Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 3.3

3

After the men headed off into the forest as the sun hit its peak and I said farewell to Gazraan Rutim, it was finally time to start my experimentation. I headed around the back of the house towards the kitchen, and found two women waiting for me: The eldest son Jiza Ruu’s wife Sati Lea Ruu and the third daughter, Lala Ruu.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Asuta. The two of us will be assisting you today,” the slender, neat, and tidy young wife said to me with a gentle smile. She had somewhat short brown hair and blackish eyes.

“Whoa, what’s with all those horns and tusks? Did you steal them from somewhere?” Lala Ruu asked, disparaging me as always. The 12 year old girl had her red hair done up in what looked like a ponytail.

“This is the advance payment for this job. Um, should I put it down somewhere?”

“If you wish, we can hold onto it for you at the house. It would be quite a mess if it were to happen to fall into the stove or something.”

With that, Sati Lea Ruu took the necklace from me and left the kitchen.

She was very tactful with her actions, but as a result I ended up left alone with a young girl who wasn’t especially fond of me.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for Lala Ruu to start coming after me again.

“Hmph! I thought the heir to the Rutim had his act together more than their clan head, but seeing how he’s entrusting the stove to you on his precious wedding night, he certainly doesn’t seem especially sane! Now the Rutim are going to be the laughingstock of the forest’s edge. And since they’re under us, that’s a real pain for the Ruu clan, too!”

“Is that so? Then I’ll have to expend all of my meager ability to silence even a few more of those laughing voices, right?”

I wasn’t going to curse at a girl five years younger than me or get angry, so instead I just decided to give that lighthearted response.

Plus, well, I was more than a little indebted to the four daughters of the Ruu clan, so there was no helping the fact that she hated me. But would I have to keep on bearing that cross for the rest of my life...?

“At any rate, here’s to working with you. Are you alright on your other work, though...? I’m the one who asked for help, but I wasn’t expecting to have the two of you sent my way this early in the day.”

“Mama Mia Lea decided it, so there’s no helping it! It’s not like I wanted to see your face, either!” shouted Lala Ruu with a stern look on her face and furrowed eyebrows. And then, she stomped on over towards me. “Those horns and tusks...”

“Huh?”

“You went from having eight to nine. Did Gazraan Rutim or Ama Min give you a blessing?”

“Ah, um... Is it alright to say...? No, I better not...”

“What the heck is that about?! If you won’t tell me, then I’ll tell papa Donda about what happened that morning!”

“T-That’d be a real issue. You see, this... it was given to me by your ‘papa Donda.’”

In an instant, Lala Ruu came flying at me in a thunderous rage with a boyish look on her face.

“There’s no way that’s true! Papa Donda seriously hates you, so there’s no way he’d give you a blessing! Give it up and tell me the truth already, or I’ll expose you to everyone!”

“N-No, that really is the truth. It’s not like he forbid me from saying anything, either, so I’ll tell it to you straight. Donda Ruu gave me this blessing after I manned the stove for the celebratory banquet.”

The rage remained clear on her face for a while afterwards, but then the anger steadily shifted to astonishment.

“Are you being serious...? If you keep on trying to trick me, then I really will check with papa Donda. And if it’s a lie, then I’ll tell him all about what happened that day.”

“Agh, then I guess I’ll just have to pray that Donda Ruu answers you truthfully. I’ll have to really hope that he’s not the sort of scum who would lie to protect his own pride!”

“Wait... Is it actually true?”

I nodded and said, “Yeah,” only for Lala Ruu to explode again.

“What the heck?! I can’t believe it! I didn’t give a blessing because I was thinking of papa Donda’s feelings, so what was he thinking, giving you one on his own?! It makes me look like an idiot! Damn it, what the heck?! Geez!”

“Ah, um, please calm down... I’m sure your papa had his own thoughts and feelings behind it.”

“Don’t you say ‘papa’! It’s gross!”

“Sorry... But stuff like this is rooted in personal feelings, right? Just because Donda Ruu gave a blessing, it doesn’t mean that you have to do the same.”

“What the heck is that?! Are you saying you won’t accept my blessing?!”

No matter what I said, the girl exploded into a ball of anger.

Just when I gave a sigh, thinking I just must not be fated to get along with this girl, a hand was suddenly thrust in front of my face. And seated atop it was a single giba tusk... or was it a horn?

“...That last dinner was seriously delicious. And you saved Granny Jiba before that, too. So I, Lala Ruu, offer Asuta of the Fa clan my blessing.”

Did it seriously make sense for someone to be giving a blessing with such blatant displeasure on their face? Well, anyway, I gratefully went ahead and picked up that pure white blessing.

“Thank you. It really makes me happy.”

“Hmph!” Lala Ruu loudly snorted and turned away.

