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After following the path Telia Mas had shown us, we arrived at the plaza where the meat market would be held.
We had left with time to spare, so there weren’t many people out on the street. But as soon as we set foot in the plaza, we saw that a number of wagons were parked there already, and a good number of folks were getting set up to do business.
“Ah, so you really did come, huh?” a familiar voice called out. When I turned to look, I saw Marth, a young platoon commander from the guards who we were acquainted with.
“Oh, so you’re finally back on duty, Marth?”
“I am. My arm still isn’t back to full strength yet, but if I just keep resting forever, I’ll dry up and fade away.” Marth was opening and closing his right hand as he spoke. During the cutting of the path through the forest’s edge, he had been seriously injured in a giba attack, but it looked like he was mostly back to normal.
When he spotted Marth, Ludo Ruu called out, “Hey there. So your broken arm has finally healed? Glad to see you looking well.”
“Ah, you’re a Ruu hunter, aren’t you? I owe you for your actions back then.” Despite the stern look he still had on his face, and how he seemed to be puffing up his armored chest self-importantly, Marth’s expression of gratitude seemed to be completely earnest.
Then Rimee Ruu peeked out from behind her older brother. “I’m really glad you’re feeling better! I’m sure it’s because you ate lots of giba meat!”
During his time off, Marth had stopped by our stalls once every few days. Even to Rimee and Reina Ruu, he was a familiar regular at this point. The second Ruu daughter also greeted him with a smile, which made Marth somewhat uncomfortably scratch the tip of his nose.
“This sort of stuff gets harder the more people you know personally. You lot are here to sell giba meat, aren’t you? In that case, you should hurry up and get ready,” he said.
“We will. Are you on patrol, Marth?”
“It’s more that I’m acting as security here. When you have a lot of money in one place, you’ll often see outlaws gather too.”
It was true that I had seen guards around here and there when we had come to inspect the meat market. Still, now that he mentioned it, I noticed that there seemed to be quite a few of them present.
“When you first started doing business with your stalls, it caused a real commotion in town, didn’t it? There was some concern that something similar might occur today, so we tightened up security.”
“Are you talking about the incident where our customers from the east and south almost got into a huge fight with one another?”
“Yeah, that one. That happened because you ran out of goods to sell, didn’t it? We’d rather not take the chance of something like that happening again today.”
Polarth had cautioned us about that in advance too. He had said that there was sure to be a scramble for our giba meat stock, so we would be wise to prepare a lottery for it.
“Well then, we’re gonna go ahead and get ready now.”
We parked our wagons along the wall. The proper procedure for this was apparently to line up starting at the end of the road, so we took our place beside three people who were already unloading boxes. And when we did, one of them turned toward us with a suspicious look.
“Oh, you’re the meat sellers from the forest’s edge, aren’t you? I’ve heard about you.” From that cold, formal tone, I had a pretty good guess as to who we were dealing with. They must have been karon merchants from Dabagg. “So you’ll finally be selling giba meat at the market, will you? I hear that you’re sure to get plenty of attention, but who knows how true that really is.”
“I’m not sure myself. I’m hoping we will, though.”
The Fou and Dai were busy unloading the boxes, so I naturally ended up being the one to reply to him.
“Hmph,” the merchant from Dabagg muttered while wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see how much demand there is for your product. That’ll have a big impact on our business going forward, after all.”
“Of course.”
These men didn’t work for the ranches themselves. Rather, they collected meat from the ranches in order to sell it in other towns. First they went to the castle town and sold as much stock as they could there, then they came to the post town the next morning, and after they were done here, they would head back to Dabagg. Judging by how well-dressed they were, they were probably even permitted to lodge in the castle town.
He seems a bit on edge. There’s a chance that us selling giba meat really will lead to them losing out. That was why I wanted to make a point of forming proper bonds with them too. As I was thinking about that, though, a real stir filled the plaza as a very fine boxed carriage slowly advanced into it.
There were guards on either side of the carriage guiding the totos that were pulling it, and it was obvious that they were from the castle town, given how much nicer their armor was than that worn by Marth and the other post town guards. They were members of the totos cavalry who often accompanied us when we entered the castle town.
