"Chewed sake...?!"
Kallen's words clearly startled Yae Sakura.
"What?"
"That... that stuff isn't clean... Kallen, you'd better not let your curiosity make you try it."
It wasn't that Yae Sakura knew nothing about chewed sake. When she was little, she had gone out with her father several times and learned quite a bit about the world, though it was a pity that she had never been able to bring her younger sister along.
Yae Rin had been frail and sickly since childhood, a delicate invalid who could only stay at home.
Yet she had also wanted to know about the outside world, so Rin's greatest joy was listening to her sister, Yae Sakura, tell stories about the world beyond Yae Village.
Whenever Yae Sakura returned from a long journey, the first thing she did was go to her sister and tell her about everything she had seen and heard.
Yae Rin could only remain at home, unable to go out or see the world beyond. So Yae Sakura became Rin's eyes, describing everything she saw to her sister.
And once, Yae Sakura had happened to hear about chewed sake. It was the most ancient method of brewing alcohol. Although chewed sake had long fallen out of fashion by the Warring States period, many old shrines still retained the ritual of brewing it.
It was also an offering that shrine maidens presented to the gods, and mortals were not qualified to taste it.
Yae Sakura herself was a shrine maiden, so after hearing about chewed sake, she had specifically looked into it. But once she understood it, she immediately lost interest.
After all, Yae Shrine did not practice any rituals involving chewed sake!
Chewed sake... as human civilization developed, people increasingly found it unhygienic. Of course... if the person brewing it