Chapter 5: The Girl and the Entrails

1

It was the day after Lala Ruu turned 13: the 26th of the blue month. I was once again busy with my work preparations, only for Ai Fa to come back shouldering yet another giba.

“Whoa, you caught another one? You haven’t even been back out in the forest for ten days yet, but that makes three, doesn’t it?”

“Hmph... Today’s giba is rather young, though. I’ll probably only get two coins for each of its horns and tusks.”

Even if it was young, it couldn’t have weighed less than 40 kilos. And it may not have been all that tall, but it seemed plenty plump.

After giving a nod to the Fou and Din women staring at her with admiration, Ai Fa passed in front of the stove and set about hanging the giba from a branch. And as she did so, she called out, “I’m back, Gilulu,” to the totos tied to another nearby tree.

It sure made for a tranquil sight.

The meeting with the folks from the castle was in just four days, so would we be able to maintain this peaceful lifestyle after that? I couldn’t help but ponder the matter, but then an older woman let out an impressed-sounding, “Ooh, you sure are skilled.”

Turning to look, I saw Toor Din transferring freshly baked poitan to a wooden plate. Despite the fact that they hadn’t mixed in any gigo, they really had come out nice and plump. And that light golden-brown color they had made them look seriously tasty.

“That’s for sure. You really are talented, Toor Din.”

“No...” the girl replied, casting her gaze downwards. Her expression hadn’t shifted much, but her cheeks were ever so slightly red. Adorable.

Toor Din was a ten-year-old girl who had once belonged to one of the Suun branch families. Her dark brown hair hung down on either side of her neck, and her eyes were blue. And though she had a rather cute face, her expression was always sorrowful and listless.

However, I believed that was due to how the girl’s heart had withered away from being forced to live under the bizarre rules of the Suun settlement. But she occasionally let slip an innocent smile, or showed her inherent kindness through her actions. And so, I couldn’t help but feel that she would have been an energetic, carefree girl like Rimee Ruu had she just been raised normally.

“Looks like you’ve already perfected baking poitan, Toor Din. If you bring along some giba meat, I could show you how to cook with that too. What do you say?”

With that, Toor Din’s face grew even redder, and she muttered, “But...”

“Asuta of the Fa clan. Normally, dinner is to be made at your own house’s stove. We’ve been fine baking poitan here, but I believe going so far as to grill giba meat would mean going against the customs of the forest’s edge,” Jas Din, elder sister to both the Din clan head and Toor Din’s late mother, chimed in. With her gentle but stern gaze, she made for quite a commanding presence.

“Ah, right, I had forgotten that was the custom. That was why everyone’s just watched when it came to preparing anything but poitan, huh? But... isn’t it pretty tricky to learn the techniques just by watching?”

“That’s true. But Toor Din here once received your instruction in preparing food for the clan head meeting, and she’s grown rather skilled at manning the stove.”

The more Toor Din was praised, the lower and lower her gaze seemed to fall. It was a rather sad thought, but folks from the branch families like her seemed to be stricken more by kindness than by animosity.

At any rate, Toor Din let out a little, “Ah...”

Following her gaze, I found she was looking at Ai Fa, who had finished peeling the pelt and set about removing the innards.

“What is it?” I tried asking.

But all I got back was, “Nothing...”

Back at the Suun settlement, the men avoided hunting as much as possible, so they ate torso meat, too. In that case, she should have been perfectly accustomed to seeing such things.

“The entrails, huh...? Back where I come from, there was this animal a lot like a giba. From what I heard, its innards could be made into pretty tasty dishes, but I wonder what a giba’s taste like...” I tried throwing out there, feeling like I would somehow regret it if I let the conversation die off there. And with that, Toor Din turned to face me with a look of amazement.

“Th-They ate giba entrails back where you came from?”

“Hmm? It wasn’t a giba, but a real similar animal. But yeah, they did. And since the taste of the meat’s a lot alike, I figured maybe a giba’s innards would taste good, too.”

“T-They do!” Toor Din responded, far louder than I expected from the shy little girl. However, before long her face went beet red and her gaze fell further than ever before.

