Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 15 - Chapter 4.2

Chapter 2: Welcome to The Westerly Wind

A strange party of two arrived at The Westerly Wind on the seventh of the ashen month.

“Welcome. Are you looking for lodging? Or just a meal?” Yumi called out from the reception desk her parents had asked her to man.

Perhaps because the early afternoon was such an awkward in-between time, there were currently only three men drinking cheap fruit wine in the dining hall at the moment. And as if to avoid the gazes from those men, the pair of newcomers swiftly hurried over her way.

They had the hoods of their cloaks pulled far forward over their heads, almost like easterners. But they couldn’t possibly be from Sym. After all, Yumi could spy Jagar-style clothing in the form of embroidered vests and narrow cylindrical pants underneath those cloaks, and one of them was about as small as a kid.

Was it a man and a woman, or perhaps a parent and child? At any rate, it was suspicious for anyone but easterners to be hiding their faces, and the outfits they had on looked way too nice for the post town. As Yumi rested her chin atop her hands, she vaguely thought to herself that these customers must have had some special reason that brought them here.

Well, not that it matters. If they pay up then they’re still customers. I’ll have to warn them not to mess with any of the ruffians around here.

The pair stopped and stood there in front of the reception desk.

And then, the smaller one made a startling statement. “We finally found you! Long time no see, Yumi.”

“Huh? How do you know my name?”

As Yumi stared in shock, the figure flicked back their hood. The head that appeared from underneath had speckled dark-brown hair and fine facial features.

“Oh, you’re Diel! What’re you doing in a place like this?!”

“You even have to ask? I came to see you,” Diel replied with a pout. At first glance, it looked like a tough, boyish expression, but her face had such slender contours that it was hard to imagine she was a southerner, so even her frown looked cute. This girl was the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Jagar who had come to Genos to do business.

Yumi recognized the young man standing behind her too. She believed his name was Labis, and he acted as Diel’s bodyguard.

“W-Well, you should come over here. Folks might see you if you stand there.” Yumi stepped out from behind the reception desk and led the pair over to the seats furthest out of the way.

It was nothing to brag about, but The Westerly Wind tended to get a lot of rough customers. Since their fees were low, they were frequented by ruffians out of a job, travelers low on funds, and thieves and bandits looking to work with those other groups. To folks like that, seeing someone as well dressed as these two would look like a pair of sitting kimyuus. In fact, those three previous customers drinking their cheap booze had already been stealing glances over their way now and again.

“It was pretty hard to find your inn, Yumi. We ended up searching all over,” Diel complained as she crossed her arms and took a seat.

Looking down at the southerner girl, Yumi replied, “Sorry about that. But we’ve been running this place since my grandfather’s era, so if you want to complain to someone, it’d have to be him. Except his soul was returned to the western god so long ago that I never even saw his face.”

“It’s not like I’m complaining... But if what I said was hurtful, then I apologize.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for. But what are you doing wandering around a place like this? I hesitate to say it, but this really isn’t the sort of place folks as well off as you two should be hanging out.”

These were the backstreets of the post town. All the shops here were dicey ones meant for ruffians and the poor, and once night fell you got prostitution and pickpocketing. When things were especially bad, folks would even be cut down. It was the sort of place where even a guard wouldn’t set foot on their own.

Genos was praised as an especially prosperous town even for the western kingdom, but it had a dark side too, with its slums full of lowlifes whose minds teemed with wicked thoughts. Thanks to Genos’s prosperity, it also needed a place to scoop up wanderers hoping to benefit from that wealth, or those failures who just couldn’t cut it. Just as the saying went, the brighter the light the darker the shadows, and this place was pretty much pitch black.

Even so, Yumi wasn’t ashamed of where she was born. Just like nobles weren’t born into wealth thanks to their own accomplishments, you didn’t have to do anything wrong to be born into poverty either.

Naturally, Yumi felt that thieves and murderers should be properly judged for their crimes. But even folks like that might have only fallen to such depths after facing the agony of having to choose whether to starve to death or become a criminal in order to survive. It might not have excused their actions, but she couldn’t bring herself to blame them either.

