Urun Village consisted of roughly thirty households, making it similar in scale to Kaina Village.
A row of wooden stakes driven into the ground served as a simple boundary. Goose Minakata stepped out of the automobile before they reached them.
"I know the village chief here, so I'll go let him know we've arrived," he told Jin before heading into the settlement.
They waited for about ten minutes. The stakes stood about a meter high and were spaced thirty centimeters apart, leaving Jin and the others in plain view through the gaps and over the tops.
The villagers, particularly the children, stared at the automobile with intense curiosity.
"The people here look just like the ones in Mitsuho," Jin noted.
Their skin, the color of coffee milk, suggested they shared the same ethnic lineage. While most had dark brown hair, there were occasionally children with light brown hair; Jin wondered if they were half or quarter-blood. Conversely, he also spotted hair as black as his own.
Their clothing wasn't in the Mitsuho style, but rather resembled the common attire found in the Shouro Empire or the Allied Kingdoms.
After a while, Goose returned. An elderly man accompanied him—likely the village chief. He was of a similar build to Goose, with thinning hair and no beard.
"Jin, this is the village chief of Urun Village."
"Pleased to meet ya. I'm called Romiesu," the man said.
"I am Jin Nidou."
"Let's see... so Nidou's the family name and Jin's the given one... that about right?"
"Ah, yes."
While his speech was heavily accented and his pronunciation wasn't the best, the fact that he correctly distinguished between the surname and given name made Jin even more curious about the culture of the north.
"Since it's just a tiny village, we ain't got no proper lodgin' houses, but if you're fine with it, why don't ya stay at my place? I got some rooms to spare."
"Thank you very much."
With that, Jin and his companions were invited to stay at the village chief's house.
"I'll get the bath water boilin' for ya now," Romiesu said.
Goose whispered to Jin that water was fairly abundant here, so the village had a custom of bathing.
"Ah, in that case, let me help you heat it."
Since it seemed they heated the water with firewood, Jin made the offer. With Craft Magic, there was no need for fuel.
"Oh, that'd be a real help, it would."
Goose had already informed Romiesu that Jin was a magi known as a Magi Craft Meister, so the village chief gratefully accepted the assistance.
"Heat."
Though it was a fairly large bathtub, it reached the perfect temperature after only about five seconds of magic.
"Oh...!"
The village chief, watching from the side, looked impressed.
"Folks called magi sure are incredible..."
"By the way, are there no magi in this village?" Jin asked.
"No, not just in this village; there ain't hardly none on Fusou Island at all."
Jin wondered why, then, they knew about the existence of magi and why they weren't shocked to see magic. When he asked about it, Romiesu answered:
"Folks we call marebito visit every now and then, ya see. They're rare, but you ain't the first ones we've seen."
Jin nodded in understanding. However, the true identity of these marebito remained a mystery.
"Ah, this feels great."
The guest bath at the village chief's house was large, so Jin and Goose bathed together.
"Scrub down before you get in," Jin cautioned Goose, who apparently hadn't washed in months, let alone days.
"I know, I know."
Goose seemed to understand the etiquette; he rinsed himself with water before scrubbing his body with soap.
As a gesture of gratitude for the lodging, Jin had donated a ten-kilogram box of soap. Saki and Aaru knew how to make it, and Aaru's memory data had already been transmitted to Laojun. On Hourai Island, experiments to create soap from baking soda and seaweed ash had already begun.
"Soap, huh? This stuff is amazing! It's several levels better than Rita fruit."
As expected of a naturalist, Goose seemed to know all about Rita fruit.
As a side note, the box of soap gifted to the village chief would eventually come to be used specifically for cleansing the body during New Year's celebrations and other sacred festivities.
After Elsa and the others also used the bath to refresh themselves, the party was treated to a welcoming feast by the village chief.
"It ain't nearly enough to repay ya for the 'ke-kken,' but please, eat your fill."
"It's 'soap,'" Goose corrected him.
"Oh, that's right. That soap stuff is truly wonderful. I'll make sure we use it sparingly."
The village chief looked delighted. However, Jin was more interested in the meal served to them—specifically, the vessels it was served in.
"These bowls are..."
The base material was wood—light yet seemingly sturdy, with the grain clearly visible. However, the issue was the coating applied to it.
"...Is this lacquer?"
It had a transparent coating of a reddish-brown color, often called amber. To accentuate the wood grain, the growth rings were dark while the outer sections were slightly lighter. It was an extremely elegant color.
"Them bowls are rubbed with sap from the tokisoko tree. I wouldn't go so far as to call 'em a local specialty, but they're a product of our village."
The spoons and shallow plates had the same coating.
"The lacquer I know is black," Jin noted. "It's also made from tree sap."
Indeed, the lacquer-like substances harvested on Hourai Island and the sap that Saki had once reacted to were both pitch black. Jin figured this was because the species of tree was different. This tokisoko might be closer to the urushi lacquer of Japan.
Goose latched onto Jin's words.
"Ho, so you have trees that produce black sap where you come from? How interesting."
"Haha, let's just eat for now."
"Umu, I agree with that."
With that, everyone began to enjoy the feast.
"Oh, this is delicious."
Elsa seemed to have taken a liking to the vinegared dish.
"Heh, this is a flavor I've never had before, but it's not bad at all!"
Saki also liked the vinegared dish.
"I like this one!"
Hanna had taken a liking to a clear soup. By Jin's estimation, the broth was made from dried fish.
And Jin, while surprised to find rice here as well, thoroughly enjoyed the white rice.
"There's plenty of wetlands 'round here, so this nogi grows just fine," Goose explained as he stuffed his face. He seemed to have fully recovered his health.
"That mountain vegetable over there is nunawa. It's a water plant that often grows in shallow ponds."
The mountain vegetable used in both the vinegared dish and the clear soup was apparently called nunawa. Jin liked the soup; the slightly slimy texture was interesting.
Despite the simplicity of the courses, the heartfelt hospitality allowed Jin and his party to truly relax.
"This is thanks to you, Goose," Jin said to him in their assigned room after the meal. "If we had just shown up on our own, things might not have gone this well."
"Well, you might be right about that. Guests from foreign lands are extremely rare."
Even so, Goose added that there had been a few cases in the past, and it seemed to happen about once every ten years.
"The most recent was a fellow named Tenkunhan, or so Romiesu said."
The man had billed himself as a technician, but since magic tools weren't used here and the villagers weren't particularly struggling with their ordinary tools, there were no opportunities for him to be of use. He had reportedly continued heading north.
"If you all keep heading north, you might run into him somewhere," Goose said.
Jin felt like he might want to meet the man, but then again, he didn't mind if he didn't. He was far more interested in the lacquer-like coating than he was in Tenkunhan.