Phoebe poked the fried rice on her plate with her spoon, looking troubled.
"I never thought we'd still be eating Crow Rice even after the seventh day following Dorothea's death."
Her muttering drew a chorus of sighs from those around her.
"Tell me about it. And to save Miss Crow, we actually have to eat even more Crow Rice. Our production line gets four meals a day now," one believer complained.
"We get five!"
"That's not bad. I was sent to the hospital yesterday after a workplace injury. Do you know how miserable the seriously ill inpatients have it? Every day, they get Crow Rice pumped into their stomachs through a tube!"
"I heard about that too. The number of unconscious patients in the hospital has plummeted lately. After two days of Crow Rice through a tube, even someone who'd gone mad ought to recover."
"Just what you'd expect from Miss Crow, a medical student. Even in death, she's brought enormous advances to medicine."
Another chorus of sighs followed.
A boy at the table who had remained silent glanced around before asking hesitantly, "Excuse me, who is Miss Crow? Is her cooking really that bad?"
Phoebe struggled to swallow the food in her mouth. "Zell, you've only just joined the Communion, so you don't know about these things yet. Miss Crow... there, that's Miss Crow."
She pointed at the kitchen window.
The boy followed her finger, then froze for a moment. "Isn't that a fully automatic steam vegetable chopper? Mr. Simon, who guided me around, told me about it. It's a masterpiece from the Hearthfire District's factory."
"It's a fully automatic spinning steam crow vegetable chopper. Take a good look at that kitchen knife."
A kitchen knife?
Puzzled, the boy looked at the bulky machine.
He knew plenty about machinery,