“Coming! Well then, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay...”
Yumoto-san was calling me, so I went to see him. He and the other men were already pretty drunk. There was an appetizing smell wafting in, which meant that the women had started grilling the meat. Finally.
“Shohei, this is Akimoto-chan. He’s the one who butchered your boar.”
“Oh! Thank you very much.”
I bowed to the man Yumoto-san had introduced as Akimoto. I regretted not bringing something for him as well.
“It’s no big deal, and besides, I don’t want to let my skills get rusty. Is it true that the chickens caught it?”
“Yes. My chickens are a bit, shall we say...aggressive.”
“Sounds like you can count on them. Let me know next time you catch one. I’ll be glad to help, provided you don’t catch it with a snare or something.”
Most hunting was done via trapping, but you needed a specific license to use traps, and there were also different kinds of snares and stuff.
“Well, not like there’s any problem if we eat it ourselves!”
“You got that right!”
The men burst into laughter.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Shohei’s chickens are great hunters!” exclaimed Yumoto-san. “They catch vipers too!”
“Must be nice. You can drink snake wine to your heart’s content!”
I heard making snake wine takes about three years though, so it would be a while before he could actually drink it.
“Give me some of those vipers too if you catch ’em, will ya? I’ll give you three thousand a snake.”
Yumoto-san shook his head. “Whoa, whoa! If you pay him that much, he’ll stop selling them to me!”
I wasn’t sure how much of their conversation was just banter and how much of it was serious. All I could do was smile wryly.
The women soon called out, “The meat is ready!”
“I’ll go get some for us,” I said, relieved at finally having an excuse to leave.
Despite boar meat having a moderate gamy smell, it was pretty tasty. It was said that the key to cooking tender boar meat was to let it simmer for a while, so that was probably why they had precooked it.
We finished off all the food and stayed for the night.
It was really delicious... So much so that it’s worth saying twice.
The Yumotos’ house, as tended to be the case with those old-fashioned houses, was pretty spacious. If someone called it a mansion, I wouldn’t bat an eye. It had several large rooms, which probably made cleaning a huge chore. The men were up until late into the night drinking and making a racket. The single ones even stayed the night.
My neighbor also stayed the night, though I only found out the next morning.
I had a bit of a hangover from all the alcohol they’d made me drink, but I was a guest, so I didn’t want to laze around in bed until late. I got up with some effort, went to the toilet, and then to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My neighbor, dressed in an apron, was talking to Machiko-san.
“Good morning... Can I have some water?” I asked.
I hadn’t gotten a good look last night, but looking at her again in the daylight, the young woman had pretty features. She was probably about the same age as me, if not a bit younger. Her medium-length hair was dyed dark brown, and she had large eyes. I couldn’t imagine why a young woman like her would buy a mountain in the middle of nowhere and go live on it, but I figured it was none of my business. She bowed in my direction, and I did the same.
“Sho-chan, good morning. Are you two acquainted already?”
“I only caught her first name...”
Obviously, I couldn’t just go around calling her “Miya-chan.” She seemed a bit taken aback.
“Ah! Sorry, my name is Miyako Katsuragi. Er, I live on...”
“The mountain east of mine, was it?” I asked. “I only moved here a month ago, so I’m still learning the ropes. I’d appreciate it if you could teach me about maintaining the mountain, what to look out for in each season, things like that. Even just general pointers would be a big help for me.”
Machiko-san watched, amused, as we bowed at each other.
“Here’s your water, Sho-chan.”
“Thank you.”
I took a sip and felt the fresh well water soothe my uneasy stomach. That reminds me, how are the chickens?
“By the way, have you seen the chickens...?” I asked.
“They’re in the garden,” said Machiko-san. “I put out some vegetable scraps.”
“Thank you. I’ll go check on them.”
“Oh...” Katsuragi-san’s eyes went wide. “I’ll go too.”
Her giant lizard was also in the garden. I sure do hope he didn’t eat the chickens or anything.
Thankfully, nothing of the sort had happened. The lizard was resting in the shade. Getting a good look at him now, I thought what he resembled the most was a European dragon. I wonder where she got him from. Or did she find him in the mountains? Is it a Komodo dragon, maybe?
