WE WENT TO A MEAT FESTIVAL
“Yaaaaaaawn.”
“How unbecoming, Flatorte. If you must yawn, then at least cover your mouth with your hand.”
Laika admonished Flatorte for her loud yawn during breakfast.
The yawn was certainly dramatic enough that I was almost worried she’d dislocated her jaw.
“What are you talking about? Yawning is natural. What I mean is that I, the great Flatorte, am not at fault here. I should be able to get all my yawning done at once.”
Flatorte always talked back whenever Laika criticized her, but that was a very Flatorte-esque response.
“Yet despite that, we still have a little thing called manners. And yours are awful.”
“It’s not like I’m using my Cold Breath with my yawn or anything. It shouldn’t be bothering you. Life’s so much harder when you let all the little things get to you. Life should be easygoing—that’s what peace looks like!”
I saw Laika glance in my direction. Her face read, What do you think, Lady Azusa?
“Hmm… It doesn’t really bother me… I think this is fine. I actually think you could stand to be a little more carefree sometimes, Laika.”
“Personally, I find this irresponsible lifestyle brings me much more stress, and then my health suffers…” Laika sighed.
“I see. I guess telling a serious person to suddenly just take things as they come is cruel in its own way.” After all, you’re still asking them to change their basic outlook on life.
“And it is strange to hear the word peace coming out of your mouth, Flatorte. Blue dragons want to fight all the time, do they not?”
“You’re probably right…”
When I went to visit her hometown, all they ever did was ask me to fight.
—Then Flatorte suddenly went pale, and her hands started shaking. And was her skin turning blue?
“Ooooh… Th-this is bad…”
“What is it? A sudden illness? Should we take you to the doctor?”
I couldn’t really imagine a dragon getting sick, but I bet they did feel under the weather sometimes. Flatorte, especially, struck me as someone who would eat stuff off the floor…
“I-it’s peaceful…”
What does that mean?
“It’s been so peaceful recently that my body craves battle…”
I had no idea her addiction to battle would give her withdrawal symptoms!
“Mistress, I need a spar… I want to go to Flatta and spar with all the humans there, one by one…”
“No, no! That’d kill all the villagers!”
“Oh, but I don’t have to fight. I want to see someone fighting someone else—someone evenly matched!”
“Evenly matched? Hmm…”
Those words didn’t really match this relaxing area.
Then there came a knock at the door.
I opened it, and there was a mail-carrying wyvern, meaning this matter was demon-related.
“You must be Azusa, Witch of the Highlands, yes? This is from Lady Beelzebub.”
The wyvern handed me a letter. I opened it right away. The first thing that caught my eye was a flyer.
“A bullfighting festival…? Minotaurs are the demons with bull faces, right?”
The other sheet of paper was a letter from Beelzebub. It basically invited us to come check out the bullfighting festival if we had free time.
“Please hold on a second, wyvern.”
I took a pad of paper and scrawled out the following:
To Beelzebub: Okay.
“Please give this to the minister of agriculture. Or you could send it to the ministry itself.”
The wyvern took the paper and flew off.
I didn’t pay any postage fees, but I guess Beelzebub would take care of the payment once she got it.
But the timing of the invitation was actually perfect.
I went over to Flatorte and showed her the flyer.
“This event should be pretty neat, Flatorte. You can eat some meat, too. Look at this!”
“Yesss! Now I can let off some steam!”
Flatorte, still gripping her knife and fork, shot up out of her chair. It was like a declaration of victory.
“Manners, Flatorte!” Laika was getting irritated again.
I was sure that Laika would enjoy it, too, so I hoped she would just be patient with Flatorte…
Looked like the food would be substantial, too.
And by the way, when I looked at the flyer again, I found a lot of weird little things.
Was bullfighting a part of minotaur culture or something?
And should minotaurs be serving beef dishes? Wasn’t that cannibalism…?
Well, it was totally natural for big fish to eat small fish, and big birds sometimes gobbled up little birds, so maybe it was the same. Humans didn’t understand those values. If it was fine with the minotaurs, then that was that.
I guess I’d ask Beelzebub when we went. She’d probably be showing us around anyway.
Afterward, another message came from Beelzebub. It basically said she would have Fatla come pick us up in her leviathan form.
