Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 2 - Chapter 3.3

3

“Um, you see, I’m really sorry about the other day. I swear I didn’t see any of you in the nude, but I apologize from the depths of my heart for causing you such distress.”

I had recovered from the blow to my head about a minute afterwards, and then bowed my head deeply to the women of the Ruu clan and offered that apology. Reina, Lala, and Rimee stood in order of age across from me, wearing a variety of expressions.

Reina Ruu looked embarrassed.

Lala Ruu was clearly mad.

And Rimee Ruu wore a slightly bashful smile.

Regardless of the expressions on their faces, though, they were all beet red.

Ai Fa was one thing, but I really hadn’t seen any of them, so why’d I have to be made to feel so guilty over this? It definitely felt more than a little unreasonable, but well, I guess the crime of disturbing such young ladies’ hearts was rather serious. Plus it was true that I was a big old careless idiot, so I just went ahead and bowed.

“U-Um, please don’t worry about it! Jiza already explained everything to us. It was all because of Ludo’s prank, right?” said Reina Ruu, offering me a lifeline despite the fact that her face was the reddest of all, which made me feel even more pathetic.

“Hmph! Jiza’s too soft! We should’ve gouged out the bastard’s eyeballs and tossed him out into the forest! Then he would’ve become food for the mundt and everything would be wrapped up cleanly!” Lala Ruu violently declared, but the way that her face stayed red was still making me feel guilty.

“B-But Asuta isn’t the type of person to lie! I’m sure he really didn’t see us naked! It’s embarrassing, but it won’t happen again!” Rimee Ruu chimed in. I seriously wanted someone to strangle me at the thought that I may have traumatized her young heart.

“...Are you done, women of the Ruu clan? I have to bow my head thanks to my clan member’s idiocy, too, but we came here to your home today to have a discussion,” Ai Fa said, smoothing things over. Her face was as cool and calm as always, not a hint of a blush to it.

“What did you come to discuss, Ai Fa?” The eldest of the sisters present, Reina Ruu, asked, and Ai Fa gave a small nod.

“Before that, you all were in the middle of your work, weren’t you? I couldn’t apologize to your other family members enough if we interrupted that. Please, keep working as you listen.”

“Right. Well then...” Reina responded, patting the dirt off her feet and then getting back to stomping the pelt.

“What are you doing there?” I asked, only for Reina Ruu to finally regain her usual innocent look and respond, “We’re stomping on it in order to make the fur softer.”

I wanted to ask more about how they tanned their pelts, but there wasn’t exactly time for that. After all, we were only allotted a short stay at the Ruu house, until Granny Jiba woke up.

“10 days have passed since our last time here, but how are your meals going? Has Jiba Ruu been doing alright?”

“Yeah! Granny Jiba has been eating each and every day while crying a whole lot! We can’t make it as tasty as you do though...” Rimee Ruu replied. “Everyone has gotten pretty good at making baked poitan, though. That... hamburger, was it? Anyway, that stuff is still tricky even for Reina. When she cooks them it all falls apart while it’s baking, or ends up all black, or there’s still red meat on the inside... And it’s still stinky, too. It still smells like giba whether we make hamburgers or a stew without poitan.”

“Are you washing the meat properly?”

“Yeah! We wash it in water with rock salt, just like you told us! But there’s always still some smell left...”

I had gone ahead and taught them a way to wipe out the stench, but unsurprisingly, it was difficult to get rid of it entirely without performing bloodletting right after capturing it. I’d already established that back at the Fa house.

“Man! I’m sure Reina would get lots better with practice, but Papa Donda won’t let her! ‘It’s ridiculous to waste giba meat playing around like that!’ he said. So she’s only allowed to make enough hamburgers for Granny Jiba.”

“I just can’t do it as well as you, Asuta. You really are amazing,” Reina Ruu said, her black eyes sparkling like something out of a shojo manga. I felt incredibly honored, but the stare coming from the other direction was painful.

“I mean, we’ve got plenty of meat! Ugh, I want to eat hamburgers again too! I don’t need any dried meat anymore! I just want to eat hamburgers, day and night!”

“That’s for sure. I feel the same way, Rimee,” Reina Ruu said with a sad smile.

