Chapter 4: A Giba Meat Restaurant in the Post Town

1

The preparations to head forth into battle had been completed.

The cooking was packed into the metal pot, which was then covered by a large cloth with pseudo-rubber tree leaves sewn onto the back to keep out water, and finally held together with fibaha vines. All in all, it gave off an incredibly sturdy impression.

The baked poitan, tino, and aria were each wrapped up in their own clean cloths and placed inside a bag meant for vegetables.

A large wooden spatula meant for stirring, a small spatula for dividing things up, the chopsticks I made out of grigee wood, two plates, and my kitchen knife were all stored in the same bag.

The other bag, meanwhile, contained plenty of firewood, a small hatchet, and lana grass for starting a fire.

The red coins for making change and the white ones to pay Milano Mas were already in a cloth bag dangling from my hip.

Everything was perfect.

I had already completed my morning work of cleaning up after last night’s dinner and gathering herbs and firewood, and the time was right midway between daybreak and when the sun hit its peak.

Now, I just needed to wait for Vina Ruu to arrive.

“It’s finally time,” Ai Fa said.

“Yeah, it is,” I replied.

“First, you have to make it through these ten days.”

“Yeah. I’ll give it everything I’ve got, like my life depended on it.”

“You’ll be doing this for ten days.”

“If it ends after those ten days, then there won’t be much purpose in having done it.”

“So you’ll be spending half a day with the eldest daughter of the Ruu for all that time...”

“Hmm?”

“Well, give it your all.”

“Yeah, I will!”

“There’s also your agreement to have relations with her.”

“No! There’s nothing like that at all!” I said, turning around in astonishment and facing Ai Fa. “W-Why are you throwing something like that out there, all of a sudden? You didn’t so much as bat an eye when it got decided that Vina Ruu would be helping me out, did you?!”

Ai Fa’s expression remained composed as she slapped down her hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t get so worked up. It was a joke.”

“Uggggh...”

“You just carry out your work, and I’ll carry out mine.”

Ai Fa’s expression remained just as calm and composed as always, but her eyes took on a very gentle light.

“...I’ll be awaiting your safe return.”

◇

Vina Ruu arrived right at the agreed upon time, and then together we used a grigee pole to carry the metal pot over that terrifying ravine and into the post town.

Our first stop was The Kimyuus’s Tail.

The place’s owner, Milano Mas, then led us around back and introduced us to the stall we’d be sharing both good times and bad with over the next 10 days.

It had wheels on it, so it could be moved around. It was two meters high, five meters wide, and 80 centimeters deep. Naturally, the frame was made out of wood, and it had some leather stretched out overhead to ward off the rain. There were wooden planks serving as walls on the front and to the sides, coming up to around my stomach, while on the back wall there was a section that could be pulled open like a door.

When I opened the door, I found that it was hollow inside, with clay densely packed along the reverse side of the walls.

And enshrined inside was a deep-bottomed basin that called to mind a charcoal brazier. I could definitely light a fire in there to heat up my pot.

There was a countertop with a round hole over the brazier that I set my pot into, which fit perfectly so as to not leave any gap.

Then there was an opening for ventilation by my right foot where the smoke could escape.

It was an incredibly simple setup, but well, simple wasn’t a problem.

“...Make sure that you don’t get it filthy or break it,” Milano Mas said with a surly look on his face, despite it being so early in the morning.

“Right,” I replied, trying to sound friendly.

Vina Ruu, meanwhile, feigned ignorance and looked away.

“Alright, then follow me.”

We went out on the street, with Milano Mas leading the way.

This was my first time visiting the post town before the sun hit its peak, and it seemed to be about 30% less bustling than it was in the early afternoon. Even so, Vina Ruu and I were still getting an incredible amount of stares as we pushed the cart along. And they were all full of discomfort, surprise, and distrust, questioning what people of the forest’s edge were doing with a stall.

Yellowish-brown skinned people.

Ivory-white skinned people.

Dark-skinned people.

Light-skinned people.

There really were all sorts of different folks staring our way.

I was a foreigner in the clothing of the forest’s edge, while Vina Ruu was a member the forest’s edge but also like sex appeal incarnate, so we made for quite a pair. Perhaps there wasn’t a person alive who could just ignore the two of us pushing along a cart.

“Oh, this is just awful... It seems like even more people are staring than usual, somehow...”

“It’s fine. I mean, it’s perfect advertising for us, isn’t it?”

With this, the rumor that people of the forest’s edge are opening some sort of shop should at least spread to every nook and cranny of the post town. It was fine if half the folks who heard about it just ridiculed the idea, or even if they were afraid of it. I just had to pray that this got us at least a few more people to gather around the shop.

We left the area with the inns and moved into the part of town where the stalls were laid out. Most of the shops had already started opening up for business.

The folks running the shops started looking our way alongside the passersby.

In fact, the only ones we passed by who kept calm looks on their faces were the totos birds.

“Hey there. So you’re really doing it, huh?” someone suddenly called out along the way. It was the vegetable seller, Dora.

“Yeah. I’ll be working nearby for the next ten days at least, so I look forward to being your neighbor.”

Milano Mas hadn’t stopped walking, so I had to bow my head as I kept on pushing the cart.

I saw that the old-timer’s smile had grown a lot less stiff as I glanced over his way while continuing on further north.

We really had been led all the way to the farthest reaches of the stalls. It was the absolute upper tip of where the forest had been cleared away to the side of the highway to open up space.

Facing north, we were on the right hand side of the road.

If just two or three more shops opened up, the stalls would end up running into the grove of trees. Well, if that happened they would probably keep on clearing away more space, but at any rate, we really were right at the very end.

There weren’t exactly a lot of people passing through. In fact, the space out in front of us was completely empty.

The old-timer next to us had some sort of questionable accessories laid out atop a cloth, and when he saw us, he gave a childish open-mouthed stare.

“The rules are just like I described to you yesterday. You need to pay special attention to the ones that say that you can’t yell out to try to draw in customers, and that you can’t light a fire outside of that basin. And if you see anyone else doing either of those, make sure you tell me.”

“Got it. Thanks so much for everything.”

“Hmph... Then there’s just the matter of the sign. Hey, what should I write on it?”

“Huh? The sign?”

Sure enough, there was a sign on the stall, but aside from the symbols or whatever that apparently said “The Kimyuus’s Tail” on the lower right, it was completely blank.

“If you don’t write anything on the sign, then nobody will even know what you’re selling, right? So what should I write?”

As he said that, Milano Mas took a small cloth bag from his waist and started loosening the strings with his teeth. Inside was a green gooey liquid, as well as a small stick that looked sort of like a brush. It had a bit of a sharp smell, but also a touch on the grassy side. Maybe it was some sort of plant-based paint?

“Then... I guess it’s got to be ‘Giba,’ right?”

“That’s all you’ve got, huh...?” Milano Mas said with a sigh, then he dipped the brush in the paint and started drawing out large symbols. With the ellipses and curves to it, with four lines stretching upwards, the symbol sort of looked like a giba’s horns and tusks.

“Ooh, it’s nice and giba-like, isn’t it?”

“...Make sure you bring the stall back to the shop each day. I’ve got to check if there are any scratches on it, after all.”

“Right. We plan on bringing it back before evening.”

Milano Mas gave one more, “Hmph,” then went ahead and left.

The old-timer next to us, meanwhile, was still staring vacantly.

“Now then, shall we go ahead and get ready?”

With Vina Ruu’s help, I started off by freeing the pot from the vines sealing it shut. Then when I removed the cloth and psuedo-rubber tree leaf covering from on top, Vina Ruu went, “Ooh! I think I smell tarapa. Is this for a stew...?”

“Ah, no. We can’t spare that much time and ingredients, so this tarapa is just for the sauce.”

Despite having said that, I used two whole tarapa, so roughly sixty percent of the large pot was full of pure red sauce.

I had heated up the tomato-like tarapa together with diced aria and fruit wine, then adjusted the taste with salt and pico leaves, making this deluxe tarapa sauce.

“Well then, time to light the flame. Vina Ruu, could you open that bag?”

“Right!” Vina Ruu replied, then I lit a fire in the basin using lana grass while glancing her way out of the corner of my eye.

The pot was completely cold, so I started off by getting the fire nice and roaring.

Considering the size of the basin and the distance between the opening and the pot, the net heat transferred would probably be even less than those simple stoves from the banquet, so for now I decided I just had to go with a strong flame until the whole of the pot was good and heated.

I threw in as much firewood as I could carry at once, but at this rate, what we had probably wouldn’t last us through the day. So in that case, I’d need to gather firewood from the grove behind us. That’s why I brought along the hatchet.

I estimated we’d be working for just a bit over five hours.

It was between dawn and when the sun hit its peak when we left the house, so it would be midway between the sun hitting its peak and sunset when we got back. Then I needed to deduct the two hours for transit, and I could start calculating.

According to my internal clock, dawn was at 6 AM, the sun hit its peak at noon, and sunset was at 7 PM, so the shop would be open from around 10 AM to 3:30 PM.

“Hmm, I know it’s odd to say it now, but it really is a strange feeling... I never imagined even in my wildest dreams that I’d ever be selling anything here in the post town...”

“I agree, but well, the amount of time we’ve spent at the forest’s edge is completely different, so I guess you feel it even stronger.”

Did Donda Ruu perhaps know of Vina Ruu’s adoration of the world outside the forest’s edge and choose her to help me out as a result?

No wait, I guess if he knew how she felt, he wouldn’t want to let her go out like this, right?

Well at any rate, Vina Ruu’s expression today was bright and sunny, and she seemed even more innocently excited than the last time she accompanied me to the post town.

“But will we really sell anything...? There aren’t really many people around, are there...?”

“Well, we are on the very tip of the post town, after all.”

People coming to the post town from the north, or folks leaving that way. Those were the only folks we saw periodically passing through, and hardly any of them looked interested in shopping.

“Well, it’s just the first day, so let’s give it our all, but not get overeager. After all, today and tomorrow are ultimately just our debut.”

There was no way there wouldn’t be rumors spreading about people of the forest’s edge selling giba meat cooking. Just how many people who heard that would have their curiosity get the better of them and come check out the shop, though? That was going to be the first crucial point for us.

As the tarapa sauce had started making a cute sputtering sound, I took a wooden spatula from Vina Ruu and started stirring it around.

“Vina Ruu. I’d like you to take over the stirring later, but I’ll be sinking a lot of hamburgers down in the pot, so you’ll have to take care not to crush them.”

“Got it. Still, it sure is a wonderful smell... I feel like I’m even starting to get hungry, in spite of the time...”

“Ah, if you think you want something to eat, then go ahead and have one as a taste test.”

With that, Vina Ruu’s eyes started to sparkle.

“Is it really alright? But aren’t these meant for selling...?”

“Well I mean, it’d be bad if you didn’t at least know the taste of what you’re selling. And so, I made sure to make extra just for that.”

Without a moment’s delay, Vina Ruu started fishing through the bag lying off to the side in the stall, then she stood up and slinked on over next to me. I had a very bad premonition, but she just grabbed onto the excess fabric by my waist.

“I’m so happy... Thank you, Asuta...”

“I-It’s nothing. It’s just part of the job, after all.”

It was the same back when we were preparing for the banquet, but it seemed that Vina Ruu also wouldn’t go and do anything outrageous while we were working. I suppose that went for the people of the forest’s edge in general, too.

In that case, maybe she’d end up doing pretty well as my work partner after all.

“Alright, looks like it’s almost nice and hot. Well then, I’ll be counting on you to stir.”

I laid out a black grigee cutting board on the work stand set up next to the basin, alongside the aria, tino, a wooden plate, and my kitchen knife.

The tino was like lettuce but shaped like a rose, with gently overlapping layers. However, its texture was closer to that of cabbage, so I tore off one of the leaves and started dicing it.

As for the pseudo-onions, the aria, I carefully cut them into thin slices.

Once I had finished cutting both of them up, I moved them over to a plate and loosely mixed them together.

Finally, I also laid out the baked poitan I had taken out of the bag out on the work stand, finishing off my preparations.

“There’s nothing all that tricky to it, but you should memorize how to make them too, Vina Ruu.”

“Oh, my... Those certainly are rather small poitan...”

“Yeah. I only used about half of a poitan for each of them.”

They were normally using two poitan each at the Ruu house, which should have made for a diameter of around 30 centimeters. And I was using a fourth of that, so that meant that these came out at 14-15 centimeters at most. I also mixed in gigo so it came out fluffier than usual, with a thickness of around 1.5 centimeters. All in all, they came out looking like adorable cream-colored english muffins.

