WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 479

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The Cow Says Moo

Kitchen Gluta. A fairly well-known restaurant in Ende. What made Gluta famous was partly good ingredients and skilled cooking, but above all else, it was the delivery system. By introducing alchemical containers to solve the biggest headache in delivery work, the crockery, the place had expanded its reach and gotten established before any imitator could catch up.

I had ordered from Gluta's service a few times myself and been perfectly happy with it, but nearly getting stabbed was another matter entirely. Selling pork disguised as beef and putting me in danger, you knew exactly what you were doing, didn't you? That deserves compensation.

"Get the owner out here!"

"Woof! Come out!"

I kicked through the door of the shop, warm plumes of steam still rising inside, and shouted.

"Selling pork as beef? That's a rotten thing to do to a customer! Give me my money back right now, and cover my medical costs while you're at it!"

"Woof! Pay up!"

We had charged in with plenty of spirit, but for a restaurant as popular as Kitchen Gluta, there wasn't a single customer in sight. I had figured that if I came in person and made a scene, the embarrassment alone would get them to hand over the money.

"What's this. Did this place go under?"

"We're open for business."

A heavy voice came from inside the kitchen.

"I wondered who was making a ruckus in my shop."

A huge figure walked out from the back. Tall enough that, for all the ceiling's height, he had to stoop a little coming through the doorway. The white clothes and apron did nothing to soften the imposing presence of a beastkin standing well over two meters.

Most striking of all were the curved horns on his head. The nose ring, worn like a piercing, said everything about what he was.

The owner and head chef of Kitchen Gluta. An ox-kin. Gluta exhaled a breath through his nostrils and looked down at me.

"One of two things. Either you're pig-kin, or you're a customer who got hurt by them. No beastkin ears on you, so I'd say customer."

He probably meant I had no beastkin ears to speak of, but somehow my ears heard it as a promise to remove those ears. My manners came back to me in an instant, and I folded my hands and spoke politely.

"...Yes, that's right. I got roughed up recently and I'm afraid I lost my temper."

"Customers are treated like royalty here. Don't worry. I won't be pressing your face onto the griddle."

Meaning he would press my face onto the griddle if I weren't a customer, right? Ha. Somehow that didn't sound like a joke.

Good thing I'm a customer.

"Before I apologize, one thing first. Customer. Did you genuinely not know it was pork?"

"Of course not. How would I have known?"

"The difference in flavor between pork and beef is plain enough."

What? Really? There's a meaningful difference in taste between pork and beef? Isn't meat just meat? Why didn't I know that?

When I thought about it, there was only one explanation. The blasted military state. Always serving processed, compressed mystery meat, and even then only about once a month. No wonder I couldn't tell pork from beef.

"...There are people like that in the world."

"An outsider who earned enough to settle in Ende? Then I'm even sorrier. I never thought to consider that kind of person."

Damn it. I'm the one who got tricked, so why do I feel like the embarrassing one? If I had come to the shop in person and read the thoughts there, I wouldn't have been fooled. Even the delivery person believed without a second thought that it was beef stew and carried it over. How was I supposed to know?

Anyway, I got a clean apology, but an apology in words alone is only half the job. I sat down in a chair, kept my chin up, and spoke with at least some measure of politeness.

"So. What are you going to do about it?"

"I have my pride as a shop owner. Show me a receipt and I'll compensate you for that amount, but."

Gluta continued with a reluctant expression.

"Practically speaking, I can't refund you everything in full."

"You just said you have pride."

"I don't have the money."

What? Why is that the part that sounds true? No, more than that.

"A shop this big and this well-known doesn't have cash on hand? You expect me to believe that?"

"There's a reason for it."

"Which is?"

"You experienced it yourself, didn't you. That's why you came to me."

Suddenly it all made sense. Those people had pushed even easygoing me to march all the way to a restaurant and make a scene.

"The pig-kin?"

"That's right. More precisely, the organization formed with piggies at its core. Orcma."

Piggy, the slur used to look down on pig-kin. Orc, the name they were called back when pig-kin were a symbol of fear. Gluta had used both in the same breath.

To understand why those two names exist, you first have to understand beastkin. Beastkin are a people who inherited some of the traits of animals, yet retained the advantages of humanity, making them physically superior to humans across the board.

Dog-kin had sharp senses and agility.