The carriage pulled up in front of us, and an elegant-looking man stepped out of it and promptly addressed us. “We have come to pick up the giba meat. Is the person in charge present?”
The Dai woman who had been helping the Fou to unload their goods stepped forward and said, “Yes, the giba meat is loaded in this wagon. There are five boxes of leg meat, four of shoulder meat, and three each of rib and back meat, adding up to fifteen in total.”
“You have my thanks. Our people shall transport the goods.”
Three burly men then emerged from the carriage and began moving boxes from the Dai wagon to their own vehicle. The Dai were the ones in charge of all the meat that was to be handed off to the castle town.
“We confirm that we have received fifteen boxes of meat. Please check that your payment is all here,” the elegant man said, holding out a small cloth bag. Though it wasn’t very big, it looked like its contents were fairly heavy.
The Dai woman took the coins out one by one and handed them to the Ren woman as Tsuvai Rutim casually slipped over to them. The payment was supposed to be equal to 1,710 red coins, which could be converted into 1 silver coin and 71 white coins. It was a little troublesome that there was no denomination of currency that we could exchange a hundred red coins or ten white coins for.
“Yes, this looks like the correct amount,” The Dai woman said.
“Well then, we ask that you please accept this as well. It is what is known as a tally.”
“A...tally?”
“Correct. The people who come to pick up the giba meat in the future will bring this other half of the tally with them. It is possible that someone could misrepresent themselves in order to fraudulently take possession of the goods in the future, after all.”
Based on what Polarth had told us, this guy must have been a wholesaler rather than a noble. The reason he had guards accompanying him was because he was attending to business directly relating to the nobility.
“Well then, please excuse me.”
They didn’t seem inclined to stick around and talk any more than was necessary. Their carriage slowly departed back the way they had come from, and as she watched them leave, the Dai woman placed the coins back into the cloth bag and then handed it to Deel Dai. It certainly made sense to have a man be the one to carry a small fortune like that.
A bit of a commotion then filled the plaza again. It was pretty unusual for someone to leave the castle walls in order to pick up goods, but the meat sellers from Dabagg beside us didn’t seem to be especially interested. They had almost certainly done business with wholesalers like that in the castle town too.
“That made me kinda nervous. Now we just have to sell the rest of the meat, right?” the Dai woman said. She and the Ren woman then went back to assisting the others. When it came to selling meat in the market, they would all be working together regardless of clan.
As we were dealing with the folks from the castle town, more and more meat sellers had been steadily arriving. I also started seeing people who looked like customers here and there. The market would open at the fourth hour, which was now drawing very close.
“Oh my, am I the first one here?” a tall figure pulling a wagon called out as she approached. She was the owner of The Ramuria Coil, Jizeh. Everyone from the Ruu clan who was with us except for Jiza Ruu already knew her, so they greeted one another. Then the folks from the Fou and Dai also went ahead and introduced themselves to her. “I’m sure lots of people will be coming by soon, though. But here’s to doing business with you fine folks from the forest’s edge.” Jizeh was gentle-mannered and polite, and I could feel the warmth in all of the little gestures she made, so I was sure she was the type of person who would be easily accepted by the people of the forest’s edge. She greeted us one by one, until her eyes landed on the final person in our group and narrowed. “My. It’s been a while since I last saw you. Do you remember me?”
“I remember your face, at least.” Naturally, that had come from Tsuvai Rutim. She had also encountered Jizeh during the meeting at the start of the month.
“I saw you back at that meeting, didn’t I? Is that Mida Ruu fellow doing well?”
“I’ve got no clue. The Ruu and Rutim may be related, but we live in different places.”
“Ah, I see. How lonesome.”
Tsuvai Rutim hadn’t revealed her past identity, so Jizeh had no way of knowing that she and Mida Ruu used to be siblings. But Tsuvai Rutim defending Mida Ruu and then summoning him from the settlement at the forest’s edge must have left a very strong impression.
