Chronicles of The Hardships of Komachi in The Sengoku Era Chapter 16

Translator: manshiro    Editor: BirbPenguin    Proofreader: Arocks141   TLC: RantingOtome

Arc 2 - Ninth Year of Eiroku Era, Owari Province Agricultural Reform

While the rice was being harvested, Shizuko went out to secure something special.

They were beehives that she had set up in a place where she couldn't bring herself to approach them out of fear for a while.

Because, while it was the place where she had been reunited with Wittmann, it was also the place where she had been attacked by bandits.

When that incident had been reported to n.o.bunaga, he had flown into a rage and sent out soldiers to root out all bandits in the area.

Apparently, having bandits roam freely in his territory irked him greatly.

Shivering, Shizuko agreed with the historical records on his short temper.

"But thanks to that, it does feel safer now… This is complicated…" (TN)

"What do you mean, village chief?"

Tagosaku, whom she had brought to help harvest the honey, asked while tilting his head.

It seemed that while he had heard her muttering, he wasn't able to make out its meaning.

"No, it's nothing. Rather than that, are you prepared?"

"I am ready. But, will we really be alright…?"

While answering, Tagosaku glanced in a certain direction.

The scenery there was one of a seemingly endless amount of j.a.panese honey bees flying through the air.

Faced with this, it was not strange for Tagosaku's posture to lack confidence.

"Don't worry. Let's start by burning cypress leaves to generate smoke."

"Will this really work .…."

Although he was worried, Tagosaku still arranged some cypress leaves Shizuko had prepared on top of the earthen charcoal brazier they had set up in advance.

The leaves quickly heated up, and as they were fresh, undried leaves, they generated a lot of smoke.

This smoke was then fanned towards the beehives.

There was an immediate change visible in the bees' behavior.

The bees that had been flying around hurried back into their hives.

In less than 5 minutes, the amount of bees flying around outside had reduced to an amount that one could count them.

"Next up is this…"

Picking up the brazier, Shizuko moved it closer to a beehive.

Adding more leaves, she increased the amount of smoke.

Soon, there was enough smoke to completely engulf the hive, causing the last few bees remaining outside to also return into the hive.

"With this, the preparations are complete"

"Amazing…"

Tagosaku gazed at Shizuko with admiration as she drove all the bees into their hives in an instant.

All Shizuko did here was fooling the bees into thinking that a wildfire was raging.

By fooling them, one could trigger their instincts to store more honey as a food source.

Which meant that they secured enough honey for the winter and also made them more docile.

Sated bees would be less aggressive and active, unwilling to move away from their hive.

As a result, even without protective gear, the hive could be approached easily.

"Well then, we need to look for the queen–. Ah, please prepare the hive box, Tagosaku-san." [1]

"Understood"

Moving the brazier to the side, Shizuko lightly knocked the corners of the frames of the beehive.

She then took the box apart, searching for the queen.

Finding her surprisingly easily, Shizuko moved the frame containing the queen to a new hive box.

Doing this, the worker bees would notice that their queen has moved and would follow her into the new hive.

As the new hive was also inside a hive box, the bees would try to make up for the lost hive.

And, as expected, the bees moved from the old hive to the new hive one after the other.

When Shizuko thought that the majority of the bees had finished migrating, she collected the hive box and all the frames it contained.

She then placed the new hive box onto the pedestal of the old hive, setting it up with a degree of familiarity that amazed Tagosaku.

The new beehive was set up completely in less than ten minutes.

"This should do it."

"Amazing… so, what is this?"

Asked Tagosaku, marveling at the frames sitting inside the basket.

"This is a honeycomb. We will harvest honey from them now. From this one, we should get around 3 kg of honey."

"Huh? Honey….?"

"Yes, well, it is a precious ointment. I thought of presenting it to the lord and getting a few favors out of it in return."

"Is that so…."

"It's fine if you taste some of this, but this stuff is dangerous if you eat too much of it"

Honey was the sweetest syrup found in nature, consisting of roughly 4 parts sugar for every part of water.

It contained some nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, but it mainly consisted of sugar.

But the biggest advantage of honey was its sterilizing properties, making long-term storage possible.

