4
The next several days were spent intently studying cooking methods for giba meat, all for the purpose of defeating Donda Ruu! Well, that probably makes it sound like I was up grilling day and night without any rest, but naturally that wasn’t the case.
That said, at the forest’s edge you needed to work to eat, and on top of my usual daily work, I needed to push myself even harder to gain enough surplus supplies to experiment.
Honestly, the key first step was securing firewood. Without that, I couldn’t cook anything. Plus, I wanted to use this chance to thoroughly experiment with regulating the temperature of the stove. Well, I mean, it would take years to actually master it for real, as this wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you could take lightly.
The first issue I faced was that the Fa house only had one stove, and I wasn’t able to cook anywhere where I didn’t face such severe restrictions. When I made the giba soup I heated it with a strong flame at first, then added less firewood for the back half. That was about the best I could manage when it came to regulating the flame, after all. However, the Ruu house had a number of stoves. With that, it was possible to more precisely manage the heating process by moving the pot from one to another while cooking. That was what had allowed me to make full sized hamburgers rather than miniburgers for the dinner at the Ruu house. But this method of maintaining a low flame was proving pretty tricky.
The whole process was completely different than using a frying pan over a gas stove. I mean, the shapes of the kindling were all irregular to start with, so I ultimately had to measure by eye. Plus the metal pots used by the people of the forest’s edge were way thicker than frying pans, so they heated up slow and seriously retained heat. That difference was pretty tricky to get a handle on, too.
Last night I had kept things at a level where it at least wouldn’t burn, so I didn’t end up with a complete failure, but I couldn’t help but worry that the flame was too low and let some of the meat juices escape. And I couldn’t have an audience with Donda Ruu while I was still bothered by such concerns.
And so, my first barrier to overcome was regulating a low flame.
How much kindling would result in how much flame, and how would that correlate to the overall temperature? I adjusted the amount of firewood, looked at the size of the flames, checked the smoke, and grasped the overall state of the cooked meat. This was a battle of perseverance, and also the start of a long journey with no end in sight.
At any rate, I devoted my efforts to burning kindling and cooking meat.
It was actually getting real pungent inside the house, which was becoming an issue. It really made me jealous of the Ruu house with their outdoor stoves, but there was no point to envying the rich... Anyway, I just sat there staring at my hand like I was the poet Takuboku Ishikawa or something, but there was someone else here who wasn’t so easily satisfied. Naturally, that was my benefactor and one and only roommate, Ai Fa.
On the evening of the day that we returned from the Ruu house, Ai Fa came from her hunt in the forest and saw the disastrous sight of the room, filled with the smell of fat and smoke, and yelled, “What in the world have you been up to?!”
I mumbled back that it was all essential research for beating that giba of an old man, and tried my hardest to look charming and win over my benefactor, only to be brushed off with, “What are you, an idiot?” Then, as she twirled her blonde hair, Ai Fa added, “In that case, we should just make a stove outside.”
That was a serious revelation.
There weren’t any carpenters or architects or interior designers at the forest’s edge. This house and everything inside were handmade by people who had lived here.
“If you don’t have a stove, you’ll starve and die. I at least know how to make one of those.”
But still, Ai Fa had lost her father two years ago, when she was still 15. Could someone from another world like me have really ever expected that she would be so knowledgeable, when she had been cut off from everyone else ever since? Still, I can’t exactly imagine it was the standard amongst the people of the forest’s edge to learn how to make a stove at the age of 15. It was as if Ai Fa’s father had foreseen his own death and hurried to impart all of his knowledge on his daughter. I couldn’t exactly look into that subject further, though, and I didn’t feel like doing so regardless.
Instead, I just praised Ai Fa with a, “You really are amazing,” and felt blessed that he had done so.
◇
And so, the day after we returned from the Ruu house, Ai Fa and I worked on building a stove.
This turned out to be some seriously heavy labor too, not that I had expected anything else. I picked out rocks of an appropriate size and transported them back with a pulling board, then piled them all up, which made for a battle of endurance and tenacity.
We set it up in the rear of the Fa house.
It was convenient that people couldn’t see me throwing kindling into the stove constantly while the sun was high in the sky, at least while passing by the front of the house. Plus, there was a nice tree behind the house already that was the right height to protect our new stove from sudden squalls. I figured eventually I’d use that as a base to create a proper roof around it.
But for now, I just kept on transporting rocks, and then piling them up.