Jas Din and the Fou women around her all just stood there looking confused.

“Ah, did you perhaps eat giba innards at the Suun settlement?”

“Yes...” she replied so quietly her voice was hardly audible.

“Giba innards, is it? So the Suun clan was so desperate not to do their giba hunting work that they would even eat such gross-looking things?” Jas Din questioned, her stern gaze quietly turning Toor Din’s way.

“Ah, no, but innards were treated as a delicacy back in my home country, too. And they provide different nutrition than meat, so they’re also valuable in that way,” I replied, half out of a desire to cover for Toor Din and half out of an interest in cooking with entrails. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve found it frustrating just throwing giba innards away. Hey, Toor Din, would you mind telling me how you prepared them?”

“Huh...?” she questioned, her gaze looking clearly troubled.

Jas Din gave a small sigh, then patted Toor Din on the head.

“You owe Asuta of the Fa clan a great debt, don’t you? I won’t say something like this would be enough to repay it, but I also don’t think you should go holding back at a time like this.”

“Right...” Toor Din replied with a nod, then her downcast eyes turned my way.

And if I wasn’t mistaken, I thought I saw a bit of happiness faintly kindling in her blue eyes.

◇

“I don’t really understand the details. But I do know we just set aside the especially smelly parts, then washed the rest carefully,” Toor Din stated, and so we moved to the washing area.

As for the innards, we tossed them all into a pot and carried them along with us. And we were accompanied by Jas Din and the mostly indifferent Fou women, making for a group of five. Ai Fa, however, still had to dissect the giba, so she didn’t come with us.

“First off, we got rid of this bit,” Toor Din stated, grabbing a small chunk of flesh from out of the pot. It was a round little lump about the size of a ping pong ball, and had a nasty color to it. In all likelihood, it was the bladder. “And then this part, too.”

This time around, she lifted up a hefty chunk of reddish-brown, the liver. Then, she removed what looked like a pale yellow-green little bag sandwiched in there, the gallbladder.

I had been taught by hunters way back when that the bladder and gallbladder needed special care when removing the innards, as if they ruptured, a horrible stench would spread to the meat.

“And we also threw out this part when the giba was having a baby, but this one looks fine.”

It was a white, thin, winding bit. From her description, I assumed it had to be the uterus. In other words, this giba was a female.

“Hmm, I see... And then you wash them all off, huh? Which one should we start with?”

“Ah, before that, we have to make a cut into this one and this one and scoop out all the stuff inside.”

She was referring to a swollen, pink winding bit attached to one end of the large intestine, and a long, narrow, wrinkly white organ. That was probably the rectum, with the pink thing being the stomach.

That made sense. It was such a plump giba that it must have been eating to its heart’s content when it was alive. And the remains of all that still sat in the stomach, so we needed to start by removing it.

As for the rectum, it was connected to the anus, so it should have been obvious just what we needed to get rid of from there. Still, as a newcomer when it came to cooking entrails, I was a lot more concerned about the contents of the stomach.

“Umm, giba don’t just eat fruits and vegetables, but also lizards and snakes and bugs and the like, right?”

When I said that, Toor Din tilted her head.

“Yes... Now that you mention it, sometimes when we cut that bit open, lots of snakes came spilling out.”

“Ugh, I knew it!”

“But they were dead, of course. Some were venomous, but there wasn’t any danger since they weren’t alive anymore.”

“I mean, that’s true, but still...”

“Are you scared of dead snakes, Asuta?” Toor Din asked with a giggle and a smile. It was a really cute face that she was making. “In that case, I’ll take care of it. Could I borrow your knife, Asuta?”

“Ah, no! I can’t go cooking intestines if I’m scared of what’s in the stomach!”

With that, I worked up my nerve and unsheathed my blade. Then, I slid it on into the bulging stomach and carefully cut. And as I did, the remains of a great number of fruits, now made dark green after being half-digested, came spilling out.

“There weren’t any snakes, huh?” Toor Din said with a smile while dealing with the troubling matter from the rectum. It seemed like she may not have even noticed, but she had been smiling for a while now.