“First, you heap plenty of tino and aria on top of one of these little poitan. For a rough estimate, you want it to be just a bit thinner than the poitan itself, I suppose. Then you add the hamburger on top.”

As I said that, I scooped a hamburger out of the pot with the spatula, and Vina Ruu went, “Oh, my...” in surprise. That was probably because the hamburger was a perfect circle rather than its usual elliptical shape.

From eyeballing it, I’d guess it weighed around 800 grams, and had a diameter of 12 centimeters and thickness of three centimeters.

I took that patty coated in tarapa sauce and placed it atop the diced tino, then added another poitan on top.

With that, I had a complete giba burger of the sort we’d be selling at the shop.

“It’s simple, right? Well, dig in.”

I took the stirring spatula from Vina Ruu and handed her the giba burger in exchange.

“Somehow...”

“Yes?”

“Somehow, it looks incredibly tasty...”

“It is. I’m a big fan, personally.”

“Since it’s not dinner, can I go without saying the prayer...?”

“It’s probably fine, right? I’m not exactly an expert, though.”

Vina Ruu stood staring at it for a moment at a loss, looking like she thought it would be a waste to just eat it or something. She seemed to make up her mind before too long, though, as her sensual lips opened wide and she bit into the giba burger.

“Please take care not to drop any, alright? It’s probably best to hold it sideways.”

Vina Ruu gave a nod and just kept on chewing away.

This had already been established when Ai Fa taste tested it, but the women of the forest’s edge holding onto a hamburger with both hands and happily stuffing their cheeks really did make for a charming sight.

Ai Fa was usually so cool and composed, so her adorableness was off the charts when she was like that, but Vina Ruu, who was like a bundle of mature appeal, certainly didn’t lose out in that regard.

Soon enough, Vina Ruu finished her taste test, then tightly grabbed hold of the cloth at my waist while still looking down a bit.

“It was tasty...”

“R-Really? Glad to hear it!”

Was Vina Ruu somehow even more charming when she was acting a bit childish rather than shooting flirtatious glances and wriggling her body? Well, I suppose even if I analyzed that, nobody would stand to gain anything from me doing so.

“What do you think? Will they sell?”

“I don’t know, but... I think if they don’t find this tasty, then these townsfolk aren’t worthy of eating giba meat.”

She had the same impression as Ai Fa.

Well, I didn’t quite think that myself, though.

I chose this giba burger as my first tool to try to overcome the bad image giba meat had of being smelly and tough, but well, it was what they call a curveball. As long as there aren’t any other shops serving hamburger here in the post town, it would probably surprise people, but if I wanted people to really know the true deliciousness of giba meat, I really would need a simple dish like steak or something.

Also, the hamburger patties took time to make, and I could only bring 12 at most in the pot. If I transported the cooked patties in a different container and prepared more sauce on location, I calculated I could probably manage upwards of 40, but still, this was ultimately just my first step towards overcoming the post town.

Coming up with hamburgers when thinking of light snacks may have been an incredibly simplistic idea, but it seemed like it was common for snacks in the post town like those kimyuus manju to use meat, vegetables, and some sort of carbohydrate batter in combination, so I thought it best to follow along with something similar.

Also, judging from those manju and that salted meat, it seemed there was no real worry of the townsfolk avoiding soft meat like Donda Ruu, and the way you could eat them by hand was a plus for snacks.

Then there was the fact that tarapa gave off a pretty strong smell. Since it wasn’t permitted to call out to people to try to drum up business, that made smell an even more important tool than usual. When combined with the aria and fruit wine, the aroma of the tarapa sauce was sure to powerfully arouse the appetites of folks passing by.

If these giba burgers attracted enough attention, I’d step up my menu... Which is to say, I’d switch to a simpler menu and try to get the deliciousness of giba meet across in steps.

Just how much progress would I make in these first ten days, though?

Personally, I was thinking if I was selling between 20-30 by the final day, I could justify introducing a new dish for the next ten days and would consider that a big success.

For today, I kept things on the safe side and just brought enough ingredients for ten, but if I could sell out all of those on our first day, I’d already consider that a huge success.

“Alright, then I guess it’s about time to get this battle started!”

The moment I declared that, I heard something hit the leather roof to the stall. Then suddenly, it started raining so hard it was like the sky was coming crashing down.

Even as she let out a shriek that sounded totally lacking in urgency, Vina Ruu hurriedly got the bag in under the roof.

It was the sort of sudden squall I was already accustomed to from living at the forest’s edge. Well, it was only around an hour’s walk to get here, so I suppose it made sense for the same sort of weather to occur in the post town.

However...

When the squall stopped just as suddenly as it had started, even the occasional passersby we had been seeing had completely disappeared without a trace.

2

“Hmm! I see!” was about all I could think to say.

Naturally, the townsfolk must have been used to this guerrilla style rainfall, too. As soon as the rain started to come down, folks all either took off running down the road or took cover under the nearby trees, so I think the damage must have been minimal.

And it really was impressive how the old-timer with the accessory shop next to us immediately gathered up the cloth and his goods and took off running into the woods to our rear.

Then, when the rain ended, everyone started popping back up with looks that said “good grief” on their faces... But at least here at the upper tip, the number of passersby had noticeably dropped.

Looking to the left of the stall, south down the road, the crowd seemed to have revived to what it had been beforehand. But over here where there were few people looking to shop to begin with, everybody seemed to have run off somewhere, and it was completely quiet and deserted.

“There’s nobody left, huh...?”

“Well, it’s a literal calamity from the heavens, so there’s not exactly anything we can do about it. And besides, the real fight was always going to be from when the sun hit its peak onwards, so for now let’s take it easy and recharge our spirits.”

Thanks to Vina Ruu’s quick actions, none of the firewood got wet. No water got into the pot, either. We hadn’t taken any critical damage, so now was the time to focus on turning things around.

“So we’re going to stand here the whole time till the crowds pick up when the sun hits its peak...?”

“That’s right. Waiting is part of the job, too.”

“I feel bad somehow, being paid so much just for doing this...”

“You’re looking at it all wrong. Even putting aside carrying everything, I never would have managed stirring the pot and adding the firewood and everything all on my own. Plus, we’re only just getting started.”

With that said, though, it would still be around two hours till the sun hit its peak. It really would feel pretty empty, just managing the fire in the meantime. Perhaps now would be a good time to secure the extra firewood, but it just didn’t feel like the best idea to do so right after the rain. I felt like if I just waited an hour or two the fallen branches would dry out, and I could just gather them then.

In other words, I just wasn’t motivated.

“Hmm... Do you feel like just chatting a bit?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Who do you get along with in your family, Vina Ruu?”

“Is that really an interesting topic...?”

“It is to me, at least.”

Vina Ruu gave a small sigh, starting to fiddle with the tips of her chestnut-colored hair.

“I suppose the ones I have the most lively conversations with are Rimee and Ludo... Oh, but it’s the most fun being with Darmu.”

“Ah, Darmu Ruu?”

“Yes... He can be untalkative and angry about stuff... but it’s cute seeing him get all mad, too.”

“H-Hold on a second! Now that I think of it, you were older than him, right?”

“Yes, but just by a year...”

Now that I thought about it, I had been thinking of the boys and girls separately, so I hadn’t really considered who was older overall. But well, I guess the order between Vina and Darmu Ruu was the only one that had been fuzzy, anyway.

I made a mental note of the fact that Darmu Ruu was 19, one year younger than Vina Ruu.

“By the way, how old is Jiza Ruu?”

“Jiza is 23.”

“Ooh, that’s surprisingly young! And Rimee Ruu was eight, right? So... a 15 year difference! That’s quite an age gap!”

“Really? Well, some people have children at the age of 15, so I suppose it’s as much as the gap between parent and child, in a way...”

Vina Ruu cast me a listless sidelong glance.

“Hey... Do you really find all this interesting...?”

Well, at least to me it was pretty interesting.

Maybe since they spent most of their days running around working, dealing with such excess tedium was pretty rough for the people of the forest’s edge.

“I want to hear something about you, Asuta...”

“Huh? But I mean, I shouldn’t have much of interest to bring up, either.”

“I want to hear about the country where you were born...”

I held my tongue for a moment, then stared at the red tarapa sauce and said, “Sorry. I don’t exactly want to talk about where I came from... It’s a bit of a rough topic for me.”

“Oh, but why...?”

“...I suddenly disappeared, so I can’t help but worry about if my old man is doing alright or not.”

After a moment of silence, Vina Ruu quietly whispered, “I’m sorry...”

This was making for a pretty gloomy mood...

But then...

“Asuta!” a voice energetically called out, and a little savior came running our way down the road, splashing in puddles as she went. It was Tara.

“You really opened a shop! That’s amazing!” she said, placing her hands on the stall’s counter and looking up at me.

The young girl also shot a slightly timid smile at Vina Ruu, who was standing next to me. Naturally, the older girl couldn’t help but give a wide grin back.

“There’s a really nice tarapa smell! Is that from your giba cooking?”

“That’s right. I wonder if you’ll like it.”

“I want to try it! I’ll take one, please!”

“Ah, but these are big enough for adults, so one costs two red coins.”

“Really? Then I’ll go ask my dad for some money!”

“Ah, hold on! It’d be bad if you ended up not liking it, so try a taste first. Vina Ruu, there’s another wooden plate in that bag, so could you get it for me?”

As I called that out, I looked into the pot. There were mini burgers in there, meant for sampling.

They were already a size smaller than the ones I was selling, and then I chopped one in half inside the pot and scooped it out onto the plate. Next, I cut off about 30% of that, then finally pulled out my secret weapons, toothpicks made by shaving down small grigee branches, and stuck one in it.

“Here you go.”

When I held out the plate to her, Tara looked dumbfounded.

“...What about the money?”

“Back in my country, some people would offer samples like this to customers before they bought. I already got permission from the old-timer from the inn who runs this area, so go ahead and give it a try.”

“Ooh... Thank you! I really ‘preciate it!”

Then, without so much as a hint of hesitation, Tara picked up the toothpick and tossed the little chunk of hamburger into her mouth.

“...What do you think?”

I was seriously nervous right now.

For the most part, my cooking had earned rave reviews from the people of the forest’s edge. But aside from the ever mysterious Kamyua Yoshu, this would be the first time seeing whether or not my flavorings and techniques would work when it came to folks from the city of stone, who were more familiar with the concept of cooking.

Tara... had frozen in place, the toothpick still hanging out of her mouth. And she was staring straight at me, her eyes opened wide in shock.

“What is this...?” she managed to squeeze out, sounding utterly dumbfounded.

And then... her little yellowish-brown face exploded with joy.

“It’s tasty! Super amazingly tasty, Asuta!”

I honestly felt like my knees were about to give out on me. This was seriously bad for my heart.

But well... Now, I’d finally cleared the first challenge before me.

“This is so amazing! I want to eat more! I’ll go get some money from my dad!”

“Ah, hold on! If it’s alright, I’d like to have Dora try some too. He’d feel more comfortable handing over the money then, right? Um, I don’t have too many of those little wooden needles, so do you mind if I reuse that one?”

“That’s fine!” Tara said with a big nod, then stuck another piece of meat with the toothpick and took off running back to her father, holding it aloft like it was the Olympic torch.

Dora’s stall was close enough that I could just barely make out its leather roof from here.

“That certainly went well, didn’t it, Asuta...?”

“Yeah! I’m so glad! Aah, now the light of hope is finally shining down on us! If I can put up a fight with this flavor, then it’s just down to how many people we can get to taste it!”

“That sounds like the hardest part, though...”

“It’s fine! That’s what we have the samples for! Once more people start coming by, we’ll start handing these out, mainly to folks from the south and the east!”

Though with all that said, I had only cooked two mini burgers to serve as samples. The smallest number of parts I could reasonably split them into was six, so I would have 12 to hand out in total.

Still, if sales weren’t going all that well, then I intended to use some of the patties meant for sales as samples, too. At any rate, the key point right now was to try to get even one person more to taste giba meat. In fact, even if all I managed to do today was hand out samples, I wouldn’t be upset about it.

“Asuta... I’m not all that comfortable with townsfolk talking to me...”

“Hmm? Ah, I’ll handle that part! I just need you to handle watching the fire.”

“No, that’s part of the job, so I want to do it, but... You won’t get angry if I don’t do it well at first, will you...?”

Apparently, the people of the forest’s edge were even more serious when it came to work than I was.

There were still few people around, but I started to feel things get livelier bit by bit.

