Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 12 - Chapter 6

Pechka Ponders Autumn Delights

  Pechka

Say that when you’re selecting a party in a console RPG, one of your options is a character who can’t do anything. Normally, no player would choose them, although they might if the character had some bonus attribute outside of combat—like being good at recovery magic even though they couldn’t fight, or being able to undo traps or open locks or treasure chests—or they could be promoted to a powerful job class once they hit a certain level. But if the character truly couldn’t do anything, nobody would use them.

Right now, Pechka was that character. She watched off to the side during battles. She followed along quietly when exploring. She didn’t actually do anything. She contributed nothing to the party. In addition, because the magical candies earned through combat were split equally among the four of them, Pechka’s useless presence decreased the others’ rewards. Not only was she of no benefit to anyone, she was actively dragging them down. Truly the worst party member.

For starters, she wasn’t playing this game because she wanted to. She’d essentially been dragged into Magical Girl Raising Project. Because of that, she wanted to snap back at everyone like, “It’s not my fault if I’m not useful,” but with Rionetta making stinging remarks, Nonako insensitively bringing up how useless Pechka was, and Clantail looking over at her like she wanted to say something, Pechka wanted to disappear on the spot. At this rate, she was bound to develop an ulcer. The other three magical girls took the game seriously because of the lavish ten-billion-yen completion prize, and that motivation only made Pechka feel even more out of place.

She had never been useful—not at the start and definitely not now. Clantail and Rionetta were quietly moping over how another party had driven them off the hunting grounds. Nonako Miyokata was keeping cheery conversation going all on her own, but there was a strong sense that they were spinning their wheels. The air around the fire was heavy.

If Pechka could say one thoughtful thing or lighten the mood enough to blow away this oppressive air, then no one could claim she was useless. But despite telling herself to say something—anything—she couldn’t manage a single word. Rionetta suddenly looked up, a severe expression on her face. She was staring at Nonako. Judging by her expression, she clearly didn’t think well of her. Uh-oh, Pechka thought; she expected Rionetta to say something like, “Goodness, you really are a motormouth,” or “Even a housefly would show better restraint.” Those two were always clashing over every little thing.

“By the way…,” Pechka said without thinking. And she was fretting about it more than anyone else could be. She’d been thinking she had to do something before Rionetta attacked Nonako, but she didn’t quite have any specific ideas of what to talk about.

Rionetta, Nonako, and Clantail were all looking at her. She had to say something. But when she tried to talk, she panicked, and when she panicked, words got lodged in her throat. She didn’t have the time to think of something helpful to say.

“By the way…um…there’s no seasons in this game…right?” Pechka said, finally.

Rionetta, Nonako, and Clantail stared at her dubiously.

Pechka panicked. Babbling on about the seasons in order to make small talk was too clichéd. But she couldn’t take it back now. She had to bring this to some kind of point. “Outside the game, it’s fall, but…here…um…it’s all dreary.”

When it was compared with the first area, the wasteland, maybe you could say the fact that there was grass growing here made it better, but there was scant difference between the barrenness there and the barrenness of this second area, the grasslands. There was no harvest or red leaves. Only grass blowing in the wind.

“And when you think of autumn…it’s, like, a harvest season…” Pechka didn’t even know herself what she was trying to say anymore, but the panic telling her that she just had to say something wrung the words out for her.

Rionetta looked away as if she’d lost interest, Clantail closed her eyes, and Nonako’s gaze turned to the campfire.

“…Dobin mushi,” Rionetta muttered, talking about a traditional broth with steamed prawn, chicken, and mushrooms and served in a dobin teapot.

Nonako followed up with “Marrons glacés…,” a kind of candied chestnut dish.

“Iridori…,” Clantail muttered with her eyes still closed, lowering her head, picturing chicken and vegetables simmering in mixed sauces.

The tension from moments before was all gone. Instead, a sort of ennui or gloom or something enshrouded the three girls, who immediately fell into a somber silence. What was going on here? Pechka examined the trio, but they remained with their mouths closed, seemingly lost in thought.

  Rionetta

Back when Rionetta was known as Rio Kujou, she would go to her father’s favorite restaurant every autumn to stuff her face with various matsutake mushroom dishes. Even now, she could remember the many lavish, exquisite foods that had lined the sparkling countertops: meat skewers; steaming dobin mushi in earthenware teapots; clear mushroom broth; ochazuke, steamed rice steeped in green tea; and egg drop soup.

