Aegis, the phoenix chick, was showing signs of growth, but he was still very much a chick.
Orthros Ol had also been with us for quite a while now, yet he remained a child. The fenrir pups likewise stayed in their juvenile stage for a significant amount of time. Hitoe, Yoko’s daughter, had even remained a fox cub for over a hundred years.
On the other hand, the older sister cats and the kittens already looked like fully grown adults. Kuro’s children became indistinguishable from grown wolves in the blink of an eye.
I wondered if there was some kind of law to it.
"It just varies by species. There is no point in overthinking it," one of the high elves informed me as she passed by.
I see. If there was no point in worrying, I wouldn't. For the time being, I decided to treat Sougetsu as a child, since he was still a young tiger despite his massive frame. The older sister cats raised a chorus of complaints, but I ignored them.
Over in Village One, the residents had apparently spent the winter researching food ingredients. I received a report on their results, though most of it wasn't particularly useful.
I didn't mind, though. Failure is an inherent part of research. The important thing was that they kept trying. It might be painful to feel like they were wasting food during the trial-and-error phase, but success would mean an advancement in our food culture.
Besides, it wasn't as if they had no results at all.
"This is dry and doesn't taste good!" the Fairy Queen complained, biting into a prototype while standing beside me for some reason.
So, it didn't taste good. I see. The prototype she had eaten was made by mixing powdered mochi rice with starch extracted from corn. In other words, it was a monaka wafer shell. The residents of Village One had described it as a "mysterious food with an interesting texture that requires more research into flavor."
It was a shame they only existed in flat sheets since they were prototypes, but I took one, placed some bean paste on it, capped it with another wafer, and handed it to the Fairy Queen.
"I see... Not bad at all! Well done, Village One!"
I smiled. She was still being too easy on them. I applied chocolate to one side of another wafer shell—to prevent it from getting soggy—and topped it with ice cream before handing it over.
"A revolution has occurred in the world of sweets!"
She seemed satisfied. Since the wafers could be used like this, it would be helpful if the villagers could work on the shape.
The research result Village One brought in with the most pride, however, was a new type of mochi. Unlike the kind we had made before, this was produced by crushing the rice and kneading it with sugar. This allowed it to stay soft for a very long time. It was the variety used for daifuku mochi.
It was sweet and delicious on its own, but it offered endless possibilities. You could add beans, bean paste, strawberries, or even ice cream. When I whipped up a few samples, the Fairy Queen praised me as a genius. I couldn't really take the credit, though, since it wasn't my idea.
Saint Seles, who had joined the tasting session before I knew it, was delighted that the product lineup for the Korin Sweets Shop in Village Five would grow.
"Until now, our seasonal dango only varied by the ingredients we mixed in or the toppings we applied. With this, we can expand our reach even further!"
I didn't mind that, but I wondered if they could handle a mass-production system. Was the staff at the Village Five church really going to do all that work? I worried if their religious duties would be okay. I had heard a rumor that the majority of the church staff was involved in manufacturing sweets for the shop.
"That is an incorrect rumor," Seles corrected. "It isn't the majority; everyone is involved."
"Is that... really okay?"
"This, too, is a form of discipline."
Well, if the person in charge said it wasn't a problem, then I suppose it wasn't. The products from the Korin Sweets Shop were also supplied to Kuro and Yuki and Cafe Blue, so I looked forward to the daifuku mochi.
This meant the demand for mochi rice would increase. I usually grew it in the autumn, but perhaps I should start a summer crop as well. I had already finished plowing the fields for this spring.
Seeing Seles’s motivation, I decided to plow even more fields for mochi rice. Better to have too much than not enough.
Meanwhile, karaoke was apparently trending in Village Five. Of course, it wasn't the karaoke I knew.
A singer would stand in the center of a large stage and perform to the accompaniment of a live band—lutes, harps, drums, and flutes—while their voice was amplified by magic. How was that karaoke? Since there was a live band, you could argue it was just a normal concert, but rest assured, I felt the same way.
Apparently, this "karaoke" was started as a business by some noble daughters who were acquaintances of Yuri. They had wanted to perform as a band, but their vocalist, Yuri, was busy with her actual job. She was currently struggling to coordinate the installation of short-distance teleportation gates across various regions.
Because of her schedule, the band had no work. Yuri had been worried about them and tried to find them a job, but the only opening was as assistants to Five-kun. It seemed they viewed Five-kun as an even greater rival than Yuri did, so they found the work unsatisfactory.
That was when they came up with this karaoke concept. They acted as a backing band for anyone who wanted to sing, and it turned out there were surprisingly many people with that desire. Perhaps because Village Five was a town of migrants, there were many who sang songs from their homelands with great passion, and many in the audience who were moved to tears.
The singers paid a fee based on their time on stage, while the audience watched for free. It started in a small venue, but it grew popular so quickly that they were now able to rent out a large stage. I thought people might be too shy to perform on such a big stage, but its popularity was high enough that reports were reaching me constantly. Everyone certainly had a lot of guts.
And, unfortunately, I was the one who had given this musical activity the name "Karaoke." It was a total slip-up. A request for a name had been buried among some documents, and I had simply written down the first thing that came to mind. I regretted it.
As for why it had spread so far that it was now impossible to retract... perhaps it was just because the word had a nice ring to it. Or maybe it was just a testament to the efficiency of the Civil Official Girls.
Naturally, the singers were mostly amateurs, so there was a massive disparity in skill. In other words, even those who were tone-deaf had their voices amplified by magic for all to hear. While this created some noise complaints, it also led to the opening of several music schools that taught singing. I hoped they would do their best.
By the way, I had to ask—which one in the band was the one they called the Ramen Queen? The drummer? I see. Despite walking around and eating different types of ramen every single day, she hadn't gained a bit of weight. Still, the nickname made sense once I saw that her "refreshment" for the performance was a bowl of ramen delivery.