Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 20 - Chapter 4.2

2

By the time the sun hit its peak, both the giba and kimyuus meat had been fully roasted.

“Thanks for waiting! Feel free to come get some!” I shouted out, and the folks who had been crowding around the road hurried our way with incredible speed.

There was now an even bigger and more lively crowd flowing through than usual, just as Yumi had said there would be. Some were travelers from the east or south, or even from other towns in the west, not to mention the citizens of Genos who were taking time off from their businesses.

The fruit wine had already been handed out, so the crowd was even more cheerful than usual, with endless shouts of, “To the sun god!” here and there along the street.

Once the whole roast giba were ready, we had to put out the braziers, replace the stalls’ top surfaces and their hole covers, and lay out suurub leaves over the workstation so nothing would get dirty. Then Toor Deen and the other two in charge of the stalls brought out some metal skewers and meat carving knives and began cutting up the meat. As they worked, the meat they were serving up on several large plates steadily vanished bit by bit.

Everyone was bringing their own plates, wooden spoons, metal skewers, and so on. It seemed that not only whole roast kimyuus meat but also various soups were being served, as I saw folks here and there walking along while slurping some down.

Though normally our outdoor restaurant space was only open to customers purchasing giba cooking, today we opened it to everyone. The folks seated there would raise their voices in celebration, or even start singing songs from this world that I didn’t know. It must have been a song extolling the sun god. It was quite rousing, and yet also somehow idyllic. The melody had a strangely nostalgic feel to it too.

“Are you all doing okay?” I called out to the stalls on either side of me, getting back a series of energetic affirmative replies.

Reina and Rimee Ruu were working one stall and Sheera and Lala Ruu were taking care of another where they were working together to carve the roasted meat.

Since it had been roasted until it was nice and tender, the meat was easy to remove from the bone. However, it was too hot to be touched directly, making it much more difficult to handle. But sure enough, it looked incredibly tasty. The vegetables packed into their abdomens had come out very nice, with much of their moisture gone. The chatchi and taro-like ma gigo in particular came out all soft and flakey, which was enough to make anyone crave them, not just Ludo Ruu.

“Hey there. Looks like you’re got quite a bit of excitement around here after all, Asuta.” When I heard that voice, I looked up, and found Dora standing there smiling at me. It wasn’t just Tara with him today, but also his two sons, his wife, and his oldest son’s wife. “Sorry we’re so late. We’re all done with work for today, so now we can have all the fun we want!”

Looking closely, I could tell that Dora’s face was already red from drinking.

At the same time, Dan Rutim came back over from the crowd in the road. “Well, if it isn’t Dora! You certainly took your time getting here.”

“Hello, Dan Rutim! To the sun god!”

The two clinked their plate and cup together, then chugged down the contents. They seemed to be enjoying themselves even more than they had last night.

“Asuta, I’m getting hungry too! Cut me off some giba meat!” Dan Rutim said.

“All right. I made sure to leave some just for you.”

I cut some rib meat off the right side of one of the giba, which I had intentionally left untouched. Then I placed it on a large plate, still on the bone, and offered it to Dan Rutim and Dora’s family.

Although not even thirty minutes had passed, over seventy percent of the giba’s body was now nothing but bones. It had only been around thirty kilos or so to begin with, and after all the moisture and fat that it had lost, that must have fallen to about twenty-two or twenty-three, but it had still gone as fast as at the celebratory banquet at the Ruu settlement. The stalls to my left and right seemed to be struggling a bit more with the cutting and were moving at a slower pace, but even so, half of the meat they were offering had already been eaten.

“It really is incredibly busy around here. It was crowded over by the inns too, but I think this far northern section is the most packed part of the stall area,” Dora’s older son remarked with a kind smile. Tara had run over to Rimee Ruu’s stall, and then she went to deliver the meat she received over to Yumi.

It truly was even more hectic than usual. The street was completely packed with people, and there was just as much enthusiasm in the air here as I had seen at the banquets at the forest’s edge.

There were some drunkards getting into fights here and there, but the guards quickly settled any such incidents. They had increased their patrols, and there looked to be even more of them deployed than usual.

“Oh my, it seems we really did show up late. Is there still enough left for us?”

The Gamley Troupe had returned once more.

