Isekai Rebuilding Project: Volume 2 Read online

  “I’ve been waiting to hear you say that, Sir Eiji.”

  We had been waiting for the right time, when the king would make his move. Tiamat and I had actually guessed that there would be a ban on edamame, especially since we were calling them Hermit Beans of all things. Seeing that they moved to monopolize rather than illegalize...

  “They know how badly Azur is affected,” Tiamat said, munching on another tomato-like thing. She could have at least taken off the stem, though. Wow, did she eat anything.

  “Beriberi is most common among young, active, otherwise healthy people.”

  Soldiers, for example. During the Russo-Japanese War at the beginning of the twentieth century, more deployed soldiers died of beriberi than were killed in combat. It was easy to imagine that the Azur military was in a similar condition.

  “Mm-hm. Azur can’t afford to go to war at the moment. Even if they consider us a threat, they wouldn’t send their army here.”

  “That’s where those covert teams came in, though.”

  During the past ten days, we were attacked by an assassination unit on three separate occasions... apparently. I never saw any of them. Hieronymus, Baze, and Syfer’s parties had each defeated a team. Losing to a Cait Sith and a Fenrir was one thing, but I didn’t know what to make of the official military losing to a private adventurer team, even an A-rank one.

  “We could take on swarms of those cowards.”

  Syfer came out from within the manor, having overheard our conversation. He had a bandana on his head and an apron around his neck. As I recalled, he was hired as my bodyguard, not a chef. I must have been mistaken.

  I didn’t ask him why he trained in the kitchen day after day though, because I already knew the answer. He was improving his cooking for the sake of his younger brothers and was helping in the kitchen for leftover food. I had enough heart to condone that much. Besides, Syfer having enough time to work in the kitchen was one indicator of how weak Azur’s military was.

  “They were that bad?”

  “Wobbling all over the place. They tripped over nothing, dropped their weapons... They were bad enough that we were able to chase them away alive.”

  “Ah...”

  Textbook beriberi. Their limbs were no longer listening to their brains.

  The hard-training soldiers would mostly be eating white rice. Since they had all the calories, they would appear healthy at a glance; underneath their skin, though, their bodies were crumbling. There was only so much lethargy they could overcome with their willpower. On the other hand, Syfer’s party was completely healthy, physically and mentally, with Baze and Hieronymus behind them. Of course, there was no reason for them to lose.

  “I’m starting to feel sorry for the royal army.” I shrugged.

  3.

  As expected, the potato croquette was a hit. It could be served as a legitimate side dish too. And its nutritional value was on par with edamame.

  “But it doesn’t take long to get sick of croquettes.”

  Croquettes today, croquettes tomorrow... There was a song like that that came out in the Showa period.

  “Originally from the Taisho period. The one you’ve heard of is a remake.”

  There went her trivia again. As soon as I gave one little fun-fact, she pounced on it.

  “While it was a high-class western food at the time, you would get sick of it eating it every day. A satire.”

  “What, really?”

  Wasn’t it about a housewife who couldn’t cook anything else thanking her husband for happily eating the croquettes day after day?

  “The connotation changed when it was remade. By the late 1950s it wasn’t expensive or high-class anymore.”

  “I see...”

  Culinary history is our history. Still, Tiamat hit the nail on the head. The croquettes, now fresh and popular, would soon become mundane. We weren’t nearing an actual solution unless we popularized the habit of eating a balanced meal. Pork would make things a lot easier, but alas.

  “No sense wishing for the impossible. I just had an idea though. How about a dish using rice bran?”

  Well, we wouldn’t struggle for supplies. So much is produced as a byproduct of rice refinement. But what could we make from rice bran...?

  Oh.

  “Pickled vegetables?”

  “Mm-hm. Bran pickling, wasn’t it called?”

  It was. And rice bran contains plenty of vitamin B1, which meant that bran pickled foods could yield a good amount of it too. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how much that amount was.

  “I think so. Don’t know much about it, though.”

  “Can’t be helped. I don’t eat pickled things either.”

  Like Tiamat said, it couldn’t be helped. Pickles and vinegar-y things weren’t really my cup of tea. Naturally, I didn’t know how to make any, as well as their nutritional contents. I doubted we could just shove vegetables in a pile of rice bran.

  Tiamat, or my fiancée, didn’t like pickled vegetables either. Nor did she like natto. Of course, she had her trivia databank, so she should have known how to make it.

  How do I put this... We didn’t really feel like making something we didn’t like. Please understand. We would’ve had to taste it ourselves and advertise how good it was.

  “Perhaps we can teach them the method as a means of preserving food.”

  Even Tiamat backed out. The hungry-hungry-dragon was being a little chicken.

  “Besides, we won’t be staying in this country for long.”

  “True.”

  A week had passed since we started selling croquettes. It was about time the king made his next move. The buyouts of edamame didn’t yield the results they expected, and our dishes still continued to save people. The kingdom’s reputation fell as the Hermits’ reputation rose. I doubted that the leader of Azur was so deep into la-la land to be a jolly, happy fellow in this situation.