It needed to be a round little truncated cone, like a small mountain, and then there had to be a hole in both the top and front and a hollowed out inside, so naturally just piling them up wouldn’t get the job done. What connected the rocks together was “clay” that Ai Fa brought back from the forest.
She gathered up grey clusters of rock that could only be found in a specific area, smashed them to bits, and then dissolved them in water. We carefully kneaded that gooey, sticky substance in the gaps between the rocks, got it more or less into shape, and then tried burning up some kindling. It wasn’t airtight enough, so we kneaded in some more clay in the places where it cracked and crumbled.
Once we did that five or six times the smoke stopped leaking out, so Ai Fa mixed a bit of fine sand in with the clay, and then we smeared it thoroughly all over both the inside and outside.
Then we just needed to heat up the flame all the way to harden the clay, finishing it off.
“Phew! I’m dripping with sweat! That ended up taking half a day!”
The sun was approaching the western horizon, and the white smoke of dinner being cooked had long since started rising from all around us.
“...I’m hungry, Asuta,” Ai Fa said, seated on the ground yet showing no signs of exhaustion.
“Right. Well, since we went through all this trouble, why don’t I cook on this stove tonight? Which do you want, soup or hamburgers?”
“Hamburgers,” Ai Fa immediately replied while still seated on the ground, causing me to turn and look at her. “What?” she shot back with a frightening glare.
“No, I was just thinking that you answered really quickly. But you know, we had hamburgers last night too, so now it’s been four nights in a row. Is that really alright?”
“......It’s alright.”
Hey, you don’t need to leave such a pause there...
Well, I made sure the poitan were baking as we worked, so I didn’t really care what we had for the main dish. It would take a bit of time to grind up the meat, but compared to the gratitude I felt towards Ai Fa for spending half a day helping me make this stove, it was a cheap price to pay.
As that thought passed through my mind, Ai Fa called out to me again with an “Asuta.”
“What is it, Ai Fa?”
“The hamburgers we had at the Ruu house the day before yesterday were big.”
“Yeah. Back where I came from, that was the usual size.”
“...Why are the hamburgers you make here small?”
“Oh, I never said? You need to use both strong and weak flames when making them that size. If you just use strong flames then the surface will get burned, and if you only use weak flames then it won’t cook much and the flavor will seep out. That’s why I had to cook them in that cute, small little size.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.”
“Asuta.”
“What is it, Ai Fa?”
“...Now the Fa house has two stoves.”
“Yeah. I’m really glad. But it’d be tough to carry a pot between them, with one being on the outside while the other is inside. It might be difficult to use them both for cooking at the same time...”
But if I could get down the skill of maintaining a low flame, then I could tackle that challenge head on. Just as I was thinking what a problem that would be, though, I saw Ai Fa’s eyes positively gleaming in the twilight.
And so, on the next day, we ended up building a second outdoor stove. I plopped down on the ground with all my might in front of the twin fixtures.
“Phew! I’m dripping with sweat! It’s just way too rough for me, building stoves two days in a row! My arms are done for! I don’t even know if I’ll be able to make dinner like this...” I whined while collapsed on the ground, only to spy Ai Fa staring at me with a seriously troubled look in her eyes. “No, I’ll make it. I will. I’ll make you nice big hamburgers! Don’t cry, alright...?”
“Who are you saying is gonna cry?!”
“Then it’s no problem... Anyway, now I can finally start experimenting properly from tomorrow on. Thanks, Ai Fa.”
“Hmph.”
“Now that I think of it, I’d like to start sampling some anti-Donda Ruu dishes tomorrow. Guess we better get our fill of hamburgers for the time being tonight, huh?”
“Get our fill...”
“No, I mean, if you want to eat some, I can make them whenever... Hey, don’t cry, okay?”
“Who are you saying is gonna cry?!”
“Hmm... You really do like hamburgers, don’t you? You know, if you eat nothing but hamburgers every day, it might not quite turn out like Jiza Ruu said, but your teeth really may end up losing strength...”
Something about that was catching my attention. Teeth, losing strength...? Regressing...? But what?
“I see...” I muttered, thinking as I massaged the area between my brows. “That’s certainly true, yeah...”
“What is it, Asuta?” Ai Fa asked, drawing her face in closer with a serious expression. Her golden hair was clinging just a bit to her sweaty cheek, and... it was kinda sexy, somehow.
“N-Nothing! I just reconfirmed that I was taking the right approach with this. My goal is a food with more of a chewy texture, yet every bit as tasty as the hamburgers, so look forward to it!” As my mental feelers darted here and there, I said, “Now that I think of it...” and voiced a question I’d had for a while. “Hey, Ai Fa. I really appreciate you taking two days to help me make these stoves, but are you alright on your hunting? You haven’t hunted one down in almost 10 days now, right?”
