Thanks to Omniwhatever for helping to edit this.
It was three weeks after the Heavenly Gods had attacked and the barrier to the outside world had fallen, and the Sentinels had settled into their new daily routine helping with initial resoration efforts. While they'd been almost as caught off guard by the invasion as the general public, they'd quickly recovered and, as one, had decided to remain in their posts despite the lack of leadership from the Taisha. Their old priestess/teacher had paid them a visit to check up on them, congratulated them on their resolve, set them up with as many supplies as she could given the circumstances and left Mebuki to lead the whole squad at her own discretion. Things would have worked out ideally for them, if they hadn't suffered the loss they had. While the area they were located in hadn't suffered too much physical damage, they'd still lost one of their own. Aya, pure girl that she was, had ascended to a higher state almost the second the Shinkon had begun. The surrealness of her turning into a plant had dampened their grief at first, but as what had happened had sunk in they'd entered a period of mourning and had put what remained of her in the viewing platform. They made a point of visiting her as a group every day.
"I can't believe she turned into wheat. What a ridiculous way to go," Yumiko choked out, sobbing into her handkerchief. "If only we'd exposed her to more earthly temptations then this may not have happened."
"There's no point in thinking like that. None of us could have predicted that the Taisha would do something like this," Mebuki replied. "The only thing we can do now is-"
"GYAAAA! MEBUUU! I think I overwatered her! I poured too much water in and she's gonna drown! What should we do Mebu!? I don't wanna drown Ayaya!"
Mebuki reeled as Suzume's screams blasted straight into her eardrum. "...Don't scream right next to my ears. At any rate, rice is supposed to be submerged in water so I'm sure she'll be fine."
"Oh honestly Mebuki-san, how long are you going to insist on calling her a rice plant? She's clearly wheat," Yumiko said.
"She is not wheat! I know rice when I see it!" Mebuki snapped. "Why would they turn into wheat anyway? Turning into rice makes much more sense!"
A muted wave of muttering ran through the gathered Sentinels. The question of whether Aya and the other devout Taisha members had turned into wheat or rice had become a flashpoint of arguments between them, with half of them insisting they were wheat and the other half insisting they were rice. Mebuki coming out in support of the rice faction had quelled the arguments for now, but everyone knew that things would kick off again before long.
"And can someone please go out and try and find a normal plant pot again? This just isn't respectful," Mebuki snapped again, gesturing at the pot they'd stuck Aya in. Most shops had shut down while people either evacuated or waited the worst of the troubles out, as such they hadn't been able to buy a plant pot to stick Aya in (they didn't want to plant her outside, she could get grazed or trampled or any other number of things) and had had to make do with a spare one that Shizuku had found somewhere. Said plant pot, however, was a novelty plant pot shaped like a grinning sunflower wearing sunglasses and playing the ukulele. As Mebuki gestured, she activated the motion sensor in it and it started dancing and playing it's novelty yodeling song.
"YODEL-LAAAAY-AY-E-OOOO-EY-OOOOOO!"
"Pff..." Yumiko hid her face in her handkerchief and tried not to laugh. More than a few Sentinels followed suit.
"Stop laughing, this isn't funny!" Mebuki barked.
"YODEL-EY-EH-OOOO!"
Mebuki gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to kick the pot. "Shizuku, go and find a proper pot. Just...pick one up out of one of the closed shops and leave the money behind if you have to, just bring back a proper pot. That's an order."
Shizuku nodded and silently departed.
Mebuki took a deep breath and turned to face the Sentinels properly. "Now then, to the matter at hand. Now that the Shinju-sama is no longer providing us with food we need to find suitable areas for cultivation and then start growing crops immediately. Starting on Monday we're going to join up with the main volunteer group, scout out promising areas to cultivate and help clean them up. We'll be taking soil samples to help determine where to grow which crops, kind of like old times but with less fire and Stardust attacks." The corners of Mebuki's mouth turned up slightly as she made a rare joke. "Until then we're on standby. Take some personal time and do whatever you want, but be considerate. The citizens are still shaken up, be sensitive of their position."
