4
“Well then, shall we get going? We’re short on time, so you should pick out what you want to buy as we walk.”
“Yeah. I’ll go ahead and grab whatever smells tastiest.”
We backtracked along the path that took us to the produce vendor, picking up rock salt and fruit wine along the way. The rock salt got thrown into my bag, while Ai Fa held the fruit wine from a dangling string.
When we passed another stall that sold vegetables, I stopped and gave it a careful look. It would be a bit risky to go with any ingredients that I wasn’t familiar with, so I just decided to stick with tino and pula. The girl running the place was looking everywhere except at me, but when I asked her she responded that I could get two tino or three pula for one coin. Apparently they were both significantly pricier than aria and poitan.
I looked up at Ai Fa to check if it was really alright to buy such extravagant goods, only to get back another, “Do as you please,” even though I hadn’t said anything.
And so, I decided to go with the tino. Tino had a texture like cabbage or lettuce, while pula had the bitterness of a bell pepper to it. Both of them would be great to have around, but the tino definitely seemed a lot more flexible.
Once I shoved the two tino into it, my bag ended up every bit as packed as Ai Fa’s.
“Let’s go,” Ai Fa said, turning around, and I staggered along after her.
The bags may have been similarly stuffed, but the density of their contents was totally different. But even while carrying around 24 kilos, Ai Fa’s stride didn’t break in the least, just as I’d expect.
Her core strength must have seriously been something else. That strength surely came from being a hunter, running around out in the forest where footing was bad.
Now then, last up was my long-awaited snack...
“Ah, should we go with that?” I asked, stopping beside a stall that served smoked meat. Even just walking by, the smell seriously hit me. And there was a little girl waiting for something even now, so it seemed to be doing pretty well.
Ai Fa gave me a nod and strolled up to the stand without a hint of hesitation.
“How much does this cost?”
The one manning the shop was a middle-aged woman with black-brown hair, light brown eyes, and some definite meat on her bones. Her plump face twitched a little as she looked at Ai Fa.
“A small one costs one red, while a big one costs two.”
“In that case, give me one small.”
The woman looked down at her own hands, not even bothering to respond.
I peeked into the stall over the head of the girl who was in front of us. There was some sort of light brown paste simmering inside of a fairly large pot. I still didn’t know what it was other than that it used bite sized chunks of meat and vegetables, but the smell was simply amazing even from this far away. It was a scent I hadn’t smelled at the forest’s edge, sort of like garlic.
There was also some ingredient that reminded me of baked poitan piled up beside the pot. They were lighter than poitan, though, and seemed fluffier, too. They looked to come in diameters of both 20 and 30 centimeters, but both were around five millimeters thick. The contents of the pot were then dumped onto one, and the woman squeezed the edges together on top, forming a sort of awkward pouch shape. If I had to compare it to something, well, it seemed pretty similar to a meat-filled manju.
“Here. It’s hot, so be careful.”
“Thank you!” the young girl, who looked to be about Rimee Ruu’s age, happily replied and held out both hands.
I made some space so she could easily pass by, and then the girl energetically turned around... only to stop in place when she saw Ai Fa. In the process, the manju she’d just bought slipped from her hands.
“Whoa there!” I said as I reflexively grabbed it, which was pretty lucky. I mean, if I hadn’t placed my luggage down by my feet, I wouldn’t have been able to even try. “Here. Be careful, alright?”
The girl looked pretty scared, but even so she made sure to give a bow before she took off running with her manju.
“One small, right?” the woman said without a hint of friendliness, and then she hurriedly got mine together. She certainly seemed skilled with her hands, but I couldn’t quite say the same for the way she handled customers.
After paying for it, the two of us walked over to an open space and had a seat.
“Hurry up and eat. Once you’re done, we’re leaving.”
“Right. Well then, thanks for the food!”
This was my first time encountering an unknown dish in this world since that first night with Ai Fa’s giba stew. Back then the smell was amazing, but then my expectations seriously got dashed. So this time I made sure not to let my guard down as I worked up my nerve and bit down into the manju.
This taste... Hmm...
“Is it good?” Ai Fa asked, despite not sounding especially interested.
The only response I could come up with is, “It’s okay.”
How should I put it...? It just seemed so incredibly safe. It wasn’t delicious, but it certainly wasn’t bad, either. It was just incredibly... okay.
Just as I’d figured from the smell, it was quite heavily spiced. It was like a blend of garlic and cilantro, which was a pretty strong flavor, but I didn’t exactly hate it. The meat was really white, and seemed to have the fat shaved off of it entirely. Its flavor was kind of light, like chicken tenderloin.
The red and green vegetable chunks were rather soft, like a heated aria. Actually, there may have been some aria in there, too.
The brown paste that brought everything together was probably made by boiling down vegetables. It was a little sweet but not overwhelmingly so, and none of the ingredients seemed to be clashing.
That white stuff that looked like baked poitan really was softer than the more familiar ingredient, just as I had guessed at a glance, but it had a denser feel like the naan you see in Indian cuisine rather than being like the outer layer of a manju.
Those ingredients came together in harmony, joined hands, and made for an incredibly well behaved flavor.
“Yeah, well, it made for a perfectly normal meal, and it was enough to satisfy my curiosity.”
It was the right size so that it wouldn’t be too much even to eat all of it, and it wasn’t the sort of food that would ever wreck your stomach either. Though if I had to say, it definitely cost too much considering you could get a container of fruit wine, two tino, or four poitan for the same price.
