2
The sun was now at its peak.
After waiting for Li Sudra to show up to take my place, we headed on over to The Sledgehammer. And when we did so, we entrusted the jerky for Pops’s group to Sheera Ruu. There were 20 kilos of it there, which I had easily managed to gather from the Ruu and the six clans under them, as well as five other small nearby clans.
The payment of 30 white coins wouldn’t work out to all that much once it was split twelve ways. But this time around, rather than prioritizing small clans like I had done before, I simply distributed the work evenly wherever I could.
And with my clan head’s permission, I also went ahead and prepared a little something extra to show my appreciation for those regulars of mine.
It was something I was presently experimenting with when I could find the time and, well... I wasn’t quite sure whether or not it was worthy of the name yet, but I suppose I’d call it giba bacon. In other words, I was undergoing trial and error to see if I could make the jerky, which was as hard as tree bark, a little bit less firm.
Use salt to remove moisture, then after it’s dried out, grill it with herbs. That was the process for making jerky at the forest’s edge, and at its core, that was also pretty much how bacon was produced. But jerky prioritized preservation above all else, so it thoroughly eliminated all the moisture inside the meat. Thanks to that, it ended up so tough that a weakling like me had trouble even chewing through it.
Of course, considering there were no refrigeration devices here in this world, and the climate at the forest’s edge and around Genos was akin to early summer in Japan, prioritizing preservation certainly made sense. Still, could I manage to get it closer to the bacon I was familiar with, even so...? How much could I sacrifice preservation, and just how soft could I make it? I was trying out all sorts of things whenever we made jerky at the Fa house in order to find those answers.
The amount of salt, the time the meat was salted for, how long it was left to dry after being removed from the salt, how long it was smoked with herbs, whether there was room for improvement in the smoking process, if pico leaves could be used effectively to dry it out in the same way... There were just too many variables at play, and I was finding it difficult to arrive at an answer. At present, I could make it so that even I could bite into it, but in exchange it wouldn’t even last for a full week.
I definitely still hadn’t reached my ideal result. However, when I tried boiling it up with poitan and aria like a traveler would do, I found that it was still dramatically tastier than the current jerky was.
With the jerky, you needed to boil it till it got all mushy, leaving you with nothing but rubbery chunks of meat. But with this new pseudo-bacon, you could eat it while still leaving a good bit of the delicious flavor intact.
I of course used rib meat, and I left more fat clinging to it than with the jerky, which made a big difference in terms of taste. But at any rate, I added two kilos of that pseudo-bacon to the order.
Before leaving the stall, I left three messages with Sheera Ruu: That they needed to eat it within seven days, that it didn’t need to be boiled as much as normal jerky, and that this was my thanks to them for always coming to the stalls over this past month, so I didn’t need any payment for it.
Did such actions go against the customs of the post town?
Even so, at least when it came to Pops’s construction company and the members of the Silver Vase, I couldn’t help feeling the need to give them something to show my gratitude. But I was undeniably feeling a touch nervous as we walked south down the stone highway towards The Sledgehammer, thinking that if we all met up and they thrust the pseudo-bacon back at me, then I’d probably end up crying into my pillow over it.
Our current group consisted of me, Vina Ruu, Shin Ruu, and Ai Fa. Ludo Ruu and the boy from the branch house stayed behind at the stalls.
And as she stood next to me, Vina Ruu gave a sigh full of utter misery.
“Are you alright, Vina Ruu...?”
“Yeah... But if it’s possible, I’d prefer to get all the troublesome stuff dealt with sooner rather than later...”
As she walked unsteadily along, her right leg dragged ever so slightly. I couldn’t spy any expression on her face, but I’d still say she seemed rather uncertain even so.
Is she going to accept that gift from Shumiral?
I’d felt that question welling up in my throat for a while now, but I had somehow managed to hold it back so far.
Though it had been pretty bumbling, Vina Ruu was still someone who had tried to make a move on me. And so, it probably wouldn’t be good for me to be asking her that sort of thing about Shumiral.
What had Vina Ruu been feeling as she shot me those passionate glances? And what sort of emotions had been swirling deep inside her then? Was it curiosity toward my mysterious background? Had her longing for the outside world provided some sort of added value? Or was it just pure affection? I had no way of knowing, and maybe the same was even true for Vina Ruu.
The people of the forest’s edge likely relied on their intuition when choosing a partner even more than folks did back in my old world. Mia Lea Ruu had confessed her feelings to Donda Ruu after only meeting him twice, and her daughter Reina Ruu certainly hadn’t taken long to do the same with me.
