3
Our invitation to the dinner at The Silver Star officially arrived two days after our meeting with Kukuluel, on the twentieth of the yellow month, conveyed to us by Sheila, Yang’s cooking assistant and a maid working for the house of Daleim.
“It will be held two days from now, on the twenty-second of the yellow month, at the lower fifth hour. We ask that you keep the number of diners you bring to ten or fewer.”
“Huh? We can bring that many people?”
“Yes. There will be a similar number from the castle town as well, after including the guests from the east. The Silver Star only serves twenty guests a day, from what I am told,” Sheila reported with an elegant smile, having come all the way to our stalls just to provide this information. “That being the case, the hunters may also join in if they would like. In fact, Sir Varkas asked that anyone who would not be attending as a guest should refrain from coming to the restaurant.”
“Got it. If we can bring that many people along, we should have no issues at all.”
For the previous tea party, we had only brought two guards with us, so if we went with Ai Fa and Darmu Ruu, that would probably satisfy everyone on our side.
“Sir Varkas was incredibly happy to hear that you would be coming, Sir Asuta. And if at all possible, he would like to invite Lady Myme as well.”
“Got it. I’m sure she’d be glad to come along,” I replied.
Then Sheila sighed, sounding a little sad. “Lady Ai Fa will be with you on that day, will she not?”
“Huh? Ah, yeah. I’m sure she will. Are you not going to be there, Sheila?”
“Maids and servants must wait with the carriages outside, so I would imagine that it will be quite difficult for me to find an opportunity to speak with Lady Ai Fa.”
The precise reason she was so fixated on my clan head was something of a mystery to me. Ultimately, I figured it just came down to Ai Fa being really popular with women too.
“Well then, please pass this message along to the leading clan heads of the forest’s edge as well. And my apologies for interrupting while you are working.”
“No worries. And thanks for coming out all this way.”
After saying goodbye to Sheila, I returned to the stalls, where I noticed that Toor Deen had been staring at me intensely.
“Polarth gave his approval. Apparently, we can bring ten people.”
“T-Ten? Then in that case, well...”
“Yeah, you’ll definitely be one of them, Toor Deen. But that has to include guards too, so it might end up pretty tight.”
The young chef’s face instantly lit up. She looked like she was just barely holding back tears of joy as she tended to a boiling pot of pasta for the carbonara.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had Varkas’s cooking, so I’m glad to have the opportunity too,” I said.
“Yeah! What sort of dishes do you think he’ll prepare?”
“No idea, but since he wants to hear the opinions of easterners, I figure it’ll probably be Sym-style cooking. After all, the main purpose of this event is to entertain Kukuluel and his group.”
I also recalled hearing that Varkas had been diligently experimenting with an ingredient from Sym known as shaska. I had been told that quite a while ago, so I thought he probably had it all figured out by now.
Still, I haven’t seen that ingredient among the ones the castle town has been distributing in the post town. Did Varkas secure his own personal route for purchasing it?
At any rate, we were all seriously excited, especially since we hadn’t seen Varkas since the silver month. We had visited the castle town for events like the tea party Eulifia had held and the Daleim dance party, but we had only met his apprentices Shilly Rou, Roy, and Bozl there.
“Honestly, I’d love to have him try our cooking too. But it’d probably be really tricky to invite Varkas to the forest’s edge,” I said.
“Yeah. Varkas seems to be really busy, doesn’t he?”
“Mm-hmm. Plus, I can’t even imagine him standing in the settlement at the forest’s edge. Maybe he’d cover his mouth with a cloth like Shilly Rou did when...” I started to say, but I quickly stopped myself when I noticed someone nearby who stuck out like a sore thumb, wearing a hooded cloak and a scarf over their mouth. And they were approaching us right that very moment.
As I looked on in confusion, someone followed that figure out of the crowd and then greeted me. “Hey. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since around the end of the rainy season, I think, so I guess it’s been about two months now.”
Though he had a hood on, he was not wearing a scarf like his companion, so I could see his oval-shaped, freckled face.
“R-Roy? Yeah, long time no see. So is that Shilly Rou there?”
The mysterious figure with the scarf glared at us with brown eyes. Considering the small, slender figure and the piercing gaze, it was undoubtedly her.
“I-It’s good to see you again, Shilly Rou...” Toor Deen said, bowing to her with an anxious expression, causing Shilly Rou’s gaze to fix on her.
Roy suddenly gave his companion a poke in the head from behind. “Why aren’t you saying anything? At least return the greeting.”