Of all these, the thing her parents had enjoyed the most was the dobin mushi.

The light-colored broth had smelled faintly of freshly squeezed kabosu citrus; the thick-cut matsutake mushrooms nicely complemented the soft texture of the conger eel.

To be honest, she didn’t really think she’d properly understood what made matsutake mushrooms so good. Feeding a child matsutake was basically for the self-satisfaction of the parents. It was just a barometer for having achieved a level of success where they were able to enjoy that self-satisfaction.

At the time, Rio hadn’t thought about things so cynically—rather, she’d believed the food had to be good because her mother and father were saying that it was good, and she’d lived her life without doubting anything at all: not her parents, the chefs, the matsutake mushrooms, the eel, the kabosu, or the world.

Her father had been around back then. And her mother. The Kujou family had been full of smiles and wealth. Rio had lots of friends, too. When she got in trouble, those “friends” wouldn’t be any help at all, but Rio had never even considered the time would come when she’d be in trouble. Life had been fun, with only good people around her. Suffering and struggle had only ever happened in stories, or on the other side of the TV, to those pitiable people you had to offer charity to.

Now, she no longer went to that restaurant, or anything of the sort. Her father was gone, and her mother was gone. Rionetta had become one of those pitiable people, but there was no kind benefactor who would offer her charity. There was no point in a magical girl spending wads of money to savor haute cuisine when she didn’t need to eat or drink. It was enough for her to choke down her flavorless rations.

Inside her doll, Rionetta breathed a sigh that no one else could hear.

  Nonako Miyokata

Nonako had no difficulty in chatting with other people to show them a good time—in fact, she enjoyed doing so. After she’d moved to Japan when her father’s job was transferred there, it had taken her two years to become conversational in Japanese, and she’d made plenty of friends at her middle school. It was around that time that Anna had become a magical girl. Being a pragmatist, whenever she had a spare moment, she started thinking about how she could take advantage of her magic to make it useful in her own life. Since she’d become a magical girl, she wanted to get some benefit from it.

In her classes, during gym time, during breaks, while catching basketballs or while throwing them, while eating her lunch, she pondered how she could make use of her magic to make friends with animals—while also being careful about it, since if she did anything too big, the Magical Kingdom might zero in on her. Making changes and revisions along the way, she put together a plan.

In the corner of the schoolyard, there was a chestnut tree. The rule was that it was okay to pick up any chestnuts that fell, but there were a lot of kids after them. Covered in sharp spines, the nuts were packed full of sweet flesh.

Whether roasted or steamed, or in Mont Blanc or in Maman’s specialty, marrons glacés, everyone at school knew that chestnuts tasted amazing no matter how you cooked them.

Nonako Miyokata’s human form, Anna Sarizae, was one of the people after those chestnuts. Chestnuts were good. The chestnuts from that tree were particularly good. She very much wanted to get them for herself and eat them all up. Anna was greedy. But she didn’t just have a lot of rivals—the school had even set up a security camera, since every year some students would be reckless. Even if she could get the chestnuts somehow with her magical-girl powers, getting caught on camera would spell trouble.

So Anna made a plan. First she’d make friends with a crow. And then she’d order the crow to knock down the chestnuts. Anna would stay in her regular form, and then right before the bell signaling the end of lunch rang, when nobody was around, she’d nonchalantly wait underneath the tree and pick up the chestnuts the crow had knocked down and take them for herself. No one would ever suspect Nonako and the crow were in cahoots. It should have been a perfect plan.

The next day, she put her plan into action. She had a crow peck at the chestnuts until they fell to the ground.

The moment she thought, Yes! I did it! a chestnut burr hit her right in the face where she was waiting underneath the tree, and her shriek rang out in the empty schoolyard.

  Clantail

On the long weekends in the autumn, it was customary for the Ono family to spend a few days with Nene’s father’s parents.

Her grandparents’ house was deep in the mountains, very remote compared with where Nene lived. It gave her a lot of opportunities to see wild animals like tanukis and monkeys. Nene loved animals, so it was perfect for her. She liked animals more than people. You could tell what animals were thinking, what they wanted.

