Zunda mochi is a traditional dish of the Tohoku region of Japan. It’s usually enjoyed with ground edamame on top of the mochi. A historical drama on NHK a while back had even shown a scene where Masamune Date was serving them to the regional lords of feudal Japan. Apparently there was already a form of grocery store sampling back then. According to that particular drama, of course.
It’s worth noting that not all Zunda are sweet, and some of them can be savory. Nowadays, the sweeter varieties have become mainstream. I recalled a Zunda shake being sold in a basement level of Sapporo station. It was pretty good.
“That comedian called something Deluxe raved about it, too. It’ll be a hit with women and children.”
“The person you’re thinking of is neither a woman nor a child. And not a comedian, but a columnist.”
I did make these corrections to Tiamat’s statement. Not that I knew the person in question personally, nor was I particularly a fan, but I wanted us to acknowledge his occupation correctly... for some reason.
“In any case, I’m picking up what you’re putting down. If we can get the ingredients, maybe we can manage Zunda.”
All I’d have to do is grind it down and place it on mochi!
“The ingredients we need are edamame and sugar, and a little salt for taste. As for the mochi, we can work with the rice they have now. It won’t be as stretchy as Japanese mochi, but it’ll have a similar texture.”
Tiamat gave details from one of her knowledge DLC packs. My guess was that this time it didn’t come from the useless knowledge pack.
“Sugar might be a problem, though... Mister Milon, what sorts of sweeteners are the people of this country accustomed to?” I asked.
The answer I received from Mister Milon was maple syrup, which in my world was created by boiling down the sap from sugar maple trees. Naturally, no such tree existed in this world. Some unintelligible words were used in Mister Milon’s response.
“Syrup, you say? I don’t think that will go too well with Zunda.”
“In the first place, it isn’t easy to acquire, financially speaking. We also have a honey, but that is even more expensive.”
“Right.”
If it was easy to acquire, there would have been no reason for Syfer and Millia to show such interest for the topic. There was no such thing as ‘too sweet.’ Those were the times they were living in. And yet, they had plenty of white rice. Of course they would overeat it. Rice does have a subtle sweetness to it.
I was faced with the answer to a question I never thought to ask myself. What would happen when you introduce refined white rice to people who had been munching on rye for generations? A terribly distorted world. In order to correct it, I was about to distort it even further.
“It’s not as tragic as you think it is. Even without your guidance, these people would have eventually found edamame and gagd meat. And the concept of vitamins.”
Reading my expression, Tiamat comforted me. She had a point. Just like the people on Earth, these people had the smarts to save themselves from extinction. Eventually, they would have found a cure for beriberi. It was only a question of when.
It wasn’t until the 1920s when vitamins were categorized and understood. Were there no treatments for scurvy or beriberi before then? Not necessarily. From trial and error, some effective methods were realized. For example, it was publicized in the mid-18th century that fruit helped treat scurvy. They just couldn’t prove how.
If I were to assume that Azur Kingdom was about as evolved as a country in medieval Europe, that could mean as far back as the 5th century on Earth. Considering that the cure for beriberi was found in the 20th century, it could take a maximum of 1400 years for the people of Azur to find it.
I noted before that beriberi killed over a million people over the course of 70 years. If I kept the math simple, beriberi in this world could kill over 20 million in the time it would take them to find the cure. It could have meant the end of the world for these people, quite literally.
I wanted to avoid that, so I used the knowledge I had. I chose to correct a world misshapen by a cheat code called Modern-Day Knowledge by typing in a console command of the same name.
“And you made the right choice, Eiji. Florence Nightingale used her connections to save people’s lives in Crimea. Was that an evil deed?” Tiamat said, with a smile.
In the Crimean War, where the alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia fought the Russian Empire, a nurse, Florence Nightingale, stormed into the field hospital and overruled the male-dominated army by using everything in her arsenal, including the influence of Queen Victoria, to reduce the mortality rate at the hospital from 42% to 2%. She saved lives using connections, wealth, media, and even violence. This depiction might be jarring from the Angel in White image most Japanese people hold of her; still, she was an angel.
An angel isn’t someone who gives out pretty flowers, but someone who fights for those who are suffering.
...to borrow her own words.
“Let’s make sugar,” I declared, and turned to Tiamat. “Tia. Can we get any beets?”
“You’re a Dosanko, after all. That’s your first thought, instead of sugar canes?”
Oh, can it. The northern wilderness that I called my home produces more sugar beets than any other province in Japan. Sugar beets, by the way, produce more than 70% of Japan’s sugar. Sugar cane? What’s that? You think I had any of those in Hokkaido?
“Long story short, they have beets. Albeit an unaltered species.”
Apparently, its sugar content was much lower than the modern-day variety.
“About 1%, to be specific. The modern-day species are about 20% sugar, so that’s not even close,” Tiamat explained.
“1%... Yeah, I wouldn’t call that close...”
“The world today was sharpened by the tireless efforts of those who’ve come before you. This is just one of the many examples of that.”
Of course. While we accept all of our modern-day technologies and conveniences without question, not a single one of them was possible without someone somewhere having an idea. These things are built off of someone dreaming of a future and dedicating themselves to making it a reality, through numerous trials and errors. Our lives are built upon the unfathomable efforts of countless people. And our efforts are carried onto future generations. That’s how human history has been woven together.
Now I could understand why the inspector of the Interstellar League of Nations (who didn’t call herself a goddess) had such a disdain for inter-world travel. It was blasphemous. Those who know the end result guiding a civilization to it. It may sound good on paper. It might even feel virtuous to those performing the deed. But it’s not.
People of worlds outside our own have the right to make mistakes. To make the wrong choice. To end up in a helpless situation. To correct those mistakes. To learn from their wrong choice. And to find a ray of hope at the brink of hopelessness. Not even a god should be allowed to take that away.
But that’s what that piece-of-shit Hero did. Were they the ones that selectively bred the white rice to make it the species they introduced to this world? Were they the ones that discovered how to refine the rice? Weren’t they the ones that simply showboated some tidbits of information they got from textbooks and the internet? Taking credit for those before you wasn’t enough? You had to go and ruin this world, too?
Dear Mister Piece-of-Shit Hero, I’ll fix the world you broke... using the same knowledge you had from modern-day Japan.