Of course, maybe I was being a bit hasty extrapolating those two examples out into being true of the nature of their people in general. But Vina Ruu was related to both of them, and she had come at me rather hard and fast, too.
Still, just how exactly did she feel about Shumiral?
What were her thoughts on what he had said to her?
There was no way an awkward guy like me could even begin to imagine.
“What is it? You’ve been looking disheartened for a while now,” Ai Fa said, bringing her face in closer as we walked. “If there’s something concerning you, Asuta, then speak up rather than keeping it to yourself.”
“No, it’s nothing. I was just thinking a bit,” I said with a shake of my head as Ai Fa shot me a glare about 20% more piercing than usual. “What about you, though? Are you sensing that gaze again today?”
“No, not today. And I’m hoping yesterday was someone who just happened to be keeping an unusually persistent eye on us.”
But at least until that was certain, Ai Fa wouldn’t let her guard down.
Still, there was half a month left until the day of the next meeting.
The Ruu clan were in a period of rest, so it was one thing for them, but Ai Fa couldn’t exactly ignore her hunting responsibilities that long. After all, less giba being hunted around the Ruu settlement meant more of them appearing elsewhere, as they ate up all the food.
The period when the Suun clan were shirking their duty as hunters had caused quite a bit of disturbance, but at the very least in the area around the Fa house, the number of giba still hadn’t really started thinning out at all. And the nearby Fou and Ran clans also seemed to still be making rather steady catches, too.
“I plan to head into the forest every other day until the 15th day of the white month,” Ai Fa stated as if she had been reading my mind. And then, she shot me a glare from real close. “And so, I also intend to ask the Ruu clan to take over my guard duties every other day. But you better not go acting recklessly when I’m not watching, Asuta, or I’ll make you regret it.”
“Got it. Wait, when have I been reckless in the post town to begin with, anyway?”
“You got slugged by that girl from the south just a few days ago now, didn’t you?” she retorted, looking at me like she was a cat with its hackles raised, and then she poked me in the shoulder.
It seemed like her mood took a turn for the worse the second we started talking about Diel.
“You two have quite a dynamic going, don’t you...?” Vina Ruu murmured.
Ai Fa turned her way, reining in the anger on her face as she did so.
“You seem rather weakened. Does your ankle still hurt, eldest daughter of the Ruu?”
“No... It’s more my heart that hurts when I see you two acting so comfortable with each other...”
That statement caused my heart to skip a beat.
However, Ai Fa just tilted her head and looked confused.
“You have a lot of family in the Ruu clan, don’t you? So why should such a sight pain you?”
“You’re seriously asking, aren’t you? That’s what makes you so hard to handle...”
I could practically see the question mark forming over Ai Fa’s head.
As she glanced listlessly at my clan head, Vina Ruu gave a sigh.
“Whatever, don’t worry about it... This is my own personal issue to deal with, after all...”
“I see,” Ai Fa answered with a nod. Then, after looking unusually hesitant for a moment, she continued on, “Granny Jiba and Rimee Ruu are both part of the Ruu clan. They’re the only two I know intimately, but that’s enough for me to say... I think that your house is truly blessed.”
“I know all that... My family is precious to me, too...”
With that, Vina Ruu’s face disappeared behind her long bangs.
As for what she whispered next, I may have been the only one to hear it, as I was standing right next to her.
“What is it that I even want, I wonder...?” she murmured with a childlike unease to her voice.
◇
“As of today, my contract with you has come to a momentary close, Asuta,” Nail stated emotionlessly in the kitchen of his inn, The Sledgehammer.
He had a medium build all around, and hadn’t yet hit 30. His hair was dark brown, his eyes reddish-brown, and his skin ivory-white. Overall, he had the appearance of a perfectly normal westerner.
“Thank you for working with me up till now. And I would be truly glad to form a new contract with you starting from tomorrow onwards.”
“I’m honored to hear you say that. But like I mentioned before, I’d like to switch over to a dish that doesn’t use the pickled chitt starting tomorrow,” I replied while laying out the ingredients I had brought atop my workstation.
“I’ve been secretly looking forward to seeing what you’ll make,” Nail stated as he watched.
Despite the fact that his words were so polite and friendly, his face remained almost eerily expressionless. The man was a bit eccentric, in that he adhered to the customs of the east and strove not to let his emotions show.