Because of that, she felt it was fitting for her to be the daughter of an inn that made neither enemies nor allies of that kind of people, instead simply offering them a place to stay the night or a container of fruit wine in exchange for their coins.

“So, what’s up?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I’m asking why you wandered over to a place like this. You came all the way from the castle town because you’ve got some sort of business with me, right?”

When Yumi asked that, Diel dejectedly hung her head.

Not understanding what was going on at all, Yumi placed her hands onto the table and stared into the other girl’s face.

“Well, I can probably guess. You’ve got business with Asuta rather than me, right? If he’s the one you want, he should be working at some other inn around now.”

“N-No, you’ve got it wrong! I came here to talk to you, Yumi.”

“Really? Then go ahead and talk already.”

“Right...” Diel answered, keeping her eyes aimed downward for a while until she eventually made up her mind and stared back at Yumi’s face. “W-Well, is Asuta doing all right?”

“Huh? I mean, yeah, he is. He was able to get back to work with the stalls and everything. If you came from the northern road, you must have seen how many customers were buzzing around, right?”

“I did, but still... Have you not seen Asuta much either?”

“I haven’t, since he took over half a month off. When he dropped by yesterday, it sure felt like it had been a while.”

“I see...”

Diel looked distressed as she furrowed her brow and bit her lip. Such a brooding expression really didn’t fit the energetic girl.

“What’s the matter? Did something happen with Asuta?”

“Yeah... I’m sure Asuta must be angry with me, but I just wanted to ask you how he was acting, Yumi...”

“Angry? Why would he be angry? I can’t imagine.”

“Of course you can. When Asuta was kidnapped by Lefreya, I wasn’t able to help him out at all.”

That was already a month in the past by this point. After that, those wicked nobles were taken down, and things were nice and peaceful again.

As Yumi scratched her head, she went ahead and responded, “Lefreya’s that girl who became the head of the house of Turan, right? I heard you ran into Asuta back at their manor, but did something happen between you?”

“The fact that nothing happened is the problem. Asuta was in so much trouble, but I didn’t do anything for him... I never realized at all that that old guy Cyclaeus was such a wicked criminal.”

“I mean, I didn’t know anything about that either.”

“If I had just found some way to slip out of the castle town to let the people of the forest’s edge know where Asuta was, he could have been rescued sooner. But I...”

“Hmm...” Yumi pondered. “I understand that you feel responsible, but it’s not like Asuta’s mad at you or anything. He even said he wanted to buy some new cooking tool from your place.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah. And he was worried that the count being found a criminal might have made a real mess of your old man’s business too.”

“That’s because Asuta’s way too kind...” Diel said, her expression growing even gloomier as she once again hung her head. Meanwhile, her attendant just sat there silently the whole time, looking displeased.

“Hey, wouldn’t it be quickest to just ask Asuta directly? I think he should be working at The Great Southern Tree or The Sledgehammer around now.”

“No, I just don’t have it in me to face him.”

As Yumi thought to herself how hopeless this was, she gave a shrug of her shoulders. Folks from Jagar tended to be highly emotional, and openly so, but that seemed to be working against Diel right now. She seemed to have a one-track mind, and was prone to being tossed around by her own feelings.

You really need a bit more cunning to get by.

Still, Yumi was rather fond of Diel. Maybe it was because Diel grew up dealing with nobles, but she could be both cheeky and ignorant about the way the little guys lived...and yet she had a charm about her that overcame all that. Since Yumi tended to be especially frank for a westerner, she saw the fact that this girl wore her feelings on her sleeve as a positive rather than a negative.

“By the way, where are you living now that you moved out of that count’s place? Asuta asked around, but he said he hadn’t learned anything definitive yet.”

“We’re currently staying at a manor near the castle... And someone from Duke Genos’s house is renegotiating our business deals.”

“D-Duke Genos’s house? So you’ve reached the point where you’re doing business with the lord of the land directly?”

“Yeah, since he took up the deals we had with that old man.”

It really was unbelievable. Yumi had only ever seen nobles from a distance. After all, it was impossible to imagine anyone from that arrogant lot ever letting themselves be seen in the post town. That even went for the Saturas house that ruled over the post town. The lord of Genos himself was like some far off presence who lived up in the heavens above.