By the way, that just came tumbling out like fried dough cake, so it wasn’t as gross as I had been expecting. Even with the addition of the contents of the stomach, I was just fine as long as I didn’t breath through my nose.

At any rate, we had managed to clean away all that offending matter.

After we finished carefully washing our hands with the water flowing from the rocks, next up was dealing with the large and small intestines, which were like squirming snakes, as well as the uterus.

With the narrow small intestine and uterus, we roughly washed the outside, then cut them open and washed them again inside and out. For this step, we also borrowed the help of the other three women present.

It was best to wash them until all the sliminess was gone, but it just wasn’t seeming like we could get all of it no matter how much we washed. Perhaps it would be more effective adding some salt or something, but unfortunately here in this world, that would cost a bit too much. And so for today, we had to try to overcome the issue with raw manpower instead.

“Well then, let’s try to handle this too in the meantime. Asuta, could you hold that end so that the water doesn’t leak out?” Toor Din asked, offering rather precise instructions as she started washing the large intestine.

I held the opposite end just as she said, and in no time at all it filled up with water and ended up looking like one long sausage. Then while holding onto her own end as well, she started squeezing the thing from one end to the other.

Next we let the water out and did it again, repeating the process a total of three times. After that I cut it up into slices of around ten centimeters each before flipping it inside out. Then, we gave the freshly exposed inside surface a good scrubbing, too. It really was a time-intensive task.

Still, with the five of us working together, we got everything cleaned and chopped up into a little mountain of milky white and pink flesh, at which point I had trouble seeing them as anything but ingredients.

“These ones are next. Like with the others, we’ve gotta start by peeling off the film.”

What Toor Din held up now was a bit around the size of my palm and shaped like a fava bean. And there were two of them, too. When I thought of organs you have a left and a right one of, only the lungs and kidneys came to mind. And in all likelihood, these were the latter. After clearing the white membrane off, a shiny, smooth red surface like a liver showed itself.

“Asuta, could I have you cut this horizontally?”

“Got it.”

When I cut it open, it revealed a splendid white that reminded me of fatty meat.

“When I was working the stove, we would always tear out this white bit and throw it away... That was because it had a sort of nasty smell to it.”

“Ooh, I see.”

If I recalled correctly, the job of a kidney was to filter the liquid in your body. So did that mean there were toxins stored in here?

I had no way of knowing, but there was something else entirely that I had realized. In all likelihood, Toor Din had always enjoyed manning the stove. That was probably why she had been smiling this whole time.

Up until now, she had been living with the guilt of breaking the taboo and eating the blessings of the forest. And even when it came to cooking giba, the Suun clan only hunted the minimum number necessary, so she ended up having to prepare even the innards.

Even at the mere age of ten, Toor Din must have understood full well just how strange that was. After all, the members of the branch families had it driven into them that it was a secret no one must ever know, or their scalps would be skinned. That was why their eyes had been like those of dead fish.

I couldn’t help but get the impression that in spite of all that, Toor Din had come to enjoy manning the stove, and had even gotten skilled at it. At the very least, enough to have thoughts like, “If you separate this part from here, you can make more tasty meals.”

The people of the forest’s edge had kept things simple and had no interest in delicious food. Their basic stance was that there was no need to spend excess time preparing a meal. However, that didn’t mean there weren’t people out there with the nature and latent potential needed to become skilled at cooking.

Even just in the Ruu settlement, there were folks who had always specialized in manning the stove. For example, Reina, Sheera, Mia Lea, and Tari Ruu all immediately came to mind. And I couldn’t help but feel that Toor Din was the same type of person as them.

So now, she could put to use the skills she had gained in secret while breaking taboos as a member of the Suun clan, in a way that she shouldn’t feel any shame for in the least. Perhaps that was why she was currently wearing such a joyful smile.

“And then there’s this one and this one. I think you can just put a little cut into each of them and then wash out the blood from inside,” Toor Din stated, knowing nothing of what I had been thinking as she pointed to the heart and liver. “A whole lot of blood will keep coming out as you wash, but I think it tastes a lot better cleaned...”

