For the time being,
Maomao
and the others would be staying at a mansion that seemed like a comfortable place.
The West Province, where the Western Capital was located, gave a strong impression of being nothing but desert, but in reality it could almost be called grassland. It was dry, but not everything was sand—there was enough moisture for grasses and herbs to grow. That said, water was precious.
So the mere fact that the mansion's garden was lined with lush green trees could be considered a symbol of wealth. Of course, for the people of a capital where a great river flowed nearby and the sea was not far off, it might have seemed rather lacking—but still.
(It was somewhat soothing, at least.)
The garden's style leaned toward the central region, but many of the plants were unfamiliar species. The impulse to verify whether they had medicinal properties was simply Maomao's
nature—
it was just who she was.
"Young lady, let's put our bags down first, shall we? I'm already exhausted from the long journey."
The quack doctor looked at Maomao with a weary face.
"Indeed.
Young Lady,
once we reach our rooms, shall we settle who explores the mansion with"
rock-paper-scissors
"?"
Tenyu
seemed to share the quack doctor's opinion. Indeed, compatibility with that seemingly earnest
Physician Li
did not appear to be good at all.
Their bodyguard,
Li Bai,
walked a few paces behind Maomao and the other two. He apparently had nothing to say about Tenyu.
Since the quarters also served as a medical room, they were in a separate wing of the mansion. Disease was considered unclean, so there could be no complaint about the placement. If it were carelessly situated in a high-traffic area, they would need to be vigilant about preventing infection whenever a patient arrived.
"That's quite the unusual building."
The quack doctor gazed at the detached wing with curiosity. Indeed,
Li.
its shape was quite different from what would be considered a typical detached wing back in Li. Of course, the Western Capital had its own architectural style, but this was more like—
"I suppose you'd call this a chapel?"
Tenyu said, running a hand along the brick building.
"Chapel? What's that?"
It would be an unfamiliar word to the quack doctor. It wasn't a term commonly used in Li. For a quack doctor who seemed so worldly-ignorant, it wouldn't be surprising if he didn't know it.
"It's something like a temple."
"Ah, a place for praying, then."
"The Western Capital has all sorts of faiths mixed together."
When they entered the detached wing, they found an open atrium, but there was nothing inside that suggested any object of worship. Only faint traces of religious faith lingered in the decorations on the pillars.
It had probably once been the residence of a deeply faithful person. Then it had become
Gyokuen's
property, and even if it hadn't been demolished, its function as a chapel had been lost.
"It's just the right size. Oh, the luggage has arrived properly too. Hmm, there's a lot of it—dealing with all of this is going to be a pain. Should we just leave everything in the boxes?"
"Yeah. But rather than that, let's do
rock-paper-scissors
quick! Who gets to go exploring?"
The Maomao from a while ago would have gone along with Tenyu's idea. But thinking about it more carefully, even if Maomao won, would the other two be able to do the work properly? If Tenyu won, she'd find it somehow irritating, and if the quack doctor won, that would be unsettling in its own way.
As a result, Maomao ended up doing something very uninteresting. She rolled up her sleeves and covered her mouth with a hand towel.
"Exploring can wait! First, we sort through the luggage!"
"Hm? Weren't you against exploring just a moment ago?"
"The young lady must be tired from the journey. Let's take it easy."
The luggage brought along on the long sea voyage might have spoiled. They needed to separate the usable medicines from the unusable ones and replenish what was missing.
"No. I'm not stepping outside until all this luggage has been sorted and put away."
"Whaaat?"
The quack doctor's eyebrows drooped into a frown and his lips pushed out in a pout.
Tenyuu looked fed up too, but grudgingly began to move.
"Hey, Miss, what should I do?"
Ri Haku, who had all the air of an idle large dog, poked his head in. He looked like the sort who might drop to the floor and start doing sit-ups if he had nothing better to do. Might as well put him to work on the heavy lifting, then.
"Could you bring the boxes from the entrance of the annex over here?"
Large boxes had been left abandoned at the entrance.
"Got it — oof, these are heavy!"
"That's probably why they ended up getting left sitting around like that, those boxes…"
Maomao stood before the heavy box. She lifted the lid and peered inside, finding a large quantity of rice husks and
sweet potatoes
packed within.
"These are someone else's luggage."
These were genuinely heavy. Even Ri Haku probably couldn't carry them over.
"What should we do? Want me to go rent a handcart?"
"No, let's have someone in charge come and collect them."
She was wondering who to ask when someone came waving from the direction of the garden.
"Hey — is any of our luggage mixed in over there?"
A man with no particularly distinctive features approached. If pressed, you'd just call him ordinary — probably around twenty-three or twenty-four.
(…I feel like I've seen him somewhere before?)
Maomao tilted her head.
The man looked at Maomao, and his face showed surprise.
"Y-You!"
How put-on.
Reaction
He pointed at Maomao.