“It’s no real issue. We got ahold of an unexpected bounty at the Ruu house, after all,” Ai Fa said, wrapping her finger around the necklace dangling in front of her chest. Just like me, she had been given eight tusks and horns. And since she already had a good number before that, she went ahead and stowed the excess inside the inner pockets of her cloak, apparently.
“Getting eight means it’s like hunting two giba, or 20 meals worth of poitan and aria, huh? That was a pretty exceptional reward for just manning the stove once.”
“It was a proper reward, at least for you,” Ai Fa muttered as the flames in the stove sputtered. “And besides, no matter how much I may walk around the forest, there are simply times where I cannot hunt one down. The forest is endlessly wide, but the areas we can venture into are extremely limited. After all, we can only head far enough to allow us to return home that same day.”
“Hmm... That makes sense.”
“But if we hunt down the giba around the settlement, then the fruits and small animals they love to eat multiply, and giba hiding further out will move their dwelling nearer to have at them. And then, we can hunt as much as we please.”
“I see. Sounds like you’ve got a proper cycle going there.”
But now that she’d picked up a freeloader, Ai Fa’s burden had doubled, so I didn’t think it was all that simple. Before, to meet the minimum for food she needed to hunt one every 10 days, but now that she had two mouths to feed, it was down to five. I prayed in my heart that period of abundance would arrive before Ai Fa’s stores were exhausted.
Then, the next day, Ai Fa came back with a large set of horns and tusks.
“A giba got trapped in the pitfall that you fell in,” she said.
The day after that, she came back with another massive set.
“Today’s was a big one. My blade almost snapped while facing it.”
Fighting a giba was a life or death struggle. Honestly, I felt embarrassed having prayed for that “bumper crop” to come...
And then, the following day... Amazingly, Ai Fa came home carrying a young 50 kilo giba all by herself.
“I let out the blood just like you said. It kept on moving for a long while as it bled out, so I think it likely went well.”
As I burned kindling in the outdoor stoves, Ai Fa practically collapsed beside me. Her body was positively coated in sweat and dirt, and she was breathing in a pained, rough manner. That was only natural, though. Even if it was on the small side for a giba, it was still in the 50 kilo range. That couldn’t have been all that different from what Ai Fa weighed herself.
“A-Are you alright? You really went and did something crazy there...”
“It’s nothing... Give me water.”
I hurried into the house and scooped up a ladle-full of water. I realized that Ai Fa’s arm was trembling when she tried to take it, so I brought it gently to her mouth instead. Ai Fa gulped it down in one go, gave a big sigh, and collapsed on the ground.
Her well-proportioned chest was violently heaving up and down, making me question where I should even be looking. So instead, I glanced over at the giba by her side. It was the corpse of a giba, with its head and throat stained with blood, and its sad little eyes closed shut. Its body was small, but it was round and looked like it probably had plenty of fat. Its horns were bigger than its tusks, so it was probably a young male giba.
“We still have nearly half the meat left, right? You didn’t need to push yourself so hard...” I said, only for Ai Fa to shoot me a displeased look while remaining sprawled out.
“What are you saying? In five more days, that meat will start to go bad.”
“Yeah. But in that case, you could’ve done the bloodletting in the forest and just brought back the legs...”
“You’re the one who’s always complaining about how it’s a waste to throw away the giba’s torso, aren’t you?” Ai Fa stated, sounding disgruntled. Her eyes were shut, and she was still breathing a bit heavily. “Why are you finding fault with me? Are you saying my work was unnecessary?”
“Not at all! I’m grateful... Thank you, Ai Fa.”
Ai Fa opened her eyes and glanced over at me.
“If you’re grateful, then show it through your actions.”
“H-Huh? How do you want me to show it, then?”
Ai Fa sluggishly sat up, pouted a bit, and looked at me with upturned eyes.
“...I want to eat hamburgers tonight.”
It had only been two days since I asked to start experimenting, but she was already showing withdrawal symptoms, huh?
I gave a big nod.
“Got it! I’ll get on it right after I get this guy prepared! Just make space in your stomach and wait!”
Ai Fa nodded back, wearing a bit of an odd expression on her face. It was really unnatural, like she was desperately holding back a smile.
Figuring there was no way I could stop myself from getting fired up after seeing that, I couldn’t help but look up into the sky and gave a big sigh.
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