Chapter 5

Yuto opens his front door to greet a fresh new spring day. He takes a deep breath, then takes a look at the field. He planted a bag full of each type of crop, and they are growing nicely. He knows that he should have planted more, but he is so new at this farming work that he wants to use spring to practice before he gets more serious this summer. They tend the crops each day, then spends the afternoon doing research at the library so he can be fully prepared.

Jennifer has been sleeping in her tent every night outside the house. Yuto has offered to let her sleep inside the house or at least pay for her to stay at the inn, but she smiles and says that she prefers to sleep outside with nature. Yuto wonders what she will do when the weather gets bad, but he is comfortable as long as Jennifer is happy.

That morning, Yuto is about to start his chores for the day. He goes over to the tent to wake Jennifer up, but she finds a note pinned up instead. It reads, “Meet me at Mother’s Lake at my other tent.” He scratches his head and wonders why she wants to meet him there. He can only hope that she has gotten another clue of the location of another piece of the Jewel of Truth.

After watering the plants, Yuto heads out to Mother’s Lake to meet up with Jennifer. He takes his time walking through the hot springs taking in all the beautiful sights and sounds of nature. It is still early, so some of the young ladies are walking around. They wave at him, and he waves back at them.

At the lake, he walks straight to Jennifer’s tent. On the way, he finds a pile of her clothing including some underwear neatly folded on a cut tree stump. He takes a closer look and realizes that they are Jennifer’s clothing. He begins to wonder why she had her clothing just sitting around for anyone to see.

“Hey Yuto!” called Jennifer. He looks out to the lake and finds her bathing in the water. His face turns red as he sees her rinsing her body with no soap. She looks at him waving cheerfully.

Yuto turns away and yells, “sorry! I didn’t see anything! I’ll wait for you to finish in the tent!” He then rushes off to hide his bashful face in the tent. Jennifer just shrugs and continues to bathe like if nothing happened.

As he waits in the tent, Yuto tries his best to relax. His breathing is heavy and his heart is beating hard like a drum. He was aware that Jennifer is very free spirited and does things naturally, but not to that level. He is too afraid what he is going to say to her once she comes into the tent. Should he apologize? Or just not say anything at all, she does treat him no differently than any other wild animal.

Yuto is finally able to calm himself after a few minutes. But that changes once Jennifer walks into the tent. She places her clothing on the ground, her body is covered with nothing but a towel, and she is using a second one to dry her long blonde hair. She may be sitting comfortably, but Yuto sweats nervously wondering what he should do. Should he leave and give her privacy, or will that offend her?

It takes Jennifer some time to notice Yuto trying his best not to look at her. She continues to dry her hair while she asks, “what is wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”

Yuto attempts to look at her, but he quickly looks away and answers, “I’m good. I’m just not used to seeing anyone so. . . How should I put it? . . . Comfortable?”

Jennifer looks around, then looks at herself wondering what Yuto meant by his response. After a few minutes, she giggles and says, “oh I get it. You’re embarrassed. That’s so cute, but you don’t need to be so shy. The human body is such a beautiful and natural thing.”

“But I am not used to seeing it!” exclaimed Yuto.

Jennifer giggles once again and says, “It’s perfectly fine. You may wait outside while I get dressed.”

Yuto quickly grabs his rucksack and rushes out of the tent. As he waits outside, he wonders if he may have offended Jennifer in some way. In his mind, he imagines her coming out of the tent yelling and complaining that Yuto finds her unattractive and unfit to look at. He then wonders if he should bring it up at all. He then imagines her yelling at him calling him a pervert or something similar. He knows that Jennifer is pretty free spirited and doesn’t get offended easily. He also knows that she is a young woman with feelings that he needs to be sensitive to.

After some time, Jennifer comes out of her tent fully dressed and in good spirits. Seeing her in a good mood puts Yuto at ease, as long as he can avoid asking any uncomfortable questions. All she does is fold her hands behind her and smiles for him. Rather than asking about anything that happened at the tent, Yuto asks, “so, what did you want to talk about? I found your note at the farm.”

“Last night, I had a vision from the Harvest Goddess! A clue to the whereabouts of the next piece of the Jewel of Truth,” answered Jennifer.

“Okay, what do you got?”

Jennifer thinks long and hard for a minute before shaking her head no and answering, “I am not very sure about what I’ve seen. The only thing I’ve seen in my vision is a rat tail and the color yellow.”

“Hmm, a rat tail, and the color yellow? Sounds like a Zen riddle. Are you sure you didn’t see anything else?”

Jennifer shakes her head no once again. The clues she was given are too vague and neither of them have any idea what to make of it or where to go from there. They both give it some more thought, but they can’t come up with anything that may help them locate the piece. They then assume that the Harvest Goddess will give them more information soon, or the clue will make sense eventually.

Since they can’t come up with anything, hey move on back to the farm to start their chores for the day. All day long they think about the meaning of the two clues, but they come up with nothing at all. Yuto assumes that maybe a rat has the piece hidden away in a nest somewhere underground, but can’t think of anything for the yellow part. Jennifer assumes that rat tail and yellow may have a more poetic meaning behind it. By the end of the day, they come up with nothing. Instead of driving themselves crazy, they rest for the day and try again tomorrow.

