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“We won’t get anywhere if such simple calculations are enough to trip you up! I’m seriously worried about the future!” Tsuvai Rutim complained inside the wagon after we had finished cleaning up. We were done with our sales work for the day, but the plaza was so crowded that it would have been difficult to navigate it with our totos and wagons. We decided to hold a review meeting on the spot as we waited.
Since the wagons weren’t going to be moving, most of us had loaded into one without concern for the normal weight limit. The Fou, Ran, Dai, and Ren women were all inside, along with Tsuvai Rutim, Reina Ruu, Rimee Ruu, and me, while Ai Fa stood at the front and Jiza Ruu at the back.
“One portion of leg or shoulder meat costs three coins, and one box costs nine white coins. For a portion of rib or back meat, it’s five red coins, and fifteen white coins for a box. There’s nothing more to it than that, so working it out should hardly take any time at all.”
“We’re so sorry,” the other four women replied, hanging their heads. They had taken turns handling the sales so that all of them could gain some experience with doing the math, but none of them had been able to satisfy Tsuvai Rutim.
“You there from the Ren. Back when we were studying this at the forest’s edge, weren’t you able to answer pretty smoothly? So why did you stumble so much today?”
“W-Well, it was my first time selling to townsfolk, so I might have been feeling a little out of sorts.”
“It wasn’t like there were outlaws lurking about, and we had men with us too, so what was there to get upset about? And you there from the Dai, you mixed up the price of leg and rib meat, didn’t you?! If I hadn’t caught your mistake, it would have seriously cost us!”
“I-I’m really sorry. I wasn’t in my proper state of mind either.”
As the two women dejectedly slumped their shoulders, Tsuvai Rutim’s gaze turned toward the left, to where the older Fou woman was seated.
“You seemed to have the easiest time with the calculations. At the very least, you didn’t mix up any prices.”
“Yes. Perhaps I was simply calmer than the others because I’ve lived longer.”
Though the Fou woman has spoken casually to Ai Fa and me, her tone was more polite when she was talking to someone tied to a leading clan.
Tsuvai Rutim snorted, “Hmph!” and then glared at me. “Is that really all there is to it? I don’t recall these two being able to calculate stuff like thirteen portions of leg meat and seven of rib meat very quickly back when we were teaching them either.”
“Well, these two were actually chosen for this job because they were the most skilled at counting out of the members and subordinates of the Fou. And when I taught them, they did really well,” I noted.
“Hmm? I thought that the younger woman was better at counting than the older one,” Tsuvai Rutim said.
The Fou woman smiled softly and replied, “Before we became friends with the Fa, our clan was poor. We often had to think carefully about how to best use our limited funds. That was especially true for me, as I am the wife of the head of a branch house.”
“I see,” Tsuvai Rutim said, her lower lip jutting out. “At any rate, we won’t get anywhere with things like this. If we start selling significantly more meat than this, there will be more people making small purchases too. Could you handle a purchase like three portions of leg meat, eleven of rib, thirteen of shoulder, and four of back?”
The Dai and Ren women looked downright flustered.
Tsuvai Rutim sent yet another glare my way. “That wouldn’t be enough to cause you trouble, would it?”
“Well, it would take a second... Um, I think it should be forty-eight and seventy-five coins, which would add up to one hundred twenty-three in total.”
The four women looked at me wide-eyed, and so did Reina and Rimee Ruu.
“That was amazing! How were you able to reply so quickly?” one of them asked.
“Well, first, I added the shoulder and leg meat together as well as rib and back meat since they’re the same price, then I multiplied them by their costs. Ah, but multiplication might not be a concept you’re very familiar with, so I suppose that might make it tricky to do it that way.”
Multiplication was actually something the people of the forest’s edge used in their everyday lives. Without it, they would have a lot of difficulty calculating something like how many aria and poitan they could buy for the tusks and horns of a single giba. But that was a narrow skill they had cultivated on a day to day basis, so it wasn’t as if they had learned a proper method for how to do it like I had. Looking at it from a different perspective, I had trouble understanding how they could manage such calculations without having any concept of what a multiplication table was.
“What do you mean? We’re talking about stuff like how three times three is nine, and nine times nine is eighty-one, aren’t we? That isn’t difficult at all,” Tsuvai Rutim said.
