The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 3 - Chapter 165

Chapter 165:

A Family in a Stew

MY HEART WAS RACING. If I’d messed up the rice, dinner would be ruined. Dear rice, please turn out good!

“Ivy…why are you praying to your stew pot? Is that part of the recipe?”

Druid’s puzzled voice faintly reached my ears. I glanced at him and met a pair of deeply troubled eyes… Oh no, I’m embarrassing myself.

“Um, since I messed it up so many times before, I was kind of giving it a little prayer…you might say…”

“Oh, so that’s all.” Druid looked relieved to hear that…which made me feel even more anxious. Just how long had he been watching me? “It’s just, I wondered if your memories from the past were influencing you right now.”

My memories from the past? Oh! He means Past Me. I suppose it’s safe for us to talk about my past life like this when nobody’s around. Okay, yes. That was an astute observation, Druid. Hm? Wait, I was under Past Me’s influence just now? Does that mean in my past life, I used to pray to the rice whenever I cooked it? Um…isn’t that kind of creepy?

“Mr. Druid, that’s a little…”

“You know…I sometimes feel a little anxious when I watch you, Ivy.”

I know. Who prays to a pot? But now that I think about it, I might’ve prayed to yesterday’s meal, too… Wait a minute, was that why everyone avoided me yesterday while I was cooking?

“Ha ha ha… Well, do you think the ryce turned out well this time?”

I won’t dwell on the past! All those people yesterday were just in a hurry. They definitely did NOT run away because I creeped them out! I hope…

“Or maybe you already screwed it up?”

La la la! I can’t hear you! I shook my head from side to side and lifted the lid off the pot. Please be good, please be good… “Ooh! I think this is the best attempt yet.”

It looked very nice. The rice wasn’t sticky and soggy; the kernels were nice and plump. It really resembled the freshly steamed rice I remembered. I think I may have cracked it!

I used a big spoon to fluff the rice. It looked perfect. I scooped up a bit with a smaller spoon. Okay, how does it taste? What’s the texture like?

“I…I did it! Success! I was right; the amount of water was really important. Now the only question is, can I cook it this well every time?”

“It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before,” Druid said, knitting his brows as he stared into the pot. I guess it did look foreign to him. But nothing seemed amiss to me—it was exactly like the rice in my memories.

“Can I have a taste?” he asked.

“Sure, go ahead.” I scooped up a little spoonful and handed it to him. This would be Druid’s first bite of rice. And, well, I kind of already knew what his reaction would be.

“It…tastes like nothing?”

Called it. “It does have a subtle sweetness to it, but it’s a little hard to pick up on.”

“A sweetness? Hmm…I don’t taste it…”

All that strongly seasoned food people in this world preferred seemed to make it hard for him to pick up on rice’s more subtle qualities. My only hope was that he would like the stew I served on top of it.

“Don’t worry, I’m cooking something called a donburi tonight. The rice will have a really flavorful stew on top of it.”

I wanted to try making onigiri, too, but I figured Druid wouldn’t like it. I seemed to remember that over-salting rice makes it lose some of its subtle flavors.

“Stew, huh…you mean what’s in that pot?”

“Yes.” Oh! I think I see Druid’s father at the entrance. “Mr. Druid, he’s here.”

“Hm? Oh! So he is.”

Huh…? Isn’t he going to go greet his father? I don’t think he knows where we are. As I looked at Druid, wondering why he wasn’t getting up, I noticed his face had grown tense as he stared at his father.

“Um…why are you still nervous?”

“W-well, just because, I guess.”

“You’ve got this! Remember, you guys were able to speak normally earlier.”

“Aye.”

Aye? He’s doomed. He’s nervous to the max. Well, at least he finally got up to greet his father… I hope he’ll be okay?

“Oops! I still have to finish dinner.”

I carried the pot of hot rice back to the tent and set up the table. I had also put the stew back on the fire to warm it up, so I returned to my cooking area and cracked a bunch of eggs directly into the bubbling mixture. Then I put the lid on, turned down the flame, and went over to the tent to finish getting ready. The eggs would cook to just the right consistency by the time I got back to them.

Oh dear…now Druid’s father looks nervous, too. Hee hee hee… Aww, they sure are family. They fidget exactly the same way.

“Hi, Ivy, sorry it took so long… What?” Druid stopped, perplexed by my suppressed laughter.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just thinking about how you two are so alike.”

“Huh?!” they gasped in perfect unison.

“Ha ha ha ha! Come on, take a seat.”

My neighbor Mathewla had let me borrow his table and chairs again, so I’d cooked an extra portion for him. Since it was a rice dish and I didn’t know how it’d turn out, I suggested he eat his portion the next day. But he was eager to try it, so I heaped some rice onto a large plate and topped it with the eggy poultry stew. The eggs had turned out just as I hoped—they were soft and tender. After I served up another three portions, I walked the big plate over to Mathewla’s tent.

