2
The following day ended up being even more hectic than the last one.
First, since we didn’t know how many days we would be leaving the house empty, we needed to transfer all of the ingredients in our pantry. Though with that said, we didn’t have many excess vegetables since I headed into town pretty much every single day, and herbs and seasonings weren’t all that bulky. The real hassle came from the giba meat.
In order to prevent it from spoiling, giba meat was pickled in pico leaves. That way it would last for half a month, but the pico leaves had to be stirred once a day because they absorbed moisture over time, so they couldn’t just be left to sit.
Even moving all the meat to the midway point of the Ruu house’s pantry took quite a bit of effort, since we were talking about hundreds of kilos worth. We ended up packing all the leather bags, wooden boxes, and cloth bundles we had in the Fa house full of pico leaves and loading them into the wagon. That alone involved some serious doing.
On top of that, even though it was the Ruu clan’s day to prepare food for the inns, we still needed to use this time to do the cooking for the stalls. And since we had to prepare even more giba manju and poitan wraps than usual for today, there wasn’t time for even a single moment’s rest.
The women who lived in the area, Toor Deen and Lem Dom foremost among them, helped us out with that part of the job. And starting tomorrow, I would be asking the Sauti women to assist. Moga Sauti had already given his permission on that front, but I didn’t know how skilled those women would be at cooking, so that remained something I had to be worried about.
While we were busy with that, Ai Fa headed into the forest. Since the house would be empty, there was no need to gather firewood. Instead, she was trekking deep into the forest to gather a large amount of giba summoning fruit.
Somehow or another we managed to get that all done, and afterward we loaded up our spare clothing, daily necessities, and cooking utensils into the wagon, then headed out from the Fa house even earlier than usual. Today, not just Toor Deen but also Ai Fa and Lem Dom were along for the trip to the Ruu settlement.
After dropping off our giba meat and excess luggage, we joined up with Reina Ruu’s group and finally headed for the post town. Once we got there, we were going to have something extra to do today: expanding the outdoor restaurant.
Reina Ruu’s group delivered the meals and fresh meat for the four inns, while we went to pick up the goods ordered from the carpentry shop and craftsmen. That meant two tables, twenty-two log chairs, the framework for a canopy, a leather tarp, and twenty sets of wooden plates and spoons.
Since we had ordered so many chairs, I had been concerned about whether it was really possible to finish them in a single day, but the carpentry shop’s owner powered through and got the job done. The chairs alone were enough to fill the wagon, so we ended up having to take two trips to carry everything.
After that, we picked up the stalls from The Kimyuus’s Tail and once again headed for our assigned spaces.
The outdoor restaurant surrounded by the rope was there waiting for us, looking just the same as yesterday. There was no time for getting emotional today, though, so we went ahead and got set up. We set out the new seating in the freshly rented space, put up the canopy, and got to work preparing the food. By the time we were wrapping all that up, we had even more customers gathering in front of the place than yesterday.
Before long, it would be the upper sixth hour. That was around when Ai Fa, Donda Ruu, and all the others would be heading for the Sauti settlement, and it was also when we opened for business.
For today, the Ruu had prepared one and a half times as much giba hot pot stew as yesterday, or 120 meals. For the other dishes, we added twenty more meals for the time being, bringing the giba manju up to 120 and the poitan wraps to 140. However, we kept the Ruu clan’s myamuu giba at eighty and our special dish, the giba cutlet sandwich, at thirty, since they cost a bit more.
Aside from those last two, most of our dishes were often ordered together with another one, which made it difficult to determine how much more of them we should make. And that went even more so for the giba hot pot stew, as a lot of the customers ordered the half-size serving.
Still, it wasn’t difficult to measure the shift in overall sales. If everything sold out today, then the Fa clan’s profits would go from 480 red coins to 550, and the Ruu clan’s would jump up from 480 to 600.
With the two clans put together, that would mean going from 960 coins up to 1150... And for a rough estimate with the unit price set at three red coins, that meant going from 320 customers to 383.
That would mean a roughly twenty percent increase in the number of customers we were attracting. Considering we were talking about growth happening over the course of just two days, that really was quite the dramatic rise. The impact of the outdoor restaurant had been tremendous.