And this girl is staying in some manor belonging to the duke’s house, while Asuta has gotten to where he can serve his cooking to nobles.

At present, Asuta’s name had spread all throughout Genos. The story was getting around that he served giba cooking to Duke Genos, and that it earned enough approval to be seen as no lesser than cooking from the castle town. As a result, apparently business at the stalls and inns had been booming since he reopened yesterday. With the stalls in particular, they got so much business that the guards ended up getting called.

Still, yesterday Asuta was just the same as always, all fired up thinking about how he needed to meet his customers’ expectations. To a foreigner like Asuta, nobles, folks from the post town, and even the people of the forest’s edge must have all been nothing but fellow human beings.

And even as someone born and raised in the post town, it wasn’t like Yumi couldn’t get how he felt. She wasn’t fond of those self-important nobles, but she felt much the same about bandits and their ilk. At any rate, nobody could help how they were born.

No matter how poor someone might be, there were still good and bad people out there. And that went for the nobles too. It was even true of the people of the forest’s edge, who were called vicious barbarians. Those opinions had only grown all the stronger in Yumi as she strengthened her ties with that last group in particular.

“Anyway...” Yumi started to say, only for the rear door to suddenly open. A moment later, her mother appeared through it carrying a large cloth bundle.

“Oh, my, did I keep our customers waiting? My apologies. Please, go ahead and order whatever you’d like.”

“A-Ah, welcome back. What’s dad up to?”

“Your father is around back handling the firewood. So, your order?” Yumi’s mother repeated with a smile as she sat her large burden behind the reception desk.

With a vague nod, Yumi quickly whispered into Diel’s ear. “Sorry, but could I have you order something? I’ll get chewed out if it looks like I’m bringing people who aren’t even customers into the inn.”

“Ah, my apologies. We’ll be leaving, then. Sorry for interrupting your work.”

“Hey, if you leave now, I’ll still get scolded for it,” Yumi retorted, devising a plan. “Our food’s nothing special, but just grab something to eat while we talk. You could even just get some fruit wine or whatever.”

“If we head back after drinking fruit wine, then my dad will get real angry with Labis,” Diel murmured, prompting the young man guarding her to break out in an even more displeased look.

“If you order me to do so, then I must obey.”

“I won’t order you to do something like that. Anyway, in that case could we get some sort of light snack? Just enough for one would be fine.”

“Right, thanks. Mom, could we get a single order of kimyuus grilled in milk fat over here?”

“Got it!” Yumi’s mother replied as she rolled up her sleeves and disappeared into the kitchen.

As she watched her leave, Diel tilted her head in a way that looked like some sort of small animal.

“Now that I think about it, I’ve been smelling a lot of milk fat lately, even at the stalls alongside the road. Has it become popular in the post town?”

“Actually, I’d say it’s just the fact that you can get it in the post town at all, now that it’s started to become available over the past half month or so. Before then, I didn’t even know it existed,” Yumi explained with a shrug of her shoulders. “Apparently Asuta was behind that too. Thanks to our connections with him, we were able to start handling milk fat and poitan really early.”

“Poitan? You can use that stuff in cooking?” Diel asked, only to hurriedly cover her mouth. “S-Sorry! I wasn’t trying to mock the post town or anything...”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for. Even here in the post town, it wasn’t very long ago that nobody ate poitan. It was only ever sold to the people of the forest’s edge and travelers,” Yumi replied, and then she suddenly thought of something. “By the way, you came all the way to Genos from Jagar, didn’t you? So you must have eaten poitan along the way, right?”

“Yes, of course. It’s possible to carry fuwano flour with you too, but it can be ruined by moisture or get bugs in it. That’s why poitan is always used for traveling. If you boil it with tau oil and sugar, it’s at least not totally inedible.”

“Ooh, tau oil and sugar are pretty hard to get ahold of in the west. Or I guess I should say, in the Genos post town...”

Diel sat there silently, offering no response.

Yumi chuckled. “Hey, you don’t have to get so uncomfortable over every little thing. It’s not your fault you have money, right?” she said, rustling Diel’s short hair.