  “Their next step must be to illegalize it.”

  “Yep. And ask us to leave the country, I guess.”

  I shrugged. They wanted to avoid us gaining even more of a positive reputation, but it was proving difficult for them to take care of us with blunt force. The best solution for them now was to have us leave the country.

  “Sir Eiji, Lady Tiamat. Are you still up?”

  There was a polite knock on the door, followed by a voice. It was Mister Milon.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “A royal messenger.”

  “Here we go.”

  We stood up from the edge of the bed. A week had passed since we started selling the croquettes, and twenty days had passed since the throne monopolized edamame.

  The messenger was the Viscount Zahreed from the other day. Beside him was a figure whose face was cloaked under his hood. I recognized him. I may have been stupid, but not enough to forget my own killer.

  “Nice to meet you, King Reinhart Mishima.”

  I audaciously addressed him... as my voice kind of cracked. It seemed that I still wasn’t over it. Our guests jolted, having been discovered before revealing the face under the hood. I could sense their fear. Now we were even. I was scared of my killer, and he was scared that I knew who he was at our first meeting. Finally we were on equal grounds.

  “...You said to come here if I wanted something from you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Then please, have a seat.”

  We all sat down, the meeting room table between both pairs. King Reinhart sat across from me and Viscount Zahreed across from Tiamat. Slowly, the King pulled back his hood. He seemed to deem it useless since I knew who he was.

  “Then let us hear what brought you out here.”

  Tiamat remained silent, but I could sense that she was on edge from her portrait. To her, having me killed right under her nose was an unbelievable mistake. If I could put a little faith in myself here, I would have been the same way if my fiancée was killed before my very eyes. There would not be a second time. Never again.

  “Sir Eiji...
Uh, Master Hermit.”

  Why did you switch it up?

  “Yes?”

  “Please. We need your help to save our country.”

  “Hm? I have acted with that very intention since the day I’ve arrived at Lishua.”

  I didn’t understand. What did they think we’ve been doing all this time?

  “The other day, we suffered a casualty in the royal army. The first death from that strange disease,” the king said, keeping his voice down.

  I scoffed internally. That was a lie. Out on the streets, people have been dying for years; I was sure that many soldiers had already died, too. It’s a little too convenient for their first death to hit now.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  I put on my best sympathetic expression I could find. I had enough mind and decency to not laugh off such news, true or false.

  “Why did this happen?! I told him to eat the Hermit Beans! Why did he die?!” King Reinhart raised his voice.

  Well... because he didn’t eat them. You think people will just eat what you tell them to, Your Highness?

  “Did you take away your blessing on them after we bought out the Hermit Beans?!”

  I realized his understanding. Not that there was any kind of blessing to begin with. But I doubted that this king would believe the truth if I told him. People only see and hear what they want to. King Reinhart and myself were no exception.

  “A Hermit’s blessing can’t be withdrawn or tacked on so easily.”

  “Then explain his death!”

  “Did that soldier really eat the Hermit Beans, as much as he needed to? Did you watch him eat them, Your Highness?”

  “...I...”

  “Of course you didn’t. You can’t be expected to supervise every soldier’s every meal. They could throw the beans away while you’re not looking. Besides, who would want to eat such a thing when they’ve only known it to be livestock feed, just because of an order?”

  “...”

  “Do you realize why we had been using them in appetizing meals to serve the people?”

  I decided to dig a little deeper into King Reinhart as he fell silent. Surely, I was allowed to give him a little taste of his own medicine. He had derailed our operation when we had finally got it on course. And, he killed me once.

  “Same goes for gagd meat. Instead of forcing them on people, I believe we need to use them in a way where the people would want to eat them, even when no one is looking.”

  The ruler of this nation sulked into his seat.

  4.

  “What do I do...?”

  King Reinhart’s tone had become totally depressed. Perhaps it would have been too cruel to tell him off and to figure it out himself since he was the one in charge. I wasn’t here to pick on the people of this country.

  “A bad execution just needs to be corrected, Your Majesty.”

  There was no need to obsess over the initial method or the initial goal. A course of action could be corrected as we went along. Being too tied up by the initial plan is a sort of trap that people who deal in absolutes often get caught in.

  “If you try to force-feed people the Hermit Beans, of course they’d push back. For people who don’t know what’s going on, they were just told to eat livestock feed.”

  Even the most loyal soldier would have been astounded. The soldiers of Azur remained relatively calm, considering that they weren’t offended for being treated like animals. It would not have been hard to imagine a riot or coup breaking out as a result. Food is serious business.

  “We didn’t mean the order to come across that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t. What king would make a policy with the intent of weakening his own country? I know you meant the best.”

  Everyone always does. Shizuru the Hero-King meant the best when he popularized eating rice. He meant to save the people from poverty and starvation; it just happened to cause our predicament today as an end result. A failed good deed tends to cause more damage than a successful evil deed. The worst an evil deed could accomplish is, like, graffiti and annoying people with loud music.

  “So you have to start by solving that misunderstanding. The first step is for Your Majesty to publicly declare that Hermit Beans are not feed for livestock.”