Her grandparents kept chickens. Those domestic chickens were more accustomed to people than wild animals were. Her grandparents didn’t name the chickens, treating them as a group and not as individual creatures, but even if she didn’t do it consciously, Nene remembered each one’s individual quirks and gave them all names. She fed them, and when she let them out into the yard for exercise, she played with them and ran around with them.

Her parents worried because she didn’t have friends, but Nene was fine having animals for companions.

That year was different from the usual. On the second day of her stay, just like the day before, she fed the chickens, but when she let them out of the coop to play, there was one short. Yoshio, Michiko, Jirou, Jouichi, and Kinuyo were all there, but Sachi wasn’t. No matter where Nene looked, she couldn’t find her. Nene checked the feed bin and behind the coop, but Sachi wasn’t there. Had she run away? Had she been attacked by a cat or a dog? Around here, she could’ve been attacked by a tanuki or a monkey, or maybe even a bear.

The more Nene thought about it, the more she kept imagining awful things. Where was Sachi? What had happened to her? Thinking that she had to hurry and report to an adult, Nene ran for her grandmother to find her in the kitchen, sharpening a knife. Nene kept herself from stumbling over her words as she blurted everything out rapidly.

Nene’s grandmother looked at her with a baffled expression and said, “Hmm? You didn’t know, hon? The iridori you had yesterday, the stuff you were sayin’ was so good—that was the chicken I had your grampa fetch for me.”

Nene had indeed eaten that braised chicken dish for dinner last night. The crisp texture of the lotus root, the soft and flaky taro, the shiitake mushrooms lush with lots of broth, and the main ingredient, the chicken—yes, the chicken. The centerpiece of that dish.

Once she realized what her grandmother meant, the following three days became a total blur.

Ever since then, whenever she stayed over at her grandparents’ place, she never touched the iridori.

  Pechka

She’d finished with the game for the day and was back in the real world, but she still hadn’t figured out what had been up with that awkward silence earlier. Clantail, Rionetta, and Nonako had all been in a funk. They didn’t seem irritated about anything that had happened in the game, but more like something else, something kind of distant, was on their minds.

Things had been plenty depressing at that moment, just with the stuff in the game. Nonako had been making a fuss about how their party had gotten driven out of the hunting grounds while other groups forged on ahead, Rionetta had been touchy, and Clantail had been somber. But they’d been thinking of something other than their current situation—all three of them, startlingly enough.

Pechka didn’t like this game. She wanted to avoid thinking about it, if possible. She wasn’t cut out for fighting, and even if the damage in the game wasn’t real, she didn’t like to get hurt. But still, she was scared to drop out without saying anything. She’d probably get yelled at and made fun of; maybe she’d even get slapped or kicked. She’d been down in the dumps as she continued the game against her will, but once she was back in the real world, she came up with one good idea. Or it was less that she came up with it, and more that she’d gotten a hint.

And that hint had come from Ninomiya. He’d complimented the meal Pechka had made with her magic, an ability she’d only ever thought of as a little bonus. Pechka’s magic had given her an opportunity to get alone with Ninomiya and talk with him. Therefore, her cooking had been useful.

I could even make use of this in the game, she thought.

According to Fal, the game had a hidden hunger parameter. That was why they’d been eating those dry, bland rations that didn’t taste good at all, just to fill their stomachs. But what if those rations actually tasted good? They’d feel less like farm animals at mealtime and more like humans enjoying a proper meal.

She thought back on the moment they’d had the last time they’d eaten in the game.

Rionetta, Clantail, and Nonako had reacted when Pechka had brought up autumn, the harvest season. The resulting doom and gloom hadn’t been caused by the game being boring or not going well or anything like that. Harvest meant food. Maybe they had been lamenting, “Why do we have to eat such gross rations during the harvest season, when there’s so much delicious food?”

Pechka could change that. And not only would the food be good—they wouldn’t have to pay for rations, meaning they could save more magical candy. She could finally contribute to the party. She would no longer be a drag whose presence served no purpose, but a true member who would support the party with food.

She still wasn’t into playing the game, but contributing this much was better than nothing.

And since it was autumn, she wanted to make something autumnal. Matsutake dobin mushi, marrons glacés, iridori—each of the three magical girls wanted a different food. How could she serve them best? The three dishes seemed too unrelated to serve together.

