Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.3

3

After returning to the Fa house, we set about taking care of the prep work for tomorrow, and I also took some time to teach the women from the nearby clans how to handle the rainy season vegetables.

The Fou and Ran were a bit better off than the Sudra, but they had apparently only ever used onda in their cooking before. A big pumpkin-like traip was expensive, while the burdock-like reggi didn’t have much appeal to them, so they hadn’t eaten either in a long time. However, they had plenty of leeway in their day-to-day expenses now and were doing well enough to be able to purchase as much tino and tarapa as they wanted without having to think about it, so if I could show them that reggi and traip held a similar appeal, I was sure they’d be happy to buy those as well.

Furthermore, they hadn’t bought any of the new ingredients that had been pouring out of the castle town for the last few months yet. They did regularly buy sugar and tau oil, which were ingredients that could dramatically change the character of a dish, but they weren’t interested in paying for unfamiliar vegetables, mushrooms, or dried goods, which made me all the more motivated to show them how to use the rainy season vegetables properly, to fill the gap left behind by the lack of tino and tarapa. That was what I was thinking as I set about teaching them the basics.

“I see. So reggi can be made to taste good too. It could be worth giving it a try, definitely.”

“The younger members of our clan don’t even know what reggi tastes like. It’s been years now since we last used it.”

The members of the Fou, Gaaz, and Ratsu were currently discussing what I had just shown them with cheerful expressions. The Liddo woman, whose clan was slightly better off than the rest, seemed to have a similar viewpoint.

“We occasionally buy traip in our clan, but it’s a real shock to know that there’s a way you can cook it to make it this tasty! I’ll have to buy a few along with some karon milk right away!”

“In that case, I’ll have to show you how to use it to make a delicious cream stew next. Would you mind showing up earlier tomorrow?”

“You’re holding lessons in the Ruu settlement every other day now, right?”

“Yeah. I’d like to invite chefs from the Dai, Ravitz, and Suun too if we could. It feels like if we dawdle too long, the rainy season will end before we can get anything done.”

“You’re awfully impatient, considering you just got over your illness. We still have over half of the rainy season ahead of us, you know,” the Fou woman said, her eyes narrowing in a kind expression. “At any rate, it seems like we’re going to be looking to you for lessons again, Asuta. But we’ll be sure to work hard for the Fa clan to pay you back for it.”

“Yeah. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

As sunset approached, the women headed back to their own houses.

I was careful to make sure the dinner I prepared didn’t get wet as I took it from the kitchen to the main house, where I waited for Ai Fa to return. She ended up coming back from the forest around ten minutes later.

“Welcome home, Ai Fa. Whoa, you got another big one today,” I said, turning toward the entrance to greet her.

Ai Fa nodded and replied, “Indeed,” as she lowered the giba to the ground. It looked like it had to weigh around a hundred kilos or so. Ai Fa was breathing heavily after carrying it all the way back in the rain, and she was coated in mud all over to boot.

“I’ll cleanse my body after skinning it and removing the innards. Sorry, but can dinner wait till after that?”

“You don’t have to apologize. How about I take care of processing the giba and you go clean off first?”

“But skinning and removing the innards is a hunter’s work.”

“That’s because it’s usually more efficient that way, right? But right now, it’s more efficient for me to help out.”

After thinking for a bit, Ai Fa nodded and replied, “I see... In that case, I’ll go and quickly wash up, and you can get started with the giba here.”

“Ah, no, take as much time as you want, please.”

I put on my rain gear, then grabbed the knife that used to belong to Ai Fa’s father and headed over to our detached kitchen building. It was a fine hut the men of the Deen and Liddo had built for us during their last break period. I stepped into the carving room next to the kitchen and found that Ai Fa had already finished hanging up the massive giba.

“All right, I’ll leave this to you, then,” she said.

“Okay. Don’t worry, I can take care of it.”

Her work now done, Ai Fa headed back outside to the improvised shower stall she had set up next to the kitchen hut—just some grigee poles stuck into the ground to act as supports for a giba pelt curtain, but it was enough to hide her naked body from others as she took a natural shower in the rain falling from the sky. Then she used a water jug to clean her feet.