She seriously must not have been able to stomach me at all. But still, I felt every bit as happy having someone like her acknowledge me as I did getting a blessing from someone who adored me.

With this, I had received ten blessings in total from the Ruu clan. Excluding the infant Kota Ruu, that just left Jiza and Darmu Ruu.

Just as I thought to myself how that would never happen in my whole life, Sati Lea Ruu finally returned.

“Sorry for the wait. Oh, my, you still haven’t started?”

“Yeah. We’ll get rolling now, though. Do you mind if I start by taking a look at the vegetables in your pantry?”

“Not at all. By the way, where is Ai Fa? She was with you when you arrived, wasn’t she?”

“Yup. I still hadn’t fully memorized the path to the Ruu house, so Ai Fa showed me the way. She should be out hunting giba in the forest around now.”

She couldn’t exactly shirk off her giba hunting for these five days. Or at least, that’s what Ai Fa said before leaving. We still had plenty of meat, plus horns and tusks to spare, but a hunter had to keep on hunting giba as long as they had the strength to do so.

If the hunters of the forest’s edge neglected their work, the giba would overflow from the forest and attack the western kingdom’s fields. It was the duty of the people of the forest’s edge to prevent that... or at least, that’s what most of them thought. The clan that led them seemed to have completely forgotten that, though.

Kamyua Yoshu... I really need another chance to meet with that aloof old-timer and really hear what he has to say.

I was slated to spend these next five days here at the Ruu settlement, devoting myself to experimenting. That meant that Ai Fa had to handle not only her hunting, but also managing the pantry and gathering pico leaves. And so, though we ate dinner together at the main Ruu house and spent the night together in the vacant house, we were operating completely separately during the day.

Diga Suun hadn’t tried to retaliate against Ai Fa directly since he was thrown into the river, so the Suun clan probably weren’t able to get up to anything too atrocious. But when I remember Doddo Suun’s eyes like those of a wild dog... I couldn’t help but feel uneasy.

Of course, I normally stayed home at the Fa house while Ai Fa went out hunting in the forest, so it technically wasn’t all that much of a difference. But I still felt like things couldn’t keep on going like this forever.

“Is something the matter, Asuta?” Sati Lea Ruu asked, calling me back to the real world in a bit of a fluster.

“It’s nothing. Shall we head to the pantry?”

Regardless of anything else, right now, I was working.

Naturally, the reward I’d get from this job would become part of the shared fortune of the Fa house. So for Ai Fa’s sake too, I had to succeed.

Accompanied by the two women, I stepped foot into the pantry. Just as I remembered, there were doorless shelves crammed full of different vegetables. I’d seen a whole lot of them yesterday at the post town, too, so I was steadily starting to get pretty familiar with them.

Now then, which of them were going to play nice with me...?

“Let me start off by telling you my plan,” I said to the women behind me as I inspected the different types of vegetables one by one. “My goal is to conquer the poitan.”

“Poitan...?”

“Right. Is there some way to make it tasty while heating it up like you guys have been up till now? That’s what I want to experiment with first.”

“But why? The baked poitan is delicious. I feel like I could even keep on just eating that on its own, even without any meat or vegetables.”

Ooh, sounds like Sati Lea Ruu was seriously charmed by the baked poitan, huh? Well, it’s not as if I didn’t get how she felt, but this experimentation was of the utmost importance to me.

“But there are going to be some older people at the banquet too, right? If I present nothing but unusual dishes, those folks may end up avoiding them. I’d like to present the baked poitan too, but I won’t be able to help wondering if there isn’t another cooking method that would satisfy everyone, young and old, so I’d like to try to find that first.”

All that Sati Lea Ruu had to say in response was, “Oh, my...” She didn’t sound all that astonished or disgusted with the idea, though, so I guess it was fine.

“Ultimately I think we’re just going to have to try putting all sorts of things together, but are there any ingredients you would recommend? Or on the other hand, are there any you don’t especially like?”

“Pula” a voice bluntly stated. Naturally, that had been Lala Ruu speaking up first.

“Um... Now that I think of it, I believe I’d heard that you didn’t like pula somewhere before. Are you not fond of bitter foods, perhaps?”

“Shut up! Why are you complaining when I went and answered your question?!”

“Ah, sorry! Please, let me hear your candid opinion.”

“Lilo, tarapa, zozo... I don’t like any of them.”

“Yup, got it. Lilo is that herb used when smoking meat, right? What sort of ingredients are tarapa and zozo?”

“Tarapa is that large red fruit, while zozo is the light brown lump down beneath it.”

I looked where Sati Lea Ruu pointed and saw that the tarapa was a fruit that looked sort of like a pumpkin or a big lumpy tomato, while the zozo coiled like a snake and had the texture of a beehive. Both of them left a real strong visual impression, so I definitely remembered them.