“At this rate, we might actually sell out of meals. I’ve never seen this many customers crowding around before,” Toor Deen said while cooking up the meat for the poitan wraps. She had had a gloomy expression on her face earlier in the morning out of concern for the Sauti clan, but now that she was working she looked just as lively as always. And since the Deen and Sudra clans had both given their permission, all of the chefs working here in the post town today would also be staying at the Sauti settlement. “The Ruu clan doesn’t seem to be having any issues either. In fact, I could see even a hundred and twenty servings of the hot pot stew still being too little.”
Regardless, their business seemed to be running smoothly.
They had fifty sets of tableware to go alongside the forty-two seats. That would give them some leeway in the collection and washing process, and there were always just two or three customers lined up in front of the stall now.
Though the seating was packed tight yesterday, there was now some latitude on that front too, after expanding to five spaces and seven tables. Even after upping the number of seats per table from four to six, the space still looked a lot more open. And even though it was Reina and Rimee Ruu’s first time with all this, they were still carrying out their work at a brisk pace.
“Hey, what’s going on here? We paid the same amount, but he got way more, didn’t he?” one of the customers complained.
When I looked around in surprise, I saw two westerner men with wicked-looking faces standing in front of the giba hot pot stew stall. They were the sort of ruffians that were a familiar sight around the Genos post town.
Rimee Ruu was standing behind the stall and dealing with them. The young girl had a log to stand on in order to make up for the height difference, and she was smiling away while holding up a metal ladle.
“That can’t be true. It just looks like less because the shapes of the plates are different! But they both have the same amount in them, so don’t worry about any of that!”
“Really? No matter how I look at it, I’ve got less.”
“I’m telling you, there’s no need to worry. We ordered those plates from a number of shops, so they all have different shapes. But we use two scoops of this ladle thing here for one meal, and one scoop for a half size, so there really isn’t any difference in how much you get,” Rimee Ruu said, holding out the ladle toward the men. “Reina bought this metal ladle to measure out the amounts exactly while we’re cooking! After all, with a wooden ladle, the shape can change a bit as it gets wetter or drier, so you can’t really measure precisely with one of those!”
“O-Oh, really?”
“Yup! So it’s definitely fine! But if you’re that concerned, should I swap it out for another plate?”
“Nah, it’s fine. This guy here is just being embarrassing, you know,” said the other man who had remained silent the whole time, slapping his buddy’s robust shoulder. “If you’ve got a problem with it, you can trade with me. But don’t go troubling such a fine little lady.”
“Aw, shut it,” the first man replied with a frown, and then he scratched his head and said, “Sorry about that,” to Rimee Ruu.
“No worries, and thanks for the purchase. Come back again sometime, okay?”
As Rimee Ruu saw them off with a smile fixed to her face the whole time, the two men disappeared under the canopy.
Toor Deen had been leaning forward and watching alongside me, and she said in admiration, “That was amazing... I’m so timid that if someone complained to me like that, I probably wouldn’t be able to explain things properly.”
“You think? Well, I suppose your personality’s on the delicate side as far as women of the forest’s edge go,” I replied, recalling how at The Ramam Droplet back in Dabagg, Toor Deen had been trembling beside Myme after Ai Fa beat down those bandits. As she stared back at me now, she had a bit of a sad look in her eyes.
“I hardly ever even came to the post town before I started helping out with your work... After all, we didn’t need to, back at the Suun settlement...”
“Ah,” I replied, suddenly at a loss for how to respond.
Though the members of the main house had purchased fruit wine and whatever else they pleased, such luxury was not permitted for the branch houses, who just had to fill their stomachs with the fruits of the forest and the occasional giba they caught. There really wouldn’t have been much reason for them to come to town.
As I was thinking about that, Yamiru Lea reached out from the neighboring stall and gave Toor Deen a little poke in the head.
“Toor Deen, if you keep making that pitiful expression, you’ll drag my mood down with you.”
“Ah, s-sorry!”
“I wasn’t seeking an apology, but rather telling you to stop worrying over crimes that have already been forgiven,” Yamiru Lea chided, then she turned back to the customer who had just arrived.
As Toor Deen dejectedly shrugged her shoulders, I shot her a smile.