“It will soon be the fourth hour,” Marth said, having returned to us along with his four subordinates after taking a look around the perimeter. “Hmm. I was worried that we were going to have a large number of people crowding around you before the market opened, but it seems those fears were unfounded.”
“Yeah. We were warned that it might cause a really big problem if we went with a first-come-first-served system, so we announced in advance that we would be holding a lottery right when the fourth hour rolled around.”
“I see. How well prepared of you. But even so, this is still quite a small crowd,” Marth started to say, right before a bunch of people pulling wagons started approaching us all at once. Most of them looked to be innkeepers.
“Hmm? Hey guard, do you have some sort of business here? You’re not planning to get in the way of our business, are you?” the large inn owner at the head of the group asked, glaring at Marth without any fear in his eyes.
With a quick sigh, Marth met his gaze and glared right back at him. “As long as you lot don’t cause a commotion, we won’t get involved. Go about your business while keeping to the laws of Genos.”
After that, Marth and one of the guards remained with us, while the other three moved back behind the innkeepers.
With a “Hmph!” that large man who had spoken up turned his gaze toward us. “We came here to buy giba meat. We can just wait here, can’t we?”
“Of course. Please hold on a little longer until the fourth hour arrives,” I said. I was really only supposed to be keeping an eye on things, but I wasn’t going to ignore a familiar face. Still, that was the sort of interaction the folks from the Fou and Dai would have to handle in the future.
With that thought in mind, I looked back at our work space, where I found that the women had been watching the exchange between me and the inn owner with serious looks in their eyes. None of them had participated in our business at the stalls, so they hadn’t had all that many opportunities to interact with townsfolk. It seemed they were earnestly trying their best to learn how to handle their future customers from my example.
“Looks like quite the crowd after all,” Marth quietly muttered from the spot where he had stationed himself beside our sales space.
There were people joining the crowd around us one after another, some familiar and some not. Of course, the owners of the inns didn’t necessarily have to come personally, and undoubtedly, plenty of the people swarming around us were just ordinary folks who weren’t connected to the inns as all.
It wasn’t like there had been any grand announcement for the common folk, but we certainly weren’t trying to hide what we were doing, so rumors about our participation must have spread naturally. We had been working on our plans to sell giba meat since the start of the month. That was plenty of time for word to get around.
“Hmm. I can’t imagine how you could have any meat go unsold with things like this,” Ludo Ruu whispered.
Right after he said that, a sharp flutelike sound rang out from the center of the plaza. There was a large pedestal there in the middle, and it was equipped with a sundial. Now that it was showing the fourth hour, the guard in charge had announced that the market was open.
The folks who had been waiting for that signal all crowded in, and the older Fou woman took a small calming breath before calling out, “We are now open for business. First off, could anyone who wants to purchase giba meat please raise a hand?”
There were quite a few customers in front of us now, in a group that stretched a fair distance across the plaza, and with questioning looks on their faces, every single one of them raised their hands. The Fou woman turned around to look at the Fou man, who had climbed up into the driver’s seat of one of our wagons at some point. He scanned the crowd with his eyes and reported, “Thirty-one people.”
“In that case, I will be placing thirty-one wooden tags in this box, so could I have you pull them out one at a time? Then we will begin selling giba meat, starting from the smallest numbers.”
This was the lottery method I had thought up. Back when we had been selling a limited number of giba cutlet sandwiches at the stalls, we had used a similar setup, which I had adjusted for our purposes here. Of course, all we had to do was write numbers on wooden tags, put them in a box, and have people draw them, so it was hardly complex. The people who drew the smallest numbers got to buy giba meat first, and once we sold out, that was it.
The only tricky part was that the people of the forest’s edge didn’t know how to read or write, so this time around, we had placed symbolic marks on the wooden tags instead. It was a very primitive system of notation, with one through nine being represented by small dots and tens being represented with big ones.
We had prepared up to fifty of those tags to be safe, but we only added numbers one through thirty-one to the box. There was a round hole just big enough for an adult hand to fit through in the top of the box, so they wouldn’t be able to peer inside when pulling one out.