It was then that Tara came splish-splashing up to us again.

“Dad said it was tasty, too! He was all surprised, like, ‘What is this?!’”

Then she held out some coins. They were dulled red coins... and there were four of them?

“Two please! One for me, and one for my dad!”

Full disclosure, I felt a bit like I was about to cry.

I certainly had been paid a good bit for that banquet, but when I had a customer saying my food was delicious and paying me for it... Well, there’s no way that wouldn’t hit my tear ducts hard, right?

It would probably hurt my reputation if I cried here and now, though, so I just replied, “Thanks for your business!” and got to chopping up tino and aria. I then placed them atop a poitan, added a patty soaked in plenty of tarapa sauce, then topped it off with another poitan.

“Here, thanks for waiting! It can spill out easily, so hold it sideways like this while eating it, alright?”

“Yeah! Thanks! It looks super tasty!”

I’m the one who should be saying thanks, here.

At any rate, I handed the completed burgers to Tara and accepted her money.

Four red coins... My shop’s very first sale.

“...You said you need to sell one more just to cover what you’re paying me, right? Will this business really work out...?”

“It will! Well, you could say she only bought it because we know each other, but still, it gives me a lot of hope that our first customer was a Genos resident!”

“Really? Oh, Asuta, there...” Vina Ruu grabbed the fabric by my waist again.

Looking up, there was a man walking our way from the north clad in traveling attire, and he was looking dubiously between our stall and Tara’s back as she ran away.

The hood on his cloak covered a lot of his face, but from what I could see his skin was quite dark. He must have been from the Eastern Kingdom of Sym.

Thinking this may be a chance for a sale, I reached for the wooden plate. However, the man went and briskly approached the stall even quicker.

As he came closer, he pushed back his leather hood, which had a few raindrops still clinging to it.

His eyes and hair were black, and his skin was several shades darker than the westerners. Yes, he was indeed from Sym.

I found his features to be pretty unfamiliar. He had raised, narrow eyes, and a thin nose and lips. He was real tall, but also rather slender. His long, black hair was tied up behind his neck, and there were accessories with beautifully colored stones around his neck and wrists. It was hard to tell exactly how old he may be, but well, I figured it was fair to call him a youth.

Anyway, that youth from the Eastern Kingdom was standing in front of our stall and looking at the symbols on the sign, still appearing dubious.

Then, he pointed towards the pot and questioned, “Giba?”

“Yes. It’s a meat dish made with giba. If you’d like, please go ahead and give the taste a try.”

As I said that I stuck a new toothpick into the last chunk on the wooden plate, and the youth tilted his head while looking puzzled.

It was then that Vina Ruu whispered, “Asuta... This person is from Sym, so he may not be too familiar with the language of the west, right...?”

“Huh?! The languages differ by country between the four great kingdoms?”

“The east and the north have different languages. You didn’t even know that much, Asuta...?”

I had no idea whatsoever.

Then, if I had awoken in the north or the east, we wouldn’t have been able to communicate at all? Or was it just that some unseen act of god was helping to take care of that inconvenience?

Well, this was no time to be worrying over such things, especially since doing so wasn’t going to help me arrive at a solution. Right now, I had to figure out how to get this curious gentleman to give the sample a try.

“Asuta, could you get some fresh meat on that plate? And another of those wooden needles, too...?”

“Huh? Ah, right!”

I scooped out the other half of the mini burger from the pot, then divided it into three atop the wooden plate.

Vina Ruu gave a nod, then came out the back of the stall and circled around till she was standing beside the youth. She smiled at him to lower his guard at least a bit, then elegantly popped one of the samples into her mouth.

Next, she held out the plate a bit towards the youth, and he held his hand over it. He stared at Vina Ruu, as if trying to figure her out.

Vina Ruu gave another smile and a little nod, and the youth finally picked up the toothpick. Then he suddenly tossed all three remaining hamburger pieces in his mouth.

After he finished chewing, he gave a big, satisfied nod, entwined his fingers in a strange manner, and bowed to me and Vina Ruu. He pulled his hood back up and left with a light and easy stride.

After a few seconds of silence, Vina Ruu whispered, “Sorry...” extremely quietly.

“Not at all! That was splendid work, getting him to eat it! And I’d guess the concept of samples doesn’t exist here in the post town, so something like that happening makes sense,” I loudly declared, as if I was trying to encourage myself, too, but Vina Ruu just staggered and grabbed hold of the stall’s pillar.

“...I wish I were dead...”

It turned out Vina was surprisingly weak-willed. But still, this was no time to be paying attention to stuff like that.

“It’s fine! We still have one patty left for samples! And the real fight starts after the sun hits its peak! Let’s give it our all, alright?!”

“What’s the matter, Asuta?” Tara asked, suddenly standing back in front of the stall.

“Oh, it’s nothing. How were the giba burgers?”

“They’re called giba burgers? They were super tasty! Hey, are you going to be running this shop every day now?”

“Yeah, at least for the next ten days. After that, it’ll depend on how much we can sell in that time.”

“Hooray! Then I’ll be coming every day, too! Plus Dad also said he wanted to eat it every day! It really, really surprised him!”

“Thanks. Hearing that you two were that happy with them makes me glad, too.”

If Tara and her dad really did order one each every day, that would add up to 20 in total. Since my minimum requirement for success over these ten days was 60, that was some seriously appreciated support.

“Asuta...” Vina Ruu suddenly called out again, this time with a somehow slightly different tone in her voice.

“What is it?” I asked, turning around, only to immediately notice the oddity myself.

“Wah...” Tara weakly yelped, then hid in the shadow of the stall.

There was a whole group hurriedly approaching our way from the bustling south.

“W-What is it?”

The cloaked group had gone and surrounded our stall.

Tara was quivering a bit as she clung to my legs. Meanwhile, Vina Ruu had moved in close to my side and gently grabbed onto the sheath for the knife dangling from her waist.

There were seven men standing there, all tall and with their faces hidden by the hoods on their cloaks. However, the visible lower halves of their faces all showed very dark skin.

The guy in the middle said, “Giba,” and pushed through his comrades to come to the front. When he pulled back his hood, I saw that it was the same slender faced Sym youth who had eaten all the hamburger samples before.

“W-What is it? Do you have some sort of problem with our shop?” I asked, even though I knew it was pointless doing so.

Then, the youth pointed to the pot like he’d done before and muttered, “Giba,” again.

“That’s right, giba. What about it?”

“Giba. Red. One. Two. Three?”

“...What?” I questioned, tilting my head. The youth then reached into his cloak, looking just a bit troubled.

Vina Ruu was pulling firmly on my arm, but what he pulled out was just a dull red coin.

“Giba. Red. One. Two. Three?”

When I still didn’t respond, the youth looked sad and asked, “...White?”

“No! It’s red! Red! Two!”

The youth gave a nod, then pulled out a second red coin and placed them on the counter. Then, he stared at my face.

“...Vina Ruu, could you handle the stirring?”

I had carelessly stopped stirring, so I handed the spatula over to Vina Ruu, then hurriedly set about dicing aria.

Before long I had finished a new giba burger, which I handed to the youth and said, “Here you go.”

The youth gave a big nod and accepted the burger.

Seeing that, I hesitantly reached out for the coins... and fortunately, nobody seemed to find any fault with that.

Looks like he really was just a customer. I was seriously glad for that.

What was with the other guys just standing around and surrounding the stall, though?

“Asuta...”

“I-It’s alright, Tara. They’re just customers... I think.”

Meanwhile, the youth just kept on stuffing his cheeks with the giba burger.

At first he was eating it with just one hand, but when he noticed that the tarapa sauce was about to leak out the other side, he readjusted his grip so he was holding it with both hands. Then, he started chewing away again.

How should I put it...? It wasn’t like he felt especially cold or anything, just that his expression was utterly unchanging. It... wasn’t quite enough that I’d call it creepy, but it did have me ill at ease.

Anyway, before long he finished the giba burger, then brought his fingers together in that strange way again and quietly bowed his head. Then, he nodded to his comrades as well.

The surrounding men (all of whom were also quite slender) each nodded back, then their hands started searching around inside their cloaks. With a clunk, clunk, clunk a row of red coins was laid out atop my counter. There were 12 coins in total, enough for each of the six men.

I just silently diced up aria and prepared one giba burger after another. Whenever I held out a completed dish dark fingers reached out and gently accepted it.

And not a word was said.

I was totally silent, and so were they. Even Vina Ruu and Tara weren’t saying anything.

Minutes later, the giba burgers had all disappeared into their stomachs, while I had 14 coins in my hands, including the two from the first youth.

With their hoods still raised, the six men brought their fingers together just like the youth had, bowed their heads to me, and then departed.

“Wow, your cooking sure is popular, Asuta!”

“Gah, you surprised me there!”

Before I had even realized it, a certain scrawny blond fellow had casually popped up beside the stall and called out to me.

It went without saying that I meant Kamyua Yoshu.

“W-W-Where did you pop up from? Please stop doing stuff that’s so bad for my heart!”

“I didn’t want to interfere with your business, so I was just quietly watching over you from the shadow of the trees the whole time. You didn’t notice me?”

I really did want to slug the old-timer when he played dumb like that.

Vina Ruu was also shooting a sidelong glare in the direction of Kamyua Yoshu’s smile, without any of her usual seductiveness.

The only one who actually looked happy here was Tara.

“Mister Kamyua! Hey, Asuta’s giba burgers are really, really tasty!”

“Yes, this certainly does look good. You even used tarapa? It was already delicious with just aria and tino, but with this, I can’t stop myself from drooling.”

As always, his tone was super friendly yet also somehow flaky.

“What was with those people just now...?”

“Hmm? They were travelers from the Eastern Kingdom of Sym, right? They were a rather large group, so I wonder if they were part of some large merchant group or something?”

“...You didn’t have anything to do with them, did you?”

“What do you mean? Are you suggesting I hired them in order to improve your shop’s reputation?”

Kamyua Yoshu smiled and shrugged his shoulders under his long cloak.

“If I was trying a plan like that, I would have gone for a more effective performance! And besides, it wouldn’t work at all in the first place when there’s nobody around like right now, yeah? I mean, just take a look about. Nobody even noticed that you sold seven meals at once.”

That was certainly true. Even if anyone was watching from the bustling south, at that distance they just would’ve seen a group in leather cloaks surround the stall and then leave shortly after.

The old-timer selling accessories next to us was staring and looking utterly flabbergasted, though.

“There are a lot of folks like that amongst people of the east. It’s less that they’re unsociable, and more that they plunge on forwards not caring what the people around them think, I suppose... But they also tend to think it rude to act emotionally towards others. If you talk to them you’ll generally find them pretty pleasant, but regrettably, they often can’t speak much of the western language.”

“I see...”

“Well, with that said, people from the east vary a good bit, too. There are also plenty who are a bit more versed in western customs than that. But you’ll naturally come to understand all that if you run a shop here in this post town.”

After saying that, Kamyua Yoshu started rustling around in his cloak.

“Now then, will you sell me some of your cooking, too, Asuta? I’ll take two, to cover Leito.”

“Ah, you see... I’ll actually be out of supplies once I make one more.”

“Huh? Tara bought two, and those folks from the east bought seven, so you’ve only sold just nine, right? So why are you out already?”

Just how long had this old-timer been spying on us?

This guy really was a first for me, with the way that he just seemed more and more sketchy the more that I interacted with him.

“I wasn’t expecting much in the way of sales for the first day, so I only prepared enough for ten meals. After all, the cost of ingredients is nothing to sneeze at.”

“That’s a shame! There’s no way ten of your meals would be enough, right?! And you had this big of a pot, but you only brought enough for ten?! Leito and I were looking forward to your cooking, so this sure is a let down!”

“My deepest apologies. I have leftover samples, so shall I throw that in? And I did bake extra poitan just to be safe, too.”

“Yeah! At any rate, sell it to me! I don’t want some other customer beating me to the punch!”

That slightly panicked look on his face actually made him appear a bit less sketchy than usual.

The way that he weaved in expressions like that just made the guy even harder to pin down, though.

At any rate, I made up the last patty and the mini burger meant for samples into giba burgers, then handed them over to Kamyua in exchange for two coins. The mini burger was on the house, naturally.

“Thanks! Now I can try this out along with Leito! He’s in The Kimyuus’s Tail, so I’ll let you know what we thought later!”

With that, Kamyua promptly took off.

Feeling strangely at a loss, I turned and looked at Vina Ruu.

“Um... It looks like we’re done with work for today.”

“Right. Should I go ahead and put out the flame...?”