“N-No, I couldn’t possibly calculate nine times nine so quickly. You and Asuta are the only ones capable of that, aren’t you?” the Ren woman timidly asked.
“Hmm...” Tsuvai Rutim grumbled, thinking.
I decided that now was a good time to tell her about something I had been thinking about for a while. “I actually have a suggestion for how they can calculate price totals.”
“What is it? We still haven’t solved this problem, but you’re planning on bringing up another one now?”
“No, I’d say they’re the same issue at their core. Would you mind taking a look at this real quick?” I then grabbed the bag that was sitting beside me and pulled a pair of secret items out of it: a notebook and writing brush I had bought in the post town.
“Oh? Those are the tools townsfolk use to do that writing thing, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. I was thinking that we should write down our sales here in this notebook in the future. And I’ve actually already had some of the townsfolk teach me how to write numbers the way the people of the western kingdom do.”
I turned over the B5-sized notebook, showing them where I had written each of the numerals that represented the numbers from zero to nine in the Western Kingdom of Selva, with a small set of marks next to each of them to indicate their value.
“Hmm. So this one with nothing written next to it is zero, then?”
“It is. So if you want to write twenty-four, you put this character for two on the left and this one for four on the right. And if you want to record our income of 3,660 red coins from today, you would do it like so.” On the following page, I went ahead and wrote the number using the numerals of Selva. “Then, if you write down the amount of money you used to purchase meat from other clans and subtract it to get the pure profit, you’ll be able to show how much the people of the forest’s edge have benefited from your work at the next clan head meeting.”
“I see...” Tsuvai Rutim muttered, turning back to the previous page. Her eyes that showed a strikingly large amount of white were glaring intently at those ten numbers. After a few seconds, the girl turned back to the other page, then snatched the wooden brush from me and quickly started writing.
“This should be the amount of money the Dai and Ren used. Sure enough, there shouldn’t be any worry about them making off with the money the Ruu clan loaned them with numbers like this.”
“T-Tsuvai Rutim, you already memorized all of those numbers?” the Dai woman asked in amazement, and the young girl shot her a doubtful look.
“You should only need to see them for a moment to commit them to memory. It really isn’t tricky at all.”
“N-No, I couldn’t possibly memorize them anywhere near that quickly... But of course, if we need them in order to do this job, I’ll try my best to learn.”
“I believe memorizing them will prove quite helpful down the line. It should be especially useful when it comes to practicing multiplication,” I said, writing down some fresh numbers in another notebook. As an example, I wrote down the twos column of a multiplication table. “Here, you can see what you get when you multiply two by everything from two to nine. Two times two is four, two times three is six, and so on. If you write it all out on a bigger board or something and practice it when you have the time, that should prove really useful when you need to do a calculation.”
“You think so?”
“It may not make sense to you without learning how to read numbers first, but it should be good practice in the long term. And if you add a verbal component like saying ‘two two is four’ and ‘two three is six’ as well, it’ll become even easier to remember.”
“Ha ha, that sounds like some sort of charm from Sym!” Rimee Ruu said, getting all excited like a little puppy.
Next to her, Reina Ruu was staring at the notebook with a serious gaze. “The idea of writing numbers down is quite interesting. It seems like learning this would be helpful when it comes to cooking as well.”
“Yeah. You can write things like ingredient quantities or cooking times, which will be really useful. If you only have words to work with, it can be pretty difficult to teach people how to cook, right?” However, our meat market business came first, so I smiled heartily at the four rather nervous-looking women. “This is just an initial trial, and I imagine it’ll take a while to pick it up properly. But if this work is something you intend to pass down to your descendants, I’m sure the effort you put in won’t go to waste.”
“Yeah... But is this something we’ll truly be able to master?”
“We won’t know until we actually give it a try. But I don’t think it’ll be any problem at all. You already know how to do basic multiplication without any formal techniques to help you, which is something I honestly find really amazing.”
I really did mean that too. The women of the forest’s edge had done an incredible job of learning how to cook and manage businesses without writing down so much as a single note. That had to mean they were incredibly talented when it came to either calculation or memorization.
“With multiplication, you’ve just been running calculations in your head up until now, right? But if you can look at a sheet like this and speak out the formulas, you should be able to use your eyes and ears to learn it even better. If that turns out to be too tough, I’ll try to come up with a different method, but why not give this a shot first?”