My chickens were in the corner, apparently catching and eating bugs.
“Heeey, Pochi, Tama, Yuma.”
When I called out to them, Yuma came trotting over. She tilted her head, as if to say, What is it?
This gesture’s kind of cute. I petted her wings.
Is it just me, or are they growing again? Could it be because of the boar innards and other stuff they ate yesterday...? Yeah, right—there’s no way that’d make them grow in the span of only a day.
Katsuragi-san seemed fascinated as she observed the chickens from a distance.
“Er... Sorry for intruding, but those tails...”
Naturally, some people do notice.
“Right? They look nothing like regular chicken tails. If you ask me, they look more like something you’d see on a reptile...”
“They say birds are descended from dinosaurs. Maybe it could be some kind of atavism?” Katsuragi-san remarked, cocking her head. She did have a point. They’d evolved from dinosaurs, after all.
“That could be it. Uh, Katsuragi-san, what about your...that...”
“Ah, I’m sorry. His name is Tatsuki. He’s quite big for a lizard, isn’t he? I got him two years ago at a festival stall...”
Another one from that stall, huh? I bet at the time, it just looked like a small, ordinary lizard.
“I see. Actually, I also got my chickens at one of those stalls. They were selling dyed chicks.”
“That’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
With some distance between us, we looked at each other and laughed.
“He looks more like a dragon than a lizard, doesn’t he?” I commented, and upon hearing this, the large lizard opened his half-closed eyes, as if to agree with me. So you really are a dragon after all?
“A dragon! That would be lovely. Tatsuki, a dragon...”
Katsuragi-san seemed really happy about this for some reason. I mean, I realize that it sounds much cooler to say you’re raising a dragon instead of a lizard, but still...
“If we think of it that way, maybe Sano-san’s chickens are actually cockatrices!”
“Cockatrices...”
Those mythical beasts that look like giant chickens and can petrify other creatures with their gazes? I’m not sure what to think of that.
“Ah, I’m sorry. You see, I’m a big fantasy fan...” she said.
“Oh, no, I was just thinking they do kind of look like cockatrices now that you mention it. Their tails are lizard-like, and it looks like they’re still not done growing either...”
There was plenty of food for them in the mountains. I also got the impression that they were only eating animals that could harm our homestead. After all, they didn’t eat the worms in the fields. And right now they were eating locusts.
“What do you usually feed Tatsuki?” I asked.
Katsuragi-san averted her gaze when I asked her that. “Um... He basically eats anything. That’s why, uh, I’m surprised he didn’t attack your chickens,” she remarked uncomfortably.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but does that mean he usually attacks other animals?”
“I’ve seen him catching and eating large birds...”
A true wild animal.
“By the way, I have a lot of vipers around my house—is it the same on your mountain?”
“Well... He just eats them all...”
Dragons are scary.
“What about boars, like the one from yesterday?”
“I’ve only seen one so far, but it ran away before Tatsuki could attack it. My mountain’s not too steep, so I see a lot of deer. He eats those too.”
Boy, dragons are really scary.
“That’s...quite something.”
“Next time Tatsuki catches one, I’ll bring it here. I’d like to eat it together with everyone.”
When Katsuragi-san said that, her dragon once again opened his eyes and seemed to nod in agreement. So it’s not just my chickens that can understand human language. What is up with these animals?
Katsuragi-san’s mountain was a bit taller than mine, but it had one very steep part, and the rest was mostly gentler slopes. Her house was on the mountainside, just like mine. We exchanged contact info and went our separate ways.
Meeting her piqued my curiosity about my other neighbor, the one who lived to the west.
“Yumoto-san, the mountain west of mine...”
“Hm... There’s a guy living there, I think? I don’t see him too often. I hear he’s always driving a minitruck with a long-haired woman in the passenger seat.”
Ugh, a normie.
“I see...”
I didn’t want to see any couples right now.
However, fate works in mysterious ways, and it was only a matter of a few days before I ended up meeting my other neighbor.