“Yeah, please do.”

This was what was meant when people said they felt dumbstruck, huh?

At any rate, the first day of our fight in the post town ended not just before the sun hit its peak, but before even an hour had passed.

3

“I’m home,” I called out as I opened the door, only to find Ai Fa seated leaning against the wall and looking back at me in confusion.

“Why? What happened? Was there some sort of incident in the post town?”

“No. I just came back because we safely sold everything we brought.”

“That... was rather fast. The sun hasn’t even hit its peak yet, has it?”

“It hasn’t. And we even took a number of detours along the way, too.”

We stocked up on supplies for tomorrow, stood and talked with Dora for a while, and visited The Kimyuus’s Tail to hear Kamyua and Leito’s impressions, then washed out the pot upon returning to the forest’s edge before finally coming back home.

As for the leftover tarapa sauce that hadn’t even gotten a chance to boil, Vina Ruu poured it into a leather bag that she had bought on the spot, then brought it home with a smile on her face.

We left the excess firewood with the cart when we returned it, so for tomorrow we’d just have to bring the ingredients and tools we needed, which would make everything lighter and easier to handle.

At any rate, I returned the pot to its place atop the stove and the tarapa and gigo and the like to the pantry, than sat down facing Ai Fa.

“We sold all ten of the meals I had prepared. Taking out the expenses, that means I roughly made five red coins in profit. Well, at least for the first day, I’d call this a huge success, but...”

But somehow, I didn’t feel satisfied.

And figuring I should share that sense of dissatisfaction with Ai Fa, I went ahead and told her about everything that had happened today.

“Hmm... It seems clear that your dishes sold out of acknowledgment of your skill, though. Why not simply be happy in that success?”

“That may be so, but I have no idea how long that group from the east will be staying in the post town, so it’s tricky trying to figure out what to do from tomorrow on.”

To be blunt, it felt like a big failure in terms of making a splash and building a reputation.

Just what had the townsfolk thought, seeing us open up a shop and then pull the stall on back less than an hour later? Had they assumed we caused some sort of problem and had to withdraw?

Maybe I was being overly paranoid, but still, it had hurt seeing those stares coming our way.

On top of that, that group could hardly speak the western language at all, so it was hard to imagine them spreading much in the way of word of mouth.

“...Running a business sounds truly puzzling,” Ai Fa said while ruffling her blonde hair and moving her face in closer. “But even so, you carried out your job. So be at least a little happy.”

“Yeah...”

“I said be happy,” Ai Fa repeated, then she suddenly reached out and gave my left cheek a firm twist.

“Ow, ow, ow! You’re going to rip my cheek off! What do you think you’re doing, out of nowhere?!”

“I told you to be happy, but you weren’t listening to me at all,” Ai Fa said, then an awkward smile crossed her face. “Even though I’m happy for you...”

“Ai Fa, you...”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been smiling more lately, haven’t you? Ow, ow, ow!”

Then, with a “Hmph!” that precious smile vanished from Ai Fa’s face, and she stood up and took her cloak from the wall.

“Owww... Ah, is it already time for you to head out into the forest?”

“Indeed. What will you do now, Asuta?”

“Ah, right. It’s still too early to start preparing dinner. I guess I’ll think about what to do next while chopping some firewood.”

“I already chopped some firewood, but I suppose there’s no harm to you chopping even more,” she said, moving her face in closer to mine again as I remained seated cross-legged on the floor. “Well then, I’m off. Make sure you don’t let your guard down today either, alright?”

“Yeah. If any suspicious drunks approach, I’ll be sure to run away in a full on sprint.”

“Right,” Ai Fa replied with a nod, and an incredibly strong light shining in her eyes.

Ever since the day of the Rutim banquet, Ai Fa had that sort of look in her eyes whenever she left me to head out into the forest.

At any rate, Ai Fa left for the forest like that, leaving me behind in the house.

The sun just hit its peak, huh...?

If that was the case, then now was around when I was supposed to be handing out samples in the more crowded streets of the post town, but instead I was sitting here all alone in the house.

It seemed my disappointment really had won out over my sense of satisfaction.

“Well, guess there’s no point in fretting over it. The real fight starts tomorrow! Yeah, tomorrow!”

It was a little risky, but I’d go ahead and prepare 20 patties for tomorrow. And if that ended up being a big mistake, then I could just go back down to ten. But if those happened to sell out quickly too, then I could start adding a bit more day by day. If I didn’t want to go wasting ingredients, then I just had to keep on playing it by ear like that.

I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Just as long as I don’t go seriously in the red, I can keep the shop going for 10 or 20 days. If I just build up my results bit by bit, I’ll be fine.

Ai Fa was earnestly happy for me, so that helped me to be at least a bit positive myself.

Things may have developed in a bit of an unexpected direction, but since I hadn’t really expected to sell anything at all on the first day, yet I had gone and sold out my stock, I could feel at least a little happy about that, I figured.

And they may have been acquaintances, but still, Tara, Dora, Kamyua Yoshu, and Leito all gave rave reviews of the giba burgers.

As such, I should be set to face tomorrow’s work with hope rather than unease.

“Alright! Guess I’ll chop some firewood.”

I pulled a hatchet and a bundle of firewood out of the storage, then went to leave the house.

Just when I was reaching to open the door, though, there was a sudden knocking from outside.

A visitor...?

I’d been living here for over a month now, and the only visitors we’d had in that time were Rimee Ruu and Gazraan and Ama Min Rutim.

Plus, it was just past when the sun hit its peak right now. It should be clear to everyone that Ai Fa would be out of the house at the moment, since she was a hunter.

While those thoughts were running through my head, there were another two knocks on the door.

I placed the hatchet and bundle of wood by my feet, brought my hands to my chest, and got my breathing under control.

“...Who is it?”

Silence.

I was starting to reach for the bolt on the door.

Should I try to hole up, or should I run? It was good to keep my options open, right?

But the second my fingers touched the door, a voice called out from the other side of the door.

“I’m... Saris Ran Fou, of the Fou clan.”

I had never heard that name before. However, that voice had come from a woman, and there didn’t seem to be much strength behind it.

After a few seconds of hesitation, I slowly opened the door.

Standing on the other side was a young woman, a bit on the skinny side. She had on a one piece outfit stretching from her chest to her knees, and she was holding an infant that looked even smaller than Kota Ruu.

Seeing all that, my guard finally dropped.

“I’m Asuta of the Fa clan. Do you have some sort of business with my clan head, Ai Fa?”

“Yes... Ah, no... A-Ai Fa already left for the forest, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, she just left. If you have some sort of message, I can pass it along to her for you.”

“Ah... Um, I wanted to give this to the Fa clan...”

With that, the woman picked up a bag like the ones we used for vegetables from by her feet.

The bag was rather big but it was also flat, so it looked pretty light.

“What is it, exactly?”

“Ah, yes, um... It’s pico leaves...”

This woman somehow seemed even more on guard than I was.

Well, I guess that should come as no surprise though, as I’m sure the folks around here all thought I was pretty sketchy.

“Pico leaves, huh? But why are you giving them to us?”

“Ah, well you see... Ai Fa has already given us numerous pelts...”

“Pelts?”

I didn’t understand what she was saying.

“By pelts, you mean from giba?”

“Yes... Since around a month ago, she’s left so many... M-My clan, the Fou, has few men, and they aren’t able to hunt many giba. But thanks to those pelts from Ai Fa, we’ve somehow managed to get by without this child starving...”

“I see... This is the first time I’m hearing of any of this. So my clan head has acquaintances like you nearby, huh?”

When I said that, Saris Ran Fou made a face like she was thinking about something hard, then held her child tight.

“No... We’re not acquaintances. By decree from my clan head, I’m forbidden from getting involved with the Fa clan...”

“Huh?”

“The Fa clan has bad blood with the clan that leads our people. And so if we involved ourselves with the Fa, that bad blood could extend to the Fou as well, he said... And so for two years now, I’ve been forbidden from having anything to do with Ai Fa or her house...”

“I see. I think I can understand his point, but still...”

After all, Ai Fa had intentionally cut off her ties with other clans on purpose. But what was this about pelts?

“Ai Fa has always left the pelts in front of our house without saying anything...” Saris Ran Fou said, her eyes staring straight at me. Those light blue eyes were starting to tear up just a bit. “At first, I had no idea who was doing such a thing, so I found it a bit eerie, but well... Sometimes you just have to grasp the opportunities that present themselves, or you’ll never get ahead. And so, we tanned those pelts and exchanged them for coins, which we then traded for aria and poitan... And in turn, that made it so I could somehow manage to provide milk for this child...”

“Right...”

“But a few days ago, some of the men returning from the forest saw Ai Fa leaving peeled pelts in front of the Fou house. That was when we finally learned who was saving us. The clan head said we shouldn’t do anything that would tie us to the Fa clan, but... all of us women, we begged him. At the very least, we wanted to repay her for the pelts in some way...”

As Saris Ran Fou said that, she averted her eyes.

“But with that said, the Fou clan can’t earn any real coins in the first place, so we could never offer much in exchange. Still, we figured that you can never have too many pico leaves, so we gathered these up.”

“I see...”

“I know that this won’t even come close to making up the debt we owe her, but I at least wanted to offer Ai Fa my thanks. We all feel ashamed, having her do all this for us even after the Fou clan cut ties out of fear of the Suun clan...”

“Ah, no. We don’t have the people around to tan hides at our house anyway, so please don’t worry about it. And knowing my clan head, I’m sure she’d be more upset that you found out she was the one doing it than anything.”

“But...”

“Alright, I’ll gratefully accept your feelings here. And also, if you have the chance, please try talking to Ai Fa directly. I don’t know anything of the circumstances, so I don’t think I can speak for her about what she’s feeling.”

“...Right. Thank you.”

With that, Saris Ran Fou handed the flattened bag to me and left.

I peered inside, and found about as much pico leaves as Ai Fa and I would gather in a day layered in the bottom. Considering they had to gather enough for their house on top of that, it must have taken a fair bit of effort.

...Well, I guess by offering pelts rather than meat, that won’t lead to any more people falling prey to corruption.

Actually, if anyone were to find fault with that, I’d give everything I had to defend that action.

A month ago... That was just around when I got picked up by Ai Fa.

The pelt from that first giba I prepared must have ended up getting delivered to the Fou clan. After all, it had been Ai Fa’s work the whole time from then up until now to deal with cleaning up the pelt and the innards once I was done.

More abundant living, huh...?

An ordinary guy like me could never fully understand Gazraan Rutim’s strong will, I figured. And I didn’t even know what was behind Kamyua Yoshu’s actions in the first place.

But at the very least, I didn’t think it was right for people to be living such poor lives that they were starving and couldn’t even provide milk for their baby.

And that was even more true when a single clan was monopolizing the reward money that was meant to be distributed amongst all the people of the forest’s edge, all so they could live comfy lives.

Even so, there’s a limit to what I can do.

With that, I stored the pico leaves in the pantry, then set about chopping the firewood that would fuel the stove for tomorrow.

4

It was the second day of business for the giba cooking stall under the direct management of the Fa clan in the Genos post town.

While I sold out of everything on my first day, I had still been left with more disappointment than a sense of satisfaction, but I turned that around and used it as fuel to push me forwards from this morning on.

“Today I’ve prepared enough for 20! If we sell all that on our second day, it’ll be amazing! Let’s get fired up, Vina Ruu!”

“Right... But Asuta, you made all of this on your own, right? Are you okay in regards to your other jobs...?”

“Yeah. I learned first hand between yesterday and today that preparing 20 was no problem at all. It’d be plenty simple for me to keep on making this much each and every day,” I replied, and I wasn’t just acting tough or anything.

Making the tarapa sauce and the hamburger patties was something I could knock out in advance the day before. And I could prepare it all alongside dinner, and whatever I didn’t finish then I just needed to wrap up after we ate. That just meant my usual nighttime chats with Ai Fa now happened while I was cooking.

That just left cooking the poitan and patties for the morning.

I’d already practiced making large quantities of food for both the dinner at the Ruu house and the Rutim banquets, so this much was nothing. I figured with things like this, even if we were talking the initial upper limit of 40 that I had predicted, I could make them just fine without needing to cut into my sleep or other work.

“So it’s totally fine! And so, let’s do this thing in high spirits!”

“There really aren’t a lot of people around at this time though, are there...?”

We didn’t get hit with a sudden downpour like yesterday, but there still just plain weren’t many people passing through.

Since we were at the very northern tip of the post town, all that was past this point was the Genos castle and that stone highway and forest that stretched on as far as the eye could see, so the only ones coming by were genuine travelers.