Sheep-kin had thick fleece and a balance that let them move easily up and down steep slopes.

Ox-kin had powerful strength and endurance.

Horse-kin had overwhelming speed and stamina.

Each group excelled in their own field by virtue of the animal traits they carried.

By comparison, the advantage pig-kin had was... survivability.

They did not fall ill easily. They could eat just about anything. They reproduced in large numbers, and with the instincts of beastkin they were adept at sensing and avoiding danger in the wild.

Naturally, the pig-kin population grew and grew. They formed clans among themselves and ruled over land. In those days they were called not pig-kin but orcs.

But that was ancient history.

As civilization reached every corner of the continent and the land under state control expanded, those rough-and-ready clans slowly declined. The pig-kin, whose strength had always been sheer numbers, either died resisting or surrendered in humiliation.

A common enough story. The fall was as steep as the glory that had come before it. The pig-kin were thrown to the very bottom of society, branded with the slur "piggy" on their heads and backs.

Gluta crossed his arms and exhaled through his nose.

"They had been quietly building their numbers, and a few years ago they started operating in earnest. When they called for better treatment of piggies, everyone in Ende understood, but then they started pushing for pig-kin placements in Ende's senior positions, demanding people stop eating pork, things like that. Unreasonable demands. Now they're going after not just people who sell meat, but the people who eat it."

"Sounds like a bunch of lunatics. Still, it looks like they haven't come after you here?"

"They haven't managed it. Everyone who tried ended up with their face turned into pressed meat."

...Looking at those muscles about to burst through his skin and those thick calloused hands, I could believe it.

"The piggies couldn't handle me, so now they're running terror attacks on customers. They'd follow patrons who came to the shop and attack them after they left. Attacks that happened outside the restaurant, I couldn't stop those."

"That is your fault, though."

"My customer count dropped, and my suppliers took damage too. The losses got bad enough that I swallowed my pride and tried to switch to beef, but overhauling everything from scratch, the suppliers, the pricing, the recipes, was impossible. So I pretended to give in to the piggies, told everyone I'd switched to beef, and changed the menu board. It held for a few weeks."

"Then Orcma happened to find out and made an example of me?"

"That seems to be how it went. You don't look injured, but that's beside the point. Orcma would have wanted word to spread that a customer got attacked."

Fair enough. The piggy who had stabbed me had been sloppy about it, and the spot they chose wasn't anywhere near fatal. Killing me wasn't really the goal. What mattered was the act of stabbing itself.

Orcma. Orcma, huh. For a secret organization, their methods were pretty small-time. Small-time things do matter, but it seemed unlikely to catch the regressor's attention. She was fixated on the King of Wolves; Orcma probably wasn't even a blip on her radar.

Pig-kin who won't let anyone eat pork. I was turning that thought over when Gluta's horns caught my eye.

"Wait a moment. You're ox-kin, aren't you?"

"As you can see."

"Then why did you say you were selling beef stew?"

"There are a few reasons. For one, if I was replacing pork, beef was the only meat that works for stew. And there's something that feels right about an ox-kin selling beef."

Meaning he'd sell it since it was him doing the selling. I understood the feeling. But that wasn't what I wanted to ask.

"Gluta. Does using beef not bother you at all?"

If pig-kin recoiled from pork, did the same thinking just not apply to ox-kin?

At my question, Gluta let out a long breath. So long that his lips trembled slightly with it.

"Not exactly. It does, clearly."

"But you sold it anyway."

"Some half-formed reluctance takes a back seat to my shop, my customers, my pride. If the costs had worked out, I would have switched to beef. That's no lie."

That part was true. But it sat differently from what he had said before, without the same solid certainty behind it.

"...Still. When the numbers on beef stew didn't work out. There was a part of me that felt relieved. That's also true."

'When I cut the horns from something that wore the same horns as me and put them in the pot. When I sliced the head meat after it had been simmered soft. A crawling feeling would circle my hands. And most of all, when I was about to taste it...'

Gluta gave a small shudder and spoke with a complicated expression.

"So I dislike the piggies, and yet, as a fellow beastkin, I understand their anger. To some degree."

Between the conversation and the mind reading, what I felt reading Gluta was neither sympathy nor awkwardness. It was anger. The direction was just slightly different.

It struck me freshly, what a miserable thing the military state was. They had made it so we couldn't even taste the difference in meat, and then fed us nothing but beans.

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