The next morning, Yuto walks out of his house ready to start work on the farm once again. He is surprised to find an odd visitor in front of his door step. He finds a young man of Asian descent in a yellow trench coat and short black hair. Considering his foreign taste in clothes, he is not native to Mineral Town.

“Hello there!” greeted the stranger in an accent. “My name is Huang, and I came from a far away land to bring you the very finest seeds from my hometown. Would you like to see my wares?”

Yuto nods and takes a look at what he has to sell. Huang has many seeds that Yuto has never seen being sold at the grocery store. He finds Pineapple seeds, green pepper seeds, flower seeds, and many other seeds not native to this region. Yuto begins to imagine planting the seeds and making a hefty profit from crops normally imported from far away.

As Yuto begins to bargain with Huang, Jennifer comes out of her tent to stretch her arms. She quickly notices Yuto speaking to Huang, then notices the rat tail hanging from the back of Huang’s head and his yellow trench coat. His coat is eerily similar to the color from the vision Jennifer got from the Harvest Goddess. At that moment, she finally realizes what the Harvest Goddess was trying to tell her.

After Yuto completes his purchase, Huang takes a bow and walks back out of the farm. Jennifer walks up to Yuto and asks, “do you know who that man is?”

“He’s a traveling salesman who just opened up a shop here in Mineral Town. I just bought some cool seeds I can plant for the next season,” answered Yuto.

Jennifer points at Huang and says, “I think he has one of the pieces of the Jewel of Truth. Look, he has a rat tail hair style and a yellow trench coat!”

Yuto looks at Huang walking away and definitely notices the rat tail. “Wow, I didn’t notice that earlier. When you said rat tail, I was looking out for an actual rat.” He then thinks for a moment then continues, “We could ask him about the Jewel of Truth, but I’m pretty sure that you and me are the only ones who even knows what the pieces are and what they are used for. If he has one, chances are he doesn’t know it. He did say that he has a shop set up at Zack’s house. If the piece is anywhere, it has to be there. Maybe we can pay him a visit later.”

Jennifer nods in agreement. They then move ahead and start their daily chores. Yuto waters the crops and checks for any ripe crops to ship. Jennifer walks around the field for weeds and any edible grasses to use later. At around ten o’ clock, they are done for the day and they move to Mineral Beach to look for Huang.

The beach is located in the east side of Mineral Town where the dock and Zack the shipper lives. Yuto and Jennifer came up with a plan to find the piece of the Jewel of Truth. Since Huang won’t know what that is, Yuto will distract him and Jennifer will take a look around. They enter Zack’s house, and find Huang all set up with a shop and a large collection of strange items.

Huang looks up at Yuto then smiles. Yuto then walks up to him and asks a few questions about the seeds he had purchased. As they are talking, Jennifer takes a look around all the items Huang has for sale. Everything she sees are foreign items such as vases, seeds, and strange looking apples with insane price tags. As she continues to look around, she finds the piece of the Jewel of Truth resting in a jewelry box.

“I found it!” yelled Jennifer.

Huang and Yuto rushes over to see what Jennifer is looking at. Huang smiles sleezily and says, “ah, I see you have a good eye young miss. That is a very rare gem I found here in Mineral Town. No one knows what it is, but I promise you that it makes a great addition to any collection for mineral enthusiasts. Are you interested?”

“We’ll take it,” said Yuto.

Huang rubs his hands together then says, “I’ll let you have it for a very special price. How does fifty thousand sound to you?”

The price shocks both Yuto and Jennifer. She then begins to yell at Huang about how unfair his price is and how dare he sells something so important to the goddess for any money. Yuto freaks out and tries to quiet her down before she sounds like a lunatic talking about the Harvest Goddess which most people don’t believe in. Before things get too crazy, Yuto restrains Jennifer and drags her out of the house kicking and screaming.

It takes some time for Jennifer to calm enough to talk to her. She then stamps her feet and yells, “may the Harvest Goddess curse him for this. How dare he treat the Jewel of Truth as common merchandise?”

“I guess you do get mad after all,” joked Yuto. “He probably jacked the price up seeing how much of a fuss we made when we found it. It does suck, but we don’t have any choice but to pay it. Fifty grand plus ten million, this town is starting to get pretty expensive to save. I don’t know if we can handle any more expenses.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Jennifer. “We don’t have that amount of money right now, and we need the piece of the Jewel of Truth. Is there a way to reason with him?”

Yuto thinks for a while then answers, “Huang is pretty good at being a salesman, so I don’t think he’ll be easy to reason with. Nobody else but us knows what that is, so I think it’s safe for now. Maybe he’ll lower the price later once he sees nobody but us is interested in it. All we can do now is wait and get it later.”

Jennifer nods in agreement. They then return to the farm to look at their progress so far. It is their first spring in Mineral Town, and they have a lot of work ahead of themselves if they wish to save it. They also have only one piece of the jewel of truth, they can only imagine where the other seven are.