“You all patched up now?” Jack asked Thomas as he took a seat next to him at the dinner table.

Thomas had a mixed expression on his face as he replied, “I guess.”

After carrying Thomas back to the orphanage, Mother Teresa had brought Thomas to Brother Gabriel who used his [Heal] and [Recover] tattoos to erase all the bruising, and temporarily speed up the rate of recovery.

Now they were sat within the orphanage’s dining hall, with about sixty or seventy children in the room, impatiently waiting for their meal. Like nearly every other structure in Snowfall, the walls were made out of brick and mortar, and its floors—of wood.

At one end of the rectangular-shaped room, nearly all children currently present were huddled around a roaring hearth, the fire’s red and orange light blooming across the hall in a mesmerizing pattern. Only a few other people, Thomas and Jack included, were elsewhere within the room.

Every so often, another child would enter the orphanage, a loud howling of wind accompanying the opening of the door. Brushing off the snow off their bodies, they would hang up their pelt coats upon a free hanger in the entryway and rush upstairs. They would then return downstairs in a fresh set of white undergarments and join the rest of the whispering and giggling children around the hearth. And so, in this fashion, the previously silent and destitute dining room had turned crowded and loud.

Half an hour later, Mother Alice came out of the kitchen pushing a cart with plates on it. Speaking loudly, Mother Teresa encouraged everyone to get seated. Once everyone was seated and dinner served, a prayer was said, and finally, Mother Teresa gave the signal to start eating.

Amidst the clattering of cutlery and scraping of plates that commenced, Jack looked down at his plate and harshly scrutinized the thick sirloin steak before him. The side dish for today was a plethora of green leaves and vegetables, and buttered rye bread.

Jack could already feel himself salivating.

This was beyond anything he would expect for a medieval orphanage. It was the type of food he would expect to eat at a feast for royalty, or at a luxurious restaurant. Shockingly, however, everyone ate like this. From the poorest peasant all the way to Lord Malador himself ate like this.

It stemmed from one thing: the Fi.

The Fi was a mega-plant located in a massive cavern underneath the city. He had never seen it with his own eyes, but he was told it was a wide, gargantuan tower of life dotted with countless pod-like protrusions. When these pods were cut open, however, laying inside would be a variety of fresh food. From cleanly sliced meat and fresh dairy, to rolled oats, plump fruits, and ripe vegetables. Anything and everything could be found inside.

And so, what confused Jack was how jarringly realistic the Fi’s food was. He stared at his food for so long that by the time he started eating, most boys and girls were finished. Many of the older children were even asking for seconds.

In any other medieval world, those asking for seconds would receive a scolding over the back of the head and a stern berating. But that didn’t happen.

Mother Alice disappeared into the kitchen and returned with another cart of food.

In Snowfall, no one starved. Even if the Fi tree died today, there would still be enough food in the pods to last the population another thirty or forty years.

Jack struggled to finish his second steak. Despite his stomach’s protest, he scoffed down the last few bites. His food finished, Jack looked over to Thomas, and then scouted the room.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

He saw all the children laughing and playing with each other and smiled. But on the inside, he felt saddened. In the orphanage, he had no friends. There was simply no way Jack could bring himself to seriously join in. He simply wasn’t at that age anymore.

But he was fine with it. He had other people he could interact with—like adults.

Gabriel was one example. Sometimes, while everyone else was out playing in the snow, he would find Gabriel reading a book and they would engage in conversation about the world and the teachings of God. Every time, without fail, the young healer would remark upon Jack’s remarkable intelligence and complete fluency.

The former was easy to mask. If he came off as too smart, he would play dumb for a while thereafter. But the latter wasn’t. By the time he realised he was talking like a perfectly fluent adult, it was too late to turn back to normal. A few months ago, Jack reverted his voice to a child’s.

But when he did this, Mother Teresa freaked out. She was worried that the orphanage’s child prodigy had “turned dumb”.

So, the next day, Jack returned back to “normal”.

In his next life, Jack reminded himself to play dumb. This wasn’t a problem last time because he wasn’t very talkative back then, and thus it wasn’t a big deal. But now that he was talkative, it became a problem.

Thomas pushed away his plate and stood up. He looked sickened. “I think I’m going to go to bed now.”

Jack looked at Thomas’ plate and inwardly sighed. He had barely eaten half his food.

Very often, he would overhear Mother Teresa persuading Thomas into eating more.

It had never worked.

Whilst Thomas and numerous other children went upstairs to their dorms to talk or go to sleep early, Jack stayed behind and knitted clothes with Mother Alice. A year it had been now since Jack first revealed his skills, and the young nun simply could not get over her shock. Nor could anyone else in the orphanage.

From an outside perspective, it was like Jack was possessed. He knit with such fury, consistent tempo and grace that sometimes she would stop what was she was doing and watch in awe. To Mother Alice, Jack was a knitting God. But to Jack, he found himself achingly slow.

The tension and consistency weren’t up to his standards, no matter how hard he tried to replicate the level he had reached in his last life. He had picked up many skills as a [Senior Tailor], but with his last death, the implanted knowledge disappeared. If his former self was here, Mother Alice wouldn’t just be gasping in awe, she would collapse to the floor and be foaming from the mouth.

Suddenly he felt a tingle in his stomach. He stopped momentarily and continued. He remained mindful of the strange, worm-like energy wiggling around in his stomach as he knitted. Always, about thirty minutes to an hour after eating food, Jack would feel the tingle in his stomach.

He had visited the doctor, but they found nothing.

Jack guessed that it had to do with the food, but that was just speculation. If he could get his hands on non-Fi food, he would be able to confirm his theory, and…

Jack opened the quest status with a thought.

[Quest: Find out why your stomach tingles]

[Reward: 250 Credits]

It was issued to him before Jack was even conscious. By the time that he was self-aware as a baby, it was already there.

It was as Jack was quietly knitting with Mother Alice and giving her pointers from time to time, that a spirit appeared from one of the walls of the dining room. It was blue and shaped like a kite. Hanging from its vertices were long tendrils. Jack didn’t even notice it at first, and he only did when the other children made a commotion out of it.

Jack looked over and witnessed the kite-like spirit spontaneously turn into a cute brown rabbit with big, adorable ears.

A moment later, Jack got back to work. Whereas Mother Alice stood out of her seat and calmed down the group, making sure that everyone got a turn to pat and play with the spirit’s physical form.

It wasn’t that Jack was boring, it was that this happened every day. About this time every afternoon, the same kite-looking spirit would arrive at the orphanage via floating through the wall. It would then turn into a random, cute animal, and play with the children till they were forced to go to bed.

Looking over curiously from time to time, the afternoon came and went, and bedtime swiftly arrived. Escorted upstairs by Mother Teresa, Jack walked into the shared dormitory and found his bed right near the front of the room.

His memory having lapsed by accident, Jack pulled out his purse from underneath his collar. He counted his coins and smiled in satisfaction. Seven gold coins and twelve silvers. All this from a year’s worth of knitting and selling his cloth for the best price he could bargain for.

Tomorrow, he planned to make his first purchase.

But before that, he had some sleep to catch up on.

“Light’s out!” Mother Teresa announced.

Everyone scrambled to bed and the lights from their lamps were extinguished.

A warm blanket covering his body, a silent darkness slowly enveloped Jack.