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MOLOZOV laid Leila down on a piece of cloth by the river. Her eyes are still closed.
Ganzi holds her wrist, taking her pulse like a doctor. “This insect bite on her side was probably caused by a safflower bug. The symptoms it causes have worn her down to an awful state.” He scratches his head harshly in frustration. “I thought she was hitting the bottle hard lately. Maybe it was to dull the pain? She didn’t let any of us know. Damn it, I should have noticed!”
So it wasn’t alcohol that stained her cheeks red?
“What happens when a safflower bug bites you? Is it serious?” I ask.
Ganzi doesn’t take his eyes off Leila while he replies. “Yeah. The worst of it comes and goes in time, unless you overdo it. Then you can weaken and even die. The symptoms include high body temperature, fatigue, nausea, and major loss of strength.”
It sounds like what happens when you have a cold. “Is there medicine you can give her?”
“There’s an antidote for the bug venom, but she’ll stay debilitated for a while. She needs to rest.” Ganzi takes a bottle of liquid from his pocket. I recognize it as medicine he made from a detoxifying herb he showed us earlier. He pulls the cork stopper from the bottle with his mouth, lifts Leila up with an arm around her shoulders, and carefully places the rim of the bottle against Leila’s mouth so she can drink it.
“Lady Leila, this is an antidote. Drink up, won’t you?” he pleads.
Leila’s eyes flutter open. “It’s okay, Ganzi. I’ve already had some. I don’t have any toxin in me anymore.”
“I knew it. It doesn’t matter if you just take the antidote. If you don’t rest, it won’t cure you! Why’d you hide this?! Well… We’ll have to head back to town as soon as you’ve rested.”
“No!” Leila protested. “I’m…fine! Besides, we need all of us…to defeat the owl demon… We have to…beat it.”
“Lady Leila! Now is not the time to argue!”
“He’s right, Mother! Stop pushing yourself! I can beat an owl demon by myself if I have to!”
“No! I’ll never let you go alone!” Leila glares at Luke with bloodshot eyes.
Everyone’s at a loss for words.
“Enough selfishness. You’ve put us at a disadvantage by hiding your illness. Now you want to cause more trouble?” Molozov says quietly but clearly.
“Excuse me?!” Leila looks furious at the rebuke, but soon drops her gaze and nods. Her eyes are misty when she says, “Sorry.”
“All you can do now is rest. Please, Lady Leila. Anyway, we’re far from town. It’ll be hard for you to make it back. Let’s set up camp here until you recover,” Ganzi suggests. “Does that sound good, Luke? We’ll see how Leila’s managing and reassess whether to move forward or return.”
Leila’s ragged breathing pierces the oppressive atmosphere. Why would she want to defeat the owl demon so badly that she’d risk her life?
Luke turns to me. “Sakurako, can you make her something nutritious? Something with a recovery effect?”
“Yes! Of course! I can do that!” I don’t know how to give food a recovery effect, but I’ll do my best for Leila! “Can I have the backpack, Kazuya?” I rummage through the bag he gives me. People with a cold need food that’s easy to eat. It’s also got to be nutritious, easy to digest, and a cold buster…but pretty much all we brought in the backpack is preserved salty and hard food. Jam’s good, but not nutritious on its own. What can I use for a cold?
I catch a glimpse of kudzu in the corner of my eye. “Hey, Kazuya, is that kudzu?”
It was growing everywhere on our way here, and here it is again in clumps.
“It sure is. What are you thinking, kudzu soup?”
I nod. My dad used to refine kudzu roots into powder when we all went camping together in the mountains.
“That’s impossible. You know that, don’t you? It takes ages to break the roots down into powder and starch. We can’t do it here.”
“I can, no problem. I’ll whip some up in no time, but I need your help. Would you mind?”
Kazuya nods, looking dubious. I let Luke and the others know I’m going to go start cooking a short distance away, and Kazuya and I trudge into the depths of the kudzu thicket. I scrounge around until I find where the colony originally sprang from and settle on a single huge root as my target. It looks perfect.
“Kazuya, can you help me dig up this root?”