This antibacterial effect was strong enough that, there were records of honey excavated from the 3000-year-old pyramids in Egypt neither changing nor degrading in the slightest.

It didn't necessarily have to be used as a food source, because it could be used as disinfectant for wounds.

(Well, I don't think anyone in this time would get diabetes from eating too much honey though… right?)

"Well anyway, thanks to you we didn't have to go to the battlefield, so I'll treat this as something important. I'll carry it carefully!"

"There are still two more hives, so let's do our best to harvest their honey too–"

Raising their voices, Shizuko and Tagosaku went on to collect the honey-combs from the remaining two beehives.

The amount of honey they harvested came up to only about 10 kg, but the j.a.panese honey bee had a bad honey yield either way, so Shizuko counted even this much as a great success.

—————————————————————–

Having finished harvesting everything aside from the soybeans which would be harvested in the winter, Shizuko loaded rice bales, vegetables, honey, and other offerings onto a wagon.

After everything had been packed onto the wagon, Shizuko gave the signal for the guards n.o.bunaga had a.s.signed to the wagon to depart.

Shizuko had pet.i.tioned n.o.bunaga for an escort as the tribute was incomparably larger than that of the last few years.

If one were to sell this year's tribute, one would be extremely rich.

Shizuko, aware of this more than anyone else, wanted to make sure nothing would happen.

Maybe this extra amount of caution worked, as nothing happened on the way towards Komakiyama Castle, the current location of n.o.bunaga.

But, as always, she wasn't permitted to meet him immediately and was made to groom herself and change into heavy garments.

As this was just the usual, Shizuko didn't think too deeply on it, absent-mindedly waiting for n.o.bunaga to appear.

After she had been waiting for a while, she heard loud footsteps.

Puzzled by the sound, she faced toward the entrance, right as the sliding door opened vigorously.

As it had been thrown open with enough force to almost break it, Shizuko stiffened in surprise.

On the other side of the sliding door stood n.o.bunaga.

But unlike usual, his face was twisted into a wrath-filled expression which would even make demons scramble away in fear.

n.o.bunaga closed in on Shizuko with big strides as she fidgeted in her seated position, having no idea what caused this.

He then, without uttering so much as a word, brought down his fist onto Shizuko's head.

"Mukyu-!"

Having received the blow, Shizuko held her aching head with both hands, squirming in pain.

But with the heavy formal clothing weighing her down, she couldn't quite move as she wanted to.

If she didn't care about her current location, she surely would have been writhing in pain on the ground.

That was how painful the blow had been.

"You big fool! If you are going to be bringing such monstrous bales like that, send a message beforehand!"

"Yesss! W-wait a moment, please! Just what may this be about!?"

Shizuko cried out, but n.o.bunaga didn't answer, bringing his fist down on her head once again.

As expected of the androcentric Sengoku Period, the blow had no mercy even for a woman, Shizuko thought as she tried to escape reality to lessen the pain.

But what hurt, hurt.

"M-My lord, please calm your anger. Let us hear what Shizuko-dono has to say for herself first."

While Shizuko had been holding her head in pain, another person entered the audience room.

She could recognize him just by his voice. It was n.o.bunaga's aide, Mori Yoshinari.

When she lifted her head with tears in her eyes, she was met with the forms of Mori Yoshinari desperately trying to calm n.o.bunaga down.

As expected, words from his aide and dispersal of his anger by hitting her head allowed n.o.bunaga to slowly regain his composure.

"… Shizuko, I want an explanation. About those giant bales."

Grabbing the sitting Shizuko without giving her any chance to react, n.o.bunaga made her stand up and dragged her along.

Behind them, a troubled Mori Yoshinari followed them, the trio made for a strange scene to behold.

After forcefully being moved along for a while, they arrived at their destination: the warehouses.

Seeing the bales of rice, Shizuko understood that this was probably the place where rice received as tax was stored, or something along those lines.

"Because of these monstrous bales, we don't know how many to store inside one warehouse. It will take time to replace everything here. Shizuko, explain properly why you brought those monstrous bales."