“Sounds interesting,” Tsuvai Rutim said quietly. Her eyes were still fixed on the numbers in the notebook.
Seeing that, the Dai woman turned to face me with a resolute look. “Understood. We mustn’t give up before even trying. And, well...even if I am no good at it, there might be other women among us who will benefit greatly from this knowledge. So yes, please. I would like you to show us how this is done.”
The other women all nodded along seriously too, as Jiza Ruu and Ai Fa silently watched us talking. For now at least, it seemed my comrades at the forest’s edge had accepted the plan that I had come up with.
After around half an hour later, things finally settled down at the plaza, and we were able to return to the settlement at the forest’s edge.
Once we got back to the Ruu settlement, we started working on the plan we had previously been discussing right away. I wrote out a pair of full multiplication tables on some large wooden planks, then presented them to the Fou and Dai women. I had also bought as many notebooks and brushes as I thought we might need, and I distributed those as well.
“I figured the Ruu clan would need them too, so I bought extras,” I said as I handed Reina Ruu a notebook and brush, making her look seriously surprised.
“So you really do think these techniques will be useful for cooking as well, Asuta?”
“Yeah. Back when we had a study session in the castle town on how to handle black fuwano, someone wrote down the amounts of ingredients that were being used each time, remember? Ever since I saw that, I started thinking that I’d like to do something similar here at the forest’s edge too.”
“Thank you! I’d love to record the contents of as many different dishes as I can, as soon as I can!”
If it was going to make her this happy, maybe I should have proposed the plan even sooner.
But at any rate, that wrapped things up on the meat-selling end of things.
“The meat market is held once every three or four days. It’ll be kinda hard to participate every time right from the start, so how about skipping every second one and going again six or seven days from now?” I suggested.
“Okay. If the plan is to bring the same amount next time, that should be no problem at all,” the Fou woman said.
“In that case, if you have the time to spare, how about adding a few more boxes? The castle town said they could easily take even twice as much as we gave them today, and that they would buy any that is left unsold in the post town.”
And that was the last thing that we had to discuss. I then said goodbye to everyone and got ready to head home. But as I was doing so, Tsuvai sneaked over to me and whispered, “Next time, I won’t lose.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
Rather than responding to my question, Tsuvai Rutim swiftly hopped into the Dai wagon. As I was left tilting my head, Reina Ruu smiled at me, as she happened to be standing nearby.
“I’m sure she must have been frustrated because the women you taught ended up doing better than the ones that she did.”
“Huh? That’s just because they’re naturally skilled. It had nothing to do with me.”
“Well, no matter the reason, I’d say this was good for Tsuvai Rutim. She was acting really strict with the Dai and Ren women, but...it almost felt as if she was interacting with her relatives.”
“Ah. You may be right.”
On top of that, Tsuvai Rutim had been watching every little thing the women had done very carefully. The Dai and Ren women also seemed to have a lot of trust in and respect for the girl too.
“Her tongue is as sharp as always, but I really do believe that Tsuvai Rutim has been changing. Of course, Gazraan Rutim wouldn’t have granted her the Rutim name otherwise.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” I agreed.
After that, I took care of some odd jobs at Mikel’s house before heading back home. If I wanted to take on the challenge of writing down recipes, I would need the assistance of someone familiar with the western writing system. Milano Mas and the other folks I knew in the post town were only familiar with numbers and some simple characters, so my most reliable ally on that front was Mikel, who had been raised in the castle town.
I ended up spending a fair bit of time there, so we didn’t make it back to the Fa house until right before the sun hit its peak. It was now time for Ai Fa and Brave to head out into the forest. However, they would just be checking the traps they had set, so it was more of a half day.
“I’ll be back in around two hours. You haven’t forgotten what I said, have you?”
“I haven’t. I’ll head over to the Fou settlement after this, so it shouldn’t be an issue.”
Since today was my birthday, Ai Fa had decided that she would prepare my celebratory meal. And she couldn’t concentrate with other people around, so I had been given strict orders to stay out of the kitchen.
“Very well. Make sure you return before the sun sets, all right?” she said.
“Got it. You take care too. I’ll be praying to the forest for you to return safely. And that goes for you as well, Brave.”
Brave rarely ever made a sound, so all he did in response was blink his clever-looking black eyes and wag his short tail.