“Here you go, sir! Mock oyako-don.”

“Ooh, dinner at last! It smells great. So this white stuff is ryce?”

“Yes, I hope you like it.”

“Thanks.”

I returned to Druid and his father. They were in the middle of a staring contest with the oyako-don. Just like I’d noticed earlier, their mannerisms were so similar. Even after spending years apart, there was no doubt they were father and son.

“Dinner is served, gentlemen.”

“So, uh, is this oyako-don?”

“The closest I can get to it, yes.”

We all grabbed our spoons and took a bite. Ahhh, the broth-soaked rice is so good! And I like the pigeon, too. It’s got a bit of a bite to it, and it’s really tasty.

“So…this is ryce? It tastes quite different from before… It’s good.” Druid seemed to like it. Dousing the rice with plenty of savory broth was the right move.

“I made the broth even stronger than usual to punch up the flavor.”

“I’m impressed. It is really good.” Druid’s father seemed to enjoy it, too. He took big bites, nodding after each one.

“Do you have any plain steamed ryce left?” Druid’s father asked.

I gave him a curious look. Why does he want that? “Yes…but it’s unseasoned.”

“I’m interested in tasting it…may I?”

“Um, sure… Sit tight, sir.”

I’d planned to use some of rice in the pot for onigiri the next day, but…oh well. I consulted Past Me’s memories and squeezed some rice into a ball. I assumed it would be easy enough for me to make…but it was hard. I couldn’t get it to form into a neat triangle no matter what I did! My onigiri wound up a misshapen triangular lump, but, well…it was the best I could do.

“Here you go. Sorry it’s cold.”

“Oh, thanks. …What is this, exactly?”

“It’s…an onigiri. You’re supposed to wrap it in nori, but I don’t have any right now.”

“In nori?”

Huh? But I thought this world had… No, I’ve never seen it. “Uh, never mind. It’s seasoned with salt.” Did I throw him off the scent? Come on, Druid, stop laughing and help me out here! Oh, see? Now you’ve got rice stuck in your windpipe. That’s what you get for laughing too hard. Good grief! I poured him a cup of tea and plunked it down in front of him.

“Thank…hack hack…you,” he sputtered, taking a sip of tea and breathing deeply.

His father took a bite of the onigiri and chewed it thoughtfully.

“Dad…what’s wrong?” asked Druid. “I know it has something to do with rice.”

“Hm? Well, yeah. It’s our food supplies in this town…they’re getting awfully low.”

“The butcher said the same thing. Is it a crop failure?”

“Well, we can’t get any shipments in from the next town over because of the gurbars.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, a team was attacked by a pack of gurbars on the road between the towns. Ever since that news came in, the supply chain has ground to a complete halt.”

A food shortage… Given the recent influx of migrants from other villages, that could turn into a pretty serious problem.

“Ryce is a crop that grows like a weed. So I was thinking that if it tasted good, maybe it could be useful to us.”

Ryce grows like a weed? Huh? But I thought rice took a lot of time and labor to grow. “Is it really that easy to grow rice, sir?”

“Hm? You didn’t know? Yeah, all you need to do is plow your field and scatter the ryce seed, and it practically grows on its own. It’s easy to harvest, too.”

“Wow, really?”

That was completely unlike the rice in my memories. The rice I knew had to be grown over a long period of time in flooded fields. Rice in this world sure was a cinch.

“Do you think people would eat rice bowls like this?”

“Yeah, probably… I was thinking it might be easy to convince the public to eat ryce, but the flavor of the onigiri gave me second thoughts…”

I don’t know, I think onigiri is really easy to like. Oh, wait…what about onigiri coated in soy sauce and grilled? Apparently that was also a thing in my past life. But soy sauce is so expensive… I wonder if I could use this world’s mother sauce instead? I could sweeten it a little.

“Um, what if I coated the onigiri in a slightly sweet sauce and grilled them?”

“Grilled onigiri? Grilled, eh… Yeah, grilled onigiri. With sauce…” Druid’s father muttered, looking down at the half-eaten onigiri in his hand. He seemed to be imagining how it would taste. It was a rather odd sight. “Yeah, that might be good. Even though it’s only a temporary solution to the food problem, I’m sure I could sell it if it tastes all right.”

Spoken like a true merchant.

“Ivy, could you help me with this project?”

Help him?

“I want you to create a sauce for the onigiri.”

Me? Create a sauce? Well, that shouldn’t be a problem. Actually, it sounds like fun.

“Sure thing, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Oh, wait! Is this all right with you, Mr. Druid?”

I’d just been talking about how important it was for us to make decisions together, and now here I was, going off on my own.

“I’m fine with it. Actually, I’d like to help, too, if that’s all right.”

“Of course it is!” Oh, thank goodness. Wow, I get to make a sauce! I’m so excited.