Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 26 - Chapter 3.3

3

A quarter of an hour later, we were gathered in the main room of the Fa house.

Everyone was seated in a circle, with the celebratory meal lined up in front of them. The freshly cooked meat was giving off white steam and filling the air with a wondrous aroma.

“Ahem, today we’re celebrating the eighteenth birthday of Ai Fa, the head of the Fa clan. I hope that we all may continue to guide her, so she can live a life that will bring no shame to the Fa clan’s name,” I started out, following the customs of the forest’s edge.

“Indeed,” Ai Fa replied with a calm nod, but then she tilted her head and looked a touch confused. “By the way, why are you speaking so stiffly?”

“Sorry. I’m bad at giving speeches like that.”

I also just kind of naturally took that tone when I had guests in front of me. But putting that aside, we needed to move on to the next step before the food started getting cold.

“I give you this celebratory flower, my clan head. Happy birthday, Ai Fa.”

“Thank you.”

“Happy birthday, Ai Fa!”

“Yeah, what she said.”

“Happy birthday, Ai Fa.”

Our guests also gifted Ai Fa flowers in turn. They created a beautiful combination of colors, with one each of blue, red, yellow, and white. My clan head adorned her hair and chest with them, and though she maintained a serious expression, I could see her eyes narrowing with joy. It had been two years since Ai Fa had last been given flowers like this. Or rather, since she had lost her father not long after turning fifteen, it was probably actually three years.

Anyway, I had one more present to give to my clan head. “Ai Fa, I don’t know if you’ll like it or not, but would you accept this too?”

“Hmm? You shouldn’t need to give me any gifts besides a flower.”

“Yeah, and I know you don’t like wasting money either, but I just really wanted to give it to you.”

It was a hair accessory I had bought in the post town. It had a flower motif that resembled a rose, with petals that were made out of some kind of awesome translucent stone. When light hit those petals, they took on a rainbow glow, making the accessory as beautiful as the glasswork that Ai Fa adored.

My clan head’s gaze wandered a bit, as if she wasn’t sure what sort of emotion she should show. But then, Granny Jiba smiled and called out, “It isn’t uncommon for a man to give a woman a gift outside of her birthday, you know. Everyone adorns their banquet attire with such gifts.”

“Yes, but I am a hunter.”

“You may be a hunter, but you are a woman as well. It’s a wonderful accessory, and it suits you so nicely.”

Ai Fa gave a little sigh, then turned her face away and closed her eyes. Taking that as acceptance, I placed the flower ornament above her temple.

“Wow, so pretty! It looks really good on you, Ai Fa!”

Ai Fa squirmed a bit, as if someone were tickling her, but then she sat up straight and said, “Now then, I thank all of you for gathering here today to celebrate my life. My friends Jiba and Rimee Ruu, and their clan member Ludo Ruu, I hope that you will enjoy this meal to the fullest.”

With that, we said our premeal chants, and then we finally started dinner.

“Man, I’m so hungry I could die! You could have at least let me do a little taste testing here and there!”

“Hmph! This meal is for Ai Fa, so we wanted her to be the first one to eat it!” Rimee Ruu retorted, and then she turned toward my clan head with a smile. “Come on, give it a try! Asuta and I worked really hard to make it!”

“Of course,” Ai Fa replied with a smile of her own, accepting the plate.

Just as Rimee Ruu had said, she and I had put a lot of care into preparing the meal. Naturally, the main course was hamburger steak, and since this was a celebration, we had prepared multiple varieties. Actually, it might be more accurate to say we had prepared a number of different sauces to go with the small patties.

The first type was the normal demi-glace sauce; then there was one with grated sheema soaked in a tau-oil-based Japanese-style sauce; a white sauce we had prepared alongside the stew; grated aria and myamuu; a Western-style sauce made from a fruit wine base; and even a curry sauce that combined curry with kimyuus bone soup, making for six varieties in total.

The patties were on the small side, which meant that if they had been thin and flat, they would have been lacking in chewiness, so we had made them nice and round instead. We had also prepared a special hamburger steak in addition to all the others: Ai Fa’s favorite, hamburger steak with tarapa sauce and dried milk inside. Naturally, my clan head loaded up her plate with that one first.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to get tarapa during the rainy season.”

