CH 434

Wheat’s Untold History ~The Illusory Great Famine~

There is no room in history for “what ifs.” Still, it’s in a person’s nature to spread their wings of thought and fly through the skies of possibilities, dreaming about what could have been. What if that person from history was still alive today? What if a different country won that war? There are many “what ifs” that go through the minds of experts, but there is one that keeps them all up at night: what if cold-resistant wheat hadn’t been discovered at that crucial time? Wouldn’t a famine on a scale that had never been seen before have destroyed the whole continent?

The “Mia No. 5” is one of the most popular types grown all over the continent. It was made from seeds that Arshia Tafrif Perujin and Cyril Rudolvon found and worked on. The two made their big break just as the continent started to have cold weather for a long time. When they found a potential type of wheat in Outcount Gilden’s domain near the northern border of the Tearmoon Empire, they started to improve it right away by using a process called “selective breeding.” Two years later, a type of wheat called “Mia No. 2” hit the market, but people weren’t very excited about it at first…

—

“Oh, come on. Why does wheat cost so much?”

The man groaned loudly when he saw the grains for sale in the market of the imperial capital. Wheat prices were 1.5 times higher than they had been in the past. This wasn’t so expensive that it was unaffordable, but it was still enough to make people groan.

“I heard that harvests aren’t any better this year. There are shortages everywhere, so if anything, prices will keep going up,” the store owner before him joked.

“How is a man meant to feed himself and his family? Huh? Why does this wheat cost so cheap?

”The man looked at a bag of wheat with a price tag that had a number that matched the prices he had known before.

“Oh, those are unique. Supplied by the government directly.”

“The government is supplying wheat?”

The shopkeeper gave him a wry smile at his confusion.

“A lot of it is out there, but the quality is kind of…you know.”

From the way the seller waved his hand, the man guessed, “Not great, huh?”

“Not when made into bread, at least. It’s too sticky, and when you bake it, it gets too hard. The taste isn’t very good either.”

The man gave an eye roll.

“Well, wouldn’t you know…? I swear, there are times when you wonder if the people in charge are all just clowns. What did they think they were doing when they put this kind of stuff in…”

When he saw the name on the bag of wheat, he stopped bad-mouthing.

“Mia No. 2? What’s this supposed to mean?”

“It seems to be the name of the wheat,” said the trader. “Word is that they made it in Her Highness’s academy city.”

“Huh. Her Highness, you say…”

The man’s mind flashed on a vision of the princess and how kind she was. He thought back to the Birthday Festival last winter and the food that the nobles had brought out. Scenes of bloated bellies and happy singing kept coming back to him as drunken birthday wishes played over and over in his head.

“Wheat made by Her Highness, huh?”

His eyes got warmer.

“Hm? Something wrong?” asked the store owner.

“Wha? Oh, no. Nothing”

He swallowed his somewhat offensive comment about the Princess’ wheat because he was afraid he would be charged with lèse-majesté. If he was honest, though, something about the wheat and how it could be eaten but wasn’t very tasty made him think of the princess. The way her kindness was marred… or maybe… there was this growing feeling that underneath the princess’ regal exterior was just a loving fool… It was oddly cute, just like this wheat. He couldn’t say that out loud, though.

“Well, it’s better than nothing, I guess, right? It sure beats dying of hunger, that’s for sure.” The man laughed and then bought a bag of Mia No. 2 wheat. It wasn’t just him. Others also felt the same way. Because they all liked their princess, they all decided to take a sack of wheat with her mark on it.

—

So, Mia No. 2 slowly made its way into the hands of buyers, who bought it more for its name than for its quality. This didn’t last long, though, because soon after the wheat hit the market, a very dedicated man decided to fix what he saw as a terrible wrong.

“I won’t put up with this! A strain of wheat with Her Highness’s name on it shouldn’t be looked down on! This awful situation needs to be fixed right away!”