The Sentinels departed, and Mebuki was left alone with the Aya plant. She crouched down again and looked at it. It sat still in the pot, photosynthesising. Or so she assumed, she wasn't a botanist. It was hard to believe that it'd been one of their dear friends just last week. Mebuki sat down and let herself enjoy her memories for a while.
That evening in Mebuki's room, SHIZUKU returned in place of Shizuku, with no plant pot in hand.
"What happened? How did you manage to run into enough trouble for you to switch while you were looking for a plant pot?" Mebuki demanded, jumping up and abandoning the game of cards she'd been playing with Suzume and Yumiko (Aya was 'watching' from the corner).
"Shizuku saw a hornet. She hates the things," SHIZUKU said with a shrug. "Can't be helped. Anyway, I didn't have time to find a pot, I ran into our old teacher. I asked her how things were going and she was real shady sounding, so I bullied her into spilling her guts. She's gotten pretty soft after her eye fell out."
"What did she say exactly?" Mebuki asked, an uneasy feeling creeping up her spine.
"Turns out we're fucked. Since pretty much no one's farmed for the last 300 years we hardly have any farming equipment and we can't just throw a load together cos only a few people know how to make any of it. Even if we could it's not like anyone knows how to farm apart from a few geeks and old people who like to play at it. They reckon we've got a few months tops before people figure out they're boned and start rioting. They're trying to get on top of it, but with those Taisha bastards up and turning themselves into plants they're only just managing to tread water."
Screaming filled the air before Mebuki could even open her mouth. "WE'RE GONNA DIE! Mebu, Yumiko, did you hear that!? We're gonna die for real! We're gonna waste away until we're skeletons and then angry mobs'll grind our bones up and use our corpses as fertiliser! Do something Mebu, I don't wanna dieeeeeeeeeeeee!"
"Suzume, calm down. We don't have a clear picture of the situation yet, the priestess was probably just giving SHIZUKU the worst case scenario, you know how dour she was. If-"
"Pretty sure she wasn't," SHIZUKU threw in.
Mebuki shot her a venomous look. "-If we all work together we can overcome the problems in front of us, we've overcome worse things than equipment shortages. We just have to bolster people's resolve and get them trained up quickly before things get out of hand."
"You're so simple minded Mebuki-san, you can't expect everyone to become farmers just like that, especially under these circumstances," Yumiko interjected. "This sort of situation requires lateral thinking! We need to be inventive and come up with solutions that we can put into play quickly!"
Mebuki nodded slowly. "You actually have a point, we definitely need to get people to learn the skills we're going to need from now on, but we need something to tide us over in the short term. Anyone got any ideas?"
"Yeah, I've got an idea," SHIZUKU said. She pointed at the Aya plant. "We propagate her, then we harvest her, then we eat her. We're short on resources now, might as well put her to good use. Oh, and those Taisha priests too. Might as well get some use out of them."
Mebuki stared at her uncomprehendingly. Surely SHIZUKU couldn't have just said what it sounded like she'd said? "We what?"
Mebuki's question was drowned out by Yumiko's scandalised shrieking and Suzume's renewed screams.
"You want to EAT Kokudo-san!? You want us to EAT our beloved little Kokudo-san!? To eat one of our dear friends!? What is wrong with you!? Have you no shame!?"
"GYAAAAAAAAA! MEBUUUUUUUU! SHIZUKU turned into a cannibal! She's going to eat Ayaya, and then she'll eat us too! Save me Mebu! Eat Yumiko first SHIZUKU, she's fatter than meeeeee!" Suzume screamed and cowered behind Mebuki.
"And furthermore- wait, what did you just say!?" Yumiko redirected her attention to Suzume, who was clinging onto Mebuki's legs with a death grip.
Mebuki barely noticed. She continued giving SHIZUKU a non-plussed look. "You...can't actually be serious? Eat the Aya rice? That's crazy. For one thing, we don't even know whether it's normal rice or-"
"It's wheat!" Yumiko shouted up from next to Mebuki's legs, where she was currently trying to forcibly detach the screaming Suzume from her.