“Yeah, but the castle town has tarapa sent in from other places. It’s not as fresh as the tarapa we buy from Dora, but we tried to make up for that with our cooking skills.”

It was a celebration, so I figured it was okay for me to be a little boastful. The tarapa they sold in the castle town were small and very sweet, so we had modified the flavoring to match. Simply put, we wanted to ensure that it would be just as amazing as the version Ai Fa was used to eating.

“I see,” Ai Fa said with a nod, carefully bringing a bit of hamburger steak to her mouth with a spoon. My clan head’s smooth cheeks moved slightly as she chewed, and then she narrowed her eyes in joy as she turned to look at me and Rimee Ruu.

“It’s delicious... You all should hurry up and have some too.”

Rimee Ruu looked as happy as Ai Fa when she heard that, and I most likely had a very similar expression on my face.

“See? Ai Fa’s saying so too. Hurry up and let me eat,” Ludo Ruu muttered grumpily. Glancing in his direction, I saw that Rimee Ruu had confiscated his spoon and skewers.

“Yeah, it’s fine now. You can eat as much as you want too, Ludo!”

“You don’t have to tell me that! I’m hungry enough to eat an entire mountain’s worth of food!”

With that, the rest of us went ahead and started eating too.

We had prepared all sorts of other dishes in addition to the hamburger steak. Rimee Ruu had taken charge on the soup dishes, preparing traip stew and tau oil soup that included lots of reggi and onda.

It would be difficult to make any kind of raw vegetable salad without fresh tino available, so instead we had prepared a big pile of cooked vegetables. To do so, we had thoroughly boiled some carrot-like nenon, potato-like chatchi, paprika-like ma pula, and zucchini-like chan, then added a dressing made with sesame-seedlike hoboi.

I also wanted to have a nice, refreshing intermezzo, so I had whipped up an additional salad made with thin crispy strips of sheema and gigo. It certainly did its job when eaten with the dip made from dried plumlike kiki.

Then we had a simmered reggi and traip dish that was becoming something of a staple lately, which also contained bamboo-shoot-like chamcham. Naturally, chamcham paired quite well with Japanese-style sweet and salty flavorings.

On top of that, I had cooked a big, thick steak in addition to the hamburger steak. In fact, it was so thick that it had to be cut in half in order to be eaten, but chewing through tough giba meat was important for hunters of the forest’s edge, so I felt it was necessary to have some today.

For the sauce, I had gone with a simple one made from the overflowing juices from the cooked meat, as well as fruit wine, myamuu, and tau oil. To go with the steak, I had also prepared some mashed chatchi to take the place of mashed potatoes. Since Ludo Ruu was here, I had wanted to make sure that we would have a chatchi-heavy dish too.

All of that was the result of Rimee Ruu and me working for roughly three and a half hours. Everyone was smiling as they ate, and with their joy washing over me, I dug in too.

“Granny Jiba, you seem to be eating quite a bit more nowadays,” Ai Fa gently commented.

After taking a bite of the hamburger steak with Japanese-style sauce the Rimee Ruu had cut for her, Granny Jiba smiled and nodded back. “Yes. Now, I think I eat about as much as Tito Min does. Everyone is astounded, considering how small I am.”

“I’m very glad to hear that.”

It was true that even if she was taking it slow, Granny Jiba was eating continuously at a steady pace. The only things I hadn’t seen her eat were the overly tough steak and the thinly sliced sheema salad. It was really heartening to see her demonstrate that she still had this much of an appetite, considering she would soon turn eighty-six.

Of course, Ludo Ruu was eating about five times as fast as her. The Fa clan’s poitan ration hadn’t seemed like it would be enough, so I had also made a decent amount of fuwano bread, but it felt like that would all disappear before too much longer as well.

“Ahhh, this is so tasty! I thought Reina was pretty much on your level at this point, Asuta, but I can really taste the difference in your cooking!” the young hunter said.

“You think so? When it comes to her specialties, I’d say Reina Ruu is already as skilled of a chef as I am.”