“Hmm... And what do you think of tarapa and zozo, Sati Lea Ruu?”

“Let me see... Tarapa is very sour, and zozo has a very powerful smell. I don’t especially dislike either of them, but... I think tarapa would taste better in a stew without poitan.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Tarapa really is sour, so I think it would be better in a stew without poitan, as it would pass more smoothly down your throat and be easier to eat. As for zozo, whether or not there’s any poitan, I think it would wipe out all the rest of the scents in a dish that didn’t include meat with a stench, which would worsen the flavor.”

“Amazing! How precise!”

“It’s because you taught me what a delicious meal really was, Asuta. Up until then, I didn’t pay any attention to how tarapa and zozo tasted different,” Sati Lea Ruu said with a smile.

Next to her, Lala Ruu was making a face that made it look like she was about to start stamping her feet again or something.

“What the heck?! If that’s how things are going to be, you don’t even need me! You and Sati Lea are getting along just fine on your own!”

“Lala, just because you’re having trouble getting your words out, it doesn’t mean you should have such a short temper,” Sati Lea Ruu said, gently placing a hand on her sister-in-law’s shoulder. “You’re skilled at picking up on a great many things, but you’re not very good with your words. On the other hand, I’m fairly skilled when it comes to speaking, but I don’t have very strong emotions. I’m sure we’ll be of much greater help to Asuta working together than by trying to handle things on our own.”

I’d probably had the least interaction with Sati Lea Ruu out of the entire main Ruu house, but those words alone were enough to tell me that she was more than just some calm, neat, and tidy young woman. I thought to myself, Just what you’d expect from Jiza Ruu’s partner, and then felt a little bit of a chill run down my spine. With those two as parents, just exactly what sort of person would Kota Ruu turn out to be?

“Huh? Now that I think of it, is Kota Ruu a boy or a girl?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t actually been firmly told, only for the two of them to shoot me back blank stares.

“You can tell just from the name, can’t you? Of course he’s a boy.”

I see. Well, I had gotten that feeling, anyway.

“Right. He’s a little on the small side, but he’s a boy. We had quite a bit of trouble being blessed with a child, so I really am glad that our first one turned out to be a boy.”

I really could see the pride and joy on Sati Lea Ruu’s face as she said that.

So that meant that once Jiza Ruu someday inherited the position of clan head from Donda Ruu, Kota Ruu would eventually be next in line, huh? I was a little late in noticing, but the thought really moved me, somehow.

“Ah, right, this zozo has a really tremendous smell to it, doesn’t it? It smells more like medicine than food. I can definitely see how it would wipe out all the other flavors if you threw it into a stew,” I said, dragging myself back to reality.

“Right? If we start eating giba meat without any stench regularly, then we may not even have a use for it anymore. After all, we add lilo and zozo to a stew in order to wipe out the stench.”

“I see. In that case, we’ll remove those two from the list of candidates. So, what about this tarapa? We had a vegetable called a tomato back in my country that was the same color, and it could be used in a whole ton of different ways.”

“Is that so? It doesn’t have a bad smell to it, and I certainly don’t dislike the sour taste it has, but I think it would be better in a stew without poitan than in one with it.”

“Yeah, that may be so, huh...?”

Just imagining the taste of that flour water-esque poitan broth with tomato thrown in was seriously disheartening. It may well be super versatile, but it still might not have a chance to shine this time around.

“Well then, let’s say the tarapa is out of the running too, at least for now. Are there any vegetables you would recommend, though?”

In response to that question, the two went “Hmm...” and seriously thought on the matter.

“I’ve got some ideas when it comes to a stew without poitan, but for heating up together with poitan...”

“Yeah. I mean, if we thought something was tasty like that, we’d be throwing it in each and every day. But no matter what vegetable we add...” Lala Ruu said, only to suddenly hesitate.

“What is it?” Sati Lea Ruu gently asked.

“No... I mean, it doesn’t especially change what I was saying, but... There is one that I think I may like best.”

“Oh, my. Which vegetable is it?”

“No, never mind, it’s nothing! I don’t even know why I like it! The taste is hardly any different anyway!”

“See, that’s got me super interested now. If you don’t mind, could you tell me which ingredient you’re talking about?”

Perhaps I’d jumped the gun there, as Lala Ruu had a bit of a worried look on her face that you wouldn’t expect from such a tomboy.

However, her slender finger slowly lifted up and pointed towards the very back of the pantry.

Huh, this thing? I thought, my eyes going wide.

That ingredient had been quietly waiting in the dark corner of the pantry for my eyes to fall upon it. It was like a massive two meter long great burdock, standing out even amongst such impactful ingredients as the zozo and tarapa. It was called the gigo.