“Sure, but we don’t have a shovel…”
While Kazuya’s still asking, I cup my hands together like a shovel and tap the soil at even distances around the root. Doing this softens it so I can pull out a couple of bundles of stalks. Great! Easy!
“Did you even need my help?” Kazuya asks, incredulous even after watching the process with his own eyes.
“This next part is what I need your help with.” After cutting the stalks so I’m left with only the roots, I hand the roots to Kazuya and ask him to hold them out in front of him with both hands.
Then I pull the big wok out of the carrier I have strapped around my back, put a layer of cloth in it, and place it underneath Kazuya’s outstretched hands.
“Sakurako, are you going to chop these roots with your bare hands?!”
“Uh-huh. Hold them steady.”
Kazuya winces in trepidation, but this is an emergency. Every second counts.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” I yell as I swiftly bring the side of my hand down on the roots. They snap and splinter to pieces and rain down in a pile on the wok below.
Kazuya’s face is pale, even aside from the white coating of kudzu powder that must’ve blown up on him. “That was too fast. I could see afterimages of your hands.”
I hurriedly wipe his cheeks with my hand. “Sorry, some powder flew up on you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I mean, it is worrying that this is how you cook, but so far so good, I guess. But it’s not like we can separate the starch from the root as easily to keep it from tasting too bitter.”
“Nah, that won’t be an issue.” I fill the wok with river water, which quickly turns brown thanks to the roots in the pan. I lift the corners of the cloth I spread beneath the roots and lift it up so that the murky water pours through the makeshift filter and fills the pan, leaving me with fibrous kudzu roots inside the cloth. I would’ve preferred to wait for the silty starch to sink to the bottom by itself, but time is of the essence.
I grab a leather pouch filled with potatoes out of Kazuya’s backpack, tip the potatoes out, and pour the brown juice into the pouch. I pull the bag’s cord to seal it shut, tie a tight knot to make extra sure it’s waterproof, and exhale to center myself. No worries. I can do this. I’m me. So I can do it.
“S-Sakurako, are you planning on…whirling that around like a human centrifuge?” Kazuya asks.
Gripping the cord of the bag in my right hand, I begin swinging it around at arm’s length. Round and round, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Not fast enough. I need to step it up.
Boom boom boom!
Just when I’m about to break the speed barrier, I sense the leather pouch starting to come apart, so I stop. I think we’ll have enough, anyway. I unknot the cord and open the pouch to find fine brown powder settled at its base below silty water. It worked!
I still need to remove more silt, though, so I pour out the brown juice and replace it with clean water before repeating the same process a couple of times. Eventually, the sediment at the bottom of the bag turns clean white. Kudzu powder!
“I finished!” I call to Kazuya in excitement.
“Oh, you are?” He pauses, washing the wok in the river behind me to look up in exasperation. “Cool. Can’t wait to see you pull out all the stops to cook up a delicate meal, too.”
“What’s wrong? Are you sneering because you didn’t get to help as much as you expected?”
“No, but put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel if you were a guy and the girl you liked starts wielding her arm like a maniac out of nowhere.”
“What are you talking about? Never mind. It’s time for the main event!” Forget his hissy fit! We made kudzu powder, now the rest is up to my cooking!
I take back the clean wok from Kazuya and we returned to Luke and the others.
“I thought you’d already started cooking,” Luke says, puzzled.
“Um, all I’ve done so far is prepare ingredients. Now I’m going to make a cold-busting soup, but I’m still a novice cook, so I can’t promise it’ll have a recovery effect.”
“Er, nevertheless, thank you for doing what you can. I trust you,” Luke says.
I nod and hang a pot full of water over the bonfire. When it starts to simmer, I use a ladle to scoop out some water and pour it into a bowl, then mix in freshly made kudzu powder and a spoonful of citrus jam. Soon, a sweet and sour aroma fills the air, and my thick, translucent kudzu soup is ready.
But plating is also important, so I scatter a few small reddish-purple kudzu flowers on the surface of the soup. Every part of the kudzu plant is edible, including the flowers.
“Thanks for waiting. Here’s my cold buster! I call it ‘Fruity citrus kudzu soup garnished with kudzu flowers’!”