Early the next morning, just as the sky was beginning to brighten, Nozawa was jolted awake by the cold.
The winters in Japan's central plains—if you called it cold, well, temperatures around five or six degrees Celsius weren't exactly enough to kill you, but if you said it wasn't cold, there was no way a human could possibly feel comfortable. Especially when you had to sleep at night just covered by your clothes.
In the Middle Ages of Japan, apparently even sleeping was a kind of torment.
Nozawa missed duvets, central heating, and air conditioning as he got up. He checked on Meng Ziqi's condition and found that he was just the same as before, still deep in sleep. Feeling disappointed but helpless, he could only continue to wait.
He'd just started moving around a little when the straw curtain over the dirt floor was lifted up at one corner, and Yayoi, her cheeks flushed red from the cold, poked her head in and bowed respectfully, "Lord Nozawa, are you getting up already?"
Nozawa hadn't expected this little girl to be waiting so early at the door and was a bit surprised. He hurriedly answered in the affirmative.
Yayoi rolled up the straw curtain and hung it over the door frame, then brought in hot water and a cotton towel, soaking and wringing it out, planning to help him wipe his face and hands.
"I'll do it myself," Nozawa said awkwardly, quickly refusing.
Ever since he could remember, even as a kid, he'd always washed his own face and brushed his own teeth. He really hadn't had many experiences like this. After all, his father was a worthless drunk—ignoring him was the least of it, he'd often hit and curse at him when drunk, and as for his mother, rumor had it she'd run off early with someone else; he didn't even have any memory of her. He'd spent most of his childhood at his uncle's house or at Meng Ziqi's, and he'd always been pretty independent. Once he could manage on his own, no one ever helped him wash his face again.
Yayoi hesitated, feeling this wasn't what her mother had taught her, but didn't dare insist.
Nozawa ignored her, finished washing his face himself, then carefully wiped Meng Ziqi's head, face, and neck, before taking his own jacket and covering Meng Ziqi with his quick-dry shirt. Once he was done, Yayoi hurried off to fetch water, which Nozawa didn't stop. He dug out a dental gum pellet to substitute for brushing his teeth—one bottle would only last about a month, and later he'd have to consider how to maintain dental health. There were no dentists to be found in these times.
With these thoughts swirling, he bent to put his shoes on, slinging his hiking backpack over his shoulder. Yayoi returned and, seeing this, said in surprise, "Lord Nozawa, breakfast will be ready soon. You're…"
"Breakfast can wait. I'm going out for a walk."
"Ah, umm…"
Yayoi looked perplexed but didn't dare stop him, thinking it over before carefully following after him. Nozawa didn't really care, and simply left the village, crossing the bridge and following the Koedaigawa towards the mountains.
Thirty minutes later, he was standing on the ridge, gazing again towards the Ise Mountains. Wisps of mist lingered in the valleys, but it was nothing compared to the dense fog he'd encountered before. Back then, he couldn't see even a meter ahead.
"Lord Nozawa, are you going into the mountains?" Yayoi was still trailing behind him, and she asked, a little worried, "There are bears, mountain whales, and wolves deep in the mountains. Will you be alright on your own?"
Mountain whales were actually wild boars. Back when the Emperor of Japan banned eating meat, the main target was four-legged animals, so domestic pigs died out in Japan, while wild boars were forced to change names and become a kind of 'fish'—at that time, the Japanese considered whales to be fish.
The same with rabbits—rabbits became a kind of bird, with their long ears as wings. Even nowadays, in Japan, rabbits are counted using "feathers," as for birds.
During the Heian Era, the Yin Yang Masters helped drive this trend even further, leading the Japanese to see eating the flesh of beasts as impure (akin to eating corpses; the Yin-Yang Path considered corpses impure, shrines refused to build cemeteries, and funerals were handled by monks). As a result, not eating animal meat became a common custom among Japanese people for nearly a thousand years. Because of this, people in ancient and medieval Japan were generally malnourished—you'd see crowds where everyone was only about 140 centimeters tall.
Of course, that was just a custom. When people were really starving, they ate whatever they could get—meat included. Especially the samurai class; for them, meat was food and even a form of medicine or tonic.
So, the Japanese samurai class and the commoner class ended up with a significant difference in height and weight. The "tall men" among them—anyone 170 centimeters tall was already a "tall man" in Japan. Nozawa, barefoot at 179 centimeters, was absolutely the tallest of the tall here—the pinnacle cohort.
Not that Nozawa cared whether the Japanese were short or not. Seeing there was no sign of fog in the mountains, he turned around and started heading back downhill, saying to Yayoi, "Don't worry. I'm not going into the mountains—just out for a walk."
Yayoi was just a bit over a meter tall, trotting behind him on her little short legs. She hadn't even caught her breath when Nozawa only stood on the ridge for two minutes and then started back down. She was even more baffled, and her vision swam—a result of malnutrition.
There was nothing she could do, so all she could do was trail back down behind him.
Nozawa wasn't too disappointed not to see the mountain fog rise. He'd only come to take a look on the off chance. He was ready for a drawn-out campaign—if the fog rolled in, he'd immediately go back, hoist up his idiot son, and head straight into the mountains for a gamble on getting back to the modern world. But since there was no fog, it was time to start carrying out the survival plan!
By the time they got back near Hibi Village, he got a good look at the environment he hadn't been able to see clearly after dark last night.
The village was surrounded by a ring of thick wooden fences, with a rough wooden watchtower at one corner. Around the village were sprawling fields—the areas near Koedaigawa were more orderly, but the further you went toward the hills, the more scattered the plots became.
It was late winter now, and the rice paddies were basically dry, dotted with stubble left after the harvest—those little stalks. Hard to say if the technology for winter-flooded paddies hadn't arrived here yet or if the area just wasn't suited to that sort of agriculture.