As Tiamat and I were engaging in stupid chitchat, a bowl was placed before us; it contained a soft green soup. Lady Millia puffed her chest.
“I tried making the Senzu beans into a soup!”
“...”
Uh-huh. Her enthusiasm for experimentation was admirable, and I thought an edamame potage was actually a good idea. It sounded like something a certain café owner from an Isekai novel I had gotten into would come up with. So, that was fine. With a gentle visual, I was sure that it would be popular with women, too. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was its bizarre name.
“Um... Miss Millia? Did you say Senzu...?”
“Yes! It means the bean of a hermit. Dad said this is what we should call it!”
“Oh, I see... I was really hoping for the other possibility...”
If at all possible, I did not want this name to go around. What was this, an anime about half-monkey aliens? The beans were normal edamame...
“Hm. Not a bad marketing tactic. People would be more grateful for a hermit’s bean than an ordinary one.”
There went Tiamat, without a shred of a sense of responsibility. This was more than false advertising. This was fraud. We just happened to know that edamame contained vitamin B1. We didn’t add anything to it, much less a blessing or protection. It was worse than false-idol worship.
“You know, Tia...”
“You’re overthinking it, Eiji. Faith is in the eye of the beholder. What’s important is that we add some value to it.”
“Value...?”
“It doesn’t put the dish in a good light to just say it used to be livestock feed. Were you not worried about that?”
“Yes, you’re right, but...”
I was worried that people would be hesitant to try a dish from the preconception of it as livestock feed. That’s why I tried the gagd dish first.
“Telling the whole truth is not always the best option. What marketing campaign is complete without a little exaggeration?”
It’s not like we’d be lying, she added. Without me, no one here would have started eating edamame. In that sense, it wasn’t untrue that a Hermit had brought about the dish. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
“It can’t be helped, I guess...”
“You don’t seem happy with it.”
“Yeah. But I understand.”
I shrugged, choosing to believe that it was a necessary course of action. It wasn’t like I had a better idea for the name, either. Anyone in the workforce knows to present alternatives when disagreeing with an idea. Shooting down an idea for no reason other than disliking it is just a tantrum.
In the end, edamame was to be called Senzu, or Hermit Beans. It would be served as a bar snack, too. On the other hand, gagd meat would be served as full-on dishes.
“The beans are another story, but we can’t sell the meat at too low of a price,” said Mister Milon.
It was only natural since it wasn’t domesticated, and the supply of it solely depended on the yield of the hunts.
“It’s never too easy, is it?” Tiamat said, with a satisfied sigh from a full belly.
“Down the road, we should properly domesticate them,” I responded as I rubbed my jaw.
The gesture didn’t hold a particular significance. It was just sore. It seemed that the people in this world had tougher teeth and jaws than me. The gagd thigh, in particular, was tough as nails. Chewing on the hardened muscle made me feel animalistic. Its savory flavor aided in me overeating but my jaw was paying the price. It was once again clear that the people of Lishua, who could chow down thick steak after steak, were of a different breed than the modern-day human like me.
“What were you thinking of, specifically?” Mister Milon asked, as he wiped the sweat from his forehand with his hand towel.
We were in a bath house. There were many of them in Lishua, and we had decided to enjoy a soak after our meal. Most of them, by the way, were coed. Therefore, Tiamat, Millia, and Maley, along with other women, were sharing the large bath with us. Apparently? The Hero? Who introduced the concept of baths? To this country? Told them that coed? Was normal? Uh-huh. As if we were in the Edo period.
If I recall correctly, in the movie Shogun (set in the Edo period) a Japanese woman and a Dutch man share a bath. In response to the man’s surprise, the woman says:
“In this country, we believe that there is an invisible wall between men and women. That is why no one is ashamed when showing their skin in a bath.”
Or something of the like. Don’t quote me on it.
In any case, it didn’t really matter. I was about 90% sure that the mighty hero in question wasn’t from the Edo period, nor did he spread the culture of bathing according to his own experiences. He just wanted to take coed baths. Though not as a privilege just for himself, but with the reasoning to make it normal; or otherwise his excuse for convincing people that coed baths were nothing to be embarrassed about had just stuck around. I imagined it was something like that.
Just so everyone is aware, a woman washing up with seductive gestures in these scenarios is solely a product of male fantasy. It’s only seductive in fiction and film. Why would anyone, when this was a normal day in their life, wash their body with the gaze of the opposite sex in mind?
“Sir Eiji?”
Mister Milon looked concerned as I was lost in thought watching the women wash their hair and bodies without a shred of sensuality.
“Oh, sorry, I’m fine. In terms of domesticating the gagd, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not an expert in the matter, so I can’t be too sure, but...”
With that disclaimer, I gave a quick rundown. Fortunately, we had gained the acquaintance of Baze, the lord of the forest. If he could provide us with a few gagdlets, we could multiply them to set up a steady supply. Since people here already raised livestock, I was sure that they already had a system for raising them.
That being said, gagds were magibeasts with large fangs, which would require caution. I couldn’t imagine the turn of events if a gagd farmer were to end up injured or killed.
“Pigs have fangs, too,” Tiamat, who smoothly swam through the bath to approach us, informed me.
“Really?”
“Pigs are domesticated boars. Why would they lose their fangs just from being domesticated?”
Come to think of it...
“Pigs have their canine teeth cut off on the day they are born,” she continued. “Although, that’s also to keep them from hurting the mother while nursing.”
“They’re literally defanged, then.”
Which, figuratively, means to be made much less aggressive. Perhaps the phrase originated from practices like this. Humans were raising these beasts for their own benefit after all. It wouldn’t do if they were left with elements of the wild. It may seem cruel, but it also seemed necessary.
“This isn’t something we can fix in a matter of days, though.”
“Mm-hm. There will be cracks in the foundation if we try to force it. Domestication of livestock on Earth has been going on for over ten thousand years. It isn’t something we can alter with a flick of the wrist.”
Indeed, that history was built on trial and error by generations going way back before the Common Era. It was too dangerous to turn all of that on its head with nothing but half-hearted tidbits of knowledge. The last thing we could afford was to make the same mistakes Mister Piece-of-Shit Hero had made.
“There’s your answer, Milon. We lack the proper knowledge of raising livestock, so we cannot provide you with any detailed process.”
“No need for concern, Master Tiamat. You have given us enough hints already.”
Mister Milon didn’t even seem disappointed. He hadn’t grown his business this large on dumb luck.