As I watched the two sisters, I actually felt a little scared. How should I put it...? They were a lot more addicted than I had expected. Donda and Jiza Ruu rejected it, but Rimee and Reina Ruu were completely captive to its flavor. Had the brand new dish of hamburgers been too intense for the people of the forest’s edge, who hadn’t experienced any soft meat but that mushy stuff from their giba stew?

I couldn’t help but think even more strongly that I needed to shatter the fantasy surrounding hamburgers with my cooking this time around.

“By the way, there’s a bit of something I want to ask... How do you cook giba here at the Ruu house?”

“How? We just cut it up like slice, slice, slice.”

That didn’t help at all, but fortunately Reina Ruu followed up.

“We prepare it like you showed us that time, cutting it all off the bone first, then slicing it thinly before cooking it. And I make sure to slice it evenly, leaving the white fat on top.”

That wasn’t much different from how we handled pigs and boars back in my world, then. Giba legs pretty much only had fat around the outside, so if you shaved it down like Ai Fa had done, you wouldn’t get anything but red meat before long.

“Oh yeah, how thin are you talking about?”

“Huh? About this thin.”

About a centimeter thick, huh? Slicing raw meat thinly was tough, so that was plenty enough to satisfy me.

And hey, it was pretty unfair using her two index fingers rather than her hands to show me “how much.” I mean, she was just too cute and innocent, which made her look super adorable. I broke out into a grin without thinking, and as a result I felt a gaze painfully piercing my cheek.

“Hey, why are you asking about that, Asuta?”

“Hmm? Ah, I was just asking to have a point of reference. To be honest, I’ll be manning your stove again three nights from now.”

“Huh, really?!” “Seriously?!” two of three sisters asked, practically exploding with delight.

Only one of the girls kept on stomping with a sulky look and said with a sharp tongue, “What, you’re manning the stove again? Well, whatever. Just don’t make me eat that mushy meat again.” She was abusing me in the guise of just talking to herself.

I silently turned to face her. Well, she was moving around though, so it was pretty difficult to get our gazes to meet.

She was the third daughter of the Ruu house, Lala Ruu. The only woman in the family who didn’t acknowledge my cooking.

I couldn’t change the plan at this point based on what she said, but I still wanted to hear her opinion.

“Hey, Lala Ruu... You prefer tough meat to the soft stuff like the men do, right?”

“Huh?” She replied with a dangerous glare in her eyes. But even so, her face regained a bit of red, so she wasn’t all that frightening. “What’s with you, you peeper? Don’t just go striking up a conversation with me.”

“L-Let’s just put that matter aside, alright? Even if I’m still in training, I’m a chef, so people’s impressions of my food are very important to me. And I especially wanted to hear what exactly you had to say.”

“What’s with that? Normally manning the stove is women’s work, you know.”

“That’s not the case in the country where I was born. At the very least, the majority of the folks making a living by cooking were men.”

Lala Ruu kept on silently stomping for a while, but before long, her face got a little redder and she shot me a glare.

“So what?! You won’t leave till I talk to you?! I’ve got nothing to say to a peeper like you!”

“Huh? I’ll apologize as much as it takes for that, so won’t you please help me out here?!”

“...No matter how much you apologize, it’s still embarrassing,” she said while looking down a little and biting her lip.

Was she... like Ai Fa? With that thought, the glare on my left cheek grew even more intense.

I was breaking out in a cold sweat, but I kept piling on my words.

“I-I’ll be leaving soon for today. But can’t you at least talk to me a bit before that? If I recall correctly, you said the baked poitan and soup weren’t bad, right?”

“Ugh, you’re such a pest! I just hated that mushy meat is all! That warm fruit wine stuff on top was good, and the crispy aria were tasty too! But what matters most is the giba meat!” she yelled out as if she was desperate, shooting me a thorny glare. However, her face was still clearly red. “What, are you angry because I’m the only one who didn’t give you a blessing? Well, I can’t help you there! I mean, I really couldn’t stand that meat! Yeah, and wait! It was Reina’s fault to start with for giving you a blessing!”

“H-Huh? Me?”

“Hey, wait, you shouldn’t be fighting amongst yourselves...”

“He must’ve persuaded you while you were cooking, right? That’s why you gave him a blessing right away, isn’t it? You’re always, always acting so serious, but that’s just dirty!”

“That’s not true at all! I really thought it was delicious!”

“Um, you see...”

“I thought it was yummy, too!”