Since this was her first time making food for magical girls, she didn’t reach any conclusions, even after she spent the whole night mulling it over. So the next day, she tried indirectly asking Ninomiya when he joined her in the park for lunch.

“Huh?” he said. “Autumn foods? Hmmm. I guess I’d say rice balls.”

“Rice balls…?”

“The rice balls I had during my autumn field trip in elementary school were super tasty.”

Rice balls, of all things. She thought that rather than mentioning a specifically autumnal food, bringing up a memory that had left a strong impression on him—one of rice balls—was very like Ninomiya. But perhaps she was biased.

The more she thought about it, however, the more appropriate rice balls seemed. There weren’t a lot of foods you could easily eat without any plates, bowls, forks, knives, chopsticks—any utensils at all. And besides, you could fill rice balls with fall foods as a way to fully enjoy the harvest season.

Okay, then rice balls it is.

Chika went to bed, deeply grateful to Ninomiya. The problem now was: What sort of rice balls should she make? And if she was going to test the fillings, she couldn’t use Ninomiya as her guinea pig. So who out there could she rope into taste testing? She got the feeling that it could be only one person.

  Tomoki

When he got home, there were rice balls lined up on the table. The well-shaped white triangles were prettily wrapped in seaweed with a dark purplish sheen, and the rice was so perfectly cooked that you could pick out each and every grain. The wafting smell of fresh-steamed rice was mouthwatering.

Standing beside the table was his older sister. She was wearing an apron; maybe that meant she’d made the rice balls? Tomoki had occasionally seen her cooking, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen her making rice balls. She didn’t usually make anything that simple—she had the tendency to go overboard and try really fancy and involved dishes.

“What’s this about?” Tomoki asked her.

“Can you try some of these for me?”

“Huh? You sure?”

Elementary schoolers are always hungry. Their mom might get mad if Tomoki ate something filling at this hour, but if he were to go play after this to burn off some calories, then he should still be able to enjoy dinner. He was feeling optimistic, so he picked up one of the light-brown rice balls. Was there something mixed in with the rice?

When he took a bite, something crunched inside his mouth. “What’s this…? Lotus root? Lotus root in a rice ball?”

“That’s iridori.”

True, the sweet soy sauce–based flavor was like that of iridori. It was present in each ingredient—the chicken, lotus root, carrots, taro—as well as the rice. After Tomoki finished the rice ball, he tilted his head. It wasn’t bad, but whether the filling suited a rice ball was…well, the word iffy came to mind.

“Try the others, too,” Chika suggested.

The rice ball she pushed at him was in a bowl. It wasn’t just juicy—it was soaked in broth, and the rice was falling apart. The unfamiliar aroma tickled his nose pleasantly.

“That’s a matsutake dobin mushi rice ball,” she explained.

Tomoki picked up the chopsticks from the chopstick rest and stirred the contents of the bowl. He knew matsutake mushrooms were fancy, and he had no idea how his sister had gotten ahold of some, but in any case, the dish was delicious, with a complex flavor that permeated his tongue—but this wasn’t a rice ball.

“Sis, this is good, but it’s not a rice ball. It’s ochazuke.”

“I guess you’re right. How about this one?”

The rice ball she held out to him was made of very normal white rice. Maybe this one’s normal, Tomoki thought as he bit into it, then scowled. It smelled sweet. It was soaked in sugar, and…were those chestnuts? The taste and texture of chestnuts were all through the rice, spreading inside his mouth.

“What…is this…?” he asked.

“Ummm… That’s the marrons glacés.”

Tomoki ran to the garbage bin beside the fridge and spat out the food, then gargled a few times to rinse the taste from his mouth. It seemed like his sister was protesting, but it went in one ear and out the other.

After that, he wasted an hour arguing with her, plus another thirty minutes convincing her to please just make normal rice balls. Having been made to eat something so weird, he mustered up all the vocabulary an elementary schooler could possess in an attempt to convince her, utterly exhausting himself as a result, and he headed off to bed before it was even nine o’clock. But his sister remained in the kitchen, and it looked like she was working. Just where does she get that enthusiasm? Tomoki wondered as he was drawn into the world of dreams.

The marrons glacés rice ball showed up again in his dreams. This is too much, he thought.