After watching the two of them vanish into the forest, I went ahead and set off in the wagon toward the Fou settlement. I would be borrowing their kitchen in order to handle the prep work for business tomorrow while also holding a cooking study session.
When I arrived at the Fou settlement, I found that a large crowd had already gathered there—all women who fell under the Fou, Gaaz, and Ratsu. Fei Beim and Lili Ravitz would only help out on days when they came back with us from the stalls, so this was the full lineup for today.
But as that thought passed through my head, I realized someone important was missing. Though she was attached to a clan that opposed the actions of the Fa, just like the Beim and Ravitz, she was singularly important when it came to making our work routine go at full speed. In other words, Toor Deen was nowhere to be seen.
“Ah, Asuta, I heard that you’ve been working hard all morning. One of the Fou women was just telling me about how things went at the meat market,” Yun Sudra said with a smile, her gray-brown ponytail that she wore off to the side swaying as she spoke. I could already see for myself that the other women were gathered around the board with the multiplication table written on it, excitedly chatting with one another.
“Yeah. I’d say we did really well for our first day. By the way, has Toor Deen still not arrived?”
“She hasn’t. And according to the sundial, the sun has hit its peak, so we should—” Yun Sudra started to reply, until we both heard the sound of a wagon coming into the plaza.
The chatting women suddenly went silent, and a few moments later, the wagon came to a stop in front of the main Fou house’s kitchen.
“I’m so sorry for being late. Have you started working already?” Toor Deen asked, descending from the wagon and deeply bowing her head. That wagon belonged to the Zaza clan, and Sufira Zaza was the one holding the reins.
“I just got here myself. Thanks for coming all this way, Sufira Zaza,” I said.
“This was all my younger brother Geol’s idea, and our clan head gave his approval for it, so I cannot see any reason for you to thank me.”
Lately, Toor Deen had been heading to the northern settlement in the early afternoon on days before we had a day off, and staying there until around this time the next day so she could provide cooking lessons.
Since Sufira Zaza was the one who had brought Toor Deen here, and she was a familiar face, the other women all loosened up a bit. Even though they had befriended the Deen and Liddo who fell under the Zaza, to them, the people of the northern settlement deserved greater reverence than the Ruu clan did.
“Well then, I’ll see you again in five days, Toor Deen. Farewell,” Sufira Zaza stated.
“Oh, hold on a moment. There’s actually something I’d like to tell everyone up in the northern settlement too,” I called out, earning a suspicious raised eyebrow from Sufira Zaza.
“What is it? If this is about selling giba meat in town, there shouldn’t be any issues with it that need discussing before the next clan head meeting.”
“No, this is a separate matter. I was actually just about to talk to everyone about it, so if you have the time, would you mind listening too?”
Sufira Zaza’s eyebrow remained raised, but she went ahead and tied the reins of her totos to a nearby tree and approached the kitchen.
“Everyone else, I want you to please listen up before we start prep work. It’s actually regarding the numbers written out here on this board.” I then started to explain again how useful it would be for cooking to be able to note down things like ingredient quantities and cooking time. “There’s no need to memorize the numerals of Selva in advance. You can just write down which symbol corresponds to which number elsewhere. If you place a number of dots next to each one, that should keep you from mixing them up.”
“I see. That certainly would be useful when it comes to learning trickier dishes,” an older Gaaz woman remarked.
Next to her, a young Ratsu woman chimed in. “But how will we tell which dish those amounts are for? It wouldn’t be an issue if we only write down instructions for one or two dishes, but if you’re talking five or ten, we could easily mix them up.”
“Well, on a more basic level, you also need to be able to figure out which numbers go with which ingredients, right?” This was something I had also considered in advance. “Initially, I imagine we’ll have to stick with pictures and colors. You could draw a round shape for meatballs, or write salt in red, for example. But what about trying to memorize the writing of Selva as well?”
“Memorize the writing of Selva?”
I figured it would be quicker to show them what I meant.
“There aren’t that many characters that see use in the post town, so I had to ask Mikel—the Ruu clan’s guest from the Turan lands—to teach me this... This red one says salt, this blue one is sugar, and this yellow one is tau oil.” The writing systems of Selva and Jagar used strange characters that reminded me of hieroglyphs. All of the women who were staring at my notebook were making impressed sounds. “You can rely on the colors to tell them apart at first. These are the only three dyes we have, but you can make something like ten different colors by mixing them together. So if you split up the ingredients and seasonings, you should be able to get by for the time being.”