“D-Don’t go jabbing my head with your finger so casually! How rude!”
“Hmph. I’d say you’re the rude one for not greeting her back.”
Shilly Rou trembled and stared down at her feet. As for me, I shared a glance with Toor Deen.
At the tea party in the castle town where we had last seen her, Shilly Rou had ended up shedding tears of indignation following Toor Deen’s overwhelming victory in the taste testing competition held by the noblewomen. When we parted, the chef from the castle town had shouted out a childish “I absolutely won’t let you beat me!” And after that, we hadn’t seen her again until now.
“We’ve heard that Toor Deen sends sweets to the house of Genos every few days now. It certainly isn’t the norm for someone as high-profile as a member of the duke’s house to receive sweets from outside the stone walls,” Roy bluntly stated, showing no restraint and causing Shilly Rou to suddenly look back up. And when she did, she glared right at me and Toor Deen once more. Roy glanced at her and said, “Hey, you’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t talk to them. Or did you come all the way out here just to glare at them?”
Shilly Rou remained silent even in the face of that taunt.
“Sorry about her. I’m sure she’s still so embarrassed about sobbing like a little kid last time that she can hardly stand it,” he said, before looking at her again. “But it’s been two whole months now, so you could easily just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I-I-I did not sob like a child!”
“You did. You were still crying even after you returned to the antechamber, weren’t you?”
The bits of Shilly Rou’s face I could see through the gap between her hood and scarf were bright red as she started hitting Roy in the chest over and over.
“That hurts,” Roy replied with a frown, grabbing both of her wrists. “Anyway, you lot were invited to The Silver Star, weren’t you? She came here to apologize because it’d be awkward to meet again at our workplace after parting ways like that.”
“Wh-What do I have to apologize for?!”
“Oh? Was I wrong? Then what did you come here for?”
Shilly Rou vigorously shook free of Roy, then shot us yet another glare.
“Last time, I allowed myself to get overly emotional... Even if I lost in a taste competition, it is not proper for a chef to become so angry at her opponent.”
“See? That’s totally an apology.”
“S-Silence! Asuta, Toor Deen, you have truly been invited to the event being held at The Silver Star?”
“Yeah,” I replied with a nod.
“I see,” Shilly Rou said with a piercing look in her eyes. “Allow me to say this: A sweet served as one part of a six-course meal and one eaten as a snack during the day are very different things. Even if Varkas serves a dessert that is not overly complex during the event, I won’t accept you underestimating his skills as a result.”
“Oh come on, what are you going on about right after apologizing? And here I was feeling a little proud of you,” Roy said with another poke to Shilly Rou’s head.
“Wh-What is the matter with you?!” she shouted in outrage.
“You were being so coarse that I couldn’t allow this to continue without doing something about it. You really are a pampered noblewoman to the core, aren’t you?”
“S-Stop speaking such nonsense! It is true that I am a member of the Rou house, but I see no reason for you to speak ill of me as such!”
“I’m telling you, you shouldn’t speak so loud and be so haughty like that. It’d be a real pain if any outlaws set their sights on you,” Roy said, scratching his head through his hood. Then looking at me. “Sorry for being so disruptive while you’re working. It looks like we’re all done here, so we’ll get something to eat and then head out.”
“I-Is this the only reason you came along?! Because you wanted to eat giba?!”
“I’m here to keep an eye on you, but it’d be ridiculous to just leave empty-handed after coming all this way. So, what are you serving today?”
“A-Ah, today we have pasta and meat buns, and deep-fried giba meat. The Ruu are selling herb-grilled giba and cream stew.”
After the topic had come up at the study session for desserts the other day, I had decided to start selling a fried dish for the first time in a while. This version was meant for the post town, so it used olive-oil-like reten oil instead of giba lard.
“They all sound tasty. Is there anything you’d recommend?”
“You’ve had the meat buns several times, right? So in that case, why don’t you two split the other four dishes? We can give you plates for that if you’d like.”
“That sounds great. Are you fine with that too, Shilly Rou?”
Unsurprisingly, she offered no response.
“We’ve had that pasta dish before too, haven’t we? It’s similar to the shaska dish Varkas makes, but also totally different at the same time. I’m sure he’ll serve it at the event, so that should be something to look forward to.”
“Yeah.”
I went ahead and plated up the fried meat alongside a shredded tino salad, while Toor Deen prepared the carbonara using the boiled pasta she’d been working on. In the meantime, Sheera and Lala Ruu got the herb-grilled giba and cream stew ready as well.
