In the end, he drove the cart to the rice shop and bought one koku of brown rice, half a koku of white rice, and three gou of salt—coarse salt, earthy yellow, sometimes flashing with a strange shimmer, obviously way over the limit on heavy metals, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn't find refined salt, so for now he could only grit his teeth and eat this stuff.
With that, he had clothing, food, shelter, and transportation all sorted out. The first step of his survival plan had gone very smoothly. He and his dumb son now had a stable foundation for life.
......
As a "Samurai" with status, even if it was all for show, there was no need for him to dirty his hands with rough work. Tao Liulang, Jing Qilang, and the rice shop's clerk were in charge of loading the long barrel-shaped straw-woven rice bales onto the cart, while he stood nearby with his hands behind his back, supervising the process.
He was bored out of his mind when suddenly, a pipa sounded in the distance.
In a dark, damp corner against the wall beside the rice shop, a little boy of about ten was sitting and strumming a Japanese pipa. The tune was slow and repressed, bone-chillingly eerie, sending a faint wave of dread through anyone listening.
Yeah, that's pretty much the standard style of Japanese folk songs—too many cramped semitones, innately gloomy, to the point you half expect a vengeful female ghost to be peering over your shoulder.
Harano listened for a while. He didn't like the song; it put him on edge, as if someone was plotting harm against him. But the little beggar's technical skill was excellent. In modern times, he might have become a little internet celebrity. Born in this era—what a waste.
Actually, no, it wouldn't be accurate to call him a little beggar. To be precise, he should be called a "Blind Mage": a type of street performer who made a living playing the Japanese pipa, usually blind, generally not very skilled, and often had a bowl in front of him. Over time, people just lumped them in with the beggars.
Harano watched the little boy quietly appreciating local folk music. The boy seemed aware and turned his head toward him; his eyes were a bleak white, lifeless, and his clothes were terribly tattered. He was small and thin, with no clue when he last had a full meal. He looked absolutely pitiful.
Who knows how much longer he'll survive…
Most of Harano's good mood from securing a stable living drained away. Affected by the music, he even felt a bit irritable.
Even if commerce was relatively bustling, this was still a terrible era. Even if he could get by here, it was still a terrible era.
He didn't like it here. Probably no modern person sent back to ancient times would ever feel comfortable—they'd all have trouble adapting, all want to run for their lives as soon as possible!
The pipa music faded, growing lower and lower until it ceased, leaving only a lingering resonance. Harano took some copper coins he'd gotten as change from buying rice, walked over, and put them into the boy's bowl. He didn't say anything. This wasn't his problem, and certainly wasn't something for a transient drifter like him to try and fix.
His kindness only went so far. Handing over a few spare coins to soothe his conscience was about the extent of it.
Once the loading was done, he perched on top of a straw bag. Tao Liulang led the donkey, Jing Qilang walked alongside with a bamboo spear and a straw hat, and they headed straight home.
......
The way back was much easier. After all, he was now among the "owning a car" class—he could park anywhere he wanted and not even worry about getting a ticket. Ten times better than back in the modern day. Still, the speed wasn't much faster. It had taken over four hours to get here, and taking the donkey cart home took about four hours as well. By the time they got to Yayoi's yard, it was already dark.
The Yayoi mother and daughter saw that Harano had gone to Kuno Castle Town and come back with so many things. They were surprised, happy, but also oddly accepting—as if it was only natural. They immediately helped carry rice and fabric, then started a fire to cook.
A Ping was especially delighted—Harano wasn't eating her family's provisions. That really took a load off her worried mind. You couldn't blame her for being stingy. In times like these, food was life itself. Who knew whether the next year would be bountiful or a famine?
If the household ran out of food, was the whole family supposed to sit around waiting to die?
Sometimes people have no choice but to be stingy.
Harano moved the copper coins to the earthen floor, then checked on Meng Ziqi, visited Jiulang, and made some small talk like, "Still coughing?" and "How's your body feeling?" Jiulang, having already heard from his wife that Harano had saved him, mustered his weak strength to offer heartfelt thanks.
Harano took the opportunity to say he wanted to keep staying on for a while. Of course, they agreed to that, so after giving thanks, he went back to the main house to eat.
He really was hungry. In Kuno Castle Town, though there were restaurants, Whale House, izakaya, and food stalls everywhere, he was a stranger and hadn't planned on eating out. Quick in, quick out—not only did he not eat lunch, now his stomach was stuck to his back. He wolfed down dinner with genuine relish.
The main reason was that he was eating white rice. He finally got to have white rice! The grains were still a bit firm, but it was miles better than brown rice.
Tao Liulang and Jing Qilang hadn't expected that their first day serving the Patriarch would get them real rice. That kind of food was reserved for elite Lang Faction members, the sort you had to risk your life just to taste. They dug in with salted pickled radish in their clay bowls—just like hungry ghosts reincarnated.
Yeah, only Harano, sitting at the raised earthen floor, had three dishes and a soup and could eat white rice. The others squatted in the dirt, eating brown rice with pickled radish strips and rice soup. Given the rigid social hierarchy of feudal Japan, even if you told them to join Harano at the table, they wouldn't dare—not unless you'd earned a place as a Household Retainer.
Yayoi also got brown rice, mainly because she was waiting on the meal at the earthen platform. Harano wasn't a harsh master—at least not yet used to treating others as less than human—so naturally he let her eat a bit, too. But she resolutely refused to eat white rice, acutely aware of her place. Kids in later generations couldn't hold a candle to this kind of maturity.