Cooking with Wild Game: Volume 30 (eBook)

EDA (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-3458-8 (ISBN)

Infos

A full year has finally passed since Asuta first arrived at the forest's edge, and in that time, he's brought a great deal of change to Genos as a whole.
Asuta's second year in this world certainly doesn't look like it's going to be any less eventful than the first. For starters, a whole lot of visitors are suddenly arriving in Genos. Some are friendly and familiar faces from Asuta's past that he's very glad to see again, but the others are a full two hundred soldiers from the capital, accompanying a group of nobles who seem intent on investigating the events of the past year.
Will Asuta be able to overcome this new ordeal safely? Or will these newcomers set their eyes on him and stir up a whole new sort of trouble?
See all this and more in the exciting thirtieth volume of Cooking with Wild Game!

Textauszug

Chapter 1: The Silver Lions

1

That morning, Ai Fa was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. For some reason, she was sitting by my pillow and seemed to have been staring at my face as I slept, which really threw me for a loop.

“H-Hey, good morning, Ai Fa. What are you doing there, exactly?”

“Hmm? I am not doing anything in particular. I finished getting dressed, so I was simply looking at your face,” Ai Fa replied with her usual commanding expression, but there was a gentle light shining in her blue eyes. Ever since that day—my birthday back on the twenty-fourth of the yellow month—I had seen that look in her eyes quite often.

Back on that night, we had exchanged a promise: If the day ever came when the roadblocks stopping us from getting married to each other were cleared away, then we would.

I had promised to wait for Ai Fa until she was prepared for that, and Ai Fa had sworn to love me and me alone from here on out. She had said the words with a striking smile as a single tear rolled down her cheek. And when I remembered the warmth I felt when I touched that cheek and her pinky finger, I started getting emotional all over again.

Looking at my face now, Ai Fa once again broke out in a smile. “I was starting to think that if you did not get up soon, perhaps I should pull your hair. But it looks like you avoided that pain this morning, Asuta.”

“I-I see. I guess that’s down to the forest’s guidance too.”

“Do not invoke the mother forest so lightly, you fool,” Ai Fa chided me, but her voice sounded gentle and kind.

At any rate, I sat up on my bedding and stared at my clan head straight on. She was about the same height as me, so our eyes met each other on an even level whether we were standing or sitting. She looked just as beautiful, gallant, and charming as always today.

The fact that someone as wonderful as her had sworn to love me and me alone... I could feel the joy filling me up inside at the very thought.

“Three days ago...”

“Huh?”

“Three days ago, when we saw the Sudra babies...they were so adorable that I could hardly believe it.”

Three days back, Li Sudra had finally gone into labor. It had come more than half a month early, and she had given birth to twins, which was rare at the forest’s edge. Still, the babies had cried healthily, so it didn’t seem like there would be any issues.

“That was my first time seeing newborns,” Ai Fa noted. “Had you ever seen one before then?”

“No, that was a first for me too.”

“I see. Well, not having any experience with babies, I have nothing to compare them to, but I wonder if all newborns are that adorable.”

The newborn babies had had wrinkly little faces and hands, and their eyes hadn’t opened yet. Their skin had also been unnaturally red. But none of that had detracted from the fact that they had been incredibly cute.

Though they had been so tiny and light, they had felt like the heaviest things in the world when I had held them in my hands. We didn’t even belong to their clan and we still got incredibly emotional about them, so I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much joy Raielfam and Li Sudra must have felt.

“I’m not sure either. Still, if they were our kids, I’m sure we would have felt they were even cuter,” I said.

“Yes, of course.”

“Maybe someday, the Fa clan will also get to...” I started to say, but then Ai Fa reached out toward my mouth, her fingers stopping right before they touched my lips.

“There is no point in contemplating a future that may never even come. At least for now, I have no intention of laying down my blade,” Ai Fa said, and then she smiled bashfully. Her cheeks were faintly red. Feeling that hint of her warmth on my lips was leaving me pretty shaken.

“Why are you turning red like that?” she asked.

“H-Hey, you’re red too, Ai Fa.”

“That is not true. It is a crime to lie, you fool.” With one of her outstretched fingers, Ai Fa gave my nose a quick flick before smoothly rising to her feet. “Well then, it is about time for us to get to work. You should hurry and get yourself ready as well.”