That meant we’d be able to eat Vania’s cooking. Her food was exquisite, so that was another thing to look forward to on this trip.
But at about six in the evening on the day before we were supposed to leave—
—a shadow passed across the darkened sky, and that’s when Fatla and Vania finally arrived at the house.
One of them had probably been in her leviathan form, but I’m pretty sure they were one day early, right?
“My apologies; we wanted to be certain we would not be late, but as a result, we have come much too early. Would you allow us to stay?” Fatla politely bowed her head.
“Come on, I told you we could’ve left a little later! You’re too uptight, Sis~”
It was surprising to see Vania annoyed with her sister rather than the other way around.
These two sisters were on the extreme opposite ends of the serious-careless scale.
“Yeah, sure, you can stay…”
Now that they were here, I decided to ask the leviathan sisters about the bullfighting festival and the minotaurs.
“Is it safe for minotaurs to eat beef?”
Unlike elves and dwarves, minotaurs didn’t really live in human society, so I didn’t know much about their culture.
“A minotaur’s home-cooked meal always has beef,” Vania informed me, calling on her extensive culinary knowledge.
“I see… Don’t they feel like it’s cannibalism?”
That was my greatest concern.
“Hmm, I do occasionally hear of minotaurs who oppose it, but they also keep bulls as pets. And those pet bulls are the ones they enter in bullfighting events.”
“That doesn’t sit right with me, either…”
“Minotaurs from the west tend to eat the meat, and minotaurs from the east tend to keep them as pets.”
I see. I guess if the culture differed between areas, then of course they’d hold both a meat festival and a bullfighting competition.
“From what I learned in school as a student, it is apparently unknown if minotaurs and bulls are even related. It is possible the similarities are purely surface-level.” Fatla gave an academic supplement.
“I don’t think it would be an accidental resemblance… But when you wonder how the species came to be, there are a lot of mysteries…”
I wondered how the evolution of living things worked in a fantasy world.
On Earth, I think the first time minotaurs were mentioned was in Greek myth, but the east must have had something halfway between human and cow somewhere.
I didn’t know too much about it, but I knew about Gozu, or “ox head”—a guardian of hell whose name aptly described his physique.
But that wasn’t about this world, so I couldn’t look it up anyway.
“Mom, this demon encyclopedia says little is known about the minotaur. It seems no one has come to a conclusion about their origins yet.” Shalsha came in holding a thick book.
“I see. I didn’t know you had a book on the demons.”
“Beelzebub gave it to Shalsha. I read through it carefully.”
At least Beelzebub was helping with the girls’ education, too, instead of just being the aunt who spoiled them.
“Miss Azusa, though they are labeled as minotaurs, they are still normal people. We would most appreciate it if you relax and enjoy the festivities.”
“What Sis says. That, and I think the boss wants an excuse to invite you over.”
The leviathan sisters were on the same page here.
All the previous events we’d been to weren’t all that formal, and we got to treat them like a vacation. But there was one family member who was on an entirely different energy level.
“Bullfighting! I’ve always wanted to see it for myself! I wanna see their horns clash until I can’t take it anymore!”
Flatorte was as excited as an elementary school kid on the day before a field trip.
She had just been lamenting how peaceful it’d been, so this was perfect. We could watch bullfighting all day, and Flatorte wouldn’t get hurt, so it was perfectly safe, too.
“Miss Flatorte, you mustn’t expect too much from this. From a dragon’s perspective, a fight between bulls is of no importance. It’s practically child’s play.”
Fatla must have sensed incoming trouble, so she was trying to lower the bar…
This was definitely on a much lesser scale than a battle between dragons was.
“No need to worry! Even the littlest animals can fight tooth and nail in their own way! I’m happy enough with that!”
I guess bulls were among the “littlest animals” to a dragon…
But we had leviathans, supermassive creatures, right in front of us, so…all right, I guess.
The next day, the whole family hopped on Fatla and made our way to the town around Vanzeld Castle.
We were all used to riding on the leviathans now.
When Fatla landed at the leviathan landing zone near the castle town—aka the airport—Beelzebub was waiting for us.
“You made it. I figured you’d not seen a minotaur bullfighting festival, so I decided to invite you.”