“It’s just as Yamiru Lea said. The path you all need to take is living properly as people of the forest’s edge, right? And you’re working your hardest day after day now, so I don’t see any need to worry about the past.”
“Right...” Toor Deen nodded back, adding some fresh meat to the tray.
Time kept on passing by like that, and eventually Yun Sudra and Ama Min Rutim showed up. I had finished my rotation at that point, so I had a bit of time to spare. I went ahead and walked over to the outdoor restaurant.
“How are things looking over here, Reina Ruu?”
“Ah, Asuta. Things seem to be going even more smoothly than expected. We have plenty of seating and plates, so it seems we haven’t been struggling as much as everyone did yesterday,” the second Ruu daughter replied with a truly satisfied smile. Since there were more than twice as many seats as the day before, things were even livelier. Even so, it didn’t seem like we were going to face any sudden commotions springing up.
“And I’m really getting a deep sense of satisfaction from doing this. Even though these townsfolk are not our brethren, seeing them so happy eating our dishes makes me want to try harder still to bring them greater joy... I doubt that I could ever feel any other way about it.”
“I see. Then it really was worth it to open this place up.”
“Yes,” Reina Ruu said with a smile.
But then, suddenly, her blue eyes took on a dubious look. At the same time, I sensed someone and turned around to see who it was, only to find a young man in a leather cloak holding a wooden plate with a sulky look on his face.
It was the young chef Roy from the castle town, dressed like a traveler to avoid being spotted by ruffians.
“This dish wasn’t made by Asuta, just you women of the forest’s edge, right?” Roy said before anything else, without so much as a greeting. “Let me see just how much skill you all possess.”
Reina Ruu didn’t say a word and just politely pointed toward the seating. As she watched Roy walking over there, she whispered into my ear, “What was that chef’s name, Asuta? I’ve forgotten again.”
“Huh? It’s Roy. I think that’s the third time you’ve been introduced now...”
“That’s true. I’m sorry for troubling you.”
As I thought to myself how sad that was, I turned my gaze to watch Roy.
He had ordered a full portion and hadn’t gotten any other dishes to go with it, so his plate was filled with plenty of giba hot pot stew. Since the hood on his cloak was up, it was difficult to track his expressions as he slurped the soup. But his spoon never stopped moving as he steadily ate the dish.
Guess there’s no point in me watching him.
I could just ask Reina Ruu what his impressions were later. With that thought in mind, I went to return to my own stall. However, before I could go, Roy turned my way.
“Hey...did you really have nothing to do with the making of this dish?” he asked me.
“No, I didn’t,” I replied with a shake of my head.
At that, Roy bit his lip and glared at the plate, which was still around eighty percent full.
“And you women didn’t receive instructions from Mikel either, did you?”
“We didn’t. All we learned from him was how to smoke meat and make dried milk.”
Roy’s hand gripping his spoon started trembling.
As Reina Ruu looked at him, she tilted her head a bit. “What is it that you’ve been so fixated on? My comrade Sheera Ruu and I developed this dish, but Asuta was the one who taught us how to properly use tau oil and sugar in the first place. And he in turn learned those techniques from his father, from what I’m told. I believe it’s rather hard for people to pull anything off with nothing but their own strength.”
“I get that. I do...”
“Then why won’t you ask Mikel to teach you? Is the fact that you’re a chef in the castle town while he is no longer a chef at all causing your pride to get in the way for some reason?”
“That isn’t it. I just...” Roy started to say something, but then he held his tongue.
Reina Ruu crossed her arms in front of her chest in a rather uncharacteristic manner, then sighed and said, “I just don’t understand you. If something is bothering you, then shouldn’t you be doing everything you can to resolve it?”
Roy offered no response to that, instead starting to chow down on the rest of his meal at an incredible speed. I worried the soup might have been too hot since it was still giving off steam, but in less than a minute he had finished it off and rose from his seat.
“It seems that Myme girl is planning to open a stall in the violet month,” Reina Ruu called out, but Roy left without responding to that as well. With yet another sigh, she started washing the empty plate with water from the barrel.