"You—
—Raohan—
—the one who might be his sister, or might not be!"
"I'm the one who isn't."
She felt like she had encountered him somewhere before.
(Who was it again?)
Maomao cast her gaze down to the sweet potatoes packed in the box. On top of that, Raohan's name had come up.
"…You were Raohan's brother, right?"
"Raohan was born after me! How come I'm the one treated as an add-on?!"
The quick retort confirmed it — this was indeed Raohan's brother, whom she had met once before. All Maomao remembered was that he seemed ordinary but was quick with a comeback.
"I don't know your name."
"My name is—"
"There's no need to introduce yourself."
She had only just managed to remember the name of that quack doctor.
"Listen to me!"
"More importantly, why are you here?"
At Maomao's question, Raohan's brother made a complicated expression. Lihaku, judging him to be no threat, kept quiet.
"In place of my old man, I was brought here to teach them how to raise this one…"
There was something guarded about the way he said it.
"So you're one of the ones who got tricked by Raohan into coming here?"
"Th-that's not it!"
Easy to read. Raohan was still the same terrible person.
"What happened to Raohan's real father?"
What had become of Rahani's father, Mr. Ra-something, the man whose hobby was farming? He gave off the impression that he'd go anywhere for the sake of his fields.
"...His experiment growing sweet potatoes in the northern lands was discovered, so he can't leave."
"An experiment?"
"Sweet potatoes yield several times more than rice, so he tried growing them in Shihoku Province, where there's surplus labor and land."
"I see."
Maomao remembered that Jinshi had been working on various food security measures.
"But honestly, sweet potatoes are a plant from the south, so they don't grow well in the north. They'd probably barely grow at all, but my old man kept quiet about it, saying 'it's worth finding out what the northern limit is.'"
"...No, that's not something you should be doing right now."
Even Maomao could grasp that this was dangerous thinking. With a potential food crisis on the horizon, having land and people squandered for the sake of such curiosity was a real problem.
(With that gentle-looking face of his...)
He was a man whose bearing resembled Luomen's, but he apparently had the personality type that became blind to everything around him when absorbed in his hobby.
"I thought going all-in was too risky, so over here... here."
He tossed something from the box next to the one containing the sweet potatoes.
"A potato? Um, is this a potato?"
It was a plump, round potato. This was apparently also a relatively new ingredient — Maomao had heard that the capable older woman hadn't seen them circulating when she was young.
"That's right. This potato can grow even in cold, poor soil. Rahani came to check whether his old man was doing things properly, so I gave him some potatoes to bring along. Rahani only knows kind fathers, so he didn't think much of it, but his old man is quite the piece of work too."
The thoroughness was very much like Rahani. Rahani's father, Mr. Ra-something, was ultimately part of the Ra clan after all.
"With potatoes, you can harvest twice a year, so my old man should be right in the middle of groaning about planting. I bet he's frantically trying to increase the planting area to make up for the sweet potato yields."
"You sure know a lot about potatoes."
Maomao had thought the Rahani brother was just ordinary with nothing to recommend him but his quips, but he was surprisingly well-informed.
"Wow, you're a real pro farmer."
"A-a farmer!?"
Li Bai probably didn't understand half of what was said, but he enthusiastically slapped the Rahani brother on the back. The Rahani brother looked like he wanted to fire back with something, but he was choking too hard to get the words out.
Incidentally, Yabu seemed shy around the Rahani brother, who spoke in a rough dialect, and kept his distance. As for Ten'yū, he appeared to have absolutely no interest whatsoever in a man who was far too ordinary.
"...So does that mean these potatoes were brought in not as food, but as seed potatoes?"
"That's right. They told me to teach 'em how to grow the stuff. And what was it—'Are you gonna spend your whole life tied to the same piece of land?' In the end, you're still plowing fields, aren't you!"
Ordinary people, in their own ordinary way, had yearned for the outside world and been tricked into coming here. And the fact that they chased after seed potatoes and came running proved they were thoroughly farmers at heart. They'd probably grumble the whole while but still grow delicious crops.
(Agricultural guidance, huh.)
So they must be heading to the countryside.
"When you go to the rural areas, please take me along."
"Why?"
"There's something I want to investigate."
This was a godsend. If it weren't for Rahani, she'd have had to ask Rikuson instead.
(Rikuson, with that appearance of his...)
That mud-stained look—he must have been inspecting the rural areas. What would a man who'd been specifically recruited from the capital to come to the western capital be doing out in the countryside?
(Was he checking for tax irregularities, or verifying crop yields?)
Or—
(Did he sense the onset of a locust plague?)
A locust plague had broken out west of the capital.
If so, there was a high chance that locusts had come from even farther west. With locust plagues, it was crucial to act while the flying locusts were still few in number.
(I don't have that much interest in insects, though...)
It couldn't be helped—it was something entrusted to her long ago by that insect-loving girl.