After paying, Roy headed off to the restaurant space. Shilly Rou started to silently follow after him, but before she could, Toor Deen called out, “Um, Shilly Rou, thank you for coming all the way here! I look forward to seeing you again in two days.”
Shilly Rou, who was holding plates of food in both hands, turned her head to look at the young chef. After standing frozen like that for around three seconds, she awkwardly bowed her head before hurrying swiftly after Roy. She looked like a kid desperately trying not to get separated from her parents. It was pretty cute, honestly.
“Shilly Rou sure is graceful,” I remarked.
“That’s true. I was worried that she might hate me, so I feel kind of relieved,” Toor Deen added with a gentle smile.
I felt the same way. We seemed to clash with her an awful lot, but I hoped that we could form a friendly rivalry where we all respected one another.
“If we end up inviting townsfolk for the forest’s edge again, I’d definitely love to include them. It would probably be easier to invite them than Varkas too,” I said.
With a brilliant smile on her face, Toor Deen replied, “I was thinking that too.”
After that, we wrapped up business for the day and headed back to the forest’s edge.
Today we were set to hold a study session at the Fa house, so we said farewell to Sheera Ruu and company at the Ruu settlement and continued on north. When we arrived at the Fa house, there seemed to be more people gathered there than usual. There were even folks from the Fou and Ran who hadn’t ever come before yesterday there.
“Huh? What’s going on here? Weren’t the Gaaz and Ratsu supposed to be helping out for a while instead?”
“Yes, but we finished our preparations for selling meat in town earlier today, which left us with time to spare. So we came here, figuring maybe we could help you out with your work somehow,” a young Fou woman replied with a smile.
“Oh, you’re already good to go? That’s quite a bit quicker than expected, isn’t it?”
“It is. We were able to acquire the meat itself right away, though, so it wasn’t really much of an issue. You carefully instructed us on how to weigh the meat, after all.” The Fou were in charge of half of the 450 kilograms of giba meat they would be selling in total. Three days had already passed since they had started working, so it probably was reasonable for them to have finished by now. “Of course, there were plenty of cases where we accidentally cut the meat too small, but that just meant we needed to eat those portions ourselves. And we were getting plenty of meat delivered, so it really wasn’t all that difficult.”
“We also kept the coins we received from the Fa clan separate from our clan’s stockpile so they wouldn’t get mixed together. There seems to be enough left to buy another round of meat too.”
The Fa had given money over to the Fou to cover the cost of purchasing the meat for this job. The Dai had received money from the Ruu instead.
“To be honest, I’m not sure we should be accepting a whole 240 coins for this amount of work. Should we speak with the Ruu again about whether that amount is reasonable?” she asked.
“No, since we’re still in a trial period. We may increase the number of days you participate in the market in town or the amount of meat you prepare, so things could get even busier. And I’d also like to steadily move toward having you all manage the finances yourselves.”
“Manage the finances?”
“Yeah. It’s essential to calculate how much profit you’re earning by subtracting the purchase price of the meat from the number of coins you earn in town. If you can’t keep track of that, it’ll be tricky to make a proper report at the clan head meeting, won’t it? Personally, I’d say that’s every bit as important as preparing the meat itself.” I had a plan for that, but I intended to explain it to them after they had actually participated in the meat market, so as not to cause any additional confusion. “At any rate, I’m glad that you were able to prepare the meat so quickly. Once the Dai are done with their work too, why don’t we have you participate in the first meat market after that? The longer the meat’s steeped in pico leaves, the more it will lose moisture and shrink.”
“We’re ready whenever. The meat market dates are announced the day before, aren’t they?”
“That’s right. The meat merchants from Dabagg show up once every two or three days, after all. On the day that they arrive, they sell their goods in the castle town, and then the day after that, the meat market opens.”
I had been informed by folks from the post town that there had been a meat market held today, so that meant the next one would be in three or four days.
“If the next market is held four days from now, I’ll be off from the stalls, so I’d like to come along too. I’m sure the Dai will be done with their part of the work by then too.”
“Thank you. Ah, but...wouldn’t that be the twenty-fourth of the yellow month?”
“Yeah. Is that an issue?”
“Isn’t that your birthday?”
I was a little surprised that this Fou woman was aware of that.
“I heard about it from Saris Ran Fou. I’m sure she must have discussed the matter with Ai Fa.”
“Ah, I see. Still, it being my birthday won’t affect anything. Everyone always works like normal aside from celebrating at night on days like that, don’t they?”