“Yeah! But when we have all these different dishes laid out in front of us, it’s obvious how incredible you actually are! Anything you make is good enough to die for, but if Reina served this many dishes at once, I’m sure only one or two of them would be this amazing.”

That was actually kind of insightful. Reina and Sheera Ruu were steadily polishing their skills with the dishes they sold, as well as variants of those dishes, which meant that they were getting so good at those recipes that the gap between their specialties and their other dishes was pretty noticeable. Furthermore, Reina Ruu’s biggest talent seemed to be in creating soups and stews, and the way she focused on them so much made the gap even deeper and more apparent in her case. However, I felt that in a way that actually proved how remarkably fast she was growing.

“Are you okay eating that much, Ludo? Don’t forget, we’ve still got dessert after this!”

“Normal food and sweets are separate things. It’s almost like they go to different places, you know?”

“Ah ha ha. Back in my home country, they called that a dessert stomach. There’s supposed to be some sort of reason behind it too.”

I vaguely recalled something about how it was caused by the secretion of hormones, but I didn’t know the details. Not that Ludo Ruu was asking for a detailed explanation, of course. As long as he could eat Rimee Ruu’s sweets, he wouldn’t have any complaints.

We were all getting along incredibly well as we enjoyed our food. And the star of the day, Ai Fa, was heartily satisfying her appetite as she quietly watched the rest of us. We had eaten together with members of the Ruu clan numerous times by now. However, this was definitely the smallest number of them we had ever shared a meal with, and since the ones who had joined us today were Rimee Ruu, Ludo Ruu, and Granny Jiba, who we were especially close with, that ensured that things stayed nice and energetic. The atmosphere was full of the warm vibes of a family gathering. It was as if the members of the Ruu clan were sharing a bit of their natural liveliness with us. I had never once felt dissatisfied living with just Ai Fa, but I couldn’t deny that there was a certain something in the air that we didn’t usually have at the Fa house.

Was this what it had been like for Ai Fa back when her parents were still around? That was certainly the case for me. I felt as if tonight we had both been gifted with something we had lost.

“By the way, it’s a celebratory banquet and all that, but you aren’t drinking any fruit wine, Ai Fa,” Ludo Ruu noted.

“Indeed. I haven’t had many opportunities to drink any lately. But if you want to have some, you can go ahead.”

“I’m fine. It’s not like I can’t drink the stuff, but I’m not all that big on it.” The young hunter scratched his head. “I’ve really been stirring things up for a while now, haven’t I? Sorry about that. I did say I was going to sit off in a corner while I was here. Am I being intrusive?”

“It’s not like you to show such consideration.”

“Well, I mean, it’s your birthday, Ai Fa. And Rimee and Granny Jiba were the ones you invited as guests, so I shouldn’t be bothering you all.”

“You aren’t being a bother at all. In fact, I’d feel more on edge if you were suddenly quiet,” Ai Fa replied.

“Hmm.” Ludo Ruu gave a little tilt of his head. “I guess you do look as though you’ve been enjoying yourself a lot tonight. You’re even prettier than usual when you’re like this, you know.”

“If you’re going to run your mouth like that, maybe I should have you sit in the corner.”

“Jeez, make up your mind already. I’m sure you feel the same way, right, Asuta?”

“H-Hey, don’t throw this on me.”

His sudden comment had shaken me, but Ai Fa simply shrugged, not looking particularly upset. It was true that with the brilliant flowers and hair accessory, Ai Fa was even more lovely than usual. And the bliss she seemed to be radiating only made her sparkle all the more.

After she slurped a bit of tau oil soup, Granny Jiba happily narrowed her eyes and looked around the room. “You’ve spent eighteen years in this house, Ai Fa. It certainly is a fine one.”

This house was a size smaller than the main Ruu house, and the houses at the forest’s edge were all built in the same style, so it wasn’t like there was anything particularly special about ours. The one thing that was kind of unique about it was the open display shelf the massive horn from the lord of the forest was sitting on, the glass cup from Shumiral, and the glass plate from Radajid and the others.