“Do you want a bite too, Ai Fa?” I asked, only to get an immediate, “I don’t need any,” back.
“Hmm, I just can’t accept the way that folks look down on the people of the forest’s edge as ‘giba eaters’ while being satisfied with such uninteresting food. I mean, giba meat is way tastier than this.”
“Have you forgotten the taste of that stew from your first night with me, Asuta?”
Of course I hadn’t. That was just because the people of the forest’s edge didn’t know about stuff like bloodletting, though. But the people of Genos had lived here even longer than the people of the forest’s edge, and yet they never thought to try eating giba meat?
“It’s said that before the people of the forest’s edge moved here 80 years ago, giba overflowed from the forests and attacked peoples’ fields. At the time, giba were the most terrifying symbol of calamity imaginable to the people of the Genos domain.”
They were a symbol of calamity, so they didn’t warrant eating? What a waste.
“I’m not aware of the details, but I don’t believe there was any shortage of meat. Apparently there were plenty of those giant totos birds around to eat, too.”
“Gah, people eat those? Well, it doesn’t exactly seem like it would be all that disgusting, though...”
“At any rate, the townsfolk feared giba. And now, they fear the people of the forest’s edge, who kill and eat them. And nowadays the folks around here have half forgotten how frightening giba can be, and we have become the symbol of their terror... Or at least, that’s what Granny Jiba said.”
“What the heck? So it really is just unwarranted discrimination. Why don’t the people of the forest’s edge try to do anything about it?”
“Because there’s nothing inconvenient about being feared.”
Is that so? But I didn’t think it was exactly all that great, not taking the time to clear up the misunderstanding...
I wasn’t exactly happy having reached the conclusion that the people of the forest’s edge being given the cold shoulder was at least partially their own doing. I started to offer a rebuttal of, “But...” only to notice something strange out of the corner of my eye, causing me to abruptly stop.
It was the girl from before. She was seated at the edge of the highway on the other side, biting into the same sort of manju I had. If that was all I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but when I looked her way, she turned away quickly with a speed that made me think of a squirrel. Yet, a moment later she turned her head back towards me.
Since the stone highway was 10 meters across, I couldn’t quite make out her expression in detail. She definitely seemed to be pretty interested in me, though.
“Someone with pale skin like you in the garb of the forest’s edge makes for an unusual sight,” Ai Fa said emotionlessly, having long since noticed the girl.
“I see,” I replied, observing the child out of the corner of my eye.
She looked to be around Rimee Ruu’s age, seven or eight years old at most. Her olive brown hair stretched down to her shoulders, and her skin was a yellowish brown. She wore what looked like an orange dress rather than clothing that wrapped around her, and leather sandals on her feet.
Her body and limbs were more slender than Rimee Ruu’s, and she looked seriously adorable as her cheeks filled up with manju.
I went ahead and tried looking her way once again. Taken by surprise, the girl froze in place, not even able to avert her gaze. When I went ahead and broke out in a smile, the girl seemed to get a bit of manju stuck in her throat, but then I think I saw her weakly smile back.
“Just what are you doing?”
“Ah, I was just thinking what a cute girl she was.”
“...”
“Huh? Ah, no! What’s with that look? Just what sort of person do you think I am?!”
“How annoying. Stop getting bent out of shape. Do you like children...?” she suddenly asked out of nowhere, hitting me with a real emotional shoulder throw.
“I guess if you’re asking, I’d have to say I’m fond of them, yeah. I mean, a lot of little kids used to come to my old man’s place along with their families.”
“I see...”
Huh? Did I read the flow of the conversation wrong?
I thought back on how she muttered last night that she didn’t want me disappear, looking totally unlike her usual self, causing me to get a little flustered. Maybe it’d be best if I avoided talking about my old world for a while...
Feigning that I was calm, I said in a cheery voice, “Still, I sure do feel down when I think of carrying this heavy load all the way back. Don’t you think 20 days’ worth is a bit much?”
“I always buy this much. Or are you saying...” Ai Fa started, averting her eyes, “That you don’t need food for 20 days?”
“Hey, Ai Fa...”
I fortunately stopped myself short of yelling out, “I have no idea what’s going to happen to me in the future, you know!” I couldn’t find anything else to say instead, though.
Ai Fa gently closed her eyes, as if she didn’t want me to see what she was feeling.
“Ai Fa, I...” I started, deciding that I needed to at least say something. I went and opened my mouth, still not having gotten my thoughts in order, only to get cut off by a totally unexpected bellow.
“If you’ve got some sort of problem, then come out and say it! You’re all proud citizens of the city of stone, aren’t ya?!”
It was the voice of a young man who had clearly lost control of himself. Then, there was the violent sound of something being broken.
A ton of people screamed out, including the young girl from before.
“W-what the...? What’s going on?”
I didn’t quite understand what was happening. But at the very least, there were the remains of a busted wooden box and plenty of yellow fruit I didn’t recognize scattered about the highway, with two men scuffling in the center. Everyone else seemed to be distancing themselves so as not to get wrapped up in it, but that girl was down on the ground, looking utterly terrified.
“H-hey, that’s...?!” I started to say, only for Ai Fa to slowly rise to her feet. She was glaring at the two men with an incredibly dangerous look in her eyes.
It was the middle of the day, and two men were fighting in the middle of the street... And one of them was clearly a young man from the forest’s edge.
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