"Oh, you're awake?"
Maomao
opened her eyes to find a familiar face peering down at her with a bright voice.
"Ri—
Rihaku,
sir?"
It was the familiar martial officer who resembled a large dog.
Maomao surveyed her surroundings with a foggy mind.
It wasn't a room—she was inside a tent. Looking around, she saw
Suzume
cooking something in a pot.
That much was fine, but—
At the edge of her vision, she spotted
a locust
and leaped to her feet.
"A locust!"
Maomao immediately crushed the locust underfoot.
"Hey, miss, killing just one isn't going to make a difference. Also, you really shouldn't move so suddenly."
"That's right, Maomao. Here, please eat something."
Suzume sat Maomao down and gently offered her a bowl. She took a sip—it was a milk porridge with a faint salty taste.
With some warm food in her belly, Maomao began to remember.
"How long was I unconscious?"
She recalled the locust plague arriving, and then the hail that followed.
"A whole day. A large chunk of hail hit your head. We judged it too dangerous to move you, so we had you rest here in the tent."
Maomao thought Suzume's response was largely correct. And then, thinking about how she had lost consciousness at the critical moment, she felt wretched about herself.
(She must have been pretty badly affected.)
Maomao was only human. It was no wonder she might have gone to pieces in the face of an unprecedented crisis. Still, she must have caused everyone trouble.
"There's no need for you to feel down, Maomao. You just got a bit overwhelmed and focused on killing bugs. Thanks to that, the Maomao-brand insecticide ended up so potent that it'll contaminate the soil if you don't dilute it. We've been diluting it now and finishing up the rest of the extermination."
"The rest of the extermination?"
"To put it simply, the worst has passed. The hail and the sharp drop in temperature afterward did most of the work. But they're still alive, so we're currently mopping up what's left."
"I'm here to help with that."
Li Bai raised his hand.
"Large numbers of migratory locusts also flew to the Western Capital. Not as bad as here, but there's been damage.
Jinshi
was running around like crazy and ordered me to head straight to the village where you were. I arrived half a day ago."
"In exchange, my humble brother has returned to Tsukimi-no-kimi's side."
That was probably the best Jinshi could do.
Maamen
would still have had some to spare, but someone needed to report the current situation to Jinshi.
"Sounds rough. The folks in the Western Capital looked like they'd never seen a locust plague before. I mean, neither had I, but I'd been warned over and over that something like this might come."
Li Bai's guts were as thick as he looked. He was the right choice for the job.
"Right, right, it was chaos once that old guy started shouting 'Where's Maomao?! Where is Maomao?!' and rampaging around. The physician was terrified when he barged into the infirmary."
"Wow."
She could only imagine too well what that eccentric strategist had been like.
"I don't know if it was Lord Jinshi's quick thinking, but he told some outrageous lie like 'Maomao has been isolated in an area with no locusts.'"
"When you're on the front lines?"
No, it was Maomao who had insisted on going — but still. Sometimes a lie was the best policy.
"That old guy was also assembling a locust extermination squad. And he suppressed the rioters in the Western Capital too."
"..."
I had a feeling the Western Capital was probably fine.
The problem was the other rural regions.
Come to think of it...
"...
Rahan
brother, are you safe?"
"Ah, the potato guy, huh?"
"No news means he's safe, right?"
"No, the last message was way too ominous."
A perfectly ordinary, capable farmer—yet they'd dragged him into forced marches and thrown him right into the front lines of the locust plague.
Thanks, Rahan brother.
Maomao gazed up at the tent ceiling, trying to picture Rahan's face when he smiled, but she couldn't even remember what he looked like smiling. He was basically always getting in someone's face about something.
Wait, is he even alive?
At least he'd been given a proper escort, so she wanted to believe he was alive.
"So how bad is the damage?"
The locust plague had struck. No use dwelling on it. What mattered now was the aftermath.
"The wheat harvest was about eighty percent done. The wheat that hadn't been cut yet was wiped out, but apparently the yield was better than usual this year. Factoring that in—and subtracting one household's worth of wheat lost in the fire—the total harvest comes to about seventy percent of a normal year."
"Seventy percent?"
Maomao thought that was a miraculous number, all things considered. Rahan's guidance must have been exceptionally good. But wheat wasn't the only thing to worry about.
"What about other damage?"
"A lot of the straw got eaten. The pasture grass for livestock too. As for the sweet potato fields, only the stems are left, but I think they'll probably grow back."
