A pleasantly spicy scent wafts past me almost immediately after I ask Angus about getting something to eat and my tummy rumbles, as if demanding its needs be sated at that moment.

  “Well, since you put it that way, sure.” Angus says with a chuckle.

  “Put it what way?” I ask while narrowing my eyes at him. “It was a s-simple question.”

  “Not you, your stomach. If it yelled any louder, I think the city watch would assume there was a monster attack.” He replies.

  “It wasn’t t-that loud.” I state with a huff, crossing my arms as if displeased and thrusting my nose in the air.

  Once again, my tummy lets its opinion be know. I can’t keep a straight face and the pretend air of displeasure I had been trying to pull off crumbles. Angus laughs this time, takes my hand into his, leading me across the street towards the source of the smell that had caused the loud rumbles in my gut.

  “What is that delightful scent I am s-smelling?” I ask once we are safely on the other side of the street.

  “It’s an open-air restaurant that serves a new type of food that has become all the rage recently in the capital. Honestly, I surprised to see one here in Lochavria, since we only had them start popping up in Aberling in the last year. They are quite common in Brahmberg though, since the trade routes with Trelivia really became established in the last ten years.”

  “Brahmberg? T-trelivia?” I ask. My geography lessons hadn’t mentioned those places yet.

  “Ah, sorry. Brahmberg is the largest trading port of the country on the eastern coast of the Arrick Ocean. Trelivia is a nation on the western continent that was discovered about twenty years ago and they are one of the biggest importers of spice to Elgoss. They have the most delightfully sweet and spicy cuisine, though from what I have been told, when it was introduced to Elgoss, they had to tone down the spiciness because many people just couldn’t eat it.”

  “Can we try it?” I ask hopefully. There is something familiar about the scent that reminds me of home. A wave of homesickness hits me like a truck and suddenly I want my mother’s cooking.

  “Okay, if you want to try this we can eat here. Just to warn you though, it is spicy.” Angus says before leading me to the seating area of the restaurant.

  We sit down and a waiter brings over a couple of menus and asks us what we would like to drink.

  I ask what drinks are available and the waiter lists off several types of tea, as well as coffee and water. I ask him to describe the teas to me. He goes down the list, patently describing the color and flavor profile of each one to me. Towards the end of the list there is one called nokcha and the way he describes it makes me think of green tea. I order a cup of nokcha and Angus does the same.

  After the waiter leaves our table, I ask Angus to go over the menu with me. He reads off several dishes to me while quoting the brief descriptions that go along with them. The dishes for the most part have names that I’m familiar with like curry and bulgogi. By the time he reaches the end of the short menu there are only a couple of dishes I don’t recognize the names of, but many more that I do know. I decide to order the tteokbokki which was customizable with several different sauces and protein options.

  Hey kid, I say internally. Why do so many of these foods sound like they come from Korea? They have the same names and everything.

  I receive only silence as a reply. I stew for just a minute before continuing my internal dialog once I feel I can keep my irritation out of it.

  Look, I’m sorry I called you a brat so much. It was rude of me an-

  “Damn right it was rude.” I hear him say, his voice pipping up in my head. “You should be nicer to your elders, you know that? If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here.”

  I have to focus to prevent my eyebrow from twitching at that last line considering he killed me to bring me here, not that I’m complaining about the body I inhabit.

  “And to answer your question, that is just how you are perceiving their names. Think of it as an automatic translator that puts verbal language into something you can understand. Likewise, your speech is translated to the native tongue as you speak. As long as you don’t overly focus on what you hear and say, the translator will work perfectly. Unfortunately, this does not work on written text so once your sight fully recovers, you will have to learn to read again. Such are the limitations of the transmigration process.”

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  While I have you talking to me again, can you please give me a name to call you?

  “You could just call me God.” He says with a snicker. “But I understand that might be a bit to formal and it is my title. Instead call me Damian.”

  Ok Damian. Thank you.

  I turn my attention back to my surroundings and notice that the waiter has returned to our table and Angus is in the middle of ordering. When he finishes, I place my order for the jajang tteokbokki with cheese that I had planned on getting. Our orders taken, the waiter leaves us again. We make small talk while waiting for our food to arrive and at one point Angus tries to steer the conversation back to what happened to me, or rather the original Beira, on the night of my fifteenth birthday. I pointedly move the conversation away from the topic while acting like I’m afraid someone else will hear when in truth, I just don’t want Damian jumping on my ass about it. Instead, I direct the topic of conversation to Izzy in an effort to get to know her better since she was Beira’s best friend since childhood and I knew little about her other than what I gleaned the times she had come to visit before being summoned back to Aberling.