“I somehow managed to get the flavor to come together. I’d like you to give it a taste today, so I’ll go ahead and get to work.”
The dish for today was the kimchi hot pot-inspired “chitt hot pot.” To make it, I boiled the giba meat, aria, and tino together, then added pickled chitt and tau oil. And so, my hands were completely free during that boiling step. Thanks to that, after I tossed the ingredients into the pot, I was able to swiftly set about preparing my new dish: the giba sauté arrabbiata I had served Ai Fa and Shumiral two days ago. And since I was just preparing enough for one person, it was an incredibly simple process.
As I silently worked away on the dish, I left Vina Ruu to watch over the chitt hot pot.
Meanwhile, Ai Fa stood by the far wall, which had a window, Shin Ruu guarded the kitchen’s entrance, and Nail watched me work from right next to me. The Sledgehammer was the smallest out of the inns I was familiar with, and so the kitchen was feeling rather cramped with five of us in it.
Back when we were prepared for Zattsu and Tei Suun to attack, there were four bodyguards assigned to us. Three of them stayed outside of the building and kept an eye on both the front and rear entrances. But this time there were only two guards, and so we kept our forces consolidated.
Naudis of The Great Southern Tree had definitely seemed afraid of the hunters of the forest’s edge. However, that didn’t seem to be true at all of Nail. As someone who admired the culture of the Eastern Kingdom of Sym, I guess if anyone would lament how distant the four great kingdoms could be, it would be him. And so, though the people of the forest’s edge faced discrimination for having abandoned Jagar and becoming children of Selva, he seemed to treat them fairly and justly.
He said he didn’t take a wife from the east because he couldn’t work up the resolve to abandon his god or make her do so...
It seemed that the act of changing gods was seen as a sort of taboo here in this world.
It was no surprise that the ones who were abandoned wouldn’t look fondly on such people, but they weren’t exactly welcomed with arms wide open by their new comrades, either. That was why the people of the forest’s edge were met with such a cold reception from the folks of Genos, right from the very start.
What’s their logic there, anyway? Do they find it hard to trust people who can change gods lightly?
But it wasn’t as if anyone was making that decision lightly, anyway.
Take Kamyua Yoshu, for example.
He was born with mixed blood from Selva and Mahyudra, and so he spent his childhood in the northern kingdom, but moved to the west after losing his mother. Of course, I didn’t know the circumstances behind his birth, especially considering the two nations were at war with one another. I just knew that he lived with his mother as a northerner, changed gods after his mother’s passing, and then became a westerner. And I had little doubt that complicated upbringing was what led to him having such a bizarre personality.
Kamyua Yoshu had said he couldn’t get proper work with a background like his, and so he had decided to earn a living with his skills as a bodyguard instead. And that he felt a one-sided kinship toward the people of the forest’s edge, who faced similar circumstances.
Neither Kamyua Yoshu nor the people of the forest’s edge changed gods lightly in the least. And yet, the Western Kingdom of Selva still didn’t kindly welcome them.
So I guess folks changing gods for the sake of marriage wouldn’t exactly receive the blessings of those around them, either.
I glanced over at Vina Ruu as she stood at the stove next to me, and stealthily gave a sigh.
At any rate, the meat and aria had heated up nicely by now, and so I added the tarapa sauce I had brought along into the pot.
“Is that the same tarapa broth you use at your stalls?”
“Yes. I’ve found that it pairs very well with chitt seeds.”
“I see. Like you, I often use chitt seeds and myamuu together, but hearing you recommend tarapa as well is honestly a bit surprising.”
“That’s because if you just use tarapa as is, it’s too acidic, right? That could be tasty in its own way, but I mix in finely diced aria to add some sweetness.”
As I was giving that explanation to Nail, I wrapped up with preparing the dish.
My giba sauté arrabbiata was complete.
“Please, go ahead and dig in. I believe this dish is a match for my giba chitt.”
“Right. At the very least, it smells just as good.”
With a serious look on his face, Nail picked up the spoon.
Then, when he took a bite of the loin meat coated in red sauce, he went, “Ah,” and covered his mouth.
“Wh-What is it?”
“This won’t do... I just can’t keep my mouth from grinning.”
“Ah, that makes me really happy to hear,” I replied, breaking out in a smile of my own.
It wasn’t like there was anyone from Sym around, though, so I didn’t see what the issue was with just letting his emotions show.
“I am incredibly ashamed... Ah, this is just so tasty.”
