“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?
Nothing, of course. I was just cleaning up the mess my brother-in-law, the hero, had made.