“Cut it out,” Diel grumbled, shaking her head.

In the meantime, the aroma of milk fat cooking wafted out of the kitchen. And in no time flat, the drunks started raising a fuss from their table, “Hey, that smell sure is making me hungry!”

“That’s the smell of milk fat. Must be nice to have money to burn.”

Yumi turned their way and shot them a smile too.

“If you want to eat delicious food too, then you need to get out there and work. You aren’t going to earn any coins drinking wine in the middle of the day, now are you?”

“Aw, shut it. I don’t take orders from some girl at an inn.”

“If we had any income, we wouldn’t be hanging out in a dingy hole in the wall like this.”

“Oh, is that what you really think? In that case, you should work hard so you can at least afford to eat in a cheap place like this.”

“That’s for sure,” a man laughed back while taking a swig of his fruit wine.

As Diel looked up at her face with bewilderment, Yumi asked back, “What is it?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking it’s a surprise that it doesn’t turn into a fight when you argue with customers like that...”

“The post town has its own way of doing things, and so does each individual shop. If you try to just grin and bear it, you’ll only invite more trouble around here.”

As they had that exchange, Yumi’s mother poked her head out of the kitchen. “It’s all done, so come carry it out.”

“On it.”

As Yumi stepped into the kitchen, her mother leaned in close and whispered, “Hey, who are those two? They’re dressed up almost like nobles, aren’t they?”

“They aren’t nobles. She’s just the daughter of a merchant who does business in the castle town.”

“That’s practically the same thing. You shouldn’t get too involved with inscrutable folks like that, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Yumi replied as she took the plate from her worried mother and returned to the table. “Sorry for the wait. Here’s your kimyuus grilled in milk fat. That’ll be three red coins.”

“Right, thanks,” Diel replied as Labis held out a coin.

Since he had given her a white coin, Yumi had to head over to the reception desk again to make change.

“Now then, eat up before it gets cold. Not that I know if it’ll be to your tastes, though.”

It was the second most expensive dish currently on the menu at The Westerly Wind, after the karon grilled in milk fat.

The dish was prepared by taking kimyuus breast meat pickled in salt and grilling it in milk fat together with stalks of myamuu and thin strips of aria. At first Yumi was concerned about how it would turn out, mixing together two ingredients with powerful aromas like milk fat and myamuu, but when she actually tasted it, it turned out to be surprisingly good. And besides, she tended to be fonder of kimyuus than tough karon leg meat anyway.

The round baked poitan beside it also used karon milk in its batter. The messenger from the house of Saturas had given instructions on how the milk left over after the fat was extracted could best be used, either by adding it to a poitan batter or using it in a soup dish.

The flow of karon milk and poitan flour into the post town was due to the houses of Saturas and Daleim, and apparently was the result of some confrontation with the house of Turan. But regardless of any such hidden machinations, those ingredients had brought about a complete change in the cooking on offer in the post town.

Anyone with the money to spare sought out and enjoyed dishes using milk fat. Since it still wasn’t possible to get fatty karon torso meat or kimyuus with the skin still on it, the addition of milk fat really did have a huge impact on the post town’s cuisine.

Asuta said that even more ingredients may start flowing into the post town, so just what will happen then? Yumi pondered as she watched Diel timidly bring the food to her mouth.

“Well? Don’t worry about flattering us, just go ahead and give your honest impression.”

“Hmm... The smell is nice, but it seems lacking somehow with only the salt for flavoring. I think just adding some tau oil would make it a lot tastier...”

“You folks from Jagar sure do love your tau oil! Well, not that I don’t know how tasty it can be myself...”

On her father’s orders, Yumi had sampled numerous dishes from The Great Southern Tree in order to confirm Asuta’s skill. She had tried out cubed giba meat stew, meat and chatchi stew, and some kind of soup dish, all of which used tau oil. It went without saying that Asuta was highly skilled and the giba meat was delicious, but the tastiness of that tau oil definitely played a role too.

“You try some too, Labis. You’re fine as long as it’s not giba meat, right?”

“No, please do not hold back on my account.”