“True. But you were born abroad, so I thought you might have some of your own traditions for the occasion. And you’re taking the day off from work too.”
“It’s just a coincidence that I’m off from the stalls then. I didn’t have any special plans or anything.”
Ai Fa had told me that she intended to head into the forest on that day too, so I was pretty confident that my understanding was correct. Still, I would have to confirm our plans with her today.
“Well then, I’ll ask the Ruu about how the Dai are doing tomorrow. Could you let the clan heads know that the meat market will be three or four days from now?”
“Yes, of course.”
With that, we finally set about handling the prep work. We had more assistants than the members of the Gaaz and Ratsu we had been expecting, so there was quite a crowd of people around when you included the five of us who had been working the stalls. But preparing curry base and dried pasta could be done as far in advance as we pleased, so everyone had something to do, and we were able to finish all of our tasks in no time.
“The Sudra sent Ia Fou Sudra and a couple others to help out too, and apparently cutting and weighing meat isn’t all that tough. But of course, we’ve all taken lessons from you on how to cut meat at one point or another, Asuta,” Yun Sudra called out to me as we worked. She helped consistently with both the stalls and our prep work, so she hadn’t been involved much with the preparations to sell meat in town.
“That’s really reassuring to hear. Now we’ll just have to see how much meat sells in town.”
Still, when I thought back to what had happened at the dessert study session, I couldn’t imagine the market going poorly. The only thing left to worry about was what came next... Would the people who actually bought the stuff choose to purchase it again?
At present, giba cooking was incredibly popular both at the stalls and the inns. That had led to a lot of people seeking it out, but it was a rather expensive good. How many people in the post town would want to keep on continuously buying giba meat when it cost a whole lot more than skinless kimyuus or karon legs? That was one thing we wouldn’t know until we actually started doing business.
“But the innkeepers who are close to you have kept on buying giba meat for months now, right? In that case, wouldn’t folks from other inns feel the same way?”
“I’m not sure. It’s possible that it was valuable precisely because there were so few inns selling giba cooking. I’m a bit worried about the impact this might have, honestly.”
“I see. Work really doesn’t ever end for the folks in charge, huh? I seriously admire how you put even more effort into this job than we do, and then have all these additional responsibilities you deal with on top of that,” Yun Sudra said with a smile. “As for me, I just have fun cooking and selling food, so I’m really grateful to you. I know it’s a little late to be saying this, but seriously, thank you so much.”
“Why’re you thanking me now, in particular? You know, you’ve done a ton to support me too.”
“I know. But what I’m about to say may sound a bit childish and selfish, so I wanted to make sure to thank you first.” With that, Yun Sudra looked directly at me with upturned eyes. “Ten people can come along to that dinner in the castle town two days from now, right? I’m sure I won’t make the cut...but the next time there’s a chance, I’d like to ask you to include me, please.”
“Huh? Really? I thought you’d just barely make it in with ten people coming.”
“No, I’d say I’m likely to miss out with that number. You’ll be taking yourself, Ai Fa, Reina Ruu, Sheera Ruu, Rimee Ruu, Toor Deen, Shumiral, and Myme... That’s already eight people.”
“Ah, yeah, that much sounds pretty definite. But that would leave two open spots, so...”
“The other two are going to be Darmu and Vina Ruu, aren’t they? Sheera Ruu and Shumiral will be there, after all.”
It was true that we’d need one more guard in addition to Ai Fa. And with ten people, we would need two wagons, and the driving would be left up to the hunters as well.
“Well, I don’t think Vina Ruu is guaranteed to be part of our group yet. If we talk it over with the Ruu clan...”
“At work today, I spoke with Sheera and Lala Ruu. Apparently, Vina Ruu has been worrying terribly about whether it’s all right for her to ask to come along. Considering that, I wouldn’t want to shove her aside just so I could be there,” Yun Sudra said, giving the sleeve of my T-shirt a tug. “So I’ve already given up on this one. But do you think you could try to arrange things so that I can come along at the next opportunity?”
“G-Got it. I have no idea when the next opportunity will be or why we’ll be heading there, but I’ll be sure to give you priority.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry, I know that really was childish,” Yun Sudra remarked with a fresh smile. And sure, it might have been a little childish, but that expression was really charming on her.
At any rate, the yellow month was still going to be packed with events as it headed toward its conclusion, including the meat market, the invitation to the castle town, my birthday, and more. There were now only four days left until the twenty-fourth of the yellow month, the date when I had first met Ai Fa.
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