Chapter 1: Unfulfilled Feelings

1

The popular consensus in Genos was that the rainy season had fully come to an end on the third day of the vermilion month. It had officially started back on the fourth of the brown month, so it had lasted for roughly two months.

A few days prior, the sky had started showing itself more and more as the amount of rain tapered off and the temperature rose. By the third day of the month, the skies had been clear from dawn till dusk, and it had gotten hot enough that you couldn't wear long-sleeved coats any longer, so people had marked that as the proper end of the rainy season.

Of course, that didn't mean the post town bounced right back to its usual hustle and bustle. The people who were visiting from Sym, Jagar, and various far-off towns would probably be hitting the road again soon. The hastier folks might have taken their totos and left already, but I figured it would take a little time for the rest to depart.

However, the residents of Genos were now free to head outside as they pleased. That alone was enough to make the roads throughout the post town feel so much more lively. On top of that, travelers and merchants started pouring in from nearby towns all at once, having been eagerly awaiting the end of the rainy season. As a result, the sales at our stalls were rising day by day.

We would be able to use tino, tarapa, and pula again roughly half a month from now. Until then, we would be sticking with the rainy season vegetables. Not that it mattered all that much. Our new dishes, the traip cream stew foremost among them, were once again earning loads of praise from our customers.

This wasn't directly related to the rainy season, but there was one other thing worth bringing up: the brick oven we had ordered from Mikel was finally complete, and by sheer coincidence, we got the news about that on the third of the vermilion month as well.

"Whoa, this is really well made!" I said in admiration, having just arrived at the Ruu settlement for a visit after work. The oven had been built next to the kitchen of the house where Myme and Mikel were staying, with a leather canopy over it that had been set up first. Once the covering had been erected, it had taken several more days to construct the brickwork structure.

The oven was fairly large-around two meters wide and a meter tall and deep-so it could be used to bake a huge amount of poitan at once. The sides and top were built with a thick layer of bricks to prevent heat from escaping.

The bricks had been bought from town, while the clay used to join them had been collected from the forest's edge. The people of the forest's edge already used that kind of clay to plug gaps in stone stoves, so its durability was well established. There was a metal plate over the mouth of the oven, serving as a door. That part couldn't be made with bricks and clay alone, after all. It was around a centimeter thick and slid over to the side. A slight depression had been carved into the bricks so the door would fit just right, and the plate had metal rings attached to it to allow it to be mounted on hooks.

"It's pretty excessive if you're only going to be using it for baking fuwano and poitan, but it can contain residual heat, so at least you'll be able to cut down on the amount of firewood you need," Mikel said with a sour look on his face.

Mia Lea Ruu was also present. "I'm glad to hear that," she replied with a smile. Mikel still couldn't move one of his legs properly, so the Ruu women were the ones who had actually assembled the oven. "Reina and the others have had quite a lot of trouble preparing the amount of fuwano and poitan they need for their business. If we can build more of these at the other houses, it should make their jobs a whole lot easier."

"That's right. And there are some dishes we can only make with a brick oven too," I noted.

A brick oven could cook food at a much higher temperature than a stone stove was capable of. It could also cook food through both thermal conduction and direct infrared heating, so we would be able to use it to improve the cooking process for all kinds of broiled dishes, or dishes that involved baking things in covered pans.

"So, you want to teach the northerners living in the Turan lands how to make these too, right?" Mikel asked, shooting me an annoyed glare.

"Yes. We taught them how to make steamed fuwano manju, but with the end of the rainy season, poitan supplies will go back to normal, so they're going to be getting that instead once again. But it's difficult to knead water into poitan and have it bind together in a way that would let you make steamed manju with it, right? I'd feel bad for them if that meant they had to go back to eating poitan soup, so I'd really like to teach them how to make brick ovens."

"Have you asked the nobles about that?"

"No, I haven't even brought it up with the leading clan heads yet. After all, they did warn us not to involve ourselves with the northerners too much."

But the northerners were only given metal pots to cook with. It would take far too long to cook poitan one by one under those conditions. If they had a brick oven, that problem would instantly vanish.

"But as you can see, these things need to have a metal door, and those are not cheap, even if the rest of the oven is," Mikel said.

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure it would be able to pay for itself in the long run. It would mean a lot less effort needed to gather firewood or money to buy charcoal, after all."

"Except that they wouldn't need any extra firewood or charcoal in the first place if they were to go back to eating poitan soup like before."

"Right. But delicious food motivates them to work harder, which will increase Genos's profits. The nobles have already accepted that reasoning as valid."

Since Mikel-who was currently sitting on a wooden box so as not to strain his leg-was under the Ruu clan's care, he was of course already aware of that "Hmph. That's the logic you used to get permission to give cooking lessons to the northerners, right? Didn't the nobles warn you not to involve yourselves with the northerners beyond that?"

"Y-Yes, that's right."

"So then, it sounds like you're planning to go through a huge hassle just to get chewed out again at the end. That whole thing about carving a path through the forest's edge is already over and done with, so there's no sense in you going out on a limb to try to keep helping them at this point."

"Yeah, I know. I'm fully prepared to get dismissed out of hand as soon as I bring this up."

Mikel's annoyed gaze then shifted over to Mia Lea Ruu. "How do you think the leading clan heads will react to this idea?"

"Hmm. It's hard to say. The nobles told us in very clear terms that we shouldn't involve ourselves with the northerners, and one of the reasons they gave was that it could easily lead to our people finding themselves in a worsening position, so the leading clan heads may very well decide that it's best to follow the nobles' instructions on this matter."

"But didn't they say they needed to put some more thought into how we should interact with the nobles of Genos and the northerners? So they might not reject the idea outright."

Mia Lea Ruu smiled as if attempting to placate me. "But the nobles said to leave this matter to them, did they not? And since they did tell us that so explicitly, it's pretty clear that we would be butting into their business if we were to interject at this point."

"B-But the nobles don't know how to make brick ovens...so our knowledge could be beneficial to them..." I desperately objected, but I was steadily losing confidence. It was a fact that Melfried and the others had warned us not to get involved with the northerners any further, so perhaps it would be best to pay attention to that warning.

"What if I propose it to the nobles?" Mikel suddenly suggested.

Mia Lea Ruu, Myme, and I all went wide-eyed and said, "Huh?"

"I'm a resident of the Turan lands, not a person of the forest's edge, so it wouldn't be all that strange for me to make a proposal to the nobles about the northerners."

"You want to go directly to them about the brick ovens?"

"Of course. The nobles accepted the idea that better food makes the northerners work harder, right? I can just tell them that I'll teach their slaves how to make ovens in exchange for payment," Mikel stated, the same annoyed look on his face. "I'm a poor man, no doubt about it, and there's nothing strange about a poor man racking his brain to think up a way to earn some money. Honestly, it's not like I'd be doing it out of pity for the northerners or anything, so even if those observers from the capital come sniffing around, I shouldn't be in any danger."

The observers he had referred to were the actual reason that Melfried and the other nobles were concerned about our actions. There was apparently some chance that they'd notice what we were doing and take issue with what they would see as a bunch of frontier nobles giving northerners suspiciously preferential treatment.

"Nobles are always searching for ways to advance their interests, so if they think I'm working for my own benefit, they won't look any deeper into it,"...