Editing Kino no Tabi:Volume15 Frontispiece2

==“A White Country” — Taste! —==


It was a country with a big lake.

And it was a white country.

Everything—its ramparts, roads, the walls and roofs of the houses, and all things made by human hands—were pure white.

“How thorough…”

“It just happens to be cloudy today, but if it were a day with fine weather, everything here will be blindingly bright, Kino.”

Kino and Hermes were running through the pure white scenery. Eventually, they found a strange white pile along the shores at the center of the country.

It was made from the huge, white shells of bivalve mollusks.

The pile was over thirty meters in height, and even now, a belt conveyor was carrying shells to its top.  Ten or twenty such piles were lined up along the shore.

The surroundings reeked of the fishy odor that drifted from them.

At the foot of the pile, an excavator was busy transporting the shells to a machine, which in turn pulverizes them and turns them into white powder, one batch after another. It seemed that this powder was processed into bricks, cement, and other various things.

“Oh, they probably caught those from the lake,” Kino said knowingly, and Hermes asked from below her,

“I guess so, but where do you think the stuff that were living in those shells went?”


<center><span style="font-size: 200%;">—</span></center> 


“Welcome, traveler! Eat up! This is what we eat in this country every day!”

“Thank you, I’ll have some.”

The ‘stuff that were living in those shells’ ended up in Kino’s stomach.

The menu lined up before Kino in the restaurant were numerous kinds of dishes, all made from shellfish.

“These are grilled! This way you can enjoy its natural flavor! Over here’s shellfish gratin! The shellfish were finely decorated, and the cheese perfectly complements their flavor! This is fried shellfish with vegetables! I recommend you try it with this simple seasoning! This one’s shellfish sashimi! Yes, you can eat it fresh! We also have this shellfish bread! There’s a technique for mixing it with the dough! We also have shellfish dessert! The sweetened shellfish tastes just like fruit no? Also, try our shellfish tea made from shellfish extract!”

After eating her full course meal, Kino answered Hermes’ queries about the food.

“It was quite delicious. But more than that—”

“What?”

“It was interesting.”

 
<center><span style="font-size: 200%;">—</span></center>


The next day, Kino interviewed the country’s residents while she looked at the shellfish being steadily hauled from the lake.

“Does everybody here like shellfish?”

The citizens answered, but their expressions were miserable.

“No way. To be honest… we don’t want to see another shellfish again in our life.”

“Eh? Then why are you catching so much? And why do you still eat them?” Hermes asked.

“We don’t have any choice. This particular mollusk reproduces at an abnormal rate. If we don’t catch them, they’ll multiply and spread all over the lake, and the dead ones will accumulate and poison the water. We don’t have any other source of water but this lake.”

Kino asked, “Is that also the reason for the white buildings and roads?”

“We’ve run out of places where we could dispose the shells, so we had to use them. To tell you the truth, all of us hate this landscape of nothing but white.”

“And that is also the reason why I ate a shellfish full course meal?”

“We couldn’t keep up with burning and burying the contents of the shells, so our only option was to eat them. We desperately thought up of all sorts of delicious dishes only so we would not tire of eating them… Still, we’ve had enough. No matter how delicious the food is, anyone would get fed up with it if it’s all you eat day in and day out.”

Kino took a glimpse at Hermes, then asked, “This shellfish… has it inhabited this lake originally? Or was it brought here by someone?”

“It’s been here for a long time. Even before the founding of the country several centuries ago. We only started to have this problem fifty years ago…”

“What happened around that time?”

“Let me see… Until then, there were plenty of these birds that eat the shellfish spawn…”

“And those birds disappeared?”

“Yes…”

“And do you have any idea how that happened?”

“Well… that’s because we’ve hunted and eaten them all… There was a traveler who told us that the bird was delicious… And when we tried to eat the bird, it really tasted so good, we couldn’t stop…”


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