“Well then, one at a time, please.”
The Ran woman held out the box, and the inn owner who had been arguing with Marth before turned to face Jizeh.
“You got in line first, so you should go before anyone else.”
“My, I appreciate it,” Jizeh said with a smile, reaching her slender hand through the hole in the box. Then, with her eyes closed, she rummaged around inside for a bit and pulled out a wooden tag. There was a single small dot on it.
“My... That’s number one.” Even the Ran woman couldn’t help but sound surprised, and a round of dismayed cries sounded out from the crowd.
The guy who let Jizeh go first was getting little jabs in the shoulder and the like from the people around him, but he just frowned and said, “Hey, it’s not my fault.”
“Well then, could we have you purchase your giba meat now? The amount you buy may change the number of people who will get to make a purchase after you.”
“My, I certainly appreciate the opportunity. I imagine if I were to buy all fifteen boxes now, everyone else would hold quite a grudge against me for it, wouldn’t they?” Jizeh said, glancing over the crowd.
“Hey, Granny Jizeh, cut it out with the bad jokes, okay?”
“Heh heh... It isn’t like I could bring all fifteen boxes back on my own anyway. And if I were to get too greedy and let some go to waste, why, that would be simply awful.” Ultimately, Jizeh ended up ordering one box each of back, rib, and shoulder meat. That was rather shrewd of her, to not take any of the leg meat that we had prepared the most of. “So, how much do I owe you?”
“Please hold on for just a moment. Um...” The Dai woman brought a hand up to her mouth. Tsuvai Rutim carefully observed her from the side until she spoke again. “The rib and back meat cost 150 red coins each, and it’s ninety for the shoulder meat... So that would be 390 red coins in total.”
“Then, it will be thirty-nine white coins, correct?”
After paying the requested amount, Jizeh loaded the three wooden boxes into her wagon. Despite being an older lady and quite slender, she didn’t seem to have any trouble at all with lifting a box that weighed fifteen kilos.
“Thank you for everything. I look forward to the day when we meet again,” Jizeh said with a bow, and then she swiftly departed.
With a sour look on his face, that inn owner from before stepped forward and said, “I’m next.” However, the number he drew was twenty-two. With only twelve boxes left, that put him in a pretty hopeless situation. And so, with his burly shoulders slumping, the man dejectedly stepped back.
People steadily continued to draw lots, some reacting with joy and others with sorrow. The young fellow who drew number three broke out in a little dance, while the man who drew number seven was somewhat more ambivalent. Buying three boxes would allow people to pay a cheaper wholesale price, so if everyone purchased that amount, we would run out of stock by number five.
Right around when we were halfway through, someone managed to draw number two. I wasn’t familiar with the young woman, but she seemed to be connected to an inn. She gave an excited cheer of “Yay!” which earned her some envious and disappointed looks from the folks who hadn’t drawn lots yet. “I’ll take two boxes of leg meat and one box of back meat, please!”
“Of course. In that case... Um... That’s two boxes at ninety coins, and one at a hundred fifty, so...three hundred...three hundred twenty coins...?”
“Three hundred thirty,” Tsuvai Rutim sharply interjected, prompting the Dai woman to bow to her before accepting the payment. “Hey, I taught you that it’s easier to calculate things in terms of white coins instead of red when you’re selling boxes, didn’t I? It’s easier to count out smaller numbers, after all,” Tsuvai Rutim quietly added as the girl was loading up her boxes.
With a terribly embarrassed look, the Dai woman hung her head and said, “My deepest apologies.”
“Well then, can I make my purchase too?” the young man who had drawn number three before asked with a smile as he stepped forward.
“Ah, yes, please go ahead. What would you like to purchase?”
“Let’s see... I’d like enough leg meat for twenty people.” In the post town, the amount of meat that was considered a standard serving for one person was 250 grams, so for twenty people, that would work out to five kilograms. As soon as he said that, around half of the crowd started jeering reproachfully. They must have been with the inns. Someone buying a small amount meant there would be less left to buy at the wholesale price. “Hey, I can’t help it. We’re a household of only five people. We scraped together as much money as we could,” the young man said with a look of satisfaction on his face.