Most of the time, she would just wipe the grime from her body inside, and then wash her hair in the Lanto River, but Ai Fa enjoyed bathing, so she used the shower stall at least once every few days. Apparently, back when she had been feuding with the Suun clan, though, she had refrained from doing so out of caution, in case Diga ever decided to show up out of nowhere.

I was just about finished with removing the innards and cleaning them using another jug of water when Ai Fa finally returned.

“I was terribly filthy, so it took longer than expected. You can leave the skinning to me.”

“Right. I can’t do that anywhere near as fast as you.”

“Indeed,” my clan head replied with a nod as she took the knife, a relieved look on her face. She really did love being nice and clean. She was now only wearing a chest covering and waist cloth as she sawed away at the giba’s pelt. Though I was sure she had a spare long-sleeved top, she likely didn’t want to dirty it with giba blood and fat. She didn’t look the least bit cold, despite being lightly dressed, even though the sun had set and the temperature had dropped quite a bit.

After shooting Ai Fa one more sidelong glance, I returned to the house to get dinner ready. I wanted the meat to be nice and hot when she ate it, so I needed to reheat it.

Ai Fa returned before long, wiping a bit of filth from her body with a cloth, then put on her spare top and a long wraparound skirt. Her freshly washed hunting attire was currently hanging beside the stove to dry.

My clan head sat down right as I finished getting dinner ready to eat. I set out a number of small plates and bowls full of food, causing Ai Fa to tilt her head a bit and say, “Hmm? You seem to have prepared quite a few items today. Ah, I see that you decided to make use of the rainy season vegetables right away, yes?”

“Yeah, since I had a lot of different things I wanted to show the women from the neighboring clans.”

There was the cream stew I had taught Rimee Ruu how to make; a sweet and salty simmered reggi dish; simmered traip; a meat and vegetable stir-fry using onda and various other vegetables; traip stew; and soup made with onda, reggi, and tau oil. And on top of all that, for the main dish I’d made Japanese-style hamburger steak with sauce.

The hamburger steak itself used a tau-oil-based sauce and was topped with grated daikon-like sheema, but I paired it with a sauté of onda, reggi, and pseudo-brown-beech mushrooms, as well as fried traip. The skin of a traip was even tougher than that of a pumpkin, but you could still split it open, even raw, if you used the sort of thick knife that hunters carried around. From there, I separated the inner part from the skin, sliced it up thinly, and fried it.

“Come on, dig in before it gets cold. You’re not too familiar with rainy season vegetables either, are you?”

“Indeed. I have at least tasted onda before, but ever since I lost my father, I only ever purchased aria and poitan.”

In that case, she was in pretty much the same position as the Fou and Ran. At any rate, after saying our premeal chants, we started our somewhat late dinner.

Naturally, Ai Fa went for the hamburger steak first. She never let her expression shift while eating, but she really did look happiest when she was eating that dish, and seeing her happy made me feel my happiest too.

“Hmm, so traip is like a sweet chatchi?”

“Yeah, I guess it is closest to chatchi in texture. It’s soft, flaky, and delicious.”

“Indeed. And it seems to go well with how this hamburger steak was flavored.”

Even if she wasn’t showing it in her expression, I could still sense the bliss she was feeling. There was a look of satisfaction shining in her eyes, which was enough to wipe away all the exhaustion I felt from the day.

“Reggi is an unusual vegetable. It’s quite stringy and seems to have a rather earthy aroma to it,” she commented.

“Yeah. Do you not like it?”

“I don’t think I can tell you how good it may or may not be in detail, but I would definitely not say this is a poor dish.” After giving that rather generous review, Ai Fa kept on silently eating, but when she sipped on the traip stew, her expression shifted just a bit. “This is delicious. It seems even sweeter than the traip from before too.”

“Yeah. When you slowly simmer traip, it gets even sweeter. Is it to your liking?”

“It is. As you said in the past, the people of the forest’s edge really do seem to have an affinity for stew. This tastes very good.”

In the past, dinner for the people of the forest’s edge had mainly consisted of meat, vegetables, and poitan thrown into a single pot with some water, as that was what was quickest and easiest. As a result, they seemed to enjoy the taste of stews that were packed with condensed flavor from meat and vegetables, with gooey textures that were reminiscent of their old poitan stews while also being far tastier. Giba cutlets using lard were also very popular, which seemed to be thanks to how it condensed the delicious flavor of giba.