Suzume kept her reports concise, but she was clearly no good at grave situations—she kept toying with flowers and little flags in her hands. Li Bai watched her with undiminished amusement, no matter how many times he saw it.
"Honestly, there are probably quite a few other villages that have been completely devastated."
"As soon as Jinshi got Rahan's letter, he sent riders to all the neighboring villages, but I doubt any of them pulled off countermeasures as solid as ours."
"That's right. We were relatively lucky—things didn't descend into chaos here."
(I guess that counts as not descending into chaos)
Maomao had thought she was fairly accustomed to dealing with such situations, but apparently Suzume was even more so.
Still, if you had to pick the person who had contributed the most this time, it would be—
"What happened to Rikuson?"
"I believe he's outside. Shall I go find him?"
Rikuson had been well-prepared. It wasn't just that he'd chased the locusts away—he seemed to have thoroughly considered how people on the brink of desperation would behave.
(Otherwise, the burning grain would have spread much further.)
Even though Maomao had repeatedly told them not to use fire, they had used it anyway. In an enclosed space with no light, and with screams of agony coming from outside, it was only natural to feel anxious. Now she understood just how important it had been for each person to go door to door and call out to the households.
(Who is he, really?)
Wondering to herself, Maomao stepped outside the tent. Suzume followed along, perhaps because she was worried.
Whether it was the lingering effects of the hail or not, she felt a chill. Locusts lay scattered across the ground, and some people were still catching the ones that hadn't yet landed.
In the center of the village, a rather unpleasant-looking black mound had formed—they were presumably collecting the locusts there. It seemed to be moving, so she didn't want to get too close.
The people who had been holed up in their homes were now outside, standing in stunned silence. The wheat fields had already been stripped down to just the stalks, but the straw was completely useless.
Suzume had briefed her on the extent of the damage beforehand, but seeing it with her own eyes was something else entirely. They passed fields of sweet potato plants that had been reduced to bare stems, then checked on the pastureland as well.
It wasn't as obvious as with the straw, but the grass cover seemed to have thinned out considerably. The livestock had been let outside, but they all stood around looking dejected.
A chicken pecked at a locust rolling on the ground.
(I wonder if they taste good?)
Maomao had eaten them herself, but they really did look unappetizing no matter what.
"Maomao, Maomao."
"What is it, Suzume?"
"I went ahead and made something to see if they're edible."
She produced a stir-fried dish of some kind seemingly from out of nowhere. Starting in on some random task so abruptly was classic Suzume—she had probably read exactly what Maomao was thinking.
"..."
"They looked like they'd be hard to digest, so I removed the heads, shells, and legs. Also, since I had no idea what they'd been eating, I took out the innards as well."
As for what exactly they were the innards of—well, that went without saying. From the appearance alone, it was completely impossible to tell what kind of dish it was supposed to be.
"Taking out the innards was the right call. These things eat poisonous grass, and they even cannibalize each other. But once you remove everything, there's hardly anything left."
"Yes, the edible portion is far too small. Here, go ahead!"
Maomao pinches off a small bite with obvious reluctance.
"How is it?"
"…It's not inedible, exactly."
"Honestly, when you factor in the effort, I'd recommend a different dish."
"I agree."
Since this was Suzume's cooking, they should have been using reasonably decent seasonings. With good seasoning applied, it was less a matter of being inedible and more that the people standing blankly before fields devoured by locusts weren't exactly in a position to cook anything. The nutritional value was also negligible compared to the damage they had suffered.
As they walked along checking the damage,
Nenshin
was waving. Maomao approached to see what the one-eyed old man wanted.
"Is that poison gone yet?"
"Poison?"
Maomao tilted her head.
"The stuff for killing bugs. You were simmering it in that big pot. Crushing them one by one is pointless, so I want to scatter it on those locusts and wipe them out."
"Ah, you mean insecticide."
She recalled how, in a daze, she had done nothing but boil poisonous herbs.
"Yeah, that poison."
"Poison…"
She wanted to correct him and say it wasn't poison, exactly—but—
"Oh, the poison lady! More poison, please!"
"Give us the poison. Something that looks dangerous even when diluted."
"That poison works really well! What did you boil to make it?"
Other villagers began to gather around.
(Th-that's not poison…)
Maomao wanted to insist it wasn't, but Suzume tapped her lightly on the shoulder. Suzume shook her head with a knowing look on her face.
Maomao's shoulders slumped.
"...Please follow the recommended dosage and use as directed."
Once again, she found herself reduced to gathering poisonous herbs.