Mister Garish from the Adventurers’ Guild and four other adventurers were aboard the carriage. They had formed a search party, concerned that we hadn’t returned from what was supposed to be a day trip. I was, just, terribly sorry.
One of the adventurers who accompanied Mister Garish specialized in hunting. A deus ex machina if I had ever seen one. Thanks to him, we succeeded at taking apart the gagd. However, not without some complications.
“Is that all you’re going to call it?” Tiamat offered her criticism, accompanied by a chuckle.
Mister Garish and his group had spotted us easily. At the same time, they naturally spotted Mister Baze, the Fenrir and the King of the Forest. Anyone would have been astonished.
With that in mind, the actions the four adventurers took were surely admirable. Each of them were drained of color, but they formed a stance to guard the carriage.
“We’ll hold it off! Run, Mister Garish!”
And they came out with this tearjerker. In a movie, this would have been their climax. That was, I’m sure, why Mister Baze played along...
“You dare stand in my way, humans?”
...with a line like that.
“I’ll show you what humans can do when they’re cornered.”
This was the response by a swordsman-looking adventurer. Let’s call him A for the time being.
“Yeah. I’m getting married after this gig. I can’t die here.”
“Taking it down counts as holding it off, right?”
Let’s call them B and C. They looked like a rogue and mage, respectively. The last of them, the hunter-looking adventurer D, silently held up his necklace and kissed it, before nocking an arrow on his bow. The necklace must have been something dear to him. Left behind by his lover, perhaps. Jeez. They were practically trying to set up their own deaths.
“I admire your courage. Leave this place with pride that you’ve fallen to my fangs.”
Baze made his silver, brushy hair stand. He was another problem. Why was this wolf getting so into it? Throughout this encounter, I had been poking at Tiamat with my elbow.
Say something, I was trying to communicate to her. Naturally, I was completely ignored.
With no one else to turn to, I explained our situation. It’s quite tiring to walk calm and collected into a heated play-pretend. If you don’t believe it, you should try some time. That apathetic reaction was extremely stressful, to say the least.
“To think you’ve formed a friendship with a Fenrir, Sir Eiji,” Mister Garish said, as we watched the gagd being steadily taken apart. With the adventurer experienced in the process taking the lead, things were moving smoothly. Baze and Tiamat were helping too, all buddy-buddy.
“The credit for that goes to Tia. I haven’t done a thing.”
“You’re too modest. There is such a thing, you know.”
Unfortunately for Mister Garish, I was telling the complete truth, but I decided to let it slide. It wasn’t something worth arguing over, and Tiamat’s and my accomplishments would tend to be considered one in the same, anyway. We were partners, after all.
On the other hand, if I screwed up, the shame would befall Tiamat as much as it would me. I mean, things were the same in any organization or corporation. One person’s mistake can damage everyone’s reputation. Bureaucrats like me tended to face backlash harsher than most.
“In any case, once we cut it, we need to cook it. I’m glad you came in a carriage.”
“Indeed, Sir Eiji. I can’t say I wasn’t surprised that you hadn’t thought of a method to transport the meat back to town.”
“My apologies.”
Not a shred of forethought on my end. I hadn’t thought of a single step beyond hunting a gagd. Not about taking it apart, not about carrying the meat back to town, and not about how and where to cook it. I surprised myself that I had the gall to suggest going hunting. If it weren’t for my ultra-competent partner and Mister Garish’s quick thinking, I would have died a miserable death.
“Speaking of, will the meat hold until we get it to town?” I asked, as the question sprung to my mind. It was early summer. While it was comfortable weather for us, it would not be wise to keep fresh meat exposed to it for long. Because of food poisoning, and all that.
“It should be fine. It will take less than a day to get there. Besides, no one’s going to die from meat that’s a little spoiled.”
“I suppose... No one’s going to eat it raw...”
It had slipped my mind that there was no refrigeration devices in this world. Even in Japan, before the 1920’s, anyone living in the mountainous areas of the country would have been hard pressed to enjoy any seafood. It wasn’t that eating seafood wasn’t a part of their culture, it was just a problem of transportation and preservation. Any seafood would have rotted before anyone there could have eaten it.
I remembered that the predecessors of refrigerators and frozen foods were not invented until the nineteenth century. It was only in the 1970’s that those things resembled what they look like today. That was around the same time as the invention of TV dinners. Those, of course, didn’t exist in this world. Even the food carried around by traveling adventurers weren’t given any real best-by date. Bacteria and nutrition had not even come up as concepts in this world. Any foods that people traveled with were a mish-mash of foods that kind of seemed to last longer and foods that kind of seemed to spoil slower.
Specifically, they were dried or salted meat. Those were about the only two options they could take. Preventing the growth of bacteria by cutting out moisture; in a world oblivious to the existence of microscopic organisms, this was the method of food preservation developed through trial and error. That being said, the longest one could hope for their food to last with such a method was a week or ten days.
“We’ll just boil it.”
Mister Garish laughed.
“Right...”
There it was, the ‘you can eat anything if you boil it’ philosophy. Even in Japan, those who lived through the mid- and post-war impoverishment became rather obsessed with food. Basically, they couldn’t throw anything away. Even if the food was obviously spoiled, they would try to consume it, somehow.
The most common method to do so while cooking is boiling it. As a result, they could get sick. A stomachache could be laughed off, but eating spoiled food and dying from food poisoning is so ridiculous it’s not even funny, to say the least.
“We have to think about preservation and transportation, too...”
I was beginning to recognize the mountain of problems in front of me. It wasn’t just about stopping the spread of beriberi. It was clear that trying to revert the distortedly evolved world to its natural course would be no easy task. Breaking it’s the easy part, you know? Mister Piece-of-Shit Hero?
In any case, if I didn’t follow through with preserving and transporting the meat, we would soon have a scurvy outbreak on our hands... Although, treating scurvy seemed easier than beriberi, since that was caused by the lack of vitamin C.
“Oh. Lost in thought again, are we, Eiji?”
Perhaps concerned by me and my mumbling, Tiamat approached me. A blood-soaked dragon. Soaked bright red from head to toe in the blood of the gagd. It was just plain scary.
“You really are an earnest man.”
She burst out laughing. I very much wanted her never to laugh while looking like that ever again.
“I’m already here. I know that’s a cheap reason.”
“There’s nothing cheap about helping people. But, for now, why don’t we rinse off? Baze told me there’s a spring nearby.”
“Good idea. I’m a ball of sweat.”
While I was only covered in sweat and dirt, Tiamat, Baze, and the adventurers were soaked in blood. Returning to town looking like this may cause some alarm.