Musta Waggman, who was the head chef of the imperial court and the most skilled cook in the kingdom, was up to the task. He was sure that the reason food didn’t taste good wasn’t because of the ingredients but because of how it was made, so he tried to find a new way to use wheat. If it didn’t go well with bread, it might go well with something else…

He didn’t follow the rules of traditional cooking. Instead, he thought freely and experimented a lot. In the end, he found the answer. Mia No. 2 wheat was best when it was boiled, not when it was baked. Something white with a wonderful springy feel came out of the pot.

The head cook was very excited to show Mia what he had made. She took a bite and said something so casually that it blew his mind.

“I think this would go well with that sweet bean paste I had the other time.”

Even though they had ordered some sweet beans from Forkroad & Co. a while ago, Musta had never thought to mix the paste with this new dish. He tried it right away and saw that this was the right answer. His work was finally finished!

So, the head chef’s Wheat Project with Mia led to a dish called the fullmoon dango, which was a dumpling. It spread like flames from the market to the kitchen to the table and was soon called Mia dangos. The sweet bean paste spread on top of the dango went well with its white, bouncy, and deliciously sticky texture, and made it a hit with people of all ages.

This seemed to be a contradiction, which made people talk about it at dinner for a while. The people of Tearmoon couldn’t understand why, even though they were supposed to be in the middle of a wheat shortage, they were all eating this tasty new food and not going hungry.

Not long after that, Arshia and Cyril put out another type called Mia No. 3. Mia No. 4 came out soon after. Through careful breeding, these younger strains of the Mia series had gained traits that made them more like traditional wheat. Even so, Mia No. 2 was a family favorite, and its popularity didn’t change much when its later siblings came out.

“Asking Outcount Gilden for help…Sending Cyril Rudolvon and Princess Arshia up north, where they found cold-resistant wheat and started their selective breeding project…Buying sweet beans from Forkroad & Co…”

Ludwig wrote down each event from five years ago, sighing deeply as he did so. People in Tearmoon were happy with their lives and didn’t know, and might never know, how close the empire had come to disaster. Once a real and terrible threat to everyone’s life and prosperity, the Great Famine had turned into a story about a future that would never happen. No matter how wispy it got, he couldn’t stop seeing it.

“If Her Highness hadn’t done every single one of those things…”

If they hadn’t stocked up on food and made sure they could get food from far away lands, a lot of people would have died of hunger. They could have decided to save their own, but that would have probably led to wars with neighboring countries over food, which would have drained the funds of everyone involved and caused more suffering for their people.

“I still remember how hard it was for me when Her Highness said we should help poor countries even if it meant taking from our own supplies. I wasn’t sure if I should back her up or tell her off…”

In the end, the Mia No. 2 strain solved the looming food problem, so they didn’t have to deal with it at all. When Ludwig first heard that a cold-resistant strain of wheat had been created through selective breeding and that the first finding had been made in Outcount Gilden’s domain, it took him a good few minutes to pick his jaw up off the floor. All of his friends reacted the same way. Mia didn’t just solve the empire’s food problems; she also stopped a huge famine from happening in all the nearby countries.

“If Princess Mia hadn’t been there, there would have been a large-scale famine, and this continent’s history would have taken a very sad turn.” He shook his head when he thought about it.

There is no room in history for “what ifs.”

Even so, Ludwig couldn’t help but wonder. What if Mia Luna Tearmoon, the genius who lived in his time, hadn’t been there? What would the world have been like?

There is no room in history for “what ifs.”

Because of this, the Tearmoon Empire could only go in the direction of a new kind of sweet.

People still couldn’t help but let their imaginations fly. What if things turned out that way? What could have happened?

But conjecture would always be just that: conjecture. The wheat that put an end to the Great Famine and turned it into a myth would leave a long-lasting mark on history.

This well-known wheat type was called Mia No. 2. It was named after the Great Wisdom of the Empire. Coincidentally, it also bore the name of Tearmoon Empire’s very first –