“Thanks, Beelzebub. One of us is really looking forward to it, so it was perfect timing.”
Flatorte was practicing her punches and kicks, as if she were the one going to be fighting. Maybe that’s how she lets off steam.
Even though she was older than me, there was nothing big-sisterlike about her. She probably didn’t even think of herself as older, either.
“I really wanna know what kind of bulls they’re gonna show. The pitch-black ones are the strongest, right? No, the reddish ones are gonna be more violent, right? No, I bet there’s going to be a surprise, and a pure-white bull is gonna appear!”
“Oh, her… She may be a bit too excited for this. It is just a bull fight…”
It didn’t seem like Beelzebub could keep up with Flatorte’s excitement. But the way Beelzebub described this—that it’s just a bullfight—seemed kind of rude to the bullfighters. Maybe this wasn’t much more than side entertainment to the demons.
“We told her it wasn’t a big deal, boss, but she wouldn’t listen to us…”
“Lady Beelzebub, I believe the image she has in her head of bullfights was established long ago.”
The leviathans were defending their own innocence.
But still, I wondered why the demons were so fully intent on downplaying the bullfights. I was starting to feel bad for the bulls that were entering.
“Well, ’tis all well and good. The meat festival begins before the bullfighting. Why not have a meal there?”
We made our way to the coliseum.
Outside it were rows and rows of food stalls serving steak and skewers—there was probably every kind of meat dish there.
“Yes! This is fantastic! My blood is burning, and my appetite is growing!”
“Oh, this is delightful!”
Our two dragons were beyond excited.
“Laika, I’m going to start on the left side here. You start on the right.”
“Understood. Be careful not to end up carrying more than you can hold and dropping everything.”
The two went through each stall one by one on their respective sides and bought their food. They worked together at times like this and never any other time…
“They’re not even going to choose. They’re going to conquer every last dish here.”
Some people go for broke at food festivals; for them, this is standard procedure.
“You can purchase all that you like, too, Azusa,” Beelzebub urged me. We were full-blown guests today.
“You’re right. Okay, then I may as well get a steak.”
I went to the stall and placed my order, and the steak I received looked beautiful. It was also a half a kilogram…
“I can’t eat this much… Wait, aren’t stalls at food festivals like this supposed to give out just a little bit so you can walk around and eat…?”
“What? That is hardly a meal. Are you feeling ill?” Beelzebub genuinely asked me. I had underestimated the demons’ standards.
“Hey, everyone, would you like to have some?” I ended up sharing with Falfa and Shalsha.
“Ooh, thank you! I love steak! I can eat so much more!”
“Meat is amazing. It brings activity to the mind. A wise sage once said, If there is meat, one must eat.”
Did a sage really say that?
“Falfa, Shalsha, if either of you wants a more generous portion, I will buy as much as you like for you! Ask me for anything you want!”
“They’ll stuff themselves full! So don’t get any funny ideas, Beelzebub!”
I was trying to think of a way they could eat without leaving leftovers, but she was getting in the way. Nobody likes getting more assignments right when you think you’re done with your work.
“In the event they cannot finish, then simply toss it. Foolishness is another way of enjoying festivals.”
“I get the logic, but I’m not really down with teaching the girls to waste food. That is education, too.”
In any case, I could see they could eat their way through this. My daughters weren’t particularly big eaters, but I knew they’d be happy to have meat.
I felt a little bad since Sandra couldn’t have any, but—
“Hmph. Cows and humans that eat grasses are fated to be eaten by demons. How pitiful.”
—she was smiling dauntlessly, like she had just defeated her sworn enemy, so I guess we were all right. Apparently, she saw all herbivores as her enemy.
“Oh yeah, do you want some steak, Halkara?”
“Madam Teacher… Please help me eat…”
Halkara was holding a plate full of meat skewers, piled so high that it hid her face.
“Hey, Halkara! Do you even understand what moderation means?!”
“No, that’s not what’s happening! I don’t believe I can eat this on my own, either!”
Halkara was making an excuse, but I couldn’t see her face behind the skewers, so it looked like the skewers were talking.