From what I heard there were plantations to the south of the post town, which also meant there would naturally be a farm village, with lots of folks opening stalls down that way. On top of that, the inns were also to the south, so it just made sense that the travelers would do their shopping at the stalls on that end after waking up.

At any rate, until the sun hit its peak and the crowds picked up, the best we could hope for was pinpointing the few travelers passing by to sell to.

“Now that I think of it, I know that the castle town is to the northwest of here, but if you ignore that and keep going further north, where does this connect to?”

“Who knows...? Wouldn’t it be the Northern Kingdom of Mahyudra...?”

“Isn’t Mahyudra way up north? And well, I heard Genos is pretty far south as far as the Western Kingdom goes, so I get the feeling there must be all sorts of towns in between.”

“I don’t know anything about all that... If I think too much about stuff like that, I feel like I’ll just start wandering that way, so I try to keep it out of mind the best I can...”

“Is that so?”

“Yes... I see, so there are all sorts of towns even here in the Western Kingdom... I wonder if we people of the forest’s edge would still be mocked as ‘giba eaters’ even in places other than Genos...?”

With that, Vina Ruu stared off towards the distant north, ennui in her eyes.

“So you want to go somewhere far away because you hate hearing that?”

“No... That’s not it, but... Well no, maybe it is. But at any rate, I want to live a naked life...”

“N-Naked?”

“Yes... At the forest’s edge, I’m the eldest daughter of the main Ruu house. In the post town, I’m just a giba eater woman... The only ones to acknowledge me for who I am are my family. But I want all sorts of people to see the real, naked me. Or at least, I think that’s what I want...” She shot me a coquettish glance. “Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to you... The common sense of both the forest’s edge and the post town don’t weigh you down. So I figured, maybe you could see me as just me...”

“Y-You hadn’t thought things through that deeply back when you made your move at me, did you? I mean, back then the two of us had hardly even talked...”

“Right... At first I was just attracted to your background, how you had come from so far away that you didn’t even know the name of the continent. But I still don’t think I could even have done something like that if I wasn’t also drawn to you personally, too...”

Vina Ruu definitely seemed passionate when working, but it seemed that her emotions started to get all stirred up when she had too much time on her hands.

I started to wonder secretly to myself if Tara would pop up around now and glanced around the highway. And then, I spotted a nice looking target.

“Ah! Is that a foreigner, from somewhere other than Genos?”

It was a man with skin that was neither yellowish-brown nor ivory, but rather white with a touch of ruddiness to it. He was very short and stout, and his hair was a dark brown. And he was still a bit far away so it was hard to make him out in detail, but he looked like he had some facial hair.

He had on a sleeveless vest and cylindrical legged pants, making for an outfit that reminded me a bit of the one young Leito wore, and he was walking along from the south while browsing the shops to his left and right.

“What country was a pale-skinned guy like that born in?”

“Huh...? He’s from the Southern Kingdom of Jagar, isn’t he?”

So that was it, huh?

Well, ruling out the enemy nation to the north, that had to be where he was from, using process of elimination. The people of the forest’s edge had originally come from the south and had light brown skin, so it made sense that the other folks from there shared a similar lineage.

“So the folks with yellowish-brown skin are the Genos natives, right? But there are just about the same amount of ivory skinned folks around, so where are they from?”

“They’re all citizens of the west... When I was little, Granny Jiba once told me that Genos was far and away the most peaceful and abundant land in the country, so people from all over came here to live and work.”

Ah, I see.

So there were folks who settled here in Genos decades ago, as well as folks who were born and raised here. I felt like now I could understand why even though they were detached from the situation, so many people from the south and east seemed to fear and despise the people of the forest’s edge more than pureblooded Genos citizens did.

They weren’t all travelers, so some of them must have had that mindset to begin with. But if it was possible to break that mindset, that could surely spread to the indigenous people of Genos, too.

Well, putting all that aside, I had business to take care of.

The southern man was still steadily walking along and browsing, so things were looking good.

He didn’t have much in the way of luggage about him and was pretty lightly outfitted, so he probably wasn’t going to cut on through and keep heading north. While praying to myself that he would come close enough that I wouldn’t have to shout, I started stealthily chopping up a mini burger to use for samples.

“Asuta... Since he’s from the south, I think it would be better for you to handle him.”

“Huh? Why’s that?”

“There are still quite a few older folks from the south who view the people of the forest’s edge with hatred. They call us nothing but betrayers who tossed aside the southern god, Jagar...”

So not contempt and fear, but downright hatred, huh?

But even though I saw roughly the same proportion of white-skinned southerners as dark-skinned easterners, I didn’t recall sensing that many threatening glares.

“Yes, well that’s because there are more people from their enemy nation of Sym wandering around, so normally they have their hands full glaring at them, I guess...”

“Huh? The Eastern and Southern Kingdoms are enemies?”

“You really don’t know anything, do you Asuta...?” Vina Ruu asked, half looking astounded but also half pleased, and she wore a smile. “There’s just as old of a feud between the east and south as there is between the north and west. But since the west is friendly with both of them, they’re forbidden from causing any trouble here... And if they break that rule, they won’t be allowed to step foot on western land ever again, so they apparently won’t go causing a commotion so lightly.”

It seemed the people of the Ruu clan may possess a whole lot more information than Ai Fa, who lacked any relatives.

But at any rate, I had to focus on business.

It seemed like the man from the south was just killing time, as he was carefully looking over each stall, but he didn’t appear to be buying anything.

When I saw he had finally stopped at the accessory shop next to us, I went, Yes! in my head and gave a little fist pump.

It was then that my gaze met with the man’s.

He was older than I had been thinking. In fact, he may have even been in his fifties.

He had a big head and a square face, and his back was short but well built. In fact, he looked more well built in general than the citizens of Genos. And he had an impressive moustache and beard combo going on, too.

The green eyes that sparkled under his bushy eyebrows didn’t quite look calm and gentle, though.

Once the man finished with the accessory shop, he stomped on over towards our stall.

“Giba? You’re selling giba meat of all things?”

I was trying to respond with a smile, but the man kept on pressing and cut that off.

“What are you, an idiot? Who’d eat something as smelly and hard as that? You’re the only ones who will dare eat that crap. And then you impertinently went and used tarapa, too. You fools don’t even know what good food tastes like, so you should just stick to eating aria and poitan. You really should close up shop and get lost, before you lose all your precious horns and tusks.”

His cutting words came like a machine gun, not giving me a chance to get in a single word edgewise.

And then, once he seemed to have said his piece, the man turned to leave.

“Um! You say all that, but giba meat is delicious. If you’d like, please taste one of these bits of meat here.”

“Huh?” he questioned as he turned around, shooting me a disgruntled glare.

“Are you a complete and utter idiot, boy? Why should I have to eat damn giba meat? They sell kimyuus and karon here in town. There are much better meats all around to be had. It’s downright nonsense trying to sell giba in the middle of all that, you fool. Besides, if I eat that crap my skin’ll turn brown like you people, and everyone’ll turn a cold shoulder to me too.”

“T-That’s nothing but pure prejudice! I mean, I’ve eaten a ton of giba meat, and you can see how I look.”

I’d expected to run into a customer like this eventually. In fact, it might even be reasonable to say he was relatively light on fear and contempt compared to most, making him not too bad to handle.

“What’s a kid like you doing dressed up like a person of the forest’s edge and selling giba meat...? Aha. So you were seduced by that temptress there, weren’t you? You’re a real fool. But well, no matter how stupid you may be, your life is yours to live. If you like that woman that badly, then just go live in the forest with her. Then nobody would give you any grief.”

“No, but giba meat really is tasty. I thought it would be a shame if this delicious meat could only be had at the forest’s edge, so I decided to open this shop. These samples are free, so if you don’t mind, why don’t you give it a try and see for sure whether or not I’m just being tricked?”

My sales smile was perfect, I figured.

And yet, the man just snorted, “Hmph,” and stood directly facing me. Then, he glared at the plate of samples and said, “Looks real unappetizing.”

He’d been heaping a storm of abuse my way this whole time, but perhaps because he wasn’t raising his voice, I wasn’t sensing much animosity or ill will from him.

The main impression I was getting was that he was surprisingly talkative despite his boorish appearance.

“So this is free, right? You won’t make me pay you anything, no matter what?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied with a smile and a nod.

As frustrated wrinkles formed on his brow, the man reached out and grabbed a toothpick with his thick fingers.

Then, he tossed the chunk of mini burger, which I had cut into six parts, into his mouth, chewed thoroughly, then swallowed.

Finally, he glared at me once again.

“...It was crap. You really are being led along.”

“Huh?”

“It didn’t stink as bad as I expected, and it wasn’t hard at all. But it was all gushy and had an unpleasant texture, and the taste was too heavy, like I could feel it clogging up my nose. It doesn’t even compare to kimyuus or karon. You seem to have cooked up the tarapa real nice, but it just got completely ruined by everything else. You really think anyone would pay you coins for this? The fact that you’re happy with crap like this is why people mock you and call you ‘giba eaters,’ you know.”

Could it be...? Was he really, truly someone whose tastes it just didn’t suit? That seemed to be the case for both the texture of the hamburger and the taste of the giba meat.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t predicted this ever happening, but it was just such a sudden development.

“Asuta...” Vina Ruu whispered, gripping the fabric at my hip.

I was feeling a bit shaken, but regardless I followed Vina Ruu’s gaze...

And saw a group in familiar leather cloaks rapidly approaching.

5

“W-What do you guys want?! This is western territory! You planning on starting something here?!” the man yelled, finally raising his voice for the first time.

The cloaked group, meanwhile, just wrapped around the man and the stall to half encircle the place.

And there were quite clearly more of them today than there had been yesterday.

“...We have no plan, to cause trouble,” one of the group said, shocking me by using the language of the west, albeit a touch awkwardly.

“We came, to buy, giba meat. We’ll wait, our turn.”

As he said that, the hood of the man’s cloak flipped back.

His skin was quite dark, and he had raised, narrow eyes, as well as a thin nose and lips.

Yes, his facial features were a lot like those of the youth from yesterday... but his hair was silver like Granny Jiba’s. And yet, he looked young. His hair wasn’t the result of old age, but rather he was just born that way.

“We will wait, our turn. We will have, ten, please.”

“W-What, are you all soft in the head? I can’t exactly imagine you’re sane if you want to pay for that disgusting meat. It’s like just throwing your money straight into the stove. Just let the people of the forest’s edge eat that crap. I can’t imagine it would make you all get any darker skinned, but still, it’ll just ruin your mood to eat awful meat like that, right?”

The silver-haired youth tilted his head, looking confused.

“I, still haven’t, eaten it. But, my allies, seven of them, ate it yesterday. They all, said, it was delicious. That is why, we ten, came here... Ten, please.”

“...Right. Thanks for your business!”

With that, I set about dicing up tino and aria, still feeling a little shaken up at hearing giba meat face such slander.

And in the meantime, my ten customers started silently clanking their coins down on my counter.

“I can’t believe this. So you folks from Sym don’t know what good meat tastes like, either? Because that crap’s not fit for normal humans to eat. If you want meat, then you should eat kimyuus or karon or something.”

It was some rather extreme interference with my business, but he still wasn’t raising his voice as he said it, and my customers from Sym didn’t seem to be paying him any heed, so it was nothing for me to worry about.

At any rate, I kept on working away at the ten giba burgers.

I handed the first of them over to the silver-haired youth, who sure enough silently ate it with a blank expression, gave a big nod, then turned to face the man from the south.

“Giba, tastes good. For two red, I am satisfied.”

“That’s just crazy talk. What the hell’s wrong with your tongue? Hey, everyone, get over here!” the man loudly yelled out.

With that, a new group came on over, all of them pale-skinned.

The cloaked group all smoothly clustered together, seemingly to make room for the newcomers. However, they kept munching away at their giba burgers all the while.

“What is it, Pops? Feels a little tense over here,” a young Jagar fellow from the new group asked in a bit of a coarse tone. Sure enough, the youth had dark brown hair, green eyes, and a short yet well built physique.

It seemed that in general, folks from Jagar weren’t built all that big. There were now eight people from Jagar gathered here including the first man, but only one or two of them looked like they may be taller than me. But all of them had sturdy physiques and rather fierce looking faces. Their hair colors and ages varied, but the majority of them had scraggly hair on their heads.

“Just look at them. They say that giba meat of all things is delicious and are eating it up. I had a bit too, but it wasn’t anything worth paying coins for. Did folks from Sym always have no taste?” There was a restlessness to his voice. It seemed he really was well and truly mad at this point.

