by Dojyomaru
They were all around the age of ten, maybe. They weren’t that well dressed or groomed, but they seemed full of energy.
When we looked in through the gate, the former slave who was now Ginger’s secretary, Sandria, was waving to the children. “Goodbye, children. Take care on your way home.”
The slight smile she saw them off with was a gentle one, very different from the ill-tempered demeanor she’d had when we first met.
So, she can make an expression like that, too, huh...
While I was thinking that, Sandria noticed me and gave a respectful bow. “Why, Your Majesty, how good of you to come visit us.”
“Hey, Sandria,” I said. “Is Ginger in?”
“He is in his office. I will show you the way there.”
We followed Sandria into one of the buildings.
It was a simple, boxy design with no frills, but you could tell this building had a lot of rooms even from the outside. It would have looked like a hospital or school to a modern Japanese person.
We were led in front of a room on the first floor of that building with a sign that read “Director’s Office.” When Sandria informed the occupant he had visitors and opened the door, Ginger, who had apparently been doing desk work, hurriedly rose.
“Wh-Why, Your Majesty, it has been a while,” Ginger said, rushing over to us. Unlike Sandria, he did so timidly, and it seemed he still felt tense when talking to me.
“No need to be so stiff,” I said. “I’m the one imposing on you here.”
“N-No... It’s no imposition whatsoever...”
“Your secretary there has her head held high, doesn’t she?” I commented.
“Because my loyalty belongs to Lord Ginger alone,” Sandria said nonchalantly as she moved to Ginger’s side.
It should have been quite the disrespectful statement, but there was something about her demeanor that wouldn’t let me take it that way. She was like Liscia’s maid, Serina, or the public representative for Roroa’s company, Sebastian. Those people who had found the master they meant to serve for the rest of their lives had a unique intensity. It was like they could face down the king himself on their master’s behalf.
“Ginger, let me introduce you,” I said. “This is my fiancée, Liscia.”
“Hello. I am Liscia Elfrieden.” Liscia smiled and bowed, causing Ginger to stand up very straight.
“Th-The princess?! Th-Thank you for coming to visit our humble establishment! I-I’m... Ah, no, I am the one called Ginger Camus. With more support than I deserve from His Majesty, I have been able to become the director of this facility...”
“Hee hee! No need to be so tense. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ginger.”
“Y-Yes, ma’am!” Ginger stiffly took Liscia’s hand and shook it.
“It almost feels like you’re more tense than the first time you met me...” I murmured.
“I’m sure he is,” said Carla. “Until your betrothal to her was announced, master, Liscia was something like what we now call a lorelei to the people of the kingdom. That unreachable flower, the princess who was so high above him that she might as well be above the clouds, is now right in front of his eyes. He cannot be blamed for being tense.”
Carla’s explanation made sense to me. Members of the Royal House, especially a princess or a queen... they were like national idols in a way. I had seen the huge fever that had gripped England when a new princess was born there on the news. Even in Japan, news about the Imperial House and those connected to the imperial family got a lot of attention.
After that, I also introduced Carla and Owen. Then, when I went to introduce Hilde...
“Hilde and I are already acquainted,” said Ginger. “She gives free medical examinations to the children who come here. It’s really been a great help.”
Ginger bowed his head to her, causing Hilde to take on an awkward expression.
“Hmph. The brats are filthy, that’s all. Who knows what diseases they’re carrying around.”
“You say that, but you still come to visit us once or twice a week,” said Sandria. “If the children get injured, you heal them. I think that, for all that you say to the contrary, you really do like children, don’t you?”
“Sandria... If you say too much, I’ll sew your mouth shut, you know that?” Hilde snapped.
“Oh, pardon me,” Sandria apologized nonchalantly while Hilde glared at her.
Yeah... Looking at Hilde just now, it made me remember the old lady at the bakery in the neighborhood where I’d used to live a long time ago. Whenever the children came up to her, she’d say, “Look at the noisy visitors,” taking a sour attitude, but then she’d add, “What hungry little brats you are,” and would often give away leftover sweet buns. Now that I thought back on it, it had been her way of masking her shyness.
Hilde snorted. “I’ll be waiting outside until you’re all done talking.”
“The children have all gone home, just so you know.”
“Shut up, Sandria! Whoever said they wanted to play with the children?” Hilde snapped.
“I didn’t say that much...” Sandra said.
“Hmph!”
When Hilde left, violently slamming the door behind her, we all saw her off with wry smiles.
...Now then. It was time to get back on track.
Liscia, Ginger, Sandria, and I sat down at a conference table. Liscia and I were seated on one side, with Ginger and Sandria sitting across from us. Carla and Owen were standing behind us.
Liscia raised her hand. “Um, I have a lot of questions... What exactly do you two do here?”
“For the moment, we teach applicants how to read, write, and do arithmetic,” Ginger answered with a gentle smile.
“Is that something like a school?”
“Yes. It’s a school where anyone can come learn, regardless of class.”
