When it came to accessories, Liscia tended to prefer ones she could wear in battle over ones that were just pretty. I’d chosen the blue leather choker for her because it was stylish, yet wouldn’t get in the way. For Aisha, who, like Juna, was always helping me out, I planned to give her that lipstick I found which would go well with that healthy brown skin of hers. While hosting the music program, it seemed like she’d been worried about how feminine she was.
“So you don’t need to worry about that,” I explained.
“I–Is that a fact…?” she asked.
“It is. And by the way, Juna?”
“…What is it?” she asked.
“It’s not ‘sire,’ it’s ‘Master Kazuya,’ remember?”
“Ah…”
For a little while now, Juna had been calling me “sire” instead of “Master Kazuya.” It looked like when she started talking fast at me, she really was trying to hide her embarrassment.
Juna had a sullen look on her red face. “Master Kazuya… is a surprisingly big bully.”
“Is he now?” I asked.
“Yes. And quite the ladies’ man,” she said, wrapping herself around my arm again. Even more tightly than last time.
Over my shoulder I could see Juna’s embarrassed smile, with that hair piece shining above it.
“Wow… there are lots of little shops out, big brother!” Tomoe cried gleefully, seeing all the street stalls lined up in the plaza.
In our search for a place to get lunch, Juna had led us to the plaza with the Jewel Voice Broadcast receiver. This place had been an open field only a month ago, but now it was packed with stalls selling food and assorted goods. We had only just set foot in the plaza, but we could already hear the owners of stalls calling in customers, and customers haggling for a better deal.
The faces in the crowd were diverse, too. Housewives were here to buy ingredients for dinner. A group of craftsmen was here for lunch. Even off-duty soldiers from the kingdom’s forces were here to buy snacks.
Must be from the Army, I thought to myself. The Army and Air Force soldiers camped outside were allowed to enter the city when they were off duty.
I could also see a large number of non-humans who looked like travelers or adventurers. Race, job, nationality… none of it mattered here. It was one big hodgepodge of people of all ages and genders.
“…How did it end up like this?” I wondered.
“Thanks to Sir Poncho, Van’s food crisis has been alleviated considerably, but only so many people can produce food good enough to support a restaurant,” Juna explained. “However, the people who think they can manage a food stall gather here. This is the largest marketplace in all of Van now.”
“In an out-of-the-way place like this?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they be better off on the main street?”
“It’s because the receiver for the Jewel Voice Broadcast is here.”
“Oh, I get it…”
Ever since that music program had aired, as a test, we had been broadcasting Chris Tachyon’s news program during the day and the singing program at night. The customers hadn’t gathered because there were stalls here; the stalls had gathered because there were people here waiting to watch the Jewel Voice Broadcast.
It’s kind of like the black market in post-war Japan, I thought. Maybe it’ll end up like Ameyoko someday.
Juna and the loreleis only appeared on the music program on weekends. On every other day of the week, we ran a program where contestants hoping to become loreleis competed. The Jewel Voice Broadcast was always live, so if the loreleis had been the only ones who ever appeared on the program, it would have put too much stress on them.
If anyone who appeared on that contest program was deemed to have a gift for singing, they could be newly instated as a singer like Margarita, or, if they were attractive, a lorelei. If they were male, they could debut as one of the new class of male idols: the singing knights, orpheuses.
The program was simulcast in two countries, Elfrieden and Amidonia, and it could be seen in any city where there was a receiver. The reaction might be different in Amidonia, or the cities in Elfrieden might be reacting similarly to this.
I’ll need to estimate the economic impact of this later, I thought with a grin. That was when Tomoe pulled on my coat.
“Big brother, I’m hungry,” she said.
“Oh, right,” Juna said. “Well, how about we get something from one of the stalls?”
“Yeah! ♪” Tomoe sang.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” said Juna.
The three of us looked around the different stalls. Forty percent of the stalls sold food, twenty percent sold various accessories, twenty percent sold equipment, while the remainder dealt in other things.
It looked like a lot of the food stalls were selling skewers. Van was a long way from the sea, so they could only get their hands on river fish, and with the food crisis, grains and vegetables were in short supply. For meat, on the other hand, all they had to do was hunt wild animals.
They were likely selling meat that had been hunted outside the city walls. Because of that, none of the stalls openly stated what kind of meat they were selling. This was worse than them mislabeling their meat to sell it at a higher price; it was a total mystery what creatures any of it came from.
“It feels like a gamble buying any of the skewers…” I muttered.
Horned rabbit meat, I could probably handle, but giant rat and lizard meat, well… I think my sanity stat would take some serious loss from eating that. Besides, if they had just hunted whatever they could get their hand on from the nearby fields, there was no telling what diseases or parasites it might have. There were no food sanitation laws in this world, and none of the cooks were licensed.
I’ll need to institute all of that, too, eventually… I thought.
“It’s fine,” Juna said with a very lovely smile. “I had the marines come here ahead of us and serve as poison tasters. Allow me to guide you to a safe stall.”
“Poison tasters?! Not taste testers?!”
“If anything were to happen to you, it would be a national crisis,” she said. “It’s only natural that we would test anything from the market for poison. Your body is no longer yours alone, you know?”
What, am I pregnant now? I wanted to quip, but I got what she was trying to say. I didn’t know if I’d be able to use Living Poltergeists if I was sick from food poisoning. If I couldn’t, that would mean the country’s administration would be short several instances of me.
…Yeah, it looked like poison tasters were going to be a necessity, for my people’s sake. I’d just have to accept it.
“And? What was the result of the poison tasting?” I asked.
“One person complained of stomach pain and dropped out.”
“Dispatch a messenger to the castle!” I exclaimed. “Whenever a dish including meat or fish is sold, the ingredients must be listed in the store! Inform them that if they fail to do so, or if there is an error in the ingredients displayed, their business will be shut down!”
“Understood.” Juna sent one of the marines who were guarding us to run off that message to the castle.
This was the moment the Elfrieden Kingdom saw the beginnings of its first food safety law.
I intended to expand the range of things that required their ingredients be posted in due time, but before that, I wanted to clamp down on meat fraud. If there were bacteria or parasites, it could be a matter of life and death.
“O, fallen marines,” I mourned. “I will not let your deaths be in vain.”
“No, they’re not dead. It’s just food poisoning,” Juna said, rolling her eyes.