What, you sold yourself for a packet of biscuits?
Uesugi Tetsu was puzzled and stunned for a moment, but when he saw the words "meat floss flavor" on the compressed biscuit packet he had just handed over, he immediately understood.
Meat floss, meat floss. Although it had absolutely nothing to do with real meat, at least it tasted like meat!
Then he looked at the little ninja named Shiraishi.
That small frame looked as if it would be blown over by the wind, and his height was worryingly short.
He might not be starving for three days out of every nine, but he was probably going hungry for at least three days out of every six.
Although ordinary people in this era were not quite poor enough to starve to death, their food could hardly be called delicious—or, to put it bluntly, as long as it filled their stomachs and kept them alive, that was enough.
Rice, barnyard grass, wild vegetables, beans, rice bran...
And that was only for farmers who owned their own homes and farmland.
As for little ninja Shiraishi, he had nothing at all.
Uesugi Tetsu guessed that he either tried his luck hunting in the wild, pulled edible plants from the roadside to stuff into his stomach, or, at worst, went into town to beg for food and hoped to encounter a kind-hearted person who would give him a full meal.
Or perhaps stealing someone else's leftovers was not out of the question?
But no matter how one put it, none of those things had anything to do with "meat."
Leaving aside whatever ridiculous ban on eating meat the former Emperor had issued, the absurd price of meat alone was enough to put it beyond the reach of someone like Shiraishi, who was too reluctant to