“When I saw him acting so unsure of himself like that, I couldn’t help but try to offer him some advice, even if it was pointless,” Reina Ruu said before I could speak up. “Am I really that much of a meddler? If I am, I can’t say I like that about myself...”
“No, I don’t think it has anything to do with being a meddler,” I replied. That said, I didn’t know what had made her speak up either. Perhaps she had seen herself in how Roy was worrying about cooking. As I prayed that Roy would escape from his slump as soon as possible, I went ahead and got back to my own work.
We finished up business for the day without any other incidents of note.
If nothing else, though, I would say that the booming success we had was certainly noteworthy. Once again the giba hot pot stew had sold out ahead of schedule, and the other dishes, including the myamuu giba, were all gone before closing time.
“Still, I’d say that the novelty definitely played a part. At least nobody complained about us selling out so fast, but I’d like to keep the number of our meals at the same amount for tomorrow as well,” Reina Ruu stated.
I didn’t have any objections, but someone else did have a comment: Tsuvai of all people.
“But shouldn’t we be looking at our menu while we have the leeway to do so? We may be fine for now, but I think we should consider selling another soup dish.”
“Another soup dish?”
“Yeah, that’s right. We’re preparing 120 of this dish, but most of the customers order the half size, don’t they? So over two hundred people are eating it,” Tsuvai said with an unusually serious look in her eyes. “If that many people eat the same exact dish day in and day out, they’ll get sick of it sooner than the other dishes, right? Even more so once the novelty wears off.”
I felt seriously impressed, as I was thinking the exact same thing. If I had to give my assessment, I’d say the giba hot pot stew was currently being treated as a side dish, so even if the customers changed the dish they were pairing it with, that would still mean eating the same giba hot pot stew every single day.
“Right. Thinking about it, maybe we’ve been avoiding people getting sick of the dishes on offer at the inns because we’ve been alternating them. And it’s benefited us that there have been different groups of southerners and easterners coming by every few days or weeks.” Seeing how it didn’t seem to have clicked for Reina Ruu and the others yet, I expanded on my explanation a bit. “But at the stalls we get a lot of westerners who live here in Genos. They probably don’t want to keep on eating the same exact thing for a month or two straight. So with that in mind, they could end up tiring of it even quicker than the giba burgers or myamuu giba.”
“Then should we do as Tsuvai said and prepare another soup dish to alternate with it daily?”
“Yeah. If you can come up with something just as good as the giba hot pot stew, I don’t think we’ll hear any customers complaining. At the very least, there shouldn’t be any harm in doing things that way.”
Even though Tsuvai was the one who had objected to setting up the outdoor restaurant yesterday, just one day later she had already found a new means of earning coins. It certainly was reassuring to see.
“Right... And at this rate, it’ll eventually be difficult to prepare enough innards, so it may be good to come up with new soup dishes using ordinary meat next.”
As we continued our productive discussion, we finished cleaning up and headed back toward the forest’s edge.
Next came preparing to head to the Sauti settlement.
We had determined that each day our path should take us through the Ruu settlement along the way. There were a number of reasons for that, but foremost was the fact that the Sauti clan made use of that route whenever they needed to buy something in town regardless. In other words, it was the shortest way between the Sauti settlement and the post town.
As for trying to head directly from the Sauti settlement to the post town, apparently that would require exiting the forest’s edge to the south and then going farther out to the stone highway so they could follow it north. The route would take four hours on foot, or eighty minutes by totos wagon. But by staying within the forest’s edge and heading north to the Ruu clan first, that became two hours and forty minutes by foot, or a bit over fifty minutes by wagon.
Before they had totos or wagons, the Sauti clan hardly ever ventured into the post town, instead purchasing what they needed from the farm village to the south of the forest’s edge. But after getting ahold of a totos, they’d searched for the shortest route to the post town, and ended up settling on the one we were using now.
With that long preface out of the way, we returned from the post town to the Ruu clan settlement, loaded up the luggage we needed, and a few people from the Ruu clan’s side of the business swapped out, after which we headed for the Sauti settlement.
Since Sheera and Vina Ruu would be on stall duty next, they swapped places with Reina and Rimee Ruu, hopping into the wagon. The main prep work for business tomorrow would be handled by the group remaining at the Ruu settlement, so neither side really had a heavier or lighter load.