There was a rain-soaked cloak and my rain gear hanging from the other wall, as well as the new cloak and rain gear Ai Fa had just received. Our bedding for two that we had purchased for the rainy season was folded up in a stack underneath them.

“What bloodline did the Fa come from originally, anyway?” Ludo Ruu asked while serving himself a bunch of mashed chatchi. Ai Fa shot him a questioning look in response. “The Fa must’ve had branch families and clans you were related to at some point, right? But there’s only one house here, and you don’t have blood ties with anyone nearby, so you obviously moved from elsewhere.”

“I see. That’s true, now that you mention it. But this has been the only house around here ever since I was young, and my father Gil never spoke of any clans we were related to.”

“Hmm... Our old man said he had no clue either. Do you have any idea, Granny Jiba?”

“I’m not sure... There were a great many clans at the forest’s edge originally, so I doubt anybody would have been able to remember most of them unless they lived close by.”

“Oh right, there were about twice as many clans when you were young as there are now. Yeah, that’s definitely too many to remember.”

Rimee Ruu had been eating the simmered traip dish with a smile, but now she stopped to stare blankly at her brother’s face. “Why are you acting so interested in all that, Ludo? You’ve never cared about stuff like bloodlines before.”

“Hmm? Well, if they’re even distantly related to some other clan, they could take that clan in as subordinates of the Fa, couldn’t they? Anybody would want to be under an amazing hunter like Ai Fa and an incredible chef like Asuta.”

“Huh?”

“Then things would be lively around here even if neither of them ever marries anybody else. Blond hair’s pretty rare, so it’d be interesting if you had blood ties with the Lea. But the Rutim elder said the Lea and Fa aren’t related.”

It was true that aside from Ai Fa, the only blond people I could recall seeing were Rau Lea and Uru Lea Ririn. Still, it was a surprise to hear that Ludo Ruu had gone out of his way to ask the Rutim elder Raa Rutim about that.

Rimee Ruu set her plate down atop the rug and hugged Ludo Ruu’s arm tight, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder.

“What are you doing? You’re making it hard to eat,” he complained.

“Yeah, but I think it’s really amazing how you worry about Ai Fa and Asuta that much.”

“Oh, stop making such a big deal about it. And don’t cling to me like that.”

In spite of her brother’s protests, Rimee Ruu kept on happily clinging to him with a big grin for a good while longer.

As she watched the two of them interacting with each other, Ai Fa broke out in a faint smile of her own. “Even without blood ties, we have plenty of friends. That includes Granny Jiba and Rimee Ruu, of course, but I think of you as a precious friend as well, Ludo Ruu.”

“Really? I mostly just remember arguing with you a whole lot.”

“Even so, you have shown friendship to the Fa clan for quite some time. That first night when Asuta manned the Ruu clan stove, you were the only man to give us a tusk as a blessing.”

“Hey, that was almost a year ago!”

“No matter how many years may pass, I will never forget. That tusk hangs around Asuta’s neck even now.”

Just as she had said, the tusks hanging around my neck had all come from the members of the main Ruu house. There were ten in total, with one being from each of them, aside from Jiza, Darmu, and Kota Ruu.

“Still, I’m glad to hear that Asuta’s not the only one of you who thinks of me as a friend,” Ludo Ruu said while rustling his yellowish-brown hair. “You know, you really do look like a completely different person than usual tonight! I get why Rau Lea’s always going on about how fine of a woman you are. It must be a real pain having so many men asking you to marry them, huh?”

“If you keep running your mouth, I’ll put you in the corner even if you are my friend.”

“Why do you always get so upset about that kind of thing? It’s not like I think you’ll ever marry anyone other than Asuta, you know.”

Ai Fa then grabbed an empty plate.

“Are you gonna throw that at me?!” Ludo Ruu quickly guarded his head with one arm, since Rimee Ruu was still holding on to the other one.

Even that little squabble just added to the fun we were having.

My clan head would surely never forget this night for the rest of her life, and even though my memory was nowhere near as good as hers, I knew the same was true for me. This was the first time I had ever celebrated her birthday. I was indescribably happy, and that feeling was indelibly etching itself deep into my heart.