“R-Right. Got it, clan head.” I stood up as well, rubbing my blazing-hot cheeks as I did.

And so, that day, the first of the green month, got off to an unusually sweet start.

It had finally been a year since I had first started living at the forest’s edge, and since this year had an extra month, it had been over four hundred days. In some ways, it had felt like a really long time, while in other ways, it had felt pretty short. But at any rate, it had been a very eventful year.

Despite how deeply emotional that milestone made me, though, it wasn’t like it had really changed anything in my day-to-day life. Or rather, things were constantly changing around us, so the end of my first year hadn’t been any kind of big turning point, relatively speaking.

Yesterday had been our day off from work at the stalls, and we were starting another five days of business beginning today. We and the Ruu clan were now preparing roughly eight hundred meals a day, and that number rose to nine hundred when Myme’s stall was included too. Since the end of the rainy season, it had typically taken about three hours for us to sell everything.

Generally, two or three of those meals was enough to fill someone up, so each day, we were seeing between 300 and 450 customers. In the past, our customers had been significantly more likely to be people from Sym or Jagar, but at this point, we were getting such a jumbled blend that it was tough to figure out what the ratios were. We had been getting more women and children who lived in Genos as customers lately as well, so it was now people of all ages and genders who were stopping by to eat our food.

I had thought that after we had started selling meat at the market and giba cooking had become less rare, it might have had a negative impact on our sales at the stalls. And that concern was still there, sure, but at least for now, that wasn’t happening in the least. According to the innkeepers who purchased giba meat, they felt like they couldn’t possibly compete with us even if they put out giba cooking stalls of their own, so for the time being, they intended to stick to selling it at night at their inns.

Still, if we keep making giba meat more and more available, it’ll eventually lose its novelty, and we may have to cut back the scale of our operations at the stalls.

I didn’t mind that, though. Our ultimate goal was selling giba meat in town. Selling our cooking at the stalls was a means to spread knowledge of how delicious that meat really was.

If giba meat gained value as a product to be sold, that would bring greater prosperity to the people of the forest’s edge. Rather than suffering in poverty, they would be able to hunt giba with greater strength than ever before. If we could bring those benefits to all of the clans of the forest’s edge, then Ai Fa and I would finally be able to say that our long-held wish had been fulfilled.

To take things to their most extreme, I wouldn’t even mind if we had to stop selling our cooking entirely. If the townsfolk started coming up with their own delicious giba recipes and came to desire the meat alone, that would still fulfill my goal. In fact, it would be ideal if people started to think that meals made with giba weren’t anything special, but rather something anyone could prepare well.

Still, it’s not like I want to give up the stalls, I thought to myself as I tackled the day’s work. Even if we managed to get everyone in town to love the taste of giba meat, I still wanted to keep on doing business and forming bonds with the townsfolk. That was important for the people of the forest’s edge as well.

And today, I was fortunate enough to feel the joy of the job all over again. Around when the sun hit its peak and we were hurriedly working away, a certain group showed up at the stalls.

“Hey there. Things sure are lively around here.”

This was something I had been expecting to happen, sure. But that did nothing to lessen the joy and surprise that I felt in that moment.

“Aldas! And everybody else too! You made it back to Genos right on schedule!”

“Yep. We dropped our totos and wagons off at our inn, then headed straight over here. Naudis told us a bit about what’s been going on, but man, things have really changed around here,” Aldas, the vice head of a carpentry group from Jagar, remarked with a hearty laugh.

There were also a ton of nostalgic familiar faces lined up alongside him. Though it could be tricky at times to tell folks from Jagar apart because of their scraggly mustaches, I definitely recognized everyone in front of me.

Aldas was also a real giant compared to the rest of the group, the only one over 180 centimeters tall, so there was even less chance of mistaking him for anyone else. And just like I remembered, his green eyes shone brightly as he smiled at me gently.

“At any rate, I’m relieved to see you looking well, Asuta. It really has been quite a while.”

“Yeah. It’s been eleven months since you were last here, thanks to the extra one, right? I’m glad to see you looking the same as always too. So, is Balan...”...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.10.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Cooking with Wild Game
• Illustrationen: EDA
• Übersetzer: EDA
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: business • cooking • Hunting • Isekai • Light Novel • Romance • Slice of Life
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-3458-3 / 1718334583
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-3458-8 / 9781718334588