“It was His Majesty’s idea to set up a time at night for adults to learn,” said Ginger.
It hadn’t really been my idea. I had just recreated the night schools we’d had back in the other world.
Ginger brought his hands together in front of his mouth. “This is all we can do right now. However… from here on out, we’ll be able to do more and more. Isn’t that right, sire?”
Ginger had turned the conversation over to me, so I nodded firmly. “Yeah. From here on, I intend to have you teach more specialized topics. For instance, training adventurers to explore dungeons and protect people, passing on civil engineering techniques, working with Hilde and her people to train new doctors, studying ways to improve our agriculture, forestry, and fisheries… Oh, also, I’d like a place for training chefs, too.”
“That’s a pretty wide range of topics…” Liscia said.
I think you’ve figured it out now that I’ve said this much, but the job training facility I wanted to create was a vocational school, or perhaps something like a university made up of specialized departments.
The main focus of academic study in this world was either magic or monsters. Magic could be applied with some versatility to any number of fields, and it also had ties to science and medicine. As for the study of monsters, ever since the Demon Lord’s Domain appeared, it had been become one of the most important research topics.
Before that point, the monsters that had only appeared in dungeons had been the subjects for this sort of research. However, after the demon lord’s domain had appeared, the number and variety of monster sightings had increased by a factor of ten. Research on the topic had been rushed along in order to find some solution to the problem. Also, research on the materials that could be harvested from monsters was indispensable for the development of technologies.
This sort of research on magic and demons was principally being done at the Royal Academy. It was certainly true that the results of this sort of cutting edge research could lead to new developments in other academic fields.
However, and this might be my sense as a Japanese person speaking, I thought that there were incredible, revolutionary discoveries waiting to be found in research that, at a glance, seemed pointless, too. Like how the techniques that were polished and refined in downtown factories without gathering much attention could then create indispensable parts for a spaceship.
No matter what the subject, if you mastered it, you were first class. If you could become number one, you could become the only one.
That was why I wanted to create a place where the subjects that had been neglected by this world — education, civil engineering, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, cooking, and art — could be given specialized study and taught to other people. And then, if we were able to see results in a given field from our experiment at this training facility, we would build a training facility (at this point, more or less a vocational school) for that subject in another city.
For that, it would first be necessary to raise the average level of education within the kingdom, and that was why we were starting by teaching elementary level reading, writing, and arithmetic.
I asked Ginger, “Well, what do you think? How are things with the training facility?”
“Well… we are doing a good job of gathering children under the age of twelve,” said Ginger. “The school meals system that you proposed has worked well, I would say. There are times when it gets hectic, but we have created a cycle where they show up, they study, they get a proper meal, and then they go home.”
“School meals system?” asked Liscia.
“If children under the age of twelve come here and study, they are given free meals to eat. If they study here, they can eat. Once this becomes widely known, the children of families under financial stress will be more likely to come here and study. Many of their guardians find it’s better to send them here to study and save the money it would take to feed them than it is to force the children to work for what little money they can get. If they study properly, they may be able to escape from poverty in the future, after all.”
“Hmmm,” said Liscia. “That’s a well thought out system. Is that something they do in your world, too, Souma?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a method often used for providing support in poor countries.”
Liscia seemed impressed, but Ginger’s expression was more clouded.
“It’s true, we’re doing a good job of drawing in children. However, conversely, it’s hard to gather the adults, who aren’t covered by the school meals system. We are doing what we can by teaching them in the evening once their work lets out, but… ‘I’ve lived all my life without being able to read, write, or do arithmetic. Why should I learn to now?’ they say, and won’t even give us a chance.”
“Well, if they’ve never had an education, I can see how they might think that way,” I said.
Only upon receiving an education is one able to understand the value of one. While children may ask, “Why are we studying?” when they become adults they think, “Why didn’t I study more?” That they’re able to have that regret at all is because they were made to study as children.
“Well, enlightening them on the value of education is one part of our work,” I said. “I’ll come up with something.”
“Please do, sire.”
Ginger and I naturally shook hands.
Finally, after touching base on a number of things, Ginger and Sandria saw us off, and we left the training facility.
The next place we visited was the Kikkoro Distillery, not far from the training grounds.
This distillery, which used a hexagon with the character for wolf in the center as its brand mark, was run by mystic wolves like Tomoe, and it produced soy sauce, miso, sake, and mirin.
Here, we met another person I knew.
When we entered the grounds, there was a plump man wearing short sleeved clothes despite the winter chill.
“Hm? Poncho?” I asked.
“Wh-Why, Your Majesty! Good day to you, yes.”
When he noticed us, Poncho bowed his head to me. Maybe he had gotten used to the idea that he was only supposed to bow once. Before, he had been bobbing his head up and down constantly.
“What are you doing here, Poncho?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s right! Listen to this, sire!” Poncho trudged over with his abdominous body.
“Whoa, you’re getting too close!” I exclaimed. “…What’s this, so suddenly?”
“At last, at long last, it’s complete! That ‘sauce’ you have been requesting!” The usually shy and reserved Poncho was incredibly excited, thrusting a bottle filled with a black liquid out toward me.
The sauce I’d requested?
…Ah!
“You don’t mean that’s finally ready, do you?!”
“Please taste it for yourself, yes.”
“Sure!” I dripped a few drops of the black liquid onto the back of my hand, then licked them up.
It had a vegetable or fruit flavor and a spice-like fragrance. There was no doubt, this was what we’d called sauce in Japanese. However, unlike ordinary Worcestershire sauce, it had a strong sweetness and sourness, along with a depth of flavor.
This was definitely the sort of sauce that went with yakisoba, a sauce for flour-based dishes.
“The taste of sauce… is a boy’s flavor,” I remarked, quoting a certain gourmet manga.
“What kind of nonsense are you talking now?” Liscia said with a roll of her eyes, snapping me back to my sense.
“It’s just, the sauce we have been experimenting with is finally complete, so I was filled with emotion.”
“I–Is it that big of a deal?” Liscia asked.
“Of course! Because, with this, I can make yakisoba, okonomiyaki, monjayaki, takoyaki, and sobameshi. It’s good on fried dishes on its own, too.”