Nail kept on eating the dish, his mouth twitching constantly all the while. He somehow managed to remain properly expressionless all the way to the end, but the haste with which he ate made it clear just how much he enjoyed it.
“Yes, this flavor is simply superb. I can’t possibly imagine it being less popular than what we’ve served up till now,” Nail stated, his plate now cleared. However, his light brown eyes were shooting me something of a worried look. “But we’re just talking about this one dish, right...? Of course, I had you alternate the dishes day by day based solely on my inability to choose to start with...”
“Right. I was thinking of preparing two different dishes for you again, and so I’ve been experimenting with a new soup too, but I haven’t gotten that to come together just yet.”
I had attempted an arrabbiata soup to meet the same needs, but perhaps because I was using a still-incomplete tarapa stew for it, the taste seemed somehow lacking.
In the sauté, the meat was the star. And I felt the sauce worked perfectly to support that, with its wonderful mix of tarapa and chitt. But as a soup, it just seemed like it was missing something. Apparently taking my giba meat broth and adding just tarapa sauce and tau oil wasn’t enough to bring it into harmony with the spiciness of the chitt seeds.
“With the pickled chitt, you use, um... salted maru, was it? At any rate, it was a type of seafood. And apparently, that was playing a pretty huge role in the chitt hot pot.”
It was certainly possible that I arrived at that conclusion not through some sort of common sense, but instead based on what I could recall of the kimchi hot pots I’d tasted and what I knew of Italian cooking.
Even without seafood, there was still consommé and bouillon... But at any rate, the stock I was using was clearly lacking, and it was bugging me.
Just boiling the giba bones should give me a rich stock, so maybe that was enough. Perhaps like with the stew, if I carefully heated a variety of vegetables with it, that would do the trick.
But that would require a ton of time, effort, ingredients, and firewood. And so, that method just wouldn’t work when we were talking about selling at a price of one meal for two red coins, and just one hour to work with.
“The soup dish you’ve made until now has proven quite popular with my customers. If there’s no new soup to be added to the menu in its place, then I may end up hearing quite a few complaints,” Nail stated with a serious look in his eyes. “Asuta, as I said before, I have no issues whatsoever with the flavor of the meat dish you just presented to me. Would it be difficult to alternate between it and the soup dish you make using pickled chitt...?”
“Ah, hmm... Let’s see... Well, this is a personal matter coming from my side, but I currently need to reevaluate the cost of my ingredients.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“You see, I went and revised the price I buy giba meat for throughout the settlement at the forest’s edge. I had been getting it for far too cheap up until now, so we raised it to a fair rate instead. Even so, though, it’s still cheaper than karon meat.”
Nail nodded in response, then said, “It’s true that I was worried about whether or not you would be able to make a profit when I heard you would be using my pickled chitt. How much do you make currently, then? Ah, but I don’t mean to force it out of you, so you don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t mind. Let’s see, as things stand... I make 9 red coins of profit for 30 dishes of the chitt hot pot.”
Surprising as it may sound, when we bought giba meat from other clans now, the cost-price ratio swelled up to 85%. It was enough to cause even Nail’s eyes to open wide in shock.
“You sell your cooking for 60 red coins, but only 9 of them end up as profit?”
“That’s right. Back when I was getting the meat for cheap I earned 30 red coins in profit, so I wasn’t all that worried about such matters. But this honestly doesn’t work as things stand, businesswise...”
However, I was the one who went and raised the price on meat. My own negligence was at fault here, for letting myself rely on the cheapness of the meat and not paying enough attention to the cost-price ratio.
The only thing I could say in my defense was that I had been working hard each day and had trouble squeezing in time to experiment with cooking, which was why I had little choice but to go with dishes based on kimchi hot pot and pork kimchi.
“Still, I understand what you’re saying. I’ll be working on developing a new dish from here on out, but until I’m happy with it, I’ll keep on preparing the chitt hot pot like I have up till now.”
“But your profits...”
“If I make the customers mad over something like this and giba cooking ends up with a bad reputation, that would really be putting the cart before the totos. So at least for now, I think this is the best path forward. And I’ll give my all to coming up with a new dish good enough for you to sell.” There was just one more thing I wanted to add after that. “Still, what’s really adding to my ingredient costs for the chitt hot pot is the fact that I use the pickled chitt I purchase from you to make it. But if you were to make the chitt hot pot yourself and sell it, you should certainly be able to earn a profit from that, right?”