“Pops, you ate giba meat? There’s no way that tasted good, right?” the youth from Jagar questioned, glancing over us and grabbing the man by his thick arm. “...Plus, it’s best not to get involved with the people of the forest’s edge. They’re even more trouble than guys from Sym. If you cause too much of a fuss, who knows what’ll happen to you later, right?”

“Nothing I’m saying is wrong. They’re the ones in the wrong. And if you think I’m lying, then you all try it, too.”

“I’ve got no interest in eating damn giba meat.”

“Enough already, just try it. Hey you, feed them your giba meat.”

It was an extremely heavy-handed demand... but it was also a precious opportunity. There were a lot of folks from Jagar around town, but if they didn’t like giba meat by nature, that would be a real serious issue.

These giba burgers were ultimately just a curveball. I had figured that even if their unique texture turned out to be a problem, I could always recover by offering some simple grilled meat dishes instead.

But this guy they’d been calling “Pops” had a problem with the taste of the giba meat itself. And that was in spite of the fact that I had used the rather strong tarapa sauce alongside it, too.

Was that down to the general tastes of folks from Jagar, or just Pops’s personal opinion? No matter what abusive language may come my way as a result, I couldn’t let this chance to give out samples and find the answer slip by me.

And so, I scooped out a mini burger from the pot onto the plate, then split it up into six parts. Five parts from the first sample were still sitting there too. I placed the plate atop the counter, held out enough toothpicks for everyone, and said, “Please, go ahead.”

Three of the group who looked to be on the older side went first and reached out without any hesitation.

Then, Pops chimed in and said, “Hey, you all try it too,” pushing the younger folks forward. And so, they started grabbing toothpicks, too.

By the way, the cloaked group had all finished their giba burgers in the meantime, but for some reason they didn’t leave, even though they didn’t look overly interested and were just standing there silently.

“Well? It’s gross, right?” Pops questioned, crossing his arms while looking over his allies.

As for the other men... Their expressions all seriously varied.

“If it’s gross, then come out and say it.”

Only two out of the group responded to him.

One of the old-timers said, “It’s bad,” and one of the younger crowd followed up with, “It isn’t especially good.”

“Just the two of you?” Pops replied, his eyes opening wide in shock.

It sort of reminded me of a look I had seen from Donda Ruu in days past.

“What about the rest of you? You’re not going to say it’s good, are you?”

“...It’s not bad,” one of the older men replied, while one of the youths agreed, “It’s decently tasty.”

That left the biggest of the old-timers, the youth who looked even younger than me, and the young guy with the coarse tongue who spoke earlier, all of whom were standing there looking dumbfounded.

“...It’s delicious,” that last youth muttered.

“W-What the...? Is this really giba meat?”

“Yes. It’s genuine giba meat, not karon or kimyuus.”

I was still feeling pretty darn on edge inside, but even so, I replied with a smile.

“The cost for one is two red coins. You can place an order, if you’d like.”

“Two red coins, huh...?” the large old-timer pondered, then pushed his way past the younger men.

His body was nice and filled out, and he looked to have a good number of years under his belt. Certainly, he didn’t look any less fierce than Pops.

That man said, “I’ll have one,” and offered me his coins.

“Thank you! Please hold on just a moment.”

“Aldas! You’re seriously paying for this awful crap?”

The man called Aldas turned and faced Pops with a look of annoyance on his face.

“Pops, if it wasn’t to your taste, then it wasn’t, but don’t go shouting about it in front of the shop like that. You know if the guards come they’ll haul you away, right?”

“B-But...”

“You may not like it, but to me it’s delicious enough to die for. Stuff like that varies from person to person. It’s nothing to cause such a fuss about.”

It varies from person to person...

Right, giba meat had a quirkiness to it. It was just down to my personal tastes, thinking it was more delicious than beef, pork, or kimyuus meat. So with this many people around, it wasn’t strange at all for some of them to not like it.

I had already assumed that much. And yet, I had felt something boiling and simmering up inside me even so. That was proof that I still had a ways to go as a chef.

“Hey, one for me, too,” the youngest looking of the Jagar group, who had been standing there kind of flabbergasted, chimed in and held out his coins.

“Thank you!” I replied while handing a completed burger to my first customer, then another of the men stepped forward, saying, “That looks pretty good.” It had been the youth who had called it “decently tasty.”

“I’ll have one too, kid.”

“Right! Thank you!”

“M-M-Me too!” the youth who had been talking down on my cooking at the start called out, making up his mind and holding out his coins.

Among the seven of them... No wait, eight including Pops, now four of them had made a purchase.

Half of these people had acknowledged my cooking.

While feeling a tinge of disappointment, I solemnly accepted that result.

So it had altogether good reception from the people of the east, but was about 50-50 amongst the folks from the south, huh? I suppose maybe the types of flavors you like really does vary based on the country you’re born in...

As that thought ran through my head, I diced up some more tino and aria.

In the meantime, that large Aldas fellow who made the first purchase exclaimed, “Man, that was good!” in admiration. His stern, stone-like face was overflowing with earnest surprise and joy. “So giba meat was this delicious? Just who was it that said giba was hard and stinky? Because I definitely like this stuff, even over karon.”

When I glanced over, I saw that guy called Pops who seemed like the group’s leader scratching his head and wearing a real sour expression on his face.

“This tarapa is fantastic, too. That sourness hits just right. And what’s this vegetable mixed with the tino?”

“That’s raw aria, thinly diced.”

“Raw aria?! Oh, yes, that slight bite to it goes so well with this meat. Man, it’s making me feel like I wanna chug down some fruit wine or something.”

“That’s for sure. Hey, we didn’t see you in the afternoon yesterday, so do you not stay open till that time of day?”

“Yes. It takes some time to get back home to the forest’s edge, so we close up in the early afternoon.”

“That’s a shame. I’d love to buy two of these instead of paying the inn four coins for dinner.”

These folks from the south all had fierce looking faces when they were staying silent, but unlike the group from the east, they also showed extremely varied expressions.

And when I saw them loudly proclaiming how delicious my food was, it tugged my heart in all sorts of different directions, too.

“Man, that was good! Hey, are you going to be out here at this time again tomorrow?”

“Yes. At least for now, I intend to stay open for another nine days.”

“That so? We’re here in town till the end of next month, so we’ll come here every day for a meal.”

“Thank you! I’ll be awaiting your next visit.”

With that, the men from the south started to disperse.

Pops was still standing there with a sour look on his face, but Aldas gave him a light jab on the shoulder.

“Come on, let’s get going, Pops. It’s about time for work, right?”

And yet, Pops shot me a scary look and said, “Hey. That tarapa was good, so use kimyuus or karon instead of giba. If you did, I’d pay you some coins, too.”

“...I’m sorry. Right now, I don’t have any plans to use any meat but giba. But eventually, I do plan to start selling other dishes using it...”

“No matter what you make, the giba meat will ruin it,” the old-timer muttered, then he left.

Then, I glanced over and saw that the group in the cloaks still hadn’t budged so much as an inch.

However, the silver-haired youth at the head of the group then slowly approached.

“Saying giba meat, is bad, is strange. To me, it’s very tasty.”

“Thank you very much. If you’d like, then I’d love to have you stop by again sometime.”

“We’ll come, tomorrow. Once nine days, are over, will you stop, doing this shop?”

“No. If it looks like I can continue, then I’d like to keep on doing so.”

“It would make me happy, if you kept doing it. We’ll come, each day. We are here, for all of the blue month.”

The blue month... That must have meant next month, right?

I believe Kamyua said his job started on the 15th of next month, so I figured the month must have been just about to turn over.

“I am, the head of the, merchant group ‘Silver Vase,’ Shumiral Zi Sadumtino.”

“Huh?”

“I am, Shumiral Zi Sadumtino. What, is your name?”

“Ah... I’m Asuta of the Fa clan.”

“Asuta. Thank you. We’ll come back, tomorrow.”

With that, the group from Sym also departed.

“That was... amazing. We just sold 14 at once...?” Vina Ruu, who had been silently stirring the contents of the pot the whole time, suddenly chimed in for the first time in a while. “That just leaves six, right...? At this rate, we’ll probably sell them all, won’t we?”

“That’s right. I’m super happy about it.”

“And yet you look like you’re feeling many other things besides happiness... Why?”

“Ah, well... I mean, I guess I’m just frustrated about being told giba meat was gross after all. That’s the first time I’ve had something like that happen since Donda Ruu called my hamburgers poison.”

“I think the person saying that is the strange one in this case, though... My father just didn’t like the softness of the hamburgers, but those men were saying the giba meat itself didn’t taste good. There must be something wrong with their tongues...”

“That’s not true. Tastes just vary from person to person.”

Through my showdown with Donda Ruu, I had been reminded of that completely obvious fact.

And I’m sure the fact that my cooking earned a generally positive reception from the people of the forest’s edge and the folks from Sym was of course influenced by what they had eaten up till then, too.

I knew all that. I really did, but... Even so, that sense of defeat whirling around in my chest still wouldn’t subside.

Maybe that wasn’t even my pride as a chef, but just my childish frustration at having someone badmouth something I liked.

In that case, I should just shut those feelings away deep inside. But still... The people of the south were supposed to have less prejudice than those from the west, but they were the ones to say the giba meat wasn’t good. I’ve got to keep that fact firmly in mind as I plan how to move forward.

“Ah... Asuta, it’s that man who sells the vegetables.”

“Huh?” I questioned, looking up to find Dora and Tara coming our way from the south.

I shot them a slightly relieved smile, but then went “Huh?” and tilted my head.

There were two unfamiliar men following behind the father and daughter. They both had yellowish-brown skin and looked to be around Dora’s age. And they had the same sort of majorly strained smiles on their faces as the old-timer did when I first met him.

“Hey there, Asuta. How are things going?”

“Thanks for asking. Today’s going well. I mean, we’ve already sold 14.”

“Huh?! Then you’ll be out soon?”

“We have six left. There’s still plenty of time left till the sun hits its peak, so I’m certainly happy about it.”

“I see. I’m glad to hear it. Um... I’d like to have these two try those sample things, if that’s alright.”

The faces of those two men were now twitching in front of me and Vina Ruu.

“Of course. I’d appreciate that, myself, but... Who are these men?”

“They’re old acquaintances of mine. One sells cloth, and the other pots.”

“Ah! Are you the guy I bought this pot from?”

“Th-That’s right. I-I’m surprised you remember.”

Most men in their prime here in Genos were well built, so a scrawny guy like this really left an impression.

“These guys wouldn’t believe me even when I told them giba meat is delicious, so I dragged them here. So can you let them have a taste?”

“Naturally! Hold on just a moment. I’ll heat them back up for you.”

There were exactly two samples left on the plate, so I soaked them in the piping hot sauce, then placed them back on the plate.

The men from the pot and cloth shops exchanged a look, forcing smiles but looking like they were about to cry.

Tara watched the meat out of the corner of her eye as she tugged on her father’s arm.

“Dad, I’m hungry...”

“Ah, right. Asuta, could we order one from you in the meantime?”

“Thank you. It really does make me glad, hearing that the two of you are so fond of them.”

“I’m glad too, to have met folks like you from the forest’s edge.”

As he said that, he glanced over at Vina Ruu.

Vina Ruu smiled back, looking a bit troubled.

“We’re all citizens of the west, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to think of the people of the forest’s edge as my brethren. Even now, when I see any of those terrifying men, I just freeze in place, but... But even so, I really am glad to know that there are folks like you among them, too.”

As Dora accepted the giba burger, he gave a bright smile.

“Come by my shop again sometime. I’d like to have you eat some of the aria I’ve grown.”

“Yes, well, I’ll be sure to tell my family that, too...”

With a happy smile on his face, Dora bit into the giba burger.

“Ah... This giba burger thing really is delicious. I’m seriously happy knowing the vegetables I grew are being used in such wonderful cooking.”

“No, it’s because the ingredients themselves are delicious in the first place that I was able to make such a tasty dish. I’ll keep on counting on you for delicious aria and tarapa, Dora.”

“I can proudly take on that task, at least.”

With that, Dora turned to face his two friends.

“So, how long do you two plan on staying huddled up like that? You already left your shops and came all the way here, so at least give it a try.”

“W-We were forcefully dragged here, though,” the pot seller grumbled, but even so he still reached out for a sample. Though he trembled a bit, he picked up the toothpick, worked up his nerves, and tossed the little chunk of meat into his mouth.