In this country, there were already proper educational institutions. The uniform Liscia was wearing belonged to the Royal Officers’ Academy, and there was also the Royal Academy, which pumped out researchers in every field, as well as the Mages’ School, which specialized in the study of magic. However, those educational institutions were almost entirely for the children of the knights and nobility. There were no general schools meant to serve the common people. This job training facility was serving as a test case for that sort of general school.
“Also, it’s not only for children,” said Ginger. “Adults can learn here, too.”
“Adults, too?” Liscia asked.
“There are many adults who say they cannot read, write or do arithmetic. The poorer their background, the more likely that is to be the case. We provide those people a place to learn here, too. During the day, children learn, and then at night, adults who have finished working during the day come here to study.”
“Hm, so you’ve got them properly segregated into separate time periods...”
“It was His Majesty’s idea to set up a time at night for adults to learn,” said Ginger.
It hadn’t really been my idea. I had just recreated the night schools we’d had back in the other world.
Ginger brought his hands together in front of his mouth. “This is all we can do right now. However... from here on out, we’ll be able to do more and more. Isn’t that right, sire?”
Ginger had turned the conversation over to me, so I nodded firmly. “Yeah. From here on, I intend to have you teach more specialized topics. For instance, training adventurers to explore dungeons and protect people, passing on civil engineering techniques, working with Hilde and her people to train new doctors, studying ways to improve our agriculture, forestry, and fisheries... Oh, also, I’d like a place for training chefs, too.”
“That’s a pretty wide range of topics...” Liscia said.
I think you’ve figured it out now that I’ve said this much, but the job training facility I wanted to create was a vocational school, or perhaps something like a university made up of specialized departments.
The main focus
of academic study in this world was either magic or monsters. Magic could be applied with some versatility to any number of fields, and it also had ties to science and medicine. As for the study of monsters, ever since the Demon Lord’s Domain appeared, it had been become one of the most important research topics.
Before that point, the monsters that had only appeared in dungeons had been the subjects for this sort of research. However, after the demon lord’s domain had appeared, the number and variety of monster sightings had increased by a factor of ten. Research on the topic had been rushed along in order to find some solution to the problem. Also, research on the materials that could be harvested from monsters was indispensable for the development of technologies.
This sort of research on magic and demons was principally being done at the Royal Academy. It was certainly true that the results of this sort of cutting edge research could lead to new developments in other academic fields.
However, and this might be my sense as a Japanese person speaking, I thought that there were incredible, revolutionary discoveries waiting to be found in research that, at a glance, seemed pointless, too. Like how the techniques that were polished and refined in downtown factories without gathering much attention could then create indispensable parts for a spaceship.
No matter what the subject, if you mastered it, you were first class. If you could become number one, you could become the only one.
That was why I wanted to create a place where the subjects that had been neglected by this world—education, civil engineering, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, cooking, and art—could be given specialized study and taught to other people. And then, if we were able to see results in a given field from our experiment at this training facility, we would build a training facility (at this point, more or less a vocational school) for that subject in another city.
For that, it would first be necessary to raise the average level of education within the kingdom, and that was why we were starting by teaching elementary level reading, writing, and arithmetic.
I asked Ginger, “Well, what do you think? How are things with the training facility?”
“Well... we are doing a good job of gathering children under the age of twelve,” said Ginger. “The school meals system that you proposed has worked well, I would say. There are times when it gets hectic, but we have created a cycle where they show up, they study, they get a proper meal, and then they go home.”
“School meals system?” asked Liscia.
“If children under the age of twelve come here and study, they are given free meals to eat. If they study here, they can eat. Once this becomes widely known, the children of families under financial stress will be more likely to come here and study. Many of their guardians find it’s better to send them here to study and save the money it would take to feed them than it is to force the children to work for what little money they can get. If they study properly, they may be able to escape from poverty in the future, after all.”
“Hmmm,” said Liscia. “That’s a well thought out system. Is that something they do in your world, too, Souma?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a method often used for providing support in poor countries.”
Liscia seemed impressed, but Ginger’s expression was more clouded.
“It’s true, we’re doing a good job of drawing in children. However, conversely, it’s hard to gather the adults, who aren’t covered by the school meals system. We are doing what we can by teaching them in the evening once their work lets out, but... ‘I’ve lived all my life without being able to read, write, or do arithmetic. Why should I learn to now?’ they say, and won’t even give us a chance.”
“Well, if they’ve never had an education, I can see how they might think that way,” I said.
Only upon receiving an education is one able to understand the value of one. While children may ask, “Why are we studying?” when they become adults they think, “Why didn’t I study more?” That they’re able to have that regret at all is because they were made to study as children.
“Well, enlightening them on the value of education is one part of our work,” I said. “I’ll come up with something.”
“Please do, sire.”
Ginger and I naturally shook hands.
Finally, after touching base on a number of things, Ginger and Sandria saw us off, and we left the training facility.
The next place we visited was the Kikkoro Distillery, not far from the training grounds.
This distillery, which used a hexagon with the character for wolf in the center as its brand mark, was run by mystic wolves like Tomoe, and it produced soy sauce, miso, sake, and mirin.
Here, we met another person I knew.