“Huh?! If I eat it all myself, my stomach will get all full and I won’t be able to eat dinner. Wouldn’t that be rude toward the folks from the manor?”

After that complaint from Diel, Labis reluctantly picked up a spoon. He scooped up a bit of poitan, kimyuus meat, and aria, then bit down with his sturdy-looking teeth.

“Well? Any chance I could hear your impression too?”

“It isn’t bad at all... However, the flavor is a bit lacking with just the salt, and this poitan seems dry and hard to get down.”

“Ah, should we have added gigo to the poitan after all? That should make them the same as the ones Asuta uses in his stalls.”

It would make the ingredient costs a bit pricier, but that really might have been the way to go. Although, they were already working out the price of adding new ingredients in the form of karon milk and poitan flour.

It was possible to get poitan for cheaper than fuwano, but on the other hand you could only get a little bit of milk fat out of milk. And apparently, Yumi’s parents were concerned with how to raise the quality of their cooking without also lowering their profits.

Still, Yumi figured those concerns would only last for a few more days.

“The truth is, there’s a plan in place to start offering giba cooking here too.”

“Huh?” Diel exclaimed in shock, turning Yumi’s way.

“The issue had already been raised more than a month ago. But thanks to those nobles, it ended up getting pushed back a whole bunch. Still, Asuta needs to break through my old man’s hard head first, but I figure there’s no need to worry about that, with his skills.”

“I see... I’m glad to hear it.”

With a rather lonesome expression, Diel gave a sigh.

Figuring that was really unfitting for her, Yumi once again rustled the girl’s hair.

“I want to see Asuta trying harder than ever before, with us as his business partner. And he’s been saying he wants to purchase a cooking tool, so can’t you go find out what he’s after?”

“B-But they sell cooking tools in the post town too, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but only cheap stuff. When he bought that meat-cutting knife from you, he looked real satisfied, didn’t he?”

“I mean, I’d be glad if I could sell Asuta something too, but still...” Diel replied, her eyes listlessly drooping as she fixed her disheveled hair with both hands.

And then, Yumi suddenly brought her face in close. “You know, you’re cute when you’re acting all weak and helpless, but it’ll turn unpleasant if you push it too far.”

“I-I’m not cute or anything to begin with.”

“Listen, just go to Asuta directly and talk things through with him. You’ll definitely regret it if you have to head back to Jagar with things like this, right?”

Diel pursed her lips as she stared right back at Yumi. The girl’s eyes shone a beautiful green like genuine jade.

“All right... I’ll try talking to Asuta.”

“Ah, so you finally worked up the courage?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to see Asuta because I was afraid of him looking coldly at me...but that’s all the more reason I need to apologize to him properly rather than running away.”

At that, Diel broke out in the first smile she had shone since entering the shop. It was as if the sun had finally broken through a cloudy sky. Yumi really did adore that smile of hers.

“I’ve finally made up my mind. Thanks, Yumi.”

“No problem. It really wasn’t all that big of a deal to begin with, right?” Yumi replied with an awkward laugh.

“Yeah,” Diel enthusiastically nodded back. “Okay, I’ll probably stop by again three days from now. And I’ll make sure to drop by the stalls then, so could you let Asuta know?”

“Huh? Why not settle things today?”

“I-I just couldn’t do it today. But I’ll get my feelings in order by then!”

“Hmm?” Yumi grinned.

It was just then that a group passed through the front door.

“Um, is this The Westerly Wind?”

Diel turned and looked in shock.

There were three people standing there. One was a tall blond man, another was a boy with flaxen hair, and the third was a boy whose hair was black. Out of that group, the black-haired boy looked every bit as shocked as Diel.

“Diel?! What are you doing in a place like this?”

“She came here to see you of course, Asuta. I had her sample some of our cooking until you were done with work,” Yumi answered with a smile.

Her slender shoulders trembling, Diel’s face went bright red as she shouted, “You tricked me!”

“I wasn’t particularly trying to trick you or anything. But Asuta’s got to deal with my dad after this, so go ahead and settle things first,” Yumi said, patting the angry southerner girl on the head. As she did so, she shot Asuta smile and said, “Welcome to The Westerly Wind, Asuta.”