“H-How is it?” the cloth seller asked, tugging on his friend’s arm.

“...It’s good. Seriously, it’s such a mysterious taste...”

“Ah, it’s made by finely chopping up meat and then balling it back up. So it might make for a bit of an unusual texture.”

The pot seller’s eyes seriously started to drift about. Then, he made up his mind and dug around in his clothing around his chest using those slender fingers of his.

“I-I’ll have one too! I won’t quite understand it if I don’t eat a bit more.”

“Right, thank you!”

“H-Hey, are you serious...?”

With that, the cloth seller grabbed a toothpick, too.

“Whoa, this is just plain tasty, isn’t it?!” he exclaimed, his eyes opening wide in shock as he peered into the pot. “This is really giba meat...? And man, this tarapa is really good, too!”

“Of course. I grew that tarapa, after all,” Dora chimed in, puffing his chest up with pride.

“W-What are you getting a big head over?” the cloth seller replied with a weak chuckle. Then he turned to me and said, “A-Alright, I’ll have one too! U-Um, it won’t make me grow horns or turn my skin all dark, will it...?”

“You believe in those superstitions? I’ve never seen a person of the forest’s edge with horns, and according to my grandmother they look the same as they did when they first came here from the southern forest.”

“I-I know that! Alright, give me one!”

“Thank you,” I said earnestly from the depths of my heart.

Yes, I really did have a ways to go, seeing as I was shaken by every little thing, whether I was getting all depressed from someone saying my cooking tasted bad or feeling happy when someone said it was good.

But at any rate, my fight was still only just getting started.

From tomorrow on, I would prepare 40 giba burgers.

And if it looks like those will sell out too, then I may have to start thinking of unveiling a new dish even sooner than I had planned.

Yes, I had a whole ton of things to consider.

Anyway, Kamyua Yoshu showed up out of nowhere like a ghost again and ordered one each for him and Leito, so once again we ended up completely selling out in less than an hour.

6

It was now the evening of the following day, our third day of business.

I was currently sprawled out on the floor in the Fa house’s main hall, when suddenly there were two knocks on the door.

“Asuta, it’s me,” I heard Ai Fa’s voice say.

I peeled my indescribably exhausted body from of the fur carpet, then headed towards the entrance to remove the bolt.

When I did so and opened the door, I saw my beloved benefactor for the first time in half a day, only to suddenly hear, “What’s with that drained look on your face? Did you not even sell one today? Even if that’s the case, don’t make such a pathetic expression in front of me. It’s unpleasant.”

“Ugh... What about you? The number of giba around has steadily been decreasing lately, right?”

“I took one down. However, it got overly damaged in the process, so I wasn’t able to bloodlet it well.”

“I see. Good work. The most important thing is that you weren’t hurt.”

“Like I said, what’s with that look? If you don’t tell me the gist of things, I really will get angry.”

“I’m just a bit tired, so don’t worry about it. I’ll get my energy back soon enough just from being with you, anyway...”

“Don’t say such foolish nonsense. It’s displeasing, so fix yourself right away.”

My clan head sure didn’t show mercy.

“What in the world happened? There must have been some sort of problem for you to look so incredibly drained, right?”

“It sure was something, yeah... Today, the guards ended up getting called.”

“What? What do you mean?” she asked, suddenly grabbing me by the collar. “What in the world did you do? You were supposed to just be working seriously, weren’t you?”

“I was doing that! And thanks to that, we sold out of all 40 burgers for today! But that was how the guards ended up getting summoned...”

“...I don’t understand. Explain it to me.”

She pushed me away, hung her cloak on the wall, and leaned her sword up against it too.

While watching her look every bit as gallant as always as she did so, I moved over towards the stove and sat down next to it.

“Folks from both the south and east gathered immediately when we opened the shop today, and we sold our first 20 burgers in no time at all.”

“Right.”

“And I brought more today, so I went ahead and prepared the other 20 in a big hurry. Once I finished them, people bought four more, including Tara and her dad.”

“Yes.”

“That left 16... But then, that Silver Vase group and the guys from Jagar showed up all at once. And both of those groups wanted ten each.”

“Hmm? But didn’t you say they showed up when the shop opened?”

“No, the folks who showed up first all heard tell of the shop from those groups, and they were all first time customers. Apparently, folks from the south and east each have their own preferred inns so they won’t run into each other much. And it seems that the giba burgers have become a big topic of discussion in those places.”

“...Right.”

“And so, since there were ten folks in both groups and only 16 burgers left, I told them I’d sell ten to the Silver Vase since they just barely got there first, and the remaining six to the folks from the south. But then, they yelled out, ‘At least make it fair and do eight each!’”

“I see.”

“The guys from the east had no intention of yielding either, though... And since the commotion showed no signs of dying down, some passersby called for the guards.”

“Oh? If that was the case, then only the ones causing the commotion would be punished, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s not how it turned out. They reached the conclusion that I was the initial cause of the problem, so I was entirely at fault, and I just barely avoided getting banned from the post town.”

“Is that the law in the city...?” Ai Fa questioned, anger flickering in her eyes.

“I-I don’t know anything about that. But at any rate, I managed to persuade them, so don’t worry about it. Plus, I really had screwed up by not preparing enough... That fact at least has been weighing heavily on me.”

“I see... That certainly sounds rough.”

Ai Fa lightly shook her head, clearing away the anger that had started to sprout in her.

“Good work today... And now, I’m hungry, Asuta.”

“...You really don’t know mercy, do you?”

“I said good work to you, didn’t I? Now I understand the reason behind your fatigue. I get it, so hurry up and do something about that depleted look on your face.”

I massaged the sides of my face, wondering if it really looked that bad.

Well, it was true that in the few hours since the guards released me, I had been running my mind and body full blast, so maybe I just didn’t have any energy left to spare.

It was times like this that taking in nutrition was important.

“Alright! I’ll get to work preparing dinner, then!”

“...I didn’t say you should force yourself to sound overly cheerful.”

Oh, I see.

I just meekly started adding fire to the stove in order to heat up the already prepared soup.

“Still, it’s rather remarkable that you managed to sell 40 meals on just your third day, isn’t it?” Ai Fa asked, sounding a bit perplexed as she sat beside the stove with one knee raised. “And yet, you still don’t look even the least bit happy.”

“Well, I mean, I’m glad to have sold better than expected, but I’m still not in a position where I can just be happy about it. To me, it feels like I’m still standing on the edge of a cliff.”

“The edge of a cliff...?”

“Our ultimate goal is to have the taste of giba meat spread throughout the post town, right? But so far, only four people born in Genos have even tasted the giba burgers. No matter how popular they may get among folks from the east and south, those people will all eventually leave town. So at this rate, I’m earning some change, but I’m not any closer to carrying out our goal, right?”

Thanks to today’s investigation by the guards, I learned all about the background of my customers.

Just as they had said, the group from Sym was part of the merchant group known as the Silver Vase. They were traveling around to towns in the west and north for a year with goods made of precious metals and the like from their home country, doing business as they went.

And apparently the folks from Jagar were part of a somewhat famous construction group that had built a great number of buildings around the post town.

That guy called “Pops” who utterly rejected giba meat was their leader, and supposedly they were in the area doing repairs on older buildings.

“And so, both the Silver Vase and that construction group will be leaving at the end of next month. And all those other folks are just here to work, not residents of Genos. Right now, 90% of the giba burgers are selling to them, so folks from around Genos have still hardly had a chance to taste it.”

“But... wasn’t your plan always to start by selling to folks from the south and east?”

“Well, that may be so, but it still wouldn’t do if I get hauled away by the guards before my cooking can build up a reputation, right? The next time something happens, I really may end up getting banned... So, I’m standing on the edge of a cliff.”

The cold glares from the guards and Milano Mas were still burned into my mind.

Their eyes pretty much said, “So the people of the forest’s edge really are just heathens who disturb the peace here in town...”

It was utterly unreasonable. I couldn’t help but think that if we were anybody but the people of the forest’s edge, we wouldn’t have been handled so harshly.

But even so, we had made up our minds to keep on selling despite that animosity as people living at the forest’s edge.

We couldn’t afford to get sloppy from here on out.

This really did drive it home again, the fact that I was up against the entire town in this fight.

“...Your face is finally back to normal,” Ai Fa said from up close.

I turned in surprise and found that she was now standing right next to me.

“Also, you’re a surprisingly greedy man, Asuta.”

“G-Greedy?”

“How many coins did you earn over these three days?”

“Huh? Well, putting all three days together I sold 70, which makes for 140 red coins. Subtracting out the initial fee, Vina Ruu’s daily wages, and the cost of the ingredients, that should make for 77 red coins of pure profit.”

“That means you made as much as hunting six giba’s worth would earn you in just three days, doesn’t it?”

“Those things can’t be compared. After all, no matter how much I earn, it doesn’t put even the slightest dent in the number of giba around. The work of a hunter is totally different.”

Now that I thought about it, my quota for these ten days was 60 meals.

I certainly hadn’t foreseen clearing that on just the third day.

As I kept on stirring the soup, Ai Fa stood by my side with a smile on her face.

“That’s the thinking of the people of the forest’s edge. But townsfolk work and sweat solely to earn coins, don’t they?”

“I told you though, that’s not our goal, right? Well, I would be really glad if this money could go towards buying new pots and blades, though.”

“...That’s why I said you’re greedy,” Ai Fa said with a smile, an incredibly peaceful light shining in her eyes.

I still didn’t understand, though.

“What, are you saying I’m greedy because I’m not happy with selling and earning more than expected? In that case, you must think I’m pretty awful.”

“That’s not it. It’s that you aren’t blinded by coins and keep on pushing to achieve your original goal. You have a greedy desire for victory.”

“...Then at least phrase it as me hating to lose. ‘Greedy’ makes it sound way too negative,” I complained while stirring around the contents of the pot, which had heated up quite a bit by now.

“Very well,” Ai Fa replied, drawing even closer. She ruffled my hair (I had already removed my towel) while bringing her face up near mine.

“You hate to lose, Asuta.”

She smiled so wide that her white teeth were on clear display, calling to mind a mischievous child.

That type of smile was rare for Ai Fa, and was more the type of thing I expected from Ludo Ruu.

It was rare for her to openly smile in the first place, so I was seriously taken aback.

“...Anyway, I’m hungry, Asuta.”

“Ah, right. I guess this is plenty hot enough. I’m going to grill up the meat, so could you help me move this?”

“This” referred to the giba soup I had completed earlier. The pot was still warm, and there was only just enough in there for two people, so it would heat back up in no time.

Once we moved that to a board set in the back, I placed a new pot on the stove, then got a wooden plate I had prepared in advance. Ai Fa looked at it with confusion on her face.

“What is tonight’s dinner? There’s some sort of smell to it that I’m not familiar with.”

“That’s right. I purchased a new ingredient to try out tonight. Well, I say ingredient, but it’s really more of a spice.”

Atop the wooden plate, a giba rib and shoulder roast were submerged in a red liquid. It was fruit wine with finely diced aria and my new ingredient, myamuu, making for a marinade.

“Myamuu?”

“Right, myamuu. It’s a vegetable that was used in that kimyuus manju I ate.”

It was a spice like a cross between garlic and coriander, making for a complex aroma that seriously stirred the appetite.

It came in green stalks about as thick as a straw, and if you bit into it raw, it was incredibly spicy. I had diced it thinly enough to turn it into a paste just like with the aria, and added it to the marinade.

“I’d been interested in it for a while, but I didn’t even know its name or anything. I asked Dora about it today, and I finally managed to pin it down. I’m sure this would probably go well with the tarapa sauce, too.”

As I explained, I started by sauteing some aria I had cut into thin slices. When those were nice and soft, I added in the marinated meat while making sure it spread properly around. Instantly, the smell of fruit wine and myamuu filled the room.

“What do you think? Doesn’t that smell seriously get to you?”

“...For some reason, I suddenly feel extremely hungry.”

Well, that made sense. I was a novice when it came to coriander, but I thought it made for a wonderful aroma for stimulating an appetite when you paired together the smells of grilled meat and garlic.

Back in my old world there was no shortage of people who avoided it because it was too strong of a smell, but myamuu didn’t leave as strong of a lingering scent as garlic. Plus, I’d seen plenty of women and children eating those kimyuus manju, which firmed up my resolve to use that powerful aroma in my cooking.

By the way, this wasn’t sold by vegetable sellers, but rather shops that handled rock salt and dried goods, and was an ingredient I hadn’t seen in the Ruu pantry.