“Butt out, baby Rimee! The only reason men make a fuss over you is because your breasts and butt are big, Reina! If you don’t get married while that belly of your is still nice and slim, you really might just miss out, you know.”

“W-What are you saying?! That’s awful! And how could you say such things in front of Asuta?!”

“I’m not a baby, you man-woman!”

Aaaaaaagh! I had absolutely no clue what to do here. And for some reason, I got the feeling that the glare piercing my left cheek was only growing sharper and colder. Could you seriously blame this all on me, taking everything into account?

“...What’re you all screaming about?” Ah, a savior! It’s the youngest son of the house, Ludo Ruu! “Hey visitors, Granny Jiba has woken up from her nap. Geez, give me a break... This is why I told you to hurry up and grab one of them.”

“Shut it, Ludo!” “T-That’s rude, Ludo!” “Cut it out, little Ludo!” the three sisters yelled out in synch, only to get a wave of a hand and a, “Ugh, you’re so loud,” back as the boy nodded towards me and Ai Fa.

He had a bit of a tough look on his face today, somehow. He had a bow and quiver over his left shoulder, so he must have been heading out into the forest.

Before leaving, I called out one last time to Lala Ruu, who was still grinding her teeth.

“Lala Ruu, this time I’ll prepare meat you can really dig into, not that mushy stuff! You’ll enjoy it too.”

“Oh, shut it! I won’t give you a blessing, no matter what food you roll out!”

“T-That wasn’t my intention at all! Can we just get away from that topic already?!”

The firing angle had shifted so it was hitting the back of my head rather than my left cheek, but my benefactor’s glare still felt like the tip of a metal blade pushing up against me. I was already in enough trouble for throwing myself into this fight, so could we please treat “marry” like a swear word for a while?

“Hmph. Well, whatever,” he said, locking his thin yet strong and firm arm onto my neck from the side.

“If you prefer Lala over Vina or Reina, you can have her. But if you lay a hand on little Rimee, I’ll kill you,” he said in a low, quiet voice full of real bloodlust.

I prayed that Rimee Ruu’s future suitors would find happiness in the afterlife, at least.

Anyway, we headed nonchalantly back to the front of the house like that, where I couldn’t help but freeze and go “Whoa...”

It wasn’t just the men I knew from the main family in front of the house. No, it was a full-on giba hunting party of nearly 20 warriors.

“Ah, so you’re back, Ludo? Listen up, men! We’re going to get ourselves plenty of life out there in the forest today, too!”

The men gathered let out a “Yeah!” so loud that it felt like the earth was trembling. All of them had on giba cloaks and massive blades, and a few of them were equipped with bows. Some of them even had what looked like short spears. Some were old, and some still looked to be around Ludo’s age. Some of them had bandages around their heads, while some had one of their arms bending in a strange direction.

However, they were all unmistakably hunters of the forest’s edge.

Whether they were old or young, injured or healthy, they all had eyes like beasts and gave off some sort of invisible fighting spirit as they headed off into the forest.

Donda Ruu stood at the head of them all, naturally, but he didn’t even seem to see me or Ai Fa.

Ludo Ruu called out, “See you around!” and took off running towards the group, his eyes just as beastly as the others.

They just made for such a heroic sight, like something out of a myth, that I was left unable to speak or even move for a bit.

“...Those are the men of the Ruu branch families, who support these houses.”

Ai Fa slapped her hand down on my shoulder. I turned around without even thinking, and saw the same sort of intensity in her burning blue eyes.

“They’re Donda Ruu’s younger brothers and their sons. Or perhaps the younger brothers of Donda Ruu’s parents and their children. And the one leading them all is the head of the main Ruu family, Donda Ruu.” Her wildcat-like eyes were staring right into mine. “On top of that, the Ruu clan has six other clans under them as retainers who follow their orders. The Rutim, Maam, Min, Lea, Ririn, and Muufa. Added together, they number over 100 strong. Are you feeling timid, Asuta? That’s the sort of man you picked a fight with.”

“No... I’ll probably be fine,” I replied, somehow forcing a smile. “Yeah, I’ll be alright. Actually, it just gave me more confidence in what I’m trying to do. I’m... probably not wrong with what I’m doing.”

Ai Fa furrowed her brows, looking like she was about to sigh. However, she soon gave me a daring smile of the sort I only rarely got to see in our day to day life, and then she roughly rustled my hair, towel and all, which she would normally never do.