“I entered a lottery for these. If you lost, you got one skewer; if you got fourth prize, you got two skewers—the number of skewers you could win at the stall was basically up to chance…”
There were places like that back in Japan, too. Almost all of them would give you just one if you lost.
“And I got the special prize.”
“Why is your luck so good?!”
“But I didn’t think I’d get one hundred…”
“That’s too many!”
That was enough to bury anyone.
“I was so happy the moment I won. But then the plate came out, and that was when the reality of the situation hit me. How am I going to eat all this? I thought. And the portion on each skewer is so big…”
“It really is demon-sized… Okay, let’s find some open seats where we can sit and eat…”
There were tables underneath a temporary tent near the food stalls. Just like you’d expect to see at a meat festival.
“Ooh! It’s so spicy! This would go great with a drink! Elves may be generally vegetarian, but we’ll make an exception for meat dishes that go well with a drink!”
Halkara downed some alcohol as she ate her skewers.
“Uh, let me just say…don’t get blackout drunk before we go to watch the bullfighting, okay?”
“No, one must get intoxicated at a big festival! I don’t make the rules~”
She knew what she was doing and was going to get drunk anyway!
“Okay, but if you get too drunk to walk, I reserve the right to just leave you.”
“Heh-heh, that’s all part of the fun.”
That was very charismatic of her, but if she drank enough to black out, then she wouldn’t remember anything she said.
Also, Falfa and Shalsha had been quiet this whole time, but that was because they were concentrating on eating the meat.
“Hom, hom…”
“Num, num…”
That tasty, huh? It was almost like I wasn’t feeding them enough at home…
Then it seemed as though the dragons had finished their mission of splitting up and ordering enough for two from every stall; now they were devouring their food at an empty table. Were they competitive eaters or something?
Rosalie sat alongside the two. She couldn’t eat, so maybe she was observing the dragons’ way of life.
“This event is quite well attended. What a relief.”
Beelzebub was having something that looked like barbecue and was drinking milk. I’ve never thought those two would go well together, but they are both from cows, I guess. There were stalls selling milk, too.
The leviathan sisters also sat beside her, concentrating on their beef.
Fatla struck me as someone who would have a small appetite, but that wasn’t the case at all. A demon’s appetite was a formidable thing.
“I guess the reason you invited us, Beelzebub, is because the Ministry of Agriculture was involved, right?”
There had been a list of supporting organizations on a sign, and I saw the Ministry of Agriculture on there. This event certainly was relevant to the agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry.
“Indeed, that is part of it. ’Twas originally just the bullfighting, but attendance has been falling year after year. That was where the ministry came in, and we added a meat festival alongside it.”
“Bullfighting really isn’t that popular, is it…? It sounds like it’d be wild and exciting, though…”
That said, there were plenty of events, even ones that seemed they should be popular, that lost attendance year after year, so maybe bullfighting just got unlucky.
“Well, we can support events that have been on the decline for a while now without taking much responsibility for them, which is something we are grateful for. That means we can experiment,” Fatla said as she wiped her mouth.
“Cutting right to the point… But I get how you feel.”
“Changing the bullfighting event is not easy, considering the tradition behind it~ That is why we decided to add a portion where we eat meat. We gathered a lot of well-known meat restaurants run by minotaurs. My judgments were correct.” Vania was proud of herself. When it came to food, her skills were the real deal.
“This is my first time seeing all this, but I think it’s going well. You’re doing a great job, Ministry of Agriculture.” I praised them with a smile, although the three of them didn’t seem all that happy about it.
But not everything was going perfectly.
Halkara had stopped eating. “My stomach suddenly told me, I’m finished; don’t eat any more…”
Told you so!
“I ate it all so rapidly, my stomach did not alert me until it was far too late. To think I would fall victim to a trap like this… Urp…”
“It’s not a conspiracy. This is one hundred percent your fault, Halkara.”
She was like someone who gave up on an eating contest partway through. She was a pharmacist—why didn’t she take care of herself? But then again, I got the impression that a lot of doctors were unhealthy.
“There’s still plenty of time. Fawn over the little cows, at least. Heh-heh-heh, even the herbivores are fated to be eaten.”
Sandra was in a good mood today—or a sadistic mood, rather. Did she really hate cows and bulls that much?
