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Volume 7 Chapter 3 Part 2

「When would you like to eat those fish? For breakfast? Or for dinner?」

「I would like it for dinner, desu! Even though I would have to wait for a little bit, that’s only going to make it more delicious, desu!」

Roxanne translates Miria’s answer for me. This seems to be the only thing that she’s being fixated on at the moment.

「All right. Then choose the one that you like the most and we’ll pick that one.」

「Yes, desu!」

We went and had a look around the entire fish market under Miria’s cheerful leadership. As one would have expected of a fish market of such a big size, the variety of the fish that were available for sale there was outstanding. They even had things like crabs, shrimps and lobsters available there, although in smaller quantities in comparison to other fish.

I have to admit that I have underestimated this place because it was located in such a rural village. Or maybe the selection here is so good precisely because this place is located in such a rural village.

Before long, Miria started up a deep conversation with an old lady who was running one of the shops at the market.

「Are they really able to communicate with one another?」

「Hmm… I’m not really sure. The Bana language she is using sounds a little different from the one that Miria is using, but I think that as long as they’re going to speak slowly, they should be able to understand one another.」

The Bana language spoken by Roxanne and Sherry is the same one, thanks to which they are able to communicate smoothly with one another without any misunderstandings. However, that is not how it is in the case of our catgirl and this lady whom she is speaking to, even though this lady also seems to have cat-ears on her, upon closer inspection.

The languages that Miria and the old lady speak seem to be as different as Spanish language differs from Portuguese, or how a dialect from Kyoto differs from the dialect from Osaka. I also heard that when it comes to Japan, people who speak Kagoshima dialect will not be able to communicate with the people speaking with Aomori dialect due to how different these two are from one another.

「This one, desu.」

Miria looks back toward me while pointing towards a certain, small fish that kinda looks like a Mackerel. I this the fish that she wants me to buy? A Mackerel?

「Eight of this one, desu.」

「Eight, huh? Well, I would’ve gladly bought that many, but I’m afraid that we don’t have anything to put that much fish in.」

Just like I said, we didn’t bring anything to carry larger quantities of fish with us, not even a simple shopping basket, since we usually carry bread in our hands due to its size while the vegetables are being placed in our backpacks for the ease of transportation until we return home with them. This Mackerel has a particularly strong smell, so if at all possible I want to avoid putting it inside of the backpack so that its stench would not linger on in any more than it is absolutely necessary.

However, if Miria’s reaction s anything to go by, then she seems to be quite fond of it though.

「X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X.」

「X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X.」

「She is saying we can have a bucket for 20 Nars.」

Roxanne said after asking the old lady who ran the store something in the Bana language.

「Really? That’s great to hear. A bucket and eight pieces of Mackerel, please.」

When Roxanne translated my words and placed the order, the old lady left the shop and went somewhere else, most likely to fetch the bucket for us.

「X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X.」

While pointing at the fish, Miria explains more about it to us.

「Internal organs of this fish need to be cleaned carefully, so that it doesn’t bleed and contaminate everything around it. For that reason, before it gets properly cleaned, it should be kept away from other food.」

「I see, I’ll be sure to keep it away from all the other ingredients during the preparation stage then.」

So you need to handle it extremely carefully so that its scent, blood and juices from the internal organs wouldn’t affect the rest of the dish that you’re going to be preparing in a negative way, huh? I guess this means that even if the fishing in their world is vastly inferior to the fishing from the world that I know, there are still some similarities between the two.

As expected of Miria. When it comes to anything that is even remotely fish-related, she proves time and time again that her knowledge of that subject is like no other.

The old lady was back with our bucket soon after that. The bucket itself was actually a flat tub with handles added on either side, which made it look similar to what you would get when ordering a delivery from a sushi bar.

Miria wastes no time putting the eight fish into the bucket.

「X X X X X X X X X X X X .」

「That’s going to be twenty eight Nars.」

Roxanne translates the price of the fish and the bucket for me. Just twenty-eight Nars for all of that? Now that’s what I call cheap. Is it one Nar for every Mackerel then? And that’s without my 「Thirty Percent Discount」 Bonus Skill, which doesn’t work on the old lady because when I inspected her with 「Identify」, I saw that her Job was not a Merchant, but rather a Villager.

To be honest, I also thought that we’re going to have to pay much more for that shopping: around one hundred Nars, to be exact, but I guess that’s not the case, since the most pricey item of the bunch proved to be the bucket that costs twenty Nars. Now I don’t know what we ended up buying: the fish with the addition of a bucket, or a bucket with the fish thrown in as a bonus.

「That going to be all?」

「Yes, desu.」

Since Miria nods in agreement, we all decided that our business here is done and we could go back home.

「They are really small, you know. Are you really fine with them?」

「It seems that these fish have been caught in a long-haul dragnet, and the fisherman who caught it apparently said that that can also catch the fish of different sizes, even the ones that are no bigger than their own palm. Also, it’s true that small fish are cheaper than the bigger fish, but it does not mean that their taste is worse in comparison to them. As long as they are prepared carefully and with the right ingredients, they can also be made very delicious.」

「I see, that is definitely good to hear. As expected of Miria.」

「Yes, desu.」

Miria sticks her chest out proudly, and I pat her head. Thanks to her knowledge about the fish, I feel like we’ll be able to utilize even the smallest and the most unassuming of them to their fullest potential.

If my guess is right, then probably out of all the fish that are being caught in this village, the biggest, best-looking and tasting ones are probably reserved for the heads of the group of fishermen who went out to the sea to catch them, and quite possibly to the most important personages in the entire village.

On the other hand, the smaller fish are probably distributed among all the other fishermen, and that’s why they probably learned to treat them all very carefully, because they know that this is all that they’re going to get, so they have to make each and every fish count.

For the time being, it would be best for us to keep the fish that we bought in the kitchen until the dinner in the evening, and that’s exactly what we did.

In the evening, Miria cuts all of the fish down into even pieces and sautés them. When she was done, the Mackerels were crunchy and crispy on the outside, but their insides were still perfectly soft and even chewy.

Just as I would have expected of our fish expert, the dish that she prepared came out delicious.

「It is delicious, Miria.」

「Yes, desu!」