“Things overlap when they overlap, and I would have made the same decision. Once a path is made, things will move without us sticking our noses in, so we have no choice but to be busy until then.”
Linlin closes her eyes with a resigned face, or rather, a somewhat bitter face.
Isn’t that bad?
“Try not to overwork yourself, okay? I’ll go check on things for now.”
She waves the picked-up documents and leaves the room.
If I get caught up in the work in this room, it feels like it’ll be endless labor, so I’ll make a quick retreat. Please realize that you need to take breaks and manage your workload properly.
The documents I received seem to be a summary of interviews with residents.
–First, the empty watermelon incident in the watermelon field.
Empty watermelons?
I wonder what it is? Did a small animal make a hole and eat it? No, Linlin said it’s related to Spirits, so it must be a Spirit. A gluttonous Spirit, maybe?
Anyway, I leave the castle and head for the watermelon field. The frequent empty watermelons aren’t the ones for hydration, but the sweet ones. The slightly bitter watermelons for hydration are planted along the roads travelers use, so they’re not for trade.
I’ve helped out with various things, so I know where everything is, including watermelons. New things are constantly being added, or rather, necessities are overflowing, so not everything.
It changes quite a bit when I haven’t been around for a while!
When Karn first pulled the town out of the sand, it had a strange cleanliness, an atmosphere that excluded living things. There were no plants, and if you were quiet, you could almost hear the sound of the sand moving, but now I can hear the hustle and bustle of people.
At this time of day, they’re probably in the streets covered with sunshades, or holed up in their houses? Still, the sounds of daily life and the high voices of children echo in the plaza where I am.
The plaza has nothing to block the sunlight, so it’s scorching hot. When moving from the castle, you inevitably have to go through the plaza once, and I want to do something about that.
But this is Karn’s old capital as it was, so I can’t change it, right? He must have memories of it. Should I dig an underground passage? An underground passage.
Thinking about such things, I leave the town and walk along the Es River for a while.
There are fields by the river, and Date Palms on the border between the desert and the fields. Palm oil is extracted from coconuts, and palm oil is extracted from oil palms. Palm oil and palm oil aren’t the same thing? Leaving that aside.
Oil palms grow in hot and humid places, and Date Palms grow in dry areas. By the way, it’s called Date Palm because it resembles a date, and what you get from it is dates.
It’s neither a tree nor grass in terms of classification… It doesn’t have annual rings, and bamboo, sasa bamboo, bananas, and papayas shouldn’t be either. Various things overlap, and the Date Palm tree in my mind is tangled up and makes no sense.
Well, for now, it’s a tree that provides shade, can be dried and made into sweet processed products, and even oil can be extracted from it. The leaves are also used without waste, so it’s a very important tree.
I’m a little worried that pests and diseases will occur easily if the same kind of tree is planted. I’ll let Haulon know about this too.
I think it’s okay because there are Spirits, but even Spirits don’t like that kind of environment. Thanks to the Gods of Es, it’s a plus-minus-plus environment! Something like that.
But we should properly prepare on the human side too, since we’re being taken care of.
And I arrive at the watermelon field, which is also full of Spirits who are Retainers of Es and Asas. It’s hot, or rather, scorching, so there are no people around. So I start asking the surrounding Spirits!
–In the case of a Spirit making the vine-like tendrils attached to the watermelon vine bounce.
“I don’t know. I like this winding thing. Boing, boing!”
It seems to have no interest other than the tendrils.
–In the case of a Spirit wrapped around a watermelon vine.
“I haven’t seen it. I like snuggling here. Squeeze, squeeze!”
–In the case of a Spirit staying still under a watermelon leaf.
“I don’t know. I heard the sound of the leaves. Rustle, rustle!”
–In the case of a Spirit sleeping in the scorching sun, hugging a watermelon.
“I know. The fruit under me shakes sometimes. Sway, sway!”
After being taught mysterious preferences from Spirits who don’t know anything, I get valuable information. I should have asked the one hugging the fruit from the beginning, but I was asking in the order they caught my eye in the field.
“Do you know what kind of guy it is?”
“I know. It’s black, it’s white.”
…Reversi? You can’t always expect accurate answers from Spirits.
“Is it big?”
“It’s smaller than my fruit.”
“Do you know when it comes?”
“It was here a little while ago? It might be on some fruit somewhere?”
Oh! The culprit is at the scene!