Aside from those general tastes that seemed to be shared by all of the people of the forest’s edge, though, Ai Fa loved hamburger steak most of all. When Donda Ruu had first tried the dish, he had hated it and insisted it wasn’t suitable for hunters to eat, and had declared that they needed the firm texture of grilled meat in their meals.

The people of the forest’s edge had a general trend in terms of their tastes, though of course people had their own personal preferences too. I always sought to always keep both of those elements in mind as I tried to delight Ai Fa.

“This is only my first day working with these ingredients, so there’s a lot of issues with the dishes, I know. If you have any thoughts about them at all, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”

“I naturally don’t have any complaints. I am enjoying the experience of trying these new ingredients, though,” Ai Fa replied, breaking out in an ever so faint smile. “None of the dishes felt overly strange this time, and I don’t see anything to comment on. They’re all delicious, Asuta.”

“I see. Glad to hear it.”

“Indeed.”

After that, dinner wrapped up without anything else of note happening.

Only a little over ten days had passed now since I had regained consciousness after catching Amusehorn’s breath, so I was still keenly aware of how precious it was for us to be able to spend this peaceful time together.

I was sure Ai Fa felt much the same. Though she acted like an awe-inspiring clan head, she had a gentle side as well. It was honestly a bit embarrassing the way the two of us were always trying to confirm that we were both happy without directly asking.

“By the way, your birthday is on the tenth of the red month, right? Rimee Ruu told me today.”

“Indeed.”

“Just to confirm, would it be okay for me to give you some celebratory flowers when the day arrives? And if you have any other traditions for celebrating it, I’d really like to know that too.”

“There isn’t anything in particular. I simply need to give thanks to the forest that I managed to survive another year,” Ai Fa replied, then ate a bit more of the simmered traip and smiled once more. “Now that I think about it, I spent my last birthday alone.”

“Right, you lost your father soon after turning fifteen, didn’t you?”

“Indeed. Rimee Ruu arrived in the evening, but I sent her away without opening the door. So instead, she just threw a flower in through my window and declared that she would come back the following day,” Ai Fa said, her faint smile remaining as her gaze fell. “Rimee Ruu never stopped calling me her friend, despite how poorly I treated her. For two years, I kept coldly pushing her away.”

“That was because you didn’t want her getting wrapped up in your feud with the Suun clan, right? Rimee Ruu could tell how you felt, and that was why she didn’t give up.”

As I was speaking, I thought back on when I had spoken to Rimee Ruu earlier that afternoon. I remembered how she had earnestly smiled and told me that I should make sure to celebrate Ai Fa’s birthday properly. How much emotion had she been hiding behind those words? Just thinking about it was enough to make my heart ache.

“If it wasn’t for you, Asuta, I never would have repaired my ties with Rimee Ruu and would have died alone out in the forest.”

“I don’t think there’s any point in thinking about what might have been. Besides, you were the one who made the choice to take me to your home. You forged your own fate. And isn’t it thanks to your parents, Rimee Ruu, Jiba Ruu, and Saris Ran Fou that you became the sort of person who would do something like that? We humans live by supporting one another. That’s an absolute fact.”

“Right,” Ai Fa succinctly replied with a nod, but there was a gentle light in her eyes as she stared back at me. It was the sort of clear-eyed gaze I frequently saw from Granny Jiba. “You said you intended to mark the day you met me as your birthday, correct?”

“Yeah. I can’t carry over the calendar from my own world, so that feels like the most fitting day to pick, right?”

“I suppose so. But it gives me a bit of a strange feeling to think that a year will have passed by when that day arrives.” With that, Ai Fa was unable to hold herself back from breaking out in a cheerful smile. “It feels like time has flown by, but at the same time, it’s hard to believe that it has only been a year. Still, one thing I can be sure of is that the time I’ve spent with you has been utterly irreplaceable.”

“Yeah.”

“I wish to spend all of my remaining days with you until the time comes for my soul to return to the forest. And when I am out in the forest, I will use all the strength I have to ensure that our time together lasts as long as it possibly can.”

“I feel the same way.”

Ever since I had recovered and no longer needed Ai Fa to sleep next to me, we hadn’t touched at all. I had no idea how long that would continue...but at least for now, we still didn’t touch as we enjoyed that blissful moment together.

And all the while, the rain never stopped falling.