Chapter 35: Rice

“Yeah, of course. There’s one more Blessed One I was keeping tabs on besides you two in this country. And while I can investigate only within our borders, I’m sure there are others like that in foreign countries too.”

“…I see.”

As expected, there were still other Blessed Ones with lingering attachments to Japan.

“Please continue investigating the other Blessed Ones, especially that person. If they don’t seem to have any behavioral issues, you could try making contact, hear what their lingering regrets are, and if it looks like something I could resolve with my Unique Skill, offer to help them.”

“So you’re gathering fellow Blessed Ones, huh. Okay, leave it to me!”

Rain said this while giving a thumbs up.

…Come to think of it, I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve seen that thumbs-up gesture. If it’s been 16 years, there might be a slight generational gap between us.

“It’d probably be good to have a proper name for the alliance. Think about it when you have time.”

“Hmm, I think something simple like ‘Blessed One Alliance’ would be fine. Well, I guess that might overlap with other Blessed One alliances. I’ll discuss it with everyone and come up with something.”

An alliance name like that might be good for deepening our bonds. Of course, I don’t want to spread word of my existence, so the name Rain and Aoi mentioned earlier is rejected.

…Actually, even without that, having my name in it’s out of the question. I’ll think about it together with the two of them when we get back to the mansion.

“Yeah. And this isn’t urgent, but I’d be really happy if you could grow Japanese rice here in this other world.”

“Rice?”

“Yeah. Actually, the rice in this world tastes completely different from Japanese rice.”

“Ah, I know that. The rice here is the long-grain type, right?”

At Yuuka’s mansion, we’d started eating Japanese rice, and we’d just had onigiri together when coming to the royal capital.

If you’re going to eat it as onigiri, Japanese rice is definitely far superior.

“Exactly. Personally, I want to eat it too, but even setting that aside, I want to spread it in this other world. After all, rice is something special for Blessed Ones who were originally Japanese.”

“Yes, I can certainly understand that.”

“I agree.”

Yuuka and Aoi agreed with Rain’s words.

In my case, I’d only been in this other world for about a month, so I could endure it to some degree, but I imagine it’d be pretty tough if you couldn’t eat rice for several years.

“It seems there was a major conflict between Blessed Ones over Japanese rice in the past. Apparently, it was such a large battle that the terrain itself changed.”

“Whoa…”

Come to think of it, I’d heard before about a valley that was formed by a battle between Blessed Ones with Unique Skills—could that be what they were talking about?

Because of something like that… No, calling it a trivial reason might be premature. Rice is that important to Japanese people, after all.

“I want to prevent that kind of conflict between Blessed Ones from happening in the future. I’m technically a member of the royal family, and I quite like this country. Of course, I’ll make sure Kakeru-kun’s existence definitely doesn’t get out. It’s quite a long-term plan, so I’d appreciate it if you could keep it in the back of your mind.”

“Ah, got it.”

Growing rice would take quite a while. Creating paddies might be quick in this world with magic and magical tools, but the crop itself would still take months to reach harvest.

And spreading it from there would probably take quite a long time, so it doesn’t seem like something that needs immediate attention. First and foremost, I want to stabilize my own life.

Rice, huh… I wonder where they sell rice seeds and seedlings? And I bet they’d appreciate it if I brought some books on rice cultivation too. I’ve heard that rice farming requires quite specialized knowledge.

…Wait, didn’t they just say something I couldn’t ignore?

“There was a time in the past when Japanese rice was brought here…?”

“I’ve never heard that story before. Was there another Blessed One with the same kind of Unique Skill as Kakeru?”

Yes, exactly! Just as Aoi and Yuuka said—was there another Blessed One with a Unique Skill that could bring items from Japan?

“Ah, I don’t think there’s one now. Right, maybe I should share with everyone the laws of Blessed Ones and Unique Skills that I’ve investigated so far. In addition to using the country’s intelligence department to investigate current Blessed Ones, I’ve also been looking into past Blessed Ones. Thanks to my position as royalty, gathering that kind of information was easy.”

It seemed Rain had been investigating not only current Blessed Ones but past ones as well.

Come to think of it, about Blessed Ones in this other world, I only knew that there were both transmigrators and reincarnators, and that there were two types of reincarnation.

What other laws could there be?