It was a group of five—the acrobat, Pino; the strongman, Doga; the flute player, Nachara; the beast tamer, Shantu; and the tall guy, Dilo, whose act I still hadn’t seen.

“Welcome. We should still have enough left.”

“Glad to hear it. Could you make ours an extra tasty bit?”

“Got it. Is everyone else not around?”

“Those fools had all sorts of complaints about stuff like not wanting to eat in front of people, or not liking such large crowds even though we’re all performers. Well, they can just go ahead and chew on jerky in the dark if that’s how they feel.”

So they had eight stubborn people like that in their group of thirteen? Now that she mentioned it, I got the feeling that a lot of performers could be surprisingly introverted and gloomy.

“Ah, you’re that beast tamer! Those delightful animals aren’t with you?” Dan Rutim called out after toasting with Dora, and Shantu responded with a deeply wrinkled yet cheerful smile.

“If we were to bring them out of the tent, the guards would scold us for it. They’re over that way, eating uncooked kimyuus meat.”

“It’s a shame they have to live such constrained lives! Such powerful beasts must yearn to have wide-open spaces they can run around in!”

“That’s just how it has to be in town. But when we’re traveling, we let them run free where they won’t frighten anyone.”

The crowd in the area around us was also listening to Dan Rutim and Shantu’s conversation with great interest. It seemed that people as outlandish as these traveling performers were difficult to approach for the townsfolk. Dan Rutim’s sociability really was something else.

Meanwhile, since Jiza Ruu was watching them, Ludo Ruu and Rau Lea had to behave themselves and just observe the goings-on from near the stalls. However, occasionally someone would call out from the road and Ludo Ruu would respond with a bright smile.

After they had had their fill of giba meat, Pino’s group pulled out their instruments, to the great delight of the crowd. Shantu left us, while the little guy, Zan, and the twins came in to replace him. Together, they all started playing a tune that didn’t sound like it was from around here. When they later switched to performing that song I didn’t know the name of—the one celebrating the sun god—the crowd began singing along.

“Still, I never knew that giba meat was this delicious!” one of the folks eating some of the last remaining bits of our roast said to me. The man had dark-brown hair and a skin color that made me figure he was a westerner. “We only just arrived here in Genos last night, but we heard talk at the inn about how popular giba cooking has become, so we decided we had to come over here. But, man, it was still such a shock.”

“Is that so? Normally, we run our stalls during the day, but on holidays like this, we’ll be open at night instead, so please feel free to stop by then.”

“Yeah. We visited Genos half a year ago, so I know you’ve been serving giba cooking from your stalls since then,” the man remarked with a smile while holding up a large metal cup full of wine. “Back then, we figured giba meat was inedible and just ignored it, but it seems we were just being stupid. If you’re going to be open for business tonight, we’ll be sure to hurry over.”

“Great, thank you.”

For a lot of our customers, this was their first experience with giba meat. Looking over at Reina and Sheera Ruu’s stall, it looked like even more people than usual were calling out to them too.

“The post town is so incredibly busy during the revival festival,” a voice said from behind us. It was Gazraan Rutim, who had just been silently watching over the proceedings until now. “I’m surprised to see how the westerners are acting around us as well. It’s been quite a while since I last came to the post town.”

“Yeah. But since only folks who aren’t afraid of the people of the forest’s edge come around here, that probably makes the change feel more pronounced.”

“Even so, despite having this many hunters gathered, hardly anyone is looking at us with fear in their eyes. Such a thing would have been unthinkable before now. And my father, Dan, is blending in so smoothly, it’s almost like he’s one of the townsfolk himself.”

“That’s because your father has a great personality,” I remarked, breaking out in a smile without thinking. Gazraan Rutim gave me an affable grin of his own in response.

Meanwhile, Jiza Ruu and Sufira Zaza were standing behind us. What were they thinking about, watching over all of this? And what about the leading clan heads who were waiting for their return, back in the settlement at the forest’s edge?

In order to have more prosperous lives, the people of the forest’s edge should sell giba meat in town... The validity of that viewpoint, which Ai Fa and I had advanced, would without a doubt be carefully scrutinized come the next clan head meeting.

That day of judgment was fast approaching, just half a year off.