"Ah, umm, what. Shouldn't bales be…. This size….?"

When thinking about a bale of rice, the numbers that immediately came up in her mind were a weight of 60 kg, a width of 75 cm and a diameter of 45 cm.

But in fact, there were several sizes of bales such as 30 kg, 20 kg, or 10 kg.

Having completely forgotten about this, Shizuko had packed all the rice she had transported here into 60 kg bales.

She even went as far as pulling a few strings to get the hay needed to make the bales when it turned out that they didn't have enough hay to pack the rice bales.

But all of her efforts were fruitless as the standards for n.o.bunaga's warehouses were 30 kg bales, the so-called half bales (Hanpyou).

With this in mind, Shizuko once again looked at the bales she had pulled all sorts of strings to get the hay for.

They had an overbearing presence.

Only three of them had been loaded, but they seemed intimidating, even from a distance.

She could see why n.o.bunaga had called them 'monstrous'.

The 30 kg bales next to them looked tiny, almost like a little kid?.

"I see, that size is your standard. Now then, tell me, how many warehouses do I need to store them."

"E-Excuse me?"

"Did you not listen?! Tell me how many warehouses I need to store the bales you brought."

n.o.bunaga told Shizuko to give him the number of warehouses, but he, in fact, ordered her to calculate how many new warehouses would need to be built.

Surprised by the sudden task thrust upon her, Shizuko almost panicked, but managed to keep her calm by taking a deep breath.

"Umm… Excuse me, how many unused warehouse are there currently? And how many bales fit into one warehouse?"

"… If I remember correctly, there should be one free warehouse. And 120 bales fit into a single warehouse."

"Thank you very much. Umm… I will now calculate the needed amount, so please wait a short moment"

Having acquired the necessary information, Shizuko pulled a branch she uses in place of a pen out of her sleeve.

When she was calculating something or thinking up of ideas, she used the ground as a replacement for a notebook and wrote on it.

This was the reason why she always carried around a slightly pointed wooden stick.

With this in hand, Shizuko started writing formulas on the ground.

(Let's see… my bales weigh 60 kg. The lord's bales weigh 30 kg… maybe? Let's use these values to calculate for now. So, if 120 bales fit into a warehouse, only half that number of my bales will fit inside one. By that simple a.s.sumption, two warehouses should be enough.)

As the number of bales Shizuko was presenting to him was 100, n.o.bunaga had only prepared a single warehouse.

But, as the size of the delivered bales was twice that of the standard, they wouldn't fit into a single warehouse.

Since this was the whole problem, it wasn't really that difficult.

A simple calculation showed that just putting 50 bales into one warehouse each would do the trick.

If the remaining s.p.a.ce would be filled with other bales, there would be no problem.

(Since 120 30 kg bales fit into one warehouse, the total storage capacity is 3600 kg. Putting in 50 60 kg bales will use up 3000 kg of s.p.a.ce. The 600 kg of s.p.a.ce that will be left, can then be filled with 20 30 kg bales.)

In truth, it wasn't that easy, but it should be enough for a rough estimation.

Since Shizuko's bales were the main focus of her calculation, the number of 30 kg bales that could be put into the warehouse on top could end up being smaller.

For that part, she could only hope on adaptability of the ones in charge.

"I am finished. We will need two warehouses. Please store 50 of my bales each per warehouse. There will be a small amount of s.p.a.ce left over. Please use this s.p.a.ce to store 20 of the original bales. The 20 bales might not all fit inside, so please adjust the number if necessary."

Satisfied having neatly calculated everything, Shizuka turned to n.o.bunaga after brushing the dirt off of her hands.

However, realizing that her att.i.tude might have been a bit too frank, she hurriedly corrected her gaze and prostrated herself.

But n.o.bunaga did not even react to her words, let alone show anger at her att.i.tude.

He only looked at the characters, no the formulas Shizuko had written on the ground with mixed feelings.

The written formulas were as follows.

"30 × 120 = 3600 kg ・・・・・A

A – (60 × 50) = 600 kg・・・・・B

B / 30 = 20 ・・・・・・・・・C

50 big bales and 20 normal bales per warehouse" (TN)