“Hmm. But wouldn’t it be difficult to memorize which color applies to which ingredient?”
“To help solve that problem, you can write the name of the ingredient in the place where you store it, using the correct color. With seasonings, you can write it on the container, and you can stick a note like this on a shelf or basket for vegetables. Then if you see it on a daily basis, eventually you’ll naturally remember what those characters mean, and there won’t be any need to use different colors anymore.”
It was really tough to learn unfamiliar characters from scratch. Even I didn’t want to spend all that much effort on it. But this method I had come up with seemed like a way to at least learn the characters for ingredients and seasonings.
“The other important thing is the dish names. For those, I think we’ll just have to memorize them one by one. But if we start out with only two or three types, we shouldn’t have any issue with mixing them up.”
“I’d like to learn how to properly prepare cream stew. When I make it at home, it never turns out as good as yours, Asuta.”
“Cream stew is a term from my home country, so it seems like there isn’t a character we can use to write it directly. But I discussed that problem with Mikel a little while ago too.”
The characters used in Selva were ideographic. The next phrase I showed them in my notebook was composed of ten or so of those characters, and included the one for “karon milk” that I knew from elsewhere. Apparently, it meant something like “soup dish prepared with karon milk that uses many fillings.”
“If we write these characters for cream stew in red, and then other dishes in blue and yellow, then you can start by learning to tell those three apart. Once that stops being confusing, we can add a new dish,” I said, turning toward Sufira Zaza at the end. “What do you think? I believe this method will allow Toor Deen’s lessons to go more smoothly.”
“What do you say, Toor Deen?” the Zaza woman asked, passing my question along.
“Y-Yeah! I-I think that sounds wonderful!” Toor Deen replied, her voice sounding shrill and excited. “It may be difficult at first, but it should save us a lot of trouble in the future!”
“I see... But those brushes and notebooks can’t be cheap, correct?”
“They aren’t cheap, but they aren’t that expensive either. At least, that’s how I see it.”
Apparently, there was a town near Genos that produced large numbers of notebooks and a bunch of different dyes, so they didn’t cost all that much. These types of notebooks in particular used a relatively cheap kind of paper made from a tree known as a papula. I hadn’t run across them in the post town before now, but apparently, the innkeepers used them for ledgers behind the scenes.
“Understood. I will discuss this matter with my clan head. If it reduces the amount of effort needed on Toor Deen’s part, then we cannot be stingy in terms of coins.”
“Oh, I’m fine either way,” Toor Deen insisted. “But if we can write down amounts of ingredients like that, we could pass down our recipes from parent to child, and it would be very convenient in other ways too.”
“That’s true,” Sufira Zaza said with a faint smile. It was the sort of mature expression that could often be seen on her face lately.
When she saw that, Toor Deen broke out in a bashful smile of her own.
Sufira Zaza nodded. “Very well, I will tell the clan heads about this as well. And Asuta?”
“Yes? What is it?”
“I am grateful that you are willing to freely share your knowledge with us as well, without discrimination.” She didn’t smile at me, but her feelings still came across perfectly clearly. And with that, Sufira Zaza returned to her totos wagon.
A moment later, Saris Ran Fou approached me. “Asuta, I would like to thank you as well. I don’t think most of us fully understand what you’re aiming for yet, but I believe this is something truly amazing. And it’s rather surprising as well.”
“I’m just glad, and a little surprised, that everyone seems to have accepted it so readily.”
“Yes. With this, we’ll be able to cook even better, and make our families even happier. I’m so incredibly grateful that Ai Fa found you a year ago on this day,” Saris Ran Fou said with a bright smile. “But of course, I won’t do anything to interrupt your dinner, so don’t worry. I hope that you will enjoy your time together with Ai Fa to the fullest.”
“O-Okay. Thanks for being so considerate.”
“And no matter what sort of food she serves you, please don’t get angry or upset, okay? She’s never received cooking lessons from you, after all.”
“Of course. No matter what sort of food it is, if Ai Fa made it for me, then that’s something incredibly precious in and of itself.”
Saying that was a little embarrassing for me, but since I was dealing with none other than Saris Ran Fou, I decided to express my true feelings rather than trying to hide anything.
Of course, there was still plenty of time left until dinnertime would arrive.
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