'impatiently half-baked potato' and sat down on the front steps of her house.

If she kept pulling weeds at this rate, she'd barely manage to plant one cranberry by the time she was a grandmother.

Niksi resolved to make herbicide.

Niksi met Gilbert at the village threshold, carrying a basket of onions.

"Ta-da."

Niksi immediately held out a bundle of sunflowers to him.

The gesture was so affectionate, like giving them to a lover, that Gilbert received the sunflower bundle with a bewildered expression.

"They're pretty."

"Sunflowers in early spring?"

"A work colleague sent them. As a housewarming gift. It's thanks for lending me the blanket."

"They're pretty. They'd look nice placed at Raul's counter."

The onions Gilbert had been carrying fell to the ground. At Gilbert's praise, Niksi picked up the onions with a triumphant expression.

"What are the onions for?"

"Raul needs them. Right, have you been to Raul's bar? The bacon pasta there is delicious. Dark beer too."

"Pasta?"

"Yeah."

"I thought rural areas only ate potatoes or salad."

In amazement, Niksi opened her eyes wide. Why had she bothered making salad? It was all to fit in with the village customs!

Gilbert chuckled at her aggrieved expression.

"Or scrambled eggs! I thought you only drank wine for alcohol too!"

"I'm disappointed, Niksi. Those are all city people's prejudices. I can make pasta too."

"Really? What kind of pasta?"

"Potato salad pasta."

"..."

"..."

"I'm disappointed, Gilbert."

Familiar neighbors waved greetings to Gilbert and Niksi.

It was a quiet time since it was a bit past lunch.

Niksi carefully examined shop signs she hadn't seen yesterday as she walked.

A shoe repair shop, a direct farm produce market, a house with flower pots on the window frames.

When passing a store that grandly wrote 'Stable' despite having only two horses, Niksi giggled for a while.

"There are too many weeds in the field, so I'll make herbicide."

Niksi said to Gilbert while chatting idly.

"Make it? How?"

"75% potassium nitrate with 15% fine charcoal powder, then add 10% sulfur..."

Gilbert, who had been thinking of vinegar mixed with salt when she said herbicide, furrowed his brow.

"Sulfur? Wait, wait. What are you talking about?"

"Huh? Herbicide manufacturing method."

"Are you planning to bomb the field to get rid of weeds?"

Surely she wasn't serious. Gilbert asked if it was a joke.

Niksi threw an onion high and caught it as she asked back.

"Are the proportions wrong?"

She was serious.

"If you set off bombs there, the grandmothers will have heart attacks. The villagers will also come charging over when they hear the potatoes being dug up."

Gilbert pressed his forehead, threatened by the existence of this outsider who endangered their peaceful village.

The perpetrator still didn't seem to understand.

Seized by a strange sense of duty to protect the village, Gilbert dragged Niksi to the general store.

Niksi, amazed by the natural herbicide made from citric acid vinegar mixed with seawater, bought all eight bottles of herbicide in the store. 120 euros. All in cash.

"You said your name was Niksi, right? Please come again! It's a promise!"

Helen, the general store owner, began to really like Niksi from that moment.

▶ Today's Harvest

Sweet potato jerky, jerky, yellow blanket, natural herbicide.

▶ Overall Assessment

She ate all the sweet potato jerky on the way. 793 calories, nice. That's equivalent to three plates of omelet!

Night fell on Auvers village with the moon.

As the sun set, the villagers gathered in twos and threes at Raul's bar.

The soft orange lighting went perfectly with Raul's bar, which was bathed in deep red tones overall.

Whether it was bartender Raul's taste or not, music that bearded old gentlemen might listen to drifted from inside the establishment.

As Gilbert had said, the dark beer was very delicious. And the well-grilled sausage went well with the dark beer too.

Niksi immediately downed two drinks and ordered another beer.

"You know that's not tea, right?"

"Of course I know. It's beer. Very cold and delicious beer at that."

Gulp. Niksi drank the beer and licked the foam from her lips with her tongue.

Gilbert was startled to see half the beer disappear in one gulp.

"I'm just amazed that all of that goes in. You might not even know if you crawl home on all fours."

"Wow. I can go on two arms too. Doing handstands."

"...Please don't really do that."

"You think I can't?"

"No. I think you could."

Gilbert realized that she was easygoing, contrary to her finicky first impression. If he had to compare, she was like a well-fed donkey—carefree and unbothered.

It had only been yesterday since she greeted the villagers, but now she was going around from table to table toasting like weekly drinking buddies.

Thanks to this, Raul's bar, which had been perfect for jazz, turned into a lively festival atmosphere.

"I'm planning to plant cranberries, blueberries, and strawberries in the field."

"You like berries?"

"Wow, how did you know? Are you interested in psychology?"

"Not interested, and it would be strange not to know. Right, it gets hot in summer here so berries burst easily, so you'll need to build a greenhouse."

"Then what would be good to plant in the field?"

"Hey sunflower neighbor, are you trying to plant crops?"

