Chapter 21.14

Extra 2.2

Depending on the type of potatoes used the bulfch could maintain its high initial temperature for prolonged periods of time, securing it a comfortable spot as one of the absolute best winter warmer foods.

「Bulfch’s faine but it ain’t gonna be feedin’ all these hungry mouths all by itself.」

「How does terrona udon sound?」

「Ya might just be onto somethin’. Lemme give it a shot.」

Terrona made with soy sauce enriched fish fumet sounded like it should do the trick. Haruna, being a hardline food traditionalist, would have likely disapproved of dumping udon in just any old stew that’s not miso, but Hiroshi believed that having their guests gradually get to know all the foreign tastes, instead of bombarding them with all at once, was more important than adhering to tradition for the sake of it.

It’s not like he intended on commiting a sacrilegious act or anything of the sort either, udon, at the end of the day, was just folded flour, so it should, by all means, go well with consommé, which is what’s used in most variations of terrona.

「Time to get crackin’ on that udon.」

「Is there anything I can help out with?」

「Ya could prepare the shulp’s, we got plenty from our outin’ two days ago, they strangled the little buggers right in front of our eyes they did.」

「Understood.」

Layla, in accordance to Hiroshi’s request, began delicately taking apart the shulps. Within its intestines laid dormant a particularly nasty kind of parasite, one that was highly heat resistant, so any notions of using them as offals were out of the question, they had to be removed. They could potentially be used for potions, amplification consumables and the like but the process was immensely tedious and as materials they were much too high rank to handle for anyone besides Mio, who was too high a rank to gain any meaningful experience from it.

That being said, disposing of perfectly good materials would have been a complete waste, so they decided on turning it into fertilizer, after having done away with the parasites first, of course. Considering their circumstances there was no such thing as too much fertilizer.

「Are we having terrona?」

「Terrona udon and Bulfch ta be exact.」

「I see you’re experimenting with your food, that’s what I like to see!」

Haruna, who had finished taking a bath and putting on an apron, was in high spirits. Due to her contributions to the terrona udon cause, the dish managed to become something much greater, something much more than just udon dumped in terrona – it developed a unique identity of its own, although all Haruna did was really just that, but we don’t talk about that here.

「What’s that over there?」

Inquired Aearis upon getting dragged to the so called ‘jolly get-together’ room where, after abiding by the no shoe rule, she spotted a peculiar table like thing.

「That’s a kotatsu – one of the ways we keep warm back home.」

「What’s a kotatsu?」

「Come on over and see for yourself.」

Aearis, in accordance to Haruna’s beckoning, sat down beside her, gently lifted up the blanket and threw her legs underneath the table. Tatsuya followed right after, sitting down on the other side of the table.

「…It’s warm down here.」

「Told you.」

「Wouldn’t this close proximity be highly uncomfortable for Hiroshi?」

「He’s got a separate one all for himself, all’s good.」

She said as she pointed towards the laughably small kotatsu unassumingly sitting in the corner of the room.

「That sounds… really sad.」

「There’s not much we can do about that, it’s for his own good.」

Aearis, unable to muster up a proper response with the unfortunate set of circumstances that led up to this still ingrained deep in her mind, made a strained grin. She had already learned by that point not to take every one of Hiroshi’s incidents to heart, both for her and for his sake.

「Where did everyone else go?」

「Teres and Nora are busy being taught by Hiro and Mio. Leyla’s on dish duty while Fum and Lime are catching some z’s right about now. A bit of studying would do those two good but can’t be asking too much from a bunch of kids.」

「Makoto’s out drinking, she should be back any time soon.」

Aearis slowly nodded as she heard out what the rest of the group was up to at the moment. She found it a tad bit unfortunate how Fum and Lime, who she befriended during dinner, weren’t around for the occasion but she herself would hit the hay at around the same time when she was their age, so she kept that tiny discontent to herself.