Until this whole commotion was settled, the Ruu clan would continue to prepare the food for the inns everyday. After all, it would have been a bit much for the Fa clan to handle without the aid of the Fou or Ran clans.
After around forty minutes of travel from the Ruu settlement by wagon, we arrived at the Sauti settlement. Since there was just one road between them, there hadn’t been any worry of getting lost. And because the Sauti settlement was all the way to the south, there was also no mistaking it for anywhere else. If you just kept going south down the path through the forest’s edge, you would eventually arrive there in the end.
“Thank you for coming, fellow comrades of the forest’s edge... Welcome to the Sauti settlement,” the elder Moga Sauti greeted us.
After hopping down from the driver’s seat, I gave him a bow.
“We’ll be in your care for the time being. Did the hunters head out into the forest on schedule?”
“Indeed. They devised a detailed plan and are currently out setting traps. As long as they aren’t attacked partway through, they hope to start confronting the lord of the forest seriously beginning tomorrow.”
There was a strange quiet hanging over the Sauti settlement. It was a big, wide place, in every way a match for the Ruu and Suun settlements.
“This settlement was built not only by the Sauti, but also the Vela clan that has long followed us. There are nineteen members of the Sauti and fourteen of the Vela, making thirty-three of our people living here in total.”
“I see. And there are around sixty people under the Sauti altogether, from what I’ve been told.”
“Indeed. In these past few months, several children have reached the age of five, bringing our total to sixty-eight at present.” As I recalled, the custom was not to include children under five years of age in such counts. “There are twenty-three hunters among them, but as a result of this incident two of them now lack the strength needed to carry on in that task. And the way things are going, we Sauti are not finished with suffering losses.”
“So from now on you’ll have twenty-one hunters needing to hunt enough giba to feed sixty-eight, right?”
That seemed to be a much lower ratio of hunters to mouths to feed compared to the Ruu clan. The Sauti must have had a lot of women, or perhaps children and old folks.
“Between the Sauti and Vela, we have fourteen women. We would like to have half of them help prepare dinner. Will that be enough?”
“That shouldn’t be any problem. I was thinking we’d start with our preparations for business tomorrow, and then get to work on dinner after.”
“Well then, allow me to lead you to the Sauti kitchen.”
As Moga Sauti led us over to the main Sauti house, I ran some calculations in my head. The Sauti and Vela together had thirty-three people. Then there were eleven hunters who had come to help, and us eight chefs. That would mean we would need to prepare enough dinner for fifty-two in total. That number was no problem for the eight of us just by ourselves, so it wouldn’t be difficult to do our work while also instructing the Sauti women. After thinking all that through, I turned toward Sheera Ruu as she led Ruuruu by the reins.
“By the way, how much has Mida been eating lately? I think I heard that he’s gone from enough for ten people to just five.”
“Yes, I believe he eats around enough for five now. After all, he is quite large.”
In that case, I would add enough for four more people, bringing us to fifty-six in total. And considering the hearty appetites of the Ruu clan, it would probably be good to just go ahead and bump that up to sixty.
At that point, I asked Moga Sauti, “Um, how many children under the age of five do you have who eat normal meals? And how many in the Sauti and Vela clans are injured enough to have trouble eating normally?”
“There are four young children who have been weaned off milk, and three men who are injured enough to only be able to drink soup.”
Then, setting the children at half a normal serving, that would make for two more, and the injured folks would need a different meal, taking three off. I decided to set my plans at roughly enough for sixty people.
Food to cheer up everyone in the Sauti...and food to give the hunters strength, huh?
That said, there wasn’t really a need to get hung up on making anything that special. The Fa and Ruu clans made use of the ingredients flowing out of the castle town, and that alone was enough to feel special here at the forest’s edge. I would have to check on the condition of the injured folks later, but aside from that, we simply had to work diligently at cooking, just as always.
This is my first time cooking for another clan beside the Ruu or Rutim, outside of banquets.
These circumstances most definitely weren’t anything to celebrate, but it still felt positive to me that we were given a chance to help the Sauti, with whom we hadn’t been able to form deep ties as of yet.
And so, our several days of staying at the Sauti settlement finally got started.
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