Chapter 1: The Rainy Season Has Arrived

1

The rainy season had arrived in Genos.

Apparently, the southern portion of the vast territory held by the Western Kingdom of Selva where the town was located saw an especially striking change in climate. During this season, it was only sunny out for extremely brief periods of time, with most of each day filled with damp and dreary rainfall. Normally, rain in Genos came hard in brief bursts, like a squall, but now the pattern was the exact opposite of that.

Moreover, the average temperature had dropped quite a bit. During the rest of the year, the climate in Genos felt similar to early summer in Japan, but now it had suddenly dropped to the sort of chill I would have expected from late autumn.

As a result, I ended up having to get some new clothes for the rainy season, since this was my first one. Before the weather had started to change, I followed the advice everyone I worked with in the post town gave me and bought a long-sleeved coat and undershirt. Both were made from sturdy cotton, and they closed in the front like a dress shirt. The buttons were made of nuts, which you could hold in place with string. The coats were sold with all sorts of different designs, but everyone recommended I purchase one with a Sym-style geometrical pattern sewn into it.

As for pants, my current ones covered me down to the middle of my shins, and if they were any longer, they'd get muddy too easily, so I did not switch those out for a different style. However, I did buy new shoes. My old shoes had been made in Japan, brought along from my old world, and a lot of folks advised me that they'd get wet with rain and coated in mud and be hard to clean, so I finally went ahead and purchased the same sort of leather footwear everyone else used. They were essentially sandals, so they exposed quite a bit of skin. It was a given that your feet would end up getting dirty, wearing them. During the rainy season, the custom at the forest's edge was to leave a water jug by the front door so you could clean your feet before going inside the house.

I had been really stubborn about only wearing my original shoes out of fear of blisters and the like, but surprisingly, the sandals sold in Genos didn't feel half bad. They had leather straps that wrapped around your ankle, which made them nice and stable, and there was bark stretched out over their soles, so they were durable too. They didn't exactly have anything in the way of cushioning, but we used wagons whenever we had to move significant distances, so there didn't seem to be any need to worry about the burden on my legs.

With the purchase of this new attire and footwear for the rainy season, I had finally replaced all of the clothing I had been wearing when I arrived here. Considering that I had been wearing the same clothes for nine months straight, though, it was no surprise that my T-shirt and shoes were showing significant wear, so it was high time for a change anyway.

That just left the white towel I wrapped around my head, which was actually the most difficult thing to replace, in a way. There were a fair number of types of cloth and other fabric sold in the post town, but many of them were stiff and didn't feel good to the touch, and none of them felt particularly good wrapped around my head.

I ended up having to consult with Yang-a chef from the castle town I knew-and just two days later, an item was delivered to me that was pretty much ideal for my purposes. It wasn't as fluffy as my old towel, but the pure white woolen material was plenty thick and soft. Apparently, it was used to make some kinds of sheets in the castle town, and since the piece sent to me was of that size, I cut it up and made around ten replacements for my white towel.

With that, I had completely changed my outfit. Once the rainy season ended, I would need to look for casual wear to replace my T-shirt, and I was already wondering if something could be fashioned from the same white fabric as my new head towels.

As for my old clothes, I couldn't bring myself to simply toss them now that they had served their purpose, so I carefully stored them away alongside my chef's uniform with the Tsurumi Restaurant logo on it. As for the underwear and socks I had once used, I gave them a thorough wash and then stowed them in the uniform's pockets. Even if I was never going to be able to return home... No, because I was never going to be able to, they were precious mementos to me.

There was also one more thing the Fa house needed to purchase: bedding. I picked some of that up as well, based on Ai Fa's advice.

"Nights are chilly during the rainy season, so you need a heavy sheet to sleep under. Unfortunately, I threw out the ones my family and I used two years ago, since they were getting old."

"Then what did you do for the last rainy season?"

"I have my hunter's cloak, so I had no issues."

And so, I went ahead and purchased the sheets I had been thinking of grabbing for a while now. Naturally, I got enough for Ai Fa as well. Considering the size of the Fa house's main hall, we wouldn't have to worry about them getting in the way as long as we made sure to fold them daily.

With that, our preparations for the rainy season were complete. We had stocked up on firewood starting the previous month, and if we ran short, we could still purchase charcoal. There was, of course, a lot more that needed to be considered, but we had at least taken care of everything we could do in advance.

As the end of the gold month approached, the temperature slowly crept downward. Then one morning, it started raining and didn't let up all day. The rainy season officially arrived on the fourth of the brown month, eight days after the dance party held by the house of Daleim.

On that day, we were working in the post town as always. However, the flow of customers had clearly dropped off. In fact, the number of passersby walking down the street in general had diminished significantly. There were a lot of inconveniences inherent to this season, and it seemed not many travelers cared to go out of their way to visit the southeastern reaches of Selva.

The number of stalls along the side of the road had also been cut by about half. Those selling snacks in particular needed to prepare dining spaces with some kind of covering to do business, so only those who were equipped to do so continued to operate.

The sky was full of gray clouds, and the townscape was a hazy white from the fine rain, almost like mist. The rainwater collecting on the rooftops came streaming down, and the sound of splashing footsteps along the street felt somehow melancholy. Normally, the post town was illuminated by brilliant sunlight, so now it was almost like we were in a completely different city. I had my new coat on, and the pot in front of me was over a flame, so I wasn't feeling cold in the least, but surrounded by the sound of light rain I had grown unaccustomed to, staring out at the blurry sight of the street, I couldn't help but get a sense of emptiness from the scene in front of us.

This is definitely what they call an offseason.

The amount of fresh meat and giba meals the inns were ordering had decreased to about thirty percent of the norm during this period, and for our stalls, we reduced the number of meals we were preparing from eight hundred down to four hundred. Our current aim was to observe and try to figure out how much food we needed to make to serve the citizens of Genos and the few travelers still passing by.

However, we didn't cut back on the number of employees we were bringing to town. The Gaaz and Ratsu had put in a request to swap out their people for others from related clans, though, so they were currently in training. Normally, we would have seven employees plus trainees, but we currently had seven in total. This way, we didn't have to increase our personnel expenses, unlike when we trained people during a busy period.

Our new employees came from the Matua, a clan under the Gaaz, and the Meem, a clan under the Ratsu. And as for the old hands joining them, we had me, Toor Deen, Yun Sudra, and Yamiru Lea, as well as Fei Beim, who joined us on a rotation. I was going to have the Matua and Meem women working consecutive days in order to get them accustomed to the job, while the Beim, Dagora, and Ravitz women swapped out every three days.

As today was their first day, I took on the Matua girl myself and entrusted the Meem woman to Toor Deen. Then Fei Beim and Yamiru Lea were paired up, leaving Yun Sudra in charge of the restaurant space. If Toor Deen or I were needed elsewhere, we could simply call for Fei Beim to take our places.

"It didn't occur to me that your first day of training would coincide with the start of the rainy season. Are things going to be okay back home?" I called out.

"Yes," the Matua girl replied with an energetic nod. "This season is inconvenient in all kinds of ways, but it happens every year, so it's nothing we can't handle. The only real change we need to worry about right now is how much longer it'll take to dry out our poitan than before."

Right, it took about an hour of direct sunlight to dry out boiled-down poitan. The sun being hidden behind the clouds for so much of the day was sure to be a significant issue going forward.

"Still, that's a small price to pay for the sake of delicious food. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to...