The topic of Halkara aside—
“I’ve gotten to see a lot of minotaurs here. They sure are a diverse bunch.”
Some of the minotaurs looked like the fantasy and mythological illustrations I saw back when I lived in Japan, where their heads were entirely that of a bull, and some just had bull horns and tails, but practically human faces.
And there were some minotaurs who were kind of in-between.
“That is because while some demons live in insular communities, others live in towns and mix with other species. Some have less pronounced minotaur features, while others have more.”
“Now that I think about it, demons really are diverse… Well done keeping it so peaceful.”
As someone who knew how messy Earth was, I was a little embarrassed.
But Vania was shaking her head.
Fatla finished chewing and swallowing the meat, then spoke up.
“It is not like that at all. There have been a number of fights in the past. That hasn’t changed, even when the current demon king assumed power.”
“Oh, I see… It doesn’t feel like that at all to me, though…”
“We have faced our own set of hardships as well. It is different with each nation. There have been problems within the Ministry of Agriculture as well…”
Beelzebub gazed off into the distance. She must be thinking profoundly on some memories.
“Oh, how many times have I had to go and apologize for Vania’s mistakes…?”
“Hey! Boss! It’s a little weird to bring that up now!”
Vania was the problem?!
“Twelve times for the major incidents. If we include the smaller incidents, the total is fifty-three times.”
“Please don’t just count everything, Sis! I’m telling you, it wasn’t that much! I only remember eight big mistakes!”
That was still a lot, though, wasn’t it? But I guess for demons, who worked for a very long time, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.
Laika, Flatorte, and Rosalie then came back.
Laika’s and Flatorte’s skin was glistening.
“We ate everything! Gosh, meat really does fill you with energy, doesn’t it? I feel ready for all my training in the days to come!”
“All the stalls hit the hat trick—delicious, fast, and cheap! It was fantastic! None of them were bad!”
“Of course they were good, Flatorte; they’re food stalls.”
“No, no, there are a lot of places where that’s not a given. I say the minotaurs are doing good work!”
Rosalie whispered in my ear, “Big Sis, I think the dragons have gotten a little closer now.”
Bonded through meat…
Back when I was a corporate drone, we used to talk about people who communicated best when they were drunk. I guess that could be the same for them, but with meat. Dragons understood one another through meat.
I doubted there were many people who wanted to conquer all the stalls at a meat festival, so of course their friendship would develop as they went around by themselves.
“A wise man once said, A close friendship is forged around the meal pot.”
This wise man Shalsha kept talking about today didn’t seem to think about very lofty things.
“Mommy, the bullfighting is starting soon~” Falfa said, eyeing the crowd.
She was right. People were starting to head into the coliseum.
“Bulls are gonna wham other bulls! Falfa is excited~!”
I was pretty sure things were going to be a little harsher than just wham, but Falfa’s expression was adorable. Maybe I could just rename bullfighting into bull wham.
“Those people will be sitting in the general seating. We will be in reserved seats, so there is no reason to rush,” Beelzebub explained.
“That’s the VIP treatment. We’ve gotten our fill of the meat, so let’s get moving. We shouldn’t wait so long that we end up rushing.”
I wanted to leave plenty of time between events. If you kept cutting out all your extra time, you might suddenly die one day, after all…
“Shall we go in, then? I personally would rather wait until the second half, though.”
“Indeed. The bar of expectations has been raised so high, I believe a betrayal of those expectations may be a serious letdown. You may treat the bullfighting as a cute extra to the meat festival.”
Did Beelzebub and Fatla hate bullfighting for some reason…?
“It is just bullfighting, after all. Please feel free to fall asleep if you get bored. At least we’ll be sitting in the sun.” Even Vania expressed her disapproval.
We made our way inside as the three demons mercilessly insulted the sport we’d come to watch.
Meanwhile, Halkara still hadn’t finished her mountain of meat skewers.
“Um… I’ll be bringing this with me, so everyone please feel free to snack on them…”
The skewers themselves were delicious, so I would take bites here and there.
When I saw that Halkara’s hundred skewers had barely been chipped away, I remembered once again that moderation was important for everything.
In the worst case, Laika and Flatorte could easily finish them for us.
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