Someone shouted, “Yeah, that’s right!” as if to cut off all the criticism. That must have been another customer who wanted to purchase a smaller amount of giba meat like him. If the first five buyers had all been connected to inns and bought three boxes in order to get the cheaper rate, none of the ordinary folks would have an opportunity to get any.
“Enough leg meat for twenty? That would be sixty red coins,” the Dai woman said, briefly shooting Tsuvai Rutim a nervous look. The young girl just silently crossed her arms. When split into smaller portions, a kilo of leg meat would cost twelve red coins, meaning the price for a single portion was three red coins, so she hadn’t made any mistakes there.
We had a study session where we reviewed basic math to prepare for today, but practicing something and doing it for real are very different things, huh? It’s only natural for her to be taking a bit longer now.
Incidentally, we had used this opportunity to adjust the prices of the meat we sold a little bit. Up until now, the prices for the four cuts had been all over the place, but since back and rib meat were close in price to one another, and so were leg and shoulder meat, we took the midpoint between them and made them cost the same. That halved the effort involved in memorizing the prices and running the calculations.
Tsuvai Rutim and I fall outside of the norm, but we have to give everyone else some time to get accustomed to the process. There’s no need to rush, I thought to myself as the lots continued to be drawn. Before the final one was pulled, though, numbers four and five came up, and they were both drawn by people from inns. On top of that, one of them bought four boxes instead of three, which meant only a single box of rib meat and around ten kilos worth of leg meat were left.
At that point, all of the remaining innkeepers left dejectedly. It seemed they had no intention of buying meat at the higher price. There were only around ten people left after that, so roughly twenty out of the thirty-one had been connected to inns. And as the ones who gave up were turning in their wooden lots, most of them said something like “Make sure you come sell meat again as soon as possible, okay?”
From there, we had the people who remained make their purchases starting from the lower numbers, and by the fifth person, the meat all ran out. One person bought enough meat for thirty, so those twenty-five kilos of meat vanished in a flash.
“I sure am glad I managed to get some. My family’s going to be overjoyed,” a young man said with a smile as he purchased the last ten portions of both the rib and leg meat. His brightly shining brown eyes looked over everyone on the sales team, then finally stopped on me. “You’re Asuta of the Fa clan, right? Thank you for always being there for my grandmother.”
“Huh? Your grandmother?”
“Yes. I’m the grandson of Mishil the vegetable seller.”
I was seriously, completely, and utterly shocked. The young man continued looking at me with a smile.
“I get sent into town to make purchases a lot, so I’ve bought food from your stalls every once in a while. My other family members haven’t had that opportunity, though, so they’ve been begging me to get some giba meat for them.”
“Ah, I see. Well, thank you very much.”
“I’m the one who should be thanking you. My wife has been visiting Dora’s house and taking lessons on how to make better meals there. Thanks to that, dinnertime has become a lot more enjoyable as of late.” The smile on his face was bright enough that it was hard to believe he was related to Granny Mishil. “By the way, I didn’t see anyone from Dora’s house here. You let them know about today, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But they decided to hold off for now, since they wanted to give people who have never tasted giba meat a chance to try it first.”
“Ah, I see. They did it for the sake of people from families like mine. I certainly appreciate their consideration.” As he held the leather bags filled with meat in his hands, the young man gave a little bow. “Since I actually got ahold of some giba meat, I’ll have to tell my mother and wife to really show off their skills. I’ll stop by your stalls again too sometime, so I’ll see you then.”
“All right. And thank you again for your purchase.”
With that, the young man left, which wrapped up our business for the day. Four inns and six households had purchased over two hundred kilos of giba meat in total, and we had been able to sell that same amount to the castle town as well. That amounted to an income of 3,660 red coins in total. The contents of two of the boxes had been sold in smaller quantities, so we had earned more from those. For our first day, that was a seriously fantastic result. This business I had started out of a desire to bring prosperity to the forest’s edge had taken yet another big step forward.
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