  “That’s all we need to do?”

  As if. Was he listening to anything I was saying?

  “As I said, that’s the first step. The second is for Your Majesty to eat the Hermit Beans, and advertise that it is a proper food.”

  “We see.”

  King Reinhart nodded and shot a glance to his side. Viscount Zahreed produced something from his pocket. I could feel Tiamat tense up for a moment, but it was just a pen and paper. The viscount began making note of my suggestions. It seemed that the king was ready to take this seriously.

  “With those steps, I think we can bring things back to where they started. We’ve only fallen behind from the force-feeding.”

  “Urm...” King Reinhart pondered. That was a good sign. He seemed to be considering whether or not my ideas could bring us back to neutral.

  “Sir Eiji. I don’t think it will go that easily.”

  Good answer. He found it. A bad impression isn’t so easy to wipe away. My ideas so far were far from enough to make up for the king force-feeding his people what was thought to be livestock feed, and King Reinhart realized that too. Which means that he now accurately understood how badly he’d screwed up.

  “I agree. It won’t be enough. So, things are going to become more technical.”

  With that, I asked for permission to have Mister Milon join us at the table. King Reinhart had no objection. We were the home team, after all.

  When Mister Milon entered, he brought with him the secret weapon for turning the game around. Beet sugar. Once it was placed on the meeting room table, I cracked it with a light tap of the fist.

  “Please. Have some.”

  As I said so, I plopped a piece into my mouth to show that it wasn’t poisoned. This man had the record of poisoning me to death, after all! Wouldn’t be too presumptuous of me to think that he suspected the same thing to happen to him!

  “What is this...?!”

  After tasting a piece with visible suspicion, King Reinhart fell speechless. It wasn’t that sweetness was hard to come by for him. Surely he had access to maple syrup and honey. He was surprised that he was tasting a brand-new type of sweetness in a commoner’s (albeit a successful businessman’s) abode.

  “It is called beet sugar. Another wisdom of the Hermits.”

  “This... is the secret behind your Zoom-da?”

  Correct. But why’d he have to pronounce it like that?

  “Yes. We add this to ground Hermit Beans, and serve it with a cake made from pounding down rice. We call it Zunda mochi.”

  “Hrgh...”

  “We want the kingdom to buy all of our beet sugar, decide on a price, and put it on the market.”

  Exclusive selling rights. My proposition was to have the country make money off of monopolizing the beet sugar, rather than the Hermit Beans. It would have been dangerous to throw beet sugar at the people of this world when they were still starved of sweetness in their diet. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of ailments that would bring.

  With the government being the middleman, though, we could control how much goes into the market. And since the government and Mister Milon’s business would take a cut, the price wouldn’t get too low.

  “We would be happy to... depending on the price,” King Reinhart replied, carefully choosing his words.

  I gave Mister Milon a nod.

  “How does ten gold coins per kilogram sound?” the merchant proposed, practically drooling.

  Of course, the actual unit they used must not have been kilograms. Still, a kilogram of sugar for about one hundred thousand yen? An outrageous price if proposed in modern times. King Reinhart was stunned.

  “Per kilogram...?!”

  He couldn’t believe
it, for the opposite reason.

  “Yes. Per kilogram.”

  A brimming smile grew on Mister Milon’s face. He could already taste his victory.

  We had discussed the prospect of the government deciding on a fair price for beet sugar back when we first successfully refined it. His business might have been expansive, but it was still dangerous to have Mister Milon in sole control of the beet sugar. That would have made him too much profit. It was just squeezed out of the roots of some weed.

  We had made about 50 kilograms of beet sugar from the 1000 kilograms of beets we first harvested. Upon witnessing our yield, Mister Milon was more scared than overjoyed. It was too much. Yielding this much once or twice was one thing, but if this could be expected from every harvest, his profit would be astronomical. Precisely because of his keen sense of business, he sensed danger in the yield ratio.

  When Tia and I proposed that the government should buy out the sugar, he wholeheartedly welcomed the idea. The ten gold coins per kilogram price point was decided upon after much deliberation too. While half of that would have profited him plenty, the market price would have been too low. If we couldn’t keep the sugar at a price point where a commoner could afford it, but only on occasion, the market would become flooded. Wow, this was hard to figure out.

  “For starters, we have a hundred kilograms of it ready for you.”

  “A-A hundred...?!”

  His voice cracking, Viscount Zahreed dropped his pen. While the king reprimanded him, his voice was a little shrill also. The deal was for one thousand gold coins. Even if the government sold it at double the price, it wouldn’t be hard to find buyers. Considering that it could be used in foreign trade, the country would more than double their money.

  “And, we would like the kingdom to sell the Zunda mochi containing the beet sugar.” With the king’s endorsement, I was willing to bet that the dish would popularize in no time. I took a page from the book of Date Masamune.

  “To be honest, I feel bewildered, Sir Eiji.”

  King Reinhart sighed and slapped his cheeks with his hands.

  “But what do you two have to gain from this proposal?”

  Huh?