Other than that she found it puzzling how Haruna had been lazing around instead of taking the lecture alongside Teres and Nora, so she went ahead and asked. Apparently she had already mastered all there was to learn from that particular day’s lecture, so forcing her to attend either way would have been a waste of everyone’s time. Haruna was by no means amongst the most distinguished crafters, in fact by all means she was still very much a rookie, but by this country’s standards her capabilities were well above the median average.

「This ‘kotatsu’ thing is really comfy.」

「Try not to doze off by accident or you might catch a cold.」

「I’ll try my best…」

Aearis, being too enraptured by the kotatsu, replied in a generic manner under the assumption that she was being warned about something while feeling the floor underneath her cushion.

「Is this floor made of straw?」

「That’s right. This type of flooring is known as tatami back in our place.」

「We’d be nodding off on these in summertime.」

「That sounds wondrous.」

Aearis got all starry eyed over the hypothetical situation.

「Isn’t it crazy how he managed to replicate everything down to the fine details, even the tatami?」

「What’s more crazy is how he managed to get his hands on soft rush straw.」

「I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he just made one up on the spot with his alchemy.」

Aearis and Haruna grinned in agreement. Considering Hiroshi’s track record it wouldn’t have been the tiniest bit surprising if he was to pull something of the sort.

Reality, however, proved to be much more mundane than what they had imagined. Alchemy didn’t have to get involved since there were plenty of substitutes to go around due to the soil improvement process. Reality should be given a break every once in a while, if there were nothing but supernatural feats being pulled on a daily basis it would get repetitive, occasionally procuring materials the good old fashioned way is in order.

「I wouldn’t mind having a tiny space like this in my room…」

「Wouldn’t that be quite the tall task considering it’s Farlane castle we’re talking about?」

「I don’t think it’d even match aesthetics wise to begin with.」

The two dragged her right back to reality. Under normal circumstances this would have been devastating for a head in the clouds girl like her but she didn’t have her hopes up from the very beginning, so it wasn’t too much of a shocker.

「How does modelling a new royal villa after this design sound?」

「Isn’t your imperial treasury almost dried up?」

「It isn’t actually, we’ve managed to get a quick temporary influx of capital through hefty corruption fines and asset seizures large enough to fully support the castle’s renovations and soil improvements and then some.」

「…Shouldn’t you be using those funds for like, I don’t know, the people’s sake?」

Aearis pretended not to be listening by supposedly being too preoccupied with checking out what laid under the enigmatic kotatsu. As she’s doing this a question popped into her mind.

「Are you going to be able to keep afloat now that your labor costs skyrocketed after you freshly hired a whole three working age adults?」

「We’ve got a stable source of income, don’t you worry about us.」

「Our disciples have managed to master the art of the curry powder recently, that’s rolling in a fair amount of dough.」

「You’re positive?」

「I’m positive.」

Most of Farlane’s core cuisine was either prepared by cooking or boiling, so curry powder was a smash hit with the people, as was evident by how it sold out in a jiffy. They had the means to mass produce it to some extent as well, making it relatively affordable for even some of the upper middle class folk, which was one of the biggest factors that made it as popular as it was. They hadn’t developed the technology far enough to mass produce it cheaply enough to compete in the food stall market, however.

A vast majority of the takers were, unsurprisingly, chefs with, surprisingly enough, adventurers trailing in second. There was a reason behind this – just by sprinkling some of it on any old food they happened to gather around the campsite they could make it much more palpable. For the same exact reason it was also popular with people whose job requires frequent, long-distance travel between cities where staying out in the wild was unavoidable.

Since the public works were coming to an end they decided to collectively participate in that for the moment, but for the most part rookies participated in the slum soil improvement efforts in three day rotations. One or two of them would be assigned to public works while the remainder gathered and worked with materials. They were already at the point where everyone could perfectly handle curry powder and unclassified potions at about a fifty percent success rate, but they were getting there slowly but surely.

「From what I hear Lime’s the most active one in curry powder making.」

「Her measuring abilities are off the charts, not to the extent of Hiroshi or Mio by any means but enough to where she can get insane amounts of work done with incredible efficiency.」

「While Teres and Nora are responsible for evenly mixing the components.」

Lime, overjoyed that she could be of some assistance to the group, distinguished herself with her sharp and quick memory. She had yet to mismeasure anything despite being given the amounts verbally. Under normal circumstances they’d just use memos to provide the amounts but Lime’s reading and writing abilities were not yet developed enough to do it the easy way.