“You’re certainly right on that point. That’s precisely why it’s important to have the men bloodlet the carcass when they hunt down a giba.”

For 80 long years, the people of the forest’s edge hadn’t arrived at the idea of bloodletting. But because of the twisted rules of the Suun clan forcing her to eat the innards, which surely had a worse stench than the meat, this girl had ironically come very close to realizing the truth that blood was the source of that smell.

As that thought ran through my head, I worked away at the heart while Toor Din cleaned the liver.

“For the rest, you can just wash them in water. I think just filling the pot with water and letting them get clean that way should be plenty.”

With that said, there weren’t all that many bits left in the pot.

There were the light pink, strangely soft lungs, and a long, slender white organ surrounded by something like a netting of fat... By process of elimination, that was probably the pancreas. Then there was the diaphragm, which just looked like a flat chunk of meat to me.

We left washing those up to Jas Din’s group, and with that, the finish line was finally in sight.

“Man, this sure is quite an involved process... So, how did you prepare these innards, Toor Din?”

“Well, we generally just boiled them in the stew. But the stench was still stronger than with the meat, so we added lilo and some other herb I don’t know the name of...” Toor Din replied, a dark shadow falling over her face. It must have been something the people of the forest’s edge didn’t know the name of because it was a forbidden blessing of the forest.

“You just boiled them? You never grilled them?”

“Huh? Ah, yes, when we just grilled them, the stench was too strong...”

“Hmm... But you didn’t hate eating innards, right?”

If she did, then I couldn’t see any reason for her opening up about the fact. After all, she couldn’t have enjoyed bringing up the distorted customs of the Suun settlement.

“That’s true... I certainly didn’t dislike it any more than eating meat. How should I put it...? The chewy texture was sorta nice.”

“Chewy, huh? Sounds interesting!” I replied, trying to sound as cheerful as I could manage. Instantly, the serious expression on Toor Din’s face gave way to embarrassment as she turned bright red and her gaze fell to the ground again.

I felt a little bad about that, but I figured it was far preferable to forcing her to remember the past.

“Well then, I guess I’ll give cooking them a try today! I don’t think my methods will get rid of that chewy texture though, so don’t worry about that, alright?”

With that, Toor Din gave an angry little “Geez!” and bumped my arm with her shoulder as she kept on washing the liver.

2

Once we finished cleaning up the entrails, we headed back to the Fa house and I returned to my original tasks for the day.

Of course, that’s not to say I put off dealing with the innards for later, though. I started off by steeping the heart, liver, and kidneys in salt water to get out even more blood, and then parboiled the other bits with lilo to remove any remaining stench before finally soaking everything in a myamuu, aria, and fruit wine marinade.

It took nearly an hour to take care of all that, so my preparations for work tomorrow ended up getting rather delayed. And so, I hurriedly set about making the patties for the giba burgers and cutting up the meat for the myamuu giba, cubed giba meat stew, and giba chitt. And somehow, I managed to fulfill my quota before the sun set.

“Alright, well then, let’s get to cooking with the innards.”

We had two stoves set up outside. One of them was cooking the soup for dinner, while I had the other heating up a pot.

“Huh? You’re grilling instead of boiling?” Toor Din asked, her eyes going wide with surprise.

“That’s right,” I replied with a nod. “With the seasonings we have in the Fa house right now, I can bring out a stronger flavor that way. So for now, I’m going to try grilling them up along with the same marinade I use for the myamuu giba.”

“So first you boiled them, and now you’re grilling them...?”

The forest’s edge didn’t have any concept of parboiling, so I suppose it made sense that that seemed strange to her. But I was pretty sure fried offal back in my world used parboiling followed by grilling. Well, “pretty sure” probably made that statement sound a bit unreliable. But embarrassing as it was to admit, we didn’t eat out a lot at my house, so I wasn’t all that familiar with cooking using entrails.

I had to guess that my old man didn’t have much interest in such dishes. In fact, I was pretty sure I could recall one of our regulars saying, “Hey, you should add motsunabe to your menu,” only for him to reply, “Yeah, maybe eventually.”

