The shop we arrived at was nearly as big as the Adventurers’ Guild.
“As expected, I’d say,” I mumbled.
This shop belonged to the merchant who purchased my wristwatch. From how easily the man had struck up a hundred-gold-coin (or ¥1M) deal, I had estimated the scale of this man’s finances. I would have hesitated to make even a 100,000 yen purchase. I would’ve hesitated a lot. In any case, if this man was a successful merchant, that was all the better. A successful merchant surely had considerable influence in this town.
We entered the shop with a greeting. Immediately, an apprentice or sales clerk welcomed us.
“Welcome! Are we looking for anything in particular today!?”
It was an energetic voice that belonged to a young girl with brown hair and eyes. Her small stature seemed ready to burst with excitement. As far as I could tell, her age was around fifteen or sixteen. If I had seen her in Japan, I would have pegged her to be in high school, but it was really difficult to guess the age of this world’s residents from their appearance. I could never be sure.
“My name is Eiji. The shopmaster and I struck a deal earlier. Has he returned?”
“Yes! We’ve been expecting you! This way, please!”
She showed us the way with a great smile. It seemed like the merchant had already set things up.
Tiamat and I followed the girl. The shop had a spacious interior too, and I could see a few customers looking at the items on display and speaking with some of the employees. All in all, business seemed well.
“Oh, Sir Eiji. I’m so glad to see you,” Milon, the shopmaster, greeted us.
He was a portly, middle-aged man like Mister Garish at the Adventurers’ Guild. He invited us to his table, where he seemed to conduct his business negotiations.
“I hope we weren’t too early.”
“Of course not. I have been looking forward to your arrival... Oh, excuse me.”
As we were walking together and chatting, Mister Milon tripped... on air. He reached for the table to hold himself up.
“...”
He could barely lift his toes. He was afflicted also; it was only natural. Mister Milon was wealthy, had plenty of food on his table, and seemed to move around a lot since he was busy running his business. He checked plenty of the boxes.
“Mister Milon, how are you lately? Do you feel lethargic at all?” I asked, as I took my seat at the table. It’s not worth noting, but Tiamat managed to sit up in a chair, too. Wasn’t her tail in her way? How did the chair support her weight?
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing...”
“Yes, I do feel lethargic. My doctor told me to get out of the shop and get some exercise, so I’ve been walking quite a bit, but it’s not doing much. Although,” he concluded, “I suppose the silver lining is that I’ve run into you and a good deal on one of my walks.”
Pleasantries aside, that doctor...! Vitamin B1 can’t be made by photosynthesis. What was the point in making him exercise?
“Hm. This is grave, isn’t it? This doctor’s prescription would only worsen his symptoms,” Tiamat said, crooking her neck.
At the same time, her chair creaked.
Just don’t break the chair, please... I couldn’t help but plead silently.
“Ignorance isn’t a sin. Something like this was a common case in history, I think.”
“Is everything all right? Sir Eiji? Miss Tiamat?” Mister Milon asked, suspicious of our whispering.
“In fact, Mister Garish has also been troubled with lethargy. We have just started to take some action against this seemingly widespread condition.”
“Oh, that is wonderful news! I would love to have mine treated, too.”
“Yes, of course.”
I returned a smile. This was my opening.
“Do you know of anyone else with similar symptoms, by the way?”
“Yes, quite a few.”
Mister Milon’s expression shifted, his cheerfulness fading as he grew somber.
“I hear that many of them have lost the ability to walk, and have passed away,” he added, with somewhat of a hushed tone. I hadn’t realized how bad the situation was; I had to hurry.
“Have you heard of anyone who improved after leaving Lishua?” I asked.
“No... Not that I know of.”
“I see.”
All right. This wasn’t the beriberi that became widespread during the Edo period but the beriberi that was an epidemic during the Meiji and Taisho period, when commoners could begin to regularly eat white rice after the improvements in rice refinement technology: the beriberi known as one of the two diseases the Japanese were most affected by in history. Things were much worse than I had thought.
During the Edo period, the symptoms of beriberi subsided somewhat just by the patient moving to the countryside. In addition to eating less white rice, the patient would have more access to soba noodles, beans, and potatoes. Surely the economic disparity between the city and the countryside must have been a factor, but I assumed that there was a sort of general knowledge on how to prevent beriberi.
Possibly through old wives’ tales; they can be more on the mark than one might expect. It isn’t too uncommon, for example, for tsunami predictions calculated by a pinnacle-of-modern-technology super computer and the predictions given by the fishermen according to their generations-old signs to match up.
When Mister Mightier-Than-Thou Piece-of-Shit Hero overwrote entire cultures in this world, he made sure to stomp right over the failsafe that is cumulative knowledge. I was so thankful, I would have bowed to that hero in worship if I could have... and begged for the smiting to stop.
“Mister Milon. Your lethargy is caused by an illness. Without treatment, you will die.”
“No...”
“We will treat it. Not just you and Mister Garish, but we will treat all who are afflicted.”
“Oh, mighty Hermits...”
“But I need your help, Mister Milon.”
“Anything.”
He pounded his chest. As a powerful merchant, he might have expected us to ask for his help in the financial department. We would get to that eventually, of course, but not for a while.
“First, I need to know your diet. Do people eat pigs here?”
“$%&? What is that?”
The word he used was unintelligible. I glanced at Tiamat, who nodded.
“Since the word doesn’t exist in this world, it seems it wasn’t translated. Of course, Milon doesn’t know what it is, either.”
“I see.”
Pigs aren’t entirely a product of nature on Earth, after all. They were originally boars. Through a painstakingly long time (since the ancient Mesopotamian civilization) the species was gradually modified to become livestock. Different worlds lead to different civilizations and histories. This was only natural.
“Do you know what boars are, then?”
“Do you mean gagd? A magibeast species?”
It seemed that he understood this time. The different name for it wasn’t a big deal, as long as knew that they existed.
“Do you ever eat them?
“Are they edible? I imagine hunters may eat them on occasion, but I have never seen them in shops.”
“Hm.”
While he hadn’t eaten the pork variant before, it seemed that people in Lishua didn’t have an aversion to eating meat. That alone was an important piece of information to gain.
I went down my mental list of foods rich in vitamin B1 in the same manner. As a result, eel was a no-go. Mister Milon couldn’t even understand what sort of creature it was. While he knew of soybeans and potatoes, they were not commonly eaten by humans here. Apparently, those were mainly used as feed for their livestock, which was a creature akin to the ostrich or emu. That was a major food for them. I wondered if it would taste good; its taste aside, though, I didn’t know and didn’t have any way of finding out how much vitamin B1 the particular meat contained. I shouldn’t count on it, I thought.
The other option was brown, unrefined rice, but this was out of the question too. Mister Piece-of-Shit Hero had instilled the technology of refining rice at the same time as introducing the crop itself. Everyone in Azur had it in their minds that rice is, and will always be, white. No matter how much I campaigned for eating brown rice and its nutritional value, I doubted that I could overturn the image in these people’s minds that rice must be white.
In truth, it could have been possible over a long-term awareness campaign, but countless people would die in the meantime. In Japan, from the start of the epidemic in the early Meiji period until a decade into the Showa period (when the quality of food declined across the board due to World War II) about 10,000 to 20,000 people died to it annually over those seven decades or so. According to a quick calculation, that adds up to more than a million.
Don’t you get it, Mister Piece-of-Shit Hero? You’re about to kill off so many more than the oh-so-evil Demon Lord ever did.