  It turned out that, at least from Angus’s perspective, his little sister is as shallow as she had initially come off but I suspect otherwise. I know she is intelligent despite her childish behavior and demeanor, which has led me to suspect that there is more going on in her head than she lets on. Unfortunately, Angus seems to take her behavior at face value and, while he clearly adores his little sister, he thinks her to simply be a bit silly.

  Honestly, hearing the way her describes her makes me think a little less of him because he is judging her at face value and it comes off as a bit immature. It also makes me wonder what he truly thinks about me. Granted, I have the excuse of being an amnesiac who is having to practically ‘relearn’ about her entire world and I also have the benefit of him being infatuated with me which changes his opinion of me. It is quite irritating and I find myself getting more frustrated the longer he talks. The arrival of our food interrupts his talks about the virtues and faults of his little sister, and I am grateful for the timing of its arrival.

  The food smells divine as it is placed on our table and I feel my mouth instantly start to salivate. The waiter places some dinnerware on our table, one set for each of us, and I reach for it feeling a pair of metal chopsticks underneath my fingertips. I sigh happily and grab them, positioning them just right in my hand.

  I am about to dig in when I feel myself being watched. I look at Angus and, though he is just a smear of color in my sight, I can tell he is staring at me.

  “Y-yes?” I say, pausing in my quest for food.

  “How?” He asks, his head cocked slightly to the side.

  “How what?”

  “How did you know how to use those?” His shape gestures, presumably pointing to the chopsticks in my hand. “It took me several weeks to learn just how to hold chopsticks properly.”

  “Maybe I’ve eaten here b-before?” I ask, shrugging my shoulders before once again turning my attention to my food.

  “No, that’s impossible.” He says, making me pause and look at him again. “This restaurant is fairly new, I don’t even think it was open before your birthday. Besides, you almost always eat at the keep with your parents so the likelihood of you having come here before is miniscule.”

  I shrug and turn back to my food again.

  “It just f-feels natural.” I say and I root around, feeling for a rice cake.

  Detecting one, I snatch it up and pop it in my mouth, a line of hot cheese dangling from it that I quickly pull in using my tongue. I immediately start to spit it out because it is still very hot and burns my mouth, but I make myself stop and instead make the near molten cheese and rice cake dance in my mouth as I more air over it in an effort to cool it off. Once it is cool enough, I chew and swallow.

  “Ok, that was a b-bit too hot.” I say with a little laugh.

  I hear Angus mumble something that I can’t make out so I choose to ignore him.

  I find another rice cake and, having learned my lesson from the first one, blow on it to cool it down before popping it into my mouth. This time, I am able to appreciate to flavor which is both sweet and spicy with a touch of savory added by the thick cheese. The flavor reminds me of home and I feel an ache in my heart.

  As I eat, I feel my eyes start to water but try my best to play it off as a side effect of the spices instead of crying, even though it isn’t really that spicy. I didn’t think I would get so upset just by eating something that reminded me of home, but here I am, bawling my eyes out over a simple dish. Luckily, Angus seems to be buying my act and passes me a glass of water which I thank him for. I take my time in drinking it down as I try to get my emotions under control.

  “Are you ok, Beira?” Angus asks me when I finally lower the glass. “I didn’t know you would react so poorly to the levels of spiciness they put in their food.”

  I smile softly at him, trying to hide the sadness I feel.

  “I’m o-ok.” I reply. “It just caught me off guard. The f-food is really good though.”

  I take a few more sips from the glass of water while I wait for Angus to finish his food.

  Soon we are back on the street and Angus calls our carriage over. He offers his hand to help me climb into the transport before following me in after giving the coachman instructions to return us to the keep. The ride back in mostly uneventful and silent as I clearly indicate I no longer feel like talking. As we clear the initial gates from the city into the keep, I feel a sharp pain in my gut that catches me off guard. I draw in a sharp intake of air, hissing in pain.

  Angus says my name, concern showing in his voice.

  “I’m f-fine. I just think-“ I gasp as another sharp pain tears at my lower abdomen. “I just t-think that m-maybe spicy food doesn’t agree with m-me.”

  The pain reminds me of times I have gotten really bad gas in the past. Luckily it seems to be coming in waves and by the time we reach the keep, it has subsided for the most part though I am still in pain. After Angus helps me down from the carriage, I stumble into the keep, leaning on him as the pain comes again. Mary is there waiting for me and I ask her to take me to my room since I feel so under the weather. I say my goodbyes to Angus before I am led away. Once in my room, Mary helps me out of my constricting clothes and takes my hair down for me before helping me into my night clothes after I tell her I wish to go straight to bed.