A farmer at the next table waved the sunflower he'd received from Niksi and acted familiar.

Niksi had given one bundle to her house and the rest to neighbors she encountered. As a result, her nickname had become the sunflower neighbor.

Niksi held the remaining sunflower bundle in her hand and answered the farmer.

"Yes! Collette, what would be good? Something that requires less effort, grows well on its own, but sells for a high price."

The farmer laughed heartily at Niksi's joke.

"If such a thing existed, I would have planted it long ago. Corn is pretty profitable though?"

This was quite tempting information for a beginner farmer. Niksi ordered another beer and went to sit at the farmer's table.

Gilbert watched her back and stabbed a sausage with his fork before putting it in his mouth.

A cheerful man who had been sitting at another table pointed to the sunflower at the counter while ordering meatballs.

"The store looks different with flowers at the counter. Hey Gilbert, did you buy this flower?"

"That? The young lady who just moved in gave them out as gifts."

Gilbert pointed to Niksi with the tip of his fork. Niksi, who had learned how to sprout sweet potatoes and sow beets from the farmers, looked up.

She had just made her own practical new plan at the drinking table. Learn sowing methods during next week's beet and carrot sowing season. Theory perfect.

Make a cute section for root vegetables in one part of the field and transplant sweet potato and potato seedlings. Practice perfect.

When real spring arrives, plant berry varieties. Future planning perfect!

Plus, plant lettuce and tomatoes in the front yard garden. Thorough niche strategy!

Right. She'll name the cabbage Timmy and the tomato Barton.

Niksi was about to go to Gilbert with the last remaining sunflower. She stopped walking when she saw someone sitting by the window, sipping alcohol.

It was someone who hadn't received her sunflower gift while people had sunflowers stuck by their chests or ears. The man she saw yesterday.

'The Battle of Gergaung, was it?'

The last remaining flower should go to that sensitive friend who resembles violets.

He was drinking green alcohol like sunflower stems. She thought it would have a fresh scent like lime, but unexpectedly it had a sweet, heavy smell.

This color and this fragrance. It was alcohol familiar to her too.

'Absinthe.'

Niksi sat in the chair across from him.

He, who had been looking out the window, turned his head to look at her.

Was it because he'd been drinking? His face was red.

Whether it was because of the high-proof alcohol smell or the dancing people creating atmosphere, she felt dizzy.

"It's a gift."

She held out the sunflower.

He opened his mouth with the same cold wind expression as when she first met him.

"Get lost."

"You don't like sunflowers?"

"..."

The man silently looked outside the window. There was no answer, but his expression said 'I don't like them.'

Niksi pushed the window with her finger to create a small gap. A faint, uncertain early spring chill blew through the slightly opened window crack.

"You're the first person I've met who doesn't like sunflowers. If you have allergies, that could be the case."

"..."

"What's your name?"

"..."

"Fine. I have to guess, right? I actually know your surname. Gilbert called you 'Richter,' so you must be Richter. Um... Alphonse Richter? Or Jeremy Richter?"

"..."

The man seemed determined to ignore her - he didn't even look at her, let alone respond.

'Battle of Gergaung, absinthe, yellow sunflowers.'

Like a drunk person, Niksi repeated a few unrelated words as she looked at his hand holding the glass.

It was trembling intermittently.

Even though Niksi thought she herself was pretty, this man didn't seem to be entranced by her looks. He was now scowling completely and glaring only out the window.

Then why was his hand shaking?

"You have milky tea-colored hair and you like paintings. When I first saw you, you were carrying a painting, and even now you have paint on your clothes. Since you're drinking absinthe, that awful-tasting alcohol, I guess you like absinthe too? But you really hate sunflowers."

His other hand wasn't shaking. Only his right hand holding the glass was trembling. Looking now, his hand had several long scars that looked like they'd been torn and reattached.

Hand tremors?

Niksi slowly blinked her drowsy eyes and lowered her head.

"...Then you'd hate me."

Because I resemble sunflowers.

Niksi rested her cheek on the table and closed her eyes.

When she unknowingly muttered words while burying her head on the table, the man stood up.

The bar was unusually noisy and rowdy. He knew it was because of her.

Every time people shook their individual sunflowers, in his intoxicated eyes, this place looked like a very wide sunflower field.

He knew that was also because of that strange neighbor.

His reason for rejecting her greeting was simple. His personality was as dirty as wrongly pressed oil paint stains.

There were always descriptors attached to him.

'He's not the type to befriend anyone.' 'He hates people.' 'He's high-strung.'

All were accurate.

So there was no way he'd exchange names with such an obtusely friendly neighbor.

Especially if that neighbor resembled sunflowers, which he had once loved desperately and now despised just as desperately.

'If I've ignored her this much, she should understand not to bother me anymore. Unless she's stupid or crazy.'

He pressed his head and left the bar.

The next day, the man quietly frowned at his stupid or crazy neighbor who had come to commission a painting.