And so, this was all ultimately guesswork. For the time being, the three I chose not to parboil were the roly-poly heart, liver, and kidneys, instead cutting them finely and steeping them in a myamuu marinade.

As for the bits I parboiled, I cut them up into nice chunks. With that, it was really starting to look like the fried offal that I vaguely remembered. And when I went ahead and tossed the bits steeped in the red sauce into the pot, the sweet aroma of fruit wine and the garlic-esque smell of myamuu filled the air along with a puff of white steam.

“Aah, that smells good,” one of the Fou women muttered excitedly.

“Thanks to you buying the jerky from us, we received so many coins that we should try buying some myamuu for the Fou house, too.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” I replied as I stirred the entrails with a wooden spatula so that they wouldn’t burn. It was then that Ai Fa suddenly peeked over my shoulder.

“Hmm... This certainly has an unusual appearance.”

“But it smells delicious, right?”

“The scent is from the myamuu though, isn’t it?”

It was just as she said.

Still, just how would this go? Would fried giba offal be to the tastes of the people of the forest’s edge? The preparations we did and the marinade should have properly gotten rid of any stench, so it would surely be edible at the very least. But since I pretty much never ate fried offal myself, I couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy.

“Alright, this’ll be my first go at it.”

The entrails were nice and cooked by now, so I moved them over to the corner of the tray. Then, I moved some onto a wooden plate with a spoon and held it out towards Toor Din.

“Here you go. But let me just say in advance that this is just a preliminary taste test.”

“Right...”

Toor Din looked a bit uneasy as she accepted the plate. Was she thinking if it was gross, then we wasted an hour or so of work?

Still, the two of us were sharing the responsibility, at least. And so, I moved some to a plate for myself, then took a bite without any hesitation.

The first thing to spread throughout my mouth was the familiar salty-sweet flavor of myamuu giba. Then, as I bit down on the soft entrails, I was pleased to find that nice chewy texture Toor Din had mentioned. It reminded me a lot of poultry, just like you would assume from its appearance. Yup, it really did have a nice, satisfying texture.

It certainly wasn’t gross, nor did it smell.

Actually, what part even was this? It wasn’t all that thick, so it was probably the small intestine or uterus or something. At any rate, my earnest impressions were that it was neither particularly good or bad.

“What do you think, Toor Din?” I asked, turning to look her way.

And what I found was the girl tightly gripping her spoon and plate, wearing an incredibly joyous smile.

“It’s tasty. Really, really tasty... Much, much more than the last time I ate them.”

Ah, really?

Well, I’m sure personal opinions tend to split on dishes using entrails, too, I thought as I went and tossed a bigger chunk into my mouth. And as I chewed away at it, a whole different flavor than before filled my mouth.

“Huh? This is delicious.”

“Yeah. It sure is, isn’t it?” Toor Din chimed in, smiling even more than before.

What was going on here? The chewy texture was even better than the last bit, but more than that, the flavor was on a whole other level. The wonderful taste of giba fat was coming through really strong, now.

From the shape, had that been the large intestine? It was certainly delicious, at any rate.

“Yup, it’s real good. I’d feel confident recommending it to someone, even. So please, go ahead and give it a try if you’re interested, everyone.”

We didn’t exactly have enough to go around, so I was only able to hand a single set of tableware to each clan. The Fou women timidly took hold of the plate, while Toor Din scooped up some fresh innards and handed them to Jas Din with a smile.

As for me, I presented a plate to my clan head.

“Is this really tasty...?”

“It’s delicious. Ah, but it seems the taste varies a good bit depending on which part you get. But I think if you eat a couple bites, you’re sure to find something you like,” I replied, cooking up the heart and liver and whatnot as I did so.

The liver looked just like what I expected, but I could no longer recognize the kidneys at all. As for the heart, it was a bit thicker and almost reminded me of red meat.

As I grilled them all up, I spared a glance over at Ai Fa.

“Well? It’s not bad, right?”

“Yes, it isn’t bad at all... But when exactly should I swallow it?”

“I honestly can’t tell too well myself. If you give it a solid chew, though, that should probably be enough.”

As we had that exchange, the heart and liver finished cooking.

