Chapter 41 — Meddling
There were some ways in which cooking for quite a few people was more work than cooking for one, but an aspect of it that Mizuki hadn’t considered was the work involved in transporting raw ingredients. Not buying them, since that was easy enough, but if she wanted to bring home enough food for the five of them for the next two or three days, the pounds really started to add up, enough so that her large, trusty bag was digging into her shoulder. It was also hard to cook for five because it seemed impossible to make enough that there would be leftovers for the next day, which meant cooking was something that needed to be done every day. When she’d been alone, if she didn’t feel like cooking, she could just live off the same pot of stew for a few days.
Something was going to have to be done about it, but Mizuki didn’t quite know what. It was making cooking into a larger part of her life and in the process making cooking perhaps a little less fun. So far as she knew, none of the others could really cook, so it wasn’t like they could be depended upon to take up some of the slack. Hannah was the exception, and Isra seemed like she wanted to know how to cook, but… well. Mizuki was keenly aware that this was a problem of her own making. She had offered to cook and said that it was no problem. She had dismissed help with elements of the work where help would be appreciated. She had no idea how she was going to say, ‘Oh, actually, some days I just won’t feel like cooking’, or ‘I know that I waved off your suggestions that I take it easy, but actually I shouldn’t have done that’. It seemed awkward and unpleasant to do that.
“Mizuki, so good to see you’re intact,” said Marta, who seemed to be genuinely happy that Mizuki was there for market day. “How was the second dungeon for you?”
“Oh, it was an adventure,” said Mizuki. “We fought a bear the size of a house.”
Marta waved a hand. “You’ve got to be more realistic with your exaggerations, no one is going to believe that.”
“Very much not an exaggeration,” said Mizuki. “We really did.”
“And how would you have beaten such a thing?” asked Marta, giving Mizuki a raised eyebrow.
“By sucking all of the magic out of the room and breaking our bard,” said Mizuki. “And then having Hannah rush in to double the damage and nearly get herself killed.”
“Well, you be careful,” said Marta, frowning. “Dungeons don’t get very dangerous until you’re higher elevation, so if you’re having trouble now, it might be a sign that things aren’t for you.”
“So far it’s seeming like it’s extremely dangerous,” said Mizuki. “How many did you say you did?”
“Twenty-eight,” said Marta. She seemed to feel some pride in that, though she wasn’t quite puffing out her chest. “Of course, I was a wizard back then, filling a bit of your role, I suppose, though in a different way.”
“I’d meant to ask about that,” said Mizuki. “Why give up wizardry?” She’d known Marta for ages, though only as a purveyor of meats and other foodstuffs.
“There’s always work for a wizard, and I was a normal enough wizard for a time, but it’s intensive, mindful work, and never really gets less so,” said Marta. “Eventually I wanted to slow down, but if you slow, you start looking at all the equipment and thinking that it’s a load of money you’re not making the full use of, like sitting on a chair made of gold, so at a certain point I sold off all my mana stones and switched over to dealing in food, which was my husband’s work.”
“I guess it’s not the same for a sorc,” said Mizuki. “We don’t have equipment or really all that much training or anything. There’s nothing to give up.”
“Some wizards go into a sort of retirement and keep enough stones around for little things,” said Marta. “And I did, for a year or so, until it was clear that I was going to rust away.”
“Do you regret that?” asked Mizuki. “Switching vocations?”
“Oh, not at all,” said Marta. “Firstly, I think it’s better not to live a life of regrets, but secondly, I think that we can view our lives as having different phases to them, when sometimes it’s appropriate to be one thing, and other times it’s appropriate to be another. But I’m not sure that there are so many parallels between us, because being a wizard is, if you’ll forgive me, much more of a steady job.”
“True.” Mizuki looked down at the selection of meat. Marta’s husband was the butcher, and he had a skilled hand as well as some entad support, which allowed the meat to come out looking clean and perfect, almost an abstracted version of itself.
“You’ve been cooking for the whole house?” asked Marta.
“I have,” said Mizuki. “And they seem quite appreciative.”
“Five is a fair number to cook for,” said Marta. “You make sure you’re getting your worth from them, on that front and the other.”
“The other?” asked Mizuki.
“Dungeoneering,” said Marta. “Now, I’ve no idea how good you are in a dungeon, but we’re a bit alike, wizards and sorcerers, and my guess is that you do most of the killing. It’s a good position to negotiate from, if they know your worth.”
“Oh,” said Mizuki. “Oh, I would never do that. We’re, well, friends now. Mostly.”
“I like you quite a bit, more than my other customers, but don’t let them know it,” said Marta. “You’re always pleasant and cheerful, but you can’t negotiate to save your life.”
“Which is why I’m such a good customer?” asked Mizuki with a smile.
“Which is why you need to make sure no one is taking advantage of you,” said Marta. “I’m very serious about this. I know your family went back to Kiromo, and you don’t really have anyone, but just because someone is a friend, or just because you want to be nice, doesn’t mean that you should let them put too much on your shoulders.”
Mizuki had known Marta for a long time, and Marta was among a group of women who had made sure that when her parents left, Mizuki was more or less taken care of while she was alone in that big house. For the most part, it was in little ways, like occasionally bringing her food, or offering to help her out, or sometimes sending a son or grandson to do some chores, occasionally as a pretense for courting. These women had, perhaps, disagreed with the decision to leave her all by herself or were just fulfilling their community obligation, but it had been nice to have someone looking out for her, even though the support and check-ins petered off over the years as it became clear that Mizuki could handle herself.
It was still somewhat shocking to get such a forceful heart-to-heart with Marta. It wasn’t unwarranted, necessarily, but Mizuki hadn’t been expecting it. It was all true—she was agreeable and sometimes felt like she was missing out because of it, especially when it came to the odd jobs end of things, and the phrase ‘oh you can just pay me what you feel is fair’ had passed her lips a few too many times. Alfric was the one holding the purse strings though, and he was too upstanding to give her anything less than she was owed, but she was cooking for the whole house and perhaps offering a bit too much and waving away too many reasonable objections.
“I’ll think about it,” said Mizuki. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry to get so serious on such a lovely day, and of course I know it’s not my place,” said Marta. “We had all assumed that you’d be married by now, but if that’s not in the cards for you, and no reason it has to be, then you won’t have a partner to lean on and shore up your weaknesses, I’m sorry to say.”