Actually, he should already be making a profit from selling giba cooking to his customers, so if he made it himself, then logically he could add my profits to what he currently made. And yet, he just sadly looked down and shook his head.
“I have some degree of confidence in my cooking skills, but I don’t believe I could ever make the same dishes and provide the same flavor as you, Asuta. And if I put out something worse than what you make, then I would be inviting the displeasure of my customers.”
“You think so? That’s a shame.”
“But Asuta, from what you were saying... Does that mean it would be possible to buy giba meat from you?”
“Huh? Yes, of course,” I replied, my heart skipping a beat.
Nail had been looking downhearted, but suddenly, his eyes were brimming with anticipation.
“In that case, please allow me to do so. The flaws would stand out clearly if I attempted to make the same dish as you, but if I can make something that’s properly my own, then I believe that would be worth offering to my customers.” With that, Nail was no longer able to hold himself back from smiling. “And even more than that, I personally wish to eat giba meat, too. Lately, the fact that I feed my customers giba while I have to eat kimyuus and karon has been all I can think about...”
“You really want to buy raw giba meat...?”
“Yes. I can’t buy too great an amount, but, well... It doesn’t cost more than karon meat, right?”
“O-Of course not! Right now, I’m thinking of selling it for the same price that karon goes for around town. Though if things go well, I may want to revise the price at some point...”
“In that case, I certainly feel fortunate. After all, I’ll be able to buy giba meat while it’s still cheap,” Nail said, bringing his fingers together in the way that I’d often seen folks from Sym do. “Please, sell me giba meat. I’d like enough for ten meals each day to begin with, if that’s alright.”
Ten meals at an inn worked out to roughly 2.5 kilograms. And at the same price as karon, it would only be 10 red coins or so of profit.
But even still, I finally had someone who wanted to purchase raw giba meat. Honestly, I ended up turning towards Ai Fa without even thinking.
My clan head remained expressionless, but I could see some joy in her narrowed eyes as she stared back at me.
“Nail, thank you. Thank you so, so much.”
“I’m very glad at this turn of events, too. Giba meat has an entirely different sort of appeal to it than kimyuus or karon, and so I’m sure many more folks will end up seeking it out in the future,” Nail replied, then he said, “Excuse me,” and turned his back to me.
With that he disappeared into the pantry, and returned before long holding a small jar and a reasonably-sized cloth bundle.
“This is the salted maru I use in pickled chitt,” Nail stated, placing the jar atop my work station and removing the lid.
I peered inside with brimming curiosity, and saw that the jar was packed about halfway full with these little, white, translucent things. I couldn’t really make out their shape very well, but they were generally around a centimeter big and had long, slender bodies. If I had to guess, I’d peg them as something like krill or shrimp that had then been salted.
“These are caught in the western territory, so they’re not all that rare of an ingredient. You should be able to find it at pretty much any shop handling things like myamuu and rock salt. And one of these jars would cost you two red coins.”
“I see! You said it’s normally used as an appetizer when drinking, right?”
It was probably classified similarly to fermented squid paste. It might not go together if I just threw it into the tarapa sauce, but still, there apparently weren’t any nearby oceans and you couldn’t get much from the rivers around Genos. Even this little bit of seafood was invaluable to me.
“Thank you. I’ll go buy some today and start experimenting to see if I can use it in my dishes. What’s this bundle?”
“This is dried milk. A merchant from Sym dropped by this morning, and I purchased it just like we had agreed.”
“Ah, cheese! Ooh, and there sure is a lot of it!”
“Yes. I was able to buy five, and I will yield them all to you this time around.”
The Ruu clan had also asked to buy some, so I would equally divide it and each of us would get two and a half of these 400-500 gram blocks of cheese.
I turned again to face Ai Fa, and found my beloved clan head covering her mouth and shooting me an angry glare. As I well knew, her favorite dish was the dried milk-stuffed hamburger steak I made with the camembert-like cheese.
She’s not from Sym or anything, so she should just let herself smile when she’s happy, I thought to myself.
“Thank you! We ate up what we bought from you before in no time at all, so this is a big help.”
“I’m glad to hear that it brought you such joy... Though you looked even happier than that when you learned you could sell me giba meat,” Nail said, breaking out in a slight smile. “As a man of the forest’s edge, you find joy in dried milk from Sym, and though I am a westerner, giba meat brings me pleasure. It’s an exchange no one will ever know of, being in a tiny little shop such as this, and yet I find it quite precious. I hope that this bond between us lasts forevermore, Asuta.”
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