「Everything seems to be in order, doesn’t it?」

「Almost worryingly so.」

「By the time we set off they should be able to handle unclassified potion and various other, non-curry powder, spices just fine.」

「I see.」

Aearis felt an odd mixture of both joy and emptiness going through her upon seeing just how fulfilled everyone was with their work at Azuma’s workshop.

「Don’t think about it too much, there are still a whole two months before we leave the town.」

「A mere two months.」

「Time flies like an arrow, eh?」

Aearis found herself unable to fully contain the stifling emotions that only grew stronger as the day of parting ways grew closer and closer.

「Eru, fancy seein’ ya up this late.」

Hiroshi, who had just finished up with his lecture and was carrying a mandarin box in hand, let out a strained laugh upon catching whiff of Aearis’ presence. Mio, who came in about thirty seconds after, sat down in front of Haruna without uttering a single word.

「There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.」

「We’ve still got tomorrow, and the day after, what’s the big hubbub?」

「It’s not like we have all the time in the world here.」

「Fair ‘enuff.」

Hiroshi nodded in agreement as he took out a mandarin and flung it in the basket.

「No kotatsu chill be complete without one a these.」

「Preach it.」

Haruna enthusiastically agreed with Hiroshi’s sentiment while accurately sniping a mandarin within arm’s reach. Farlane was full to the brim with all kinds of citrus fruit varieties, including the sweet, hand sized, easily peelable and perfectly edible skin variety found all throughout the year in Japan.

「I couldn’t agree more…」

Grumbled Mio as she worked her way through the peel of a mikan, which had seemingly magically appeared in her hand out of nowhere. The last time she went through this particular blend of experiences was a few years back. Ever since they got here they’ve been able to relive much of other, similarly distant, memories, which was an equal mix of joyous and mixed feelings all at the same time.

「Why don’t you come in here, with all of us?」

Tatsuya teased Hiroshi who waddled over to the ‘boyz only’ teeny-tiny kotatsu sitting depressingly in the corner of the room with an equally as smallish basket housing a nominal amount of mandarins. All of these elements merged together masterfully to depict as dreary a sight as humanly imaginable.

「Ya know perfectly well that ain’t happenin’.」

「Caught red-handed.」

Said Tatsuya as he picked up two mandarins and moved over to Hiroshi’s kotatsu.

「So, where are they?」

「They be doin’ cleanup work, should be back any second now I wager.」

In a real ‘speak of the devil’ moment the three’s voices could be heard from around the entrance, all of which sounded confused at the sight of this irregularity of a room.

「This here be a shoe free zone, take ’em off and then come in.」

「O-okay.」

「Understood.」

Teres and Nora cautiously made their way into the room. Layla, on the other hand, was completely calm and collected through and through.

「Come on over to our kotatsu, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.」

「Kotatsu? You mean this table over here?」

「Yup.」

Briskly replied Haruna while pointing at some open spots. The three lifted up the blanket and threw their legs under the table, just as how Haruna had been seated. They felt a tad bit queasy about sitting at the same table as Aearis but she wasn’t bringing up social status nor was she criticizing their speech quirks, so they just went ahead and did it.

「T-this thing is no good, I can feel it…」

Nora was the first to take notice of the kotatsu’s perilous nature.

「There’s no escape once one enters this… thing, I know it.」

「It’s really warm down there, isn’t it?」

Nora and Teres laid down their thoughts as their arms unconsciously reached for the mandarins.

「Oh right, there’s something we need to go over.」

Proclaimed Haruna while peeling her mandarin. All eyes were on her.

「How do you all feel about some New Year’s Eve soba?」

「Now that ya mention it, it’s around that time of year ain’t it.」

Hiroshi responded. He wasn’t much for adhering to traditions just for the sake of it but in this case it would have added greatly to the hyper-Japanese mood they had going on at the moment.