When we entered the grounds, there was a plump man wearing short sleeved clothes despite the winter chill.
“Hm? Poncho?” I asked.
“Wh-Why, Your Majesty! Good day to you, yes.”
When he noticed us, Poncho bowed his head to me. Maybe he had gotten used to the idea that he was only supposed to bow once. Before, he had been bobbing his head up and down constantly.
“What are you doing here, Poncho?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s right! Listen to this, sire!” Poncho trudged over with his abdominous body.
“Whoa, you’re getting too close!” I exclaimed. “...What’s this, so suddenly?”
“At last, at long last, it’s complete! That ‘sauce’ you have been requesting!” The usually shy and reserved Poncho was incredibly excited, thrusting a bottle filled with a black liquid out toward me.
The sauce I’d requested?
...Ah!
“You don’t mean that’s finally ready, do you?!”
“Please taste it for yourself, yes.”
“Sure!” I dripped a few drops of the black liquid onto the back of my hand, then licked them up.
It had a vegetable or fruit flavor and a spice-like fragrance. There was no doubt, this was what we’d called sauce in Japanese. However, unlike ordinary Worcestershire sauce, it had a strong sweetness and sourness, along with a depth of flavor.
This was definitely the sort of sauce that went with yakisoba, a sauce for flour-based dishes.
“The taste of sauce... is a boy’s flavor,” I remarked, quoting a certain gourmet manga.
“What kind of nonsense are you talking now?” Liscia said with a roll of her eyes, snapping me back to my sense.
“It’s just, the sauce we have been experimenting with is finally complete, so I was filled with emotion.”
“I-Is it that big of a deal?” Liscia asked.
“Of course! Because, with this, I can make yakisoba, okonomiyaki, monjayaki, takoyaki, and sobameshi. It’s good on fried dishes on its own, too.”
“I barely know what any of the dishes you just named are...” Liscia murmured.
“I’ll make them for you sometime soon. I mean, even if there are leftovers, I’m sure Aisha will make them disappear for us.”
But, still... at last, we had perfected this sauce for flour-based dishes.
It had been a long process. There had already been a sauce similar to Worcestershire sauce in this world, but it hadn’t been the sort of thick sauce that would work well with yakisoba. I had thought I could create one somehow, and I’d been working on it through a process of trial and error, but with no real knowledge of sauces, it had proven to be beyond me. That was why I had ended up creating those spaghetti buns before yakisoba buns. I had half given up on the development, but it looked like Poncho had continued it for me.
“I’m impressed you were able to recreate it,” I told him. “You’d never tasted it yourself before, right?”
“I had Your Majesty’s words, ‘It’s thicker than ordinary Worcestershire sauce, sweet, and I think it felt a little sour,’ the knowledge that there was a noodle dish, ‘yakisoba,’ which you would pour the sauce over and mix, and the memory of the pasta dish you call Spaghetti Neapolitan, which gave me the hint I needed.”
“The spaghetti did?” I asked.
“Yes, it did, yes. That spaghetti uses the tomato sauce called ketchup that I developed with you, right, sire? I knew that ketchup went well with noodle dishes, so I thought something similar to ketchup might have been used with this noodle dish called yakisoba, yes.”
“Ahh!” I cried.
I saw now! This sweet and tangy flavor came from fruits and vegetables! In other words, this sauce for flour-based dished was made by adding tomato sauce and other ingredients to a thick Worcestershire sauce, then? Poncho had an incredible sense of taste to be able to figure that out on his own.
“Then, in order to give the Worcestershire and tomato sauce mixture a greater depth of flavor, I tried adding the soy sauce and mirin produced here at the Kikkoro Distillery. Um... How do you think I did?” he asked hesitantly.
I put my hands on Poncho’s shoulders. “Poncho... you did well.”
“Sire! You are too kind, yes!”
“Now, can this sauce be mass produced?” I asked.
“It seems the Kikkoro Distillery will take on the job for us.”
That was wonderful. Now I could write another page in the culinary history of the kingdom. When Poncho and I started excitedly talking about the topic of sauces, the other members of the group... particularly the women, Liscia, Hilde, and Carla... looked on, rolling their eyes.
“Souma’s not a big eater, but sometime, he can be pretty picky about the strangest details,” Liscia said. “I wonder why that is?”
“That’s just what men are like, Princess,” said Hilde. “They pour needless passion into things women don’t understand, and they think nothing of the trouble they go to doing it. They’re such bizarre creatures.”
“You speak like you have personal experience with this,” said Carla. “Do you know someone like that, Madam Hilde?”
“Don’t ask about things you shouldn’t, dragonewt girl,” Hilde snapped. “I’ll stitch your mouth shut, you know?”
“Y-Yes, ma’am! I won’t ask you anything, yes!” Carla hurriedly saluted, seemingly having been infected with some of Poncho’s speaking style as she did.
And, well, I was excited by the unexpected result, but it was about time to accomplish my real objective here. I parted with Poncho and then, in the director’s office of the Kikkoro Distillery, I met with the elder of the mystic wolves who was also the director of this place.