“Alright, now that the surface of the meat is nice and grilled, I’ll be adding this in too.”

With that, I poured the rest of the marinade from the plate into the pot. The procedure I used was the same as with ginger pork. In my head, I thought myamuu giba would work as a name.

“Asuta.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Ah, right, that’s the fourth time you’ve said that now, isn’t it? It’s pretty much finished, so just hold on a moment.”

Once the meat had been heated to temperature all the way through, I moved it to the plate with the aria.

I had sprinkled salt and pico leaves over the giba meat to begin with, so there was no need to season it any further.

Then once the remaining sauce in the pot had heated up enough, I poured it over the meat and aria, completing the dish.

“Ah, the baked poitan are in the pantry. Sorry, but could you dish out the soup?”

“Right.”

I hurried to the pantry and brought back the poitan I had baked in the morning, as well as some shredded tino I had prepared.

“This is the raw tino you added to your giba burgers, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I figured it would probably go well with this dish, too.”

When you think of ginger pork, you think shredded cabbage. And so, shredded tino was sure to go well with myamuu giba, too.

Well, at least if my sensibilities from having grown up in another world matched up, that was.

“Alright! Well then, shall we dig in?”

“...Hey, there’s not much meat on your plate, is there, Asuta?”

“Ah, yeah. When I was figuring out the ratio of marinade to aria and myamuu and how long it should be heated and the like, I ended up eating quite a bit of meat in my taste tests. And so, this much is plenty.”

Ai Fa shot me a bit of a dubious look.

“You seem to have put quite a bit of effort into this... Could you perhaps be planning on selling this dish in the post town, too?”

“Man, you’re sharp! That’s exactly it. It would take too much time to prepare more than 40 giba burgers, so I was thinking I’d start selling this too from tomorrow on. This is how you eat it.”

First up I loaded a heaping helping of shredded tino atop the poitan, which I had stretched out thinner than with the giba burgers. Then I added the meat and aria on top, and finally rolled up the bottom like a crepe, finishing it off.

“It’s dinner, so you have two, Ai Fa. And the remaining aria went into the soup, so make sure to finish it all.”

“...No person of the forest’s edge would leave dinner on their plate.”

“Right, I just wanted to try saying that. Now go ahead and chow down.”

Ai Fa gave a nod, completed her pre-meal ritual, and then picked up her dinner.

Then she knitted her brows a bit, having noticed my gaze.

“Don’t stare at people’s faces.”

“A-Ah, sorry about that. I was just interested in how you’d react.”

Ai Fa looked away with a, “Hmph,” and then bit into the myamuu giba.

Sure enough, she held the dish with both hands, which made her look incredibly adorable.

More important, though, was the flavor.

I didn’t think it had turned out half bad.

I didn’t have any ginger, cooking sake, or soy sauce, so I wasn’t exactly plotting to get close to the flavor of ginger pork. The fruit wine with its heavy sweetness and the strong garlic-like spice and aroma of the myamuu had soaked into the grilled meat to create a rich salty-sweet flavor, which paired perfectly with the shredded tino and baked poitan.

The meat was all less than five millimeters thick. However, it still had a solid bit of chewiness to it. If I messed up with the strength of the flame it could end up too tough for the townsfolk, so I took special care with that.

As I went ahead and prepared my own portion, I turned to Ai Fa and asked, “What do you think?”

“It’s good,” Ai Fa replied, the same as always.

Well, whether it was just plain delicious or still lacking something, Ai Fa wasn’t the sort to put that into words, so it would be hard to drag any more out of her...

“The aroma is nice. It suits this meat well. It’s as good as the steak... Would this aroma go well with steak, too?” she said, giving surprisingly substantial impressions for today. “However... Maybe this sweet of a taste wouldn’t be good with steak? And I wouldn’t want this aroma to go with regular hamburgers. With giba burgers and the tarapa... How would that be? I’m not so sure.”

“Th-That was amazing. That’s the first time you’ve given such in-depth impressions, isn’t it?”

And I found everything she said to be reasonable information.

At any rate, Ai Fa cast her eyes downwards again and looked like she was searching for what to say.

“Also... It definitely tastes good, but it made my throat feel parched. Perhaps... It would taste better to me if the taste wasn’t quite so strong.”

“Ah, I see. The people of the forest’s edge are only used to the rock salt used for dried meat in terms of spices, so I might have flavored it a bit too strong. I’ll try tweaking the portion used for dinner by letting it soak in a bit longer.”

Ai Fa gave a bit of an exhausted sigh, and then stared right at me.

“That’s all I have to say. Don’t ask any more of me. If I have to think anymore, my head will start hurting.”

“Got it. Thanks. That was a big help!”

“...Still, didn’t you say you intended to sell steak and normal grilled meat after the giba burgers? That with those recipes the tastiness of giba meat would be easier to see?”

“Yeah. That really was my plan.”

I adjusted my seating a bit.

“But I told you yesterday how several of my customers said the samples were no good, right? And it seemed like those folks didn’t just dislike the softness of the hamburgers, but the taste of the giba meat itself. So I wanted to try out a stronger seasoning than I’d ever used before. I wondered if there was a method that would preserve the deliciousness of the giba meat, but also cut down on its fairly strong quirkiness.”

“Right.”

“Roughly the same number of people from the south and east are buying my food, but that’s probably because the big dispute over whether it’s good or not has driven up everyone’s curiosity. So even though nobody complained to my face today, I’m sure there were still folks who weren’t satisfied. If things went badly, half of them may have even felt that way.”

Plus, the folks from the east were all so untalkative and expressionless that I had no idea whatsoever how to estimate how many of them were happy with my food.

My number of customers may have been growing day by day, but I didn’t even know how many repeats I was getting. Especially the folks from the south, what with the way their faces were shadowed by those hoods most of the time. I had a hard time making out their features, so recognizing one from another was difficult.

“Well at any rate, there were still folks who said they didn’t like the taste of the giba burgers even though I used the fairly flavorful tarapa sauce, so rather than pushing the meat’s flavor to the forefront with steaks, I figured it would be better to try a dish that suppresses the quirkiness of the meat. And that salted meat or whatever from The Kimyuus’s Tail was pretty darn salty, so I figured the townsfolk didn’t have any real problem with strong spices.”

“...You certainly seem to have given this a lot of thought.”

Ai Fa had quickly gobbled down her second myamuu giba, and was now staring at me.

“What was with that depleted look on your face before?”

“Huh? I was just plain exhausted. There was that whole commotion during the day, and then afterwards I had to hurriedly complete this new dish. Plus, I had a whole ton of other things to think about.”

I leaned forward a bit as I put together another myamuu giba for Ai Fa.

“Hey, Ai Fa. I never guessed I’d do this much business with just people from the south and east. I intend to make things work somehow tomorrow with the giba burgers and this new dish, but I don’t think that will settle the heart of the matter.”

“Hmm...?”

“With just one stall, all I can do is sell the myamuu giba after I sell out of the giba burgers. That means I’m not seeing the proper effectiveness of having two dishes on my menu... So it’s way sooner than I had expected, but I think it’s time to start seriously considering expanding to a second stall.”

As she accepted the myamuu giba I was holding out, Ai Fa went “Hmm...” and gave a dignified nod. “If that’s what you think, then you can go ahead and do it. I’ll trust in your decision.”

“No, but I mean, this is pretty important, right? Expanding the number of stalls and personnel will also increase the expenses...”

“But you feel that is a proper path to take to find success, right?”

Ai Fa gently stared back at me.

“I trust in your decision. Don’t make me keep saying that over and over.”

“...Got it. Thank you.”

I gave a big nod, and Ai Fa shot me back a gentle smile.

“...You really are a greedy man.”

“Hey, I told you, don’t say greedy...”

“You really do hate to lose.”

Well, I had no objection to that.

It was all down to my naive thinking that I hadn’t managed the kind of results I’d wanted in these three days.

If I made a mistake in my judgment, it could lead to this whole plan crashing down. I really felt that with the commotion today.

In the first place, it was strange that I found myself lamenting that folks from the east and south were buying everything up before it reached anybody from the west.

My initial goal was supposed to be having the shop prove successful over the first ten days so that I could roll out a new dish. But now, I couldn’t take things at such a leisurely pace. I had gone over capacity on the third day since opening, so I needed to deal with things quickly.

Vina Ruu had already brought the matter up.

As long as Donda Ruu gave his permission, we could have another person helping out as soon as the day after tomorrow.

If I could just make it through tomorrow somehow, then the day after that I could launch my counterattack.

“Alright! Now it’s time for round two!”

“What’s a ‘round’?”

When I turned and looked her way, I found Ai Fa staring at me with one knee up and her chin resting on her hand.

“H-Huh? You already finished eating, Ai Fa?”

“You’re just slow. You’ve got work to do after this, right? If you don’t hurry up and eat, you’ll end up cutting into the time you have for sleep.”

“It’s alright. I already made the giba burger patties in my spare time. I just have to cut the meat for the myamuu giba and prepare the tarapa sauce, which’ll be easy. The most difficult part will honestly just be baking the poitan tomorrow morning.”

Ai Fa was giving me a distant look.

“Hmm? What is it?”

“...No one but me benefits from you staying here at the Fa house. So I was just thinking that you really should be with the Rutim.”

“W-What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me to leave the Fa clan again?”

“Did you really think I would say that at this point?”

Ai Fa’s gaze was very gentle.

As I sipped the soup (which had chilled a bit by now), I scratched my head.

“If that’s the case, then why are you bringing that up? Please don’t make me all uneasy like that.”

“I’m happy. Because you chose to stay here, I mean. And because you found a way to do work where you thrive while staying part of the Fa clan.”

As she said that, Ai Fa scooched over my way using her hands and knees. Then, she ruffled my hair again. When I stroked her hair I got a body blow for it, yet this was some awfully intimate physical contact.

“U-Um, I kind of feel like I’m a small child or something when you do that.”

“Is that so? My father Gil used to do this often when praising me,” she said, giving the first pout I’d seen from her in a while.

“Ah, but it doesn’t feel bad or anything. I was just a bit embarrassed.”

“...I see,” Ai Fa said, looking downwards.

I felt a twinge of regret, figuring I’d said something I shouldn’t have.

And then...

Ai Fa suddenly got on one knee and hugged her arms around my neck. In an instant, my body and mind were awash in her warmth, fragrance, and strength.

“I’m glad I didn’t lose you back on that night... I’m glad that you chose the Fa rather than the Rutim.”

“A... A-A-Ai Fa?” I questioned, my voice unintentionally cracking.

Her unrelenting strength held my body tight, and her soft hair brushed up against my cheek. I felt like my heart was about to stop. There was an iridescent light flickering in the depths of her eyes. As I vaguely thought that if this sensation continued on for a few more seconds, my nerves would all burn up, that warmth, strength, and fragrance grew distant. Ai Fa sat back on the floor and started childishly scratching her nose.

“...That just now was how I feel.”

“P-Please don’t go shocking me like that...”

I had to firmly plant my hands on the floor to support myself, as I felt like I was about to up and collapse.

“Y-Your dad was a pretty passionate person, huh?”

“Hmm? What’s this about my father Gil?”

“Huh?”

“He has nothing to do with this. I just did what I wanted to just now.”

I sat there, shocked into silence.

“If you found it unpleasant, then I’ll refrain in the future. But just now, I simply couldn’t hold back how I felt... My apologies for interrupting your dinner. Now, go ahead and get back to eating. I’ve gotten a bit sleepy,” Ai Fa said with a composed expression, pointing to my remaining food.

She’s... She’s a million times as bad as Vina Ruu!

Not noticing my mental scream, Ai Fa set about letting down her hair.

“I believe you’re proving plenty successful, but if you think otherwise, then strive even harder... And just as I said before, those coins are your own to use as you please. If you come up short, just tell me.”

“...Is it really alright to be putting such complete trust in me? What if I use the money I earn to buy hair accessories and stuff like that for you?”

“I’d beat you to a pulp.”

“Ah, I see... Got it! In that case, depending on how tomorrow’s sales go, I really will move to expand my business! You won’t go complaining later, right?”

“What are you getting so worked up about?” Ai Fa questioned as she moved her face in closer again, now with her hair down. “Did I make you feel uneasy after all?”

Her face looked a bit displeased and worried.

Still having gotten no further with my dinner, I gave a heavy sigh.

“Of course not. Sorry about that...”

“...You truly are a strange man.”

I didn’t think that was the case at all. And yet, when I saw Ai Fa’s relieved smile, I just couldn’t bring myself to argue.

At any rate, our fight was still only just getting started.