I had at least had stir-fried liver and garlic chives and chicken liver yakitori, but how would this be? Ai Fa was still chewing away, but she handed me back the plate, and I decided to start with trying the liver.

It was definitely good.

The flavor was a good bit richer than the poultry or pork livers I was familiar with, and I couldn’t sense even the slightest stench of blood. If those preparations could earn results this good, then they more than earned a passing mark. So much so that I couldn’t help but regret getting rid of them up till now.

The kidneys had a similar taste and texture to the liver. They didn’t have as rich of a taste, but they had a less quirky flavor to them overall. I’d say they were a bit softer, too.

And as for the heart... it was pretty much just like eating normal meat. It looked like grilled red meat, and was even softer than thigh meat.

“Yup, it’s tasty. It’s easier to eat than fried offal, too. You should give it a try, Ai Fa.”

“What is it? It’s not meat, right?”

“This is the liver, these are the kidneys, and this is the heart. The liver’s a bit on the quirky side, but it’s probably packed with nutrition. And the heart’s tasty and pretty much just like ordinary meat.”

“A giba’s heart, is it...?” Ai Fa muttered like she was thinking something, then she went ahead and started with the heart, sure enough. “It’s good...”

“Right?”

“Yeah... And I can strongly sense the fact that I am taking in the giba’s life,” Ai Fa stated, looking incredibly satisfied.

Everybody else was wearing similar expressions, too.

And so, the test batch I had cooked up was quickly finished off by the six of us. And I would gladly take the uncooked leftovers to use for dinner tonight at the Fa house.

With that, our pre-dinner taste testing party came to a close.

“It was all very good... but the preparations take far too long, wouldn’t you say? Leg and torso meat is just about as tasty, and they’re much quicker to prepare,” Jas Din stated after we wrapped up, acting as a representative for the group.

“That’s true. I think it would be good for each house to decide if they want to eat them or not. Or it’d be possible to just eat the organs that take less prep work, like the heart and liver... Oh, and I don’t think they’d last that long even in pico leaves, but do you have any thoughts on that, Toor Din?”

“Yes. They may last a couple of days, but we generally ate them on the same day we prepared them.”

“I knew it. Still, I think we’ll probably end up eating everything here at the Fa house as long as time allows. Now that I know they’re tasty, I just wouldn’t feel right throwing them away. And besides... if it becomes possible to sell meat in the post town, then the prices on the meat itself will also go up.”

Jas Din and the others just tilted their heads, seeming like they didn’t understand.

“This giba wasn’t even that big, but I was able to create this much food. So with a large giba, it’d probably be easy to prepare at least one dinner with the innards, right? And if that means I can save one extra meal’s worth of meat, I could sell that in the post town instead. Still, I guess it may not really be necessary to think that much about profits.”

“Ah, I suppose that makes sense...”

“Also, this is a dish that hunters can only eat on the day that they capture a giba. So doesn’t it sort of feel like a blessing granted to them for their hard work? That may be why I feel a need to cook it properly instead of just throwing it away.” Those feelings surely varied from person to person, though. And I had no intention of forcing anyone to do the same as me. “Well, I guess it could also be good just doing it when there’s no extra work on your plate, too. Plus, the innards should provide different nutrition than meat, and a different sort of texture, too.”

“At the very least, I’d say the men would like the heart...” Ai Fa quietly chimed in. “That’s likely a food that fits well to the tastes of hunters. It gives you a satisfying feeling that you’re taking the giba’s life into yourself.”

“I see. You really have taught us quite a bit, Ai Fa and Asuta of the Fa clan,” Jas Din added.

Then, still wearing a gentle expression with a strict gaze, she placed her wrinkled hand atop Toor Din’s head.

“We should aim to eat the innards in the Din clan, too. Toor Din here seems to love them, after all.”

Hearing that, Toor Din blushed a bit, but she also smiled.

“They’re all chewy and yummy, right?” I unnecessarily chimed in, only for the girl’s face to go even redder as she whacked me in the chest and went, “Geez!”

As my clan head watched over me with a chilly glare, the curtain of twilight fell over the forest’s edge.