"-Or whether it's some kind of magic, divine rice that will have strange effects on the people who eat it," Mebuki was cut off as a vigorous yank by Yumiko almost sent her over. Suzume reasserted her grip with a vengeance and crushed Mebuki's knees together. "And more than that...it's all that's left of our friend, how can you possibly think of eating it SHIZUKU!?"
SHIZUKU gave them a steady look. "Kokudo's gone, probably disappeared along with the Shinju. All the rice is just the by-product of their transformation anyway, nothing to get sentimental over. It's not magic rice either, teacher said so. The rest of the world is going to be starving soon, so why not make the most of what the dumb Taisha left behind? They left us in this mess and tried to fuck off to paradise, least they could do is feed us."
"But..." Mebuki stared at her dumbly. Between what SHIZUKU was saying and the drama unfolding around her legs she could barely formulate a sentence. She could feel the beginnings of a raging headache coming on.
"A by-product? Nonsense!" Yumiko let go of Suzume, rose to her feet and struck a haughty pose. "Perhaps you, with your crass attitude to life and common ancestry can't sense it, but I, with my delicate and dignified approach to life and noble bloodline, can sense Kokudo-san's presence, nay, her very soul in this wheat!"
"Rice," Mebuki muttered.
"In fact, I suspect that I happen to have a high level of spiritual aptitude, perhaps even to the extent that I'm a second 'Messiah' that the Taisha happened to miss when they were testing everyone!"
'What.' Mebuki fought the urge to roll her eyes.
"For I sometimes seem to have heard her voice when I stood next to this plant, as if she was calling out to me from the spiritual realm, asking me to learn proper horticultural techniques to take care of her!"
"You sound nuts," SHIZUKU said.
"I'm not the girl with a SPLIT PERSONALITY who thinks that we should EAT OUR FRIEND! ...What? I think I hear her! I hear her calling to me right now!" Yumiko rushed over to the plant and leaned towards it. "Kokudo-san, I'm right here next to you! Talk to me! Allow me to serve as your prophet and pass on your messages! Everyone be quiet, I need to focus my spiritual senses to receive her words!"
Yumiko shushed them with a gesture and stood silently in front of the plant. A breeze blew through the open window and made the plant gently sway and rustle. A distant chorus of evening cicadas outside filled the room with an eerie hum and the room seemed to become smaller as they stood there. Even Suzume had quieted herself down to whimpers as they all stared at Yumiko. For a moment Mebuki could half believe that she might really be able to hear her.
Yumiko flung out her arms dramatically. "I hear something! She's imparting her wishes to me!" she cried."Her voice is descending from the spiritual realm! I hear you Kokudo-san, don't despair! I'll tell them that you don't want to be eaten!" She threw her arms around the plant. Unfortunately this activated the motion sensor and the room was filled with the sound of ukulele accompanied yodeling once again.
"YO-LAAAAY-AY-E-OOOO-EY-E-O-EY-OOOOOO!"
"I can hear her in my mind's ear!" Yumiko shouted. "She says she doesn't want to be eaten and that she wants to be planted in a more suitable substrate!" The ukulele the sunflower was holding was swinging around hitting her in the face, repeatedly. She ignored it.
"And she says that she's a wheat plant as well! And that she wants to be placed in open sunlit areas! And that you're watering her too much! And that-" Yumiko stopped shouting as the yodeling stopped, "-And that she wants SHIZUKU-san to be kept 50 feet away from her at all times. ...Is that all for now Kokudo-san? Very well, I'll be back tomorrow if you think of anything else." Yumiko released the plant from her embrace and stood up. This set off the motion sensor again and the room was once again filled with the ukulele accompanied yodeling.
"As you can see, Kokudo-san herself rejects SHIZUKU-san's ghastly plan, so I trust that we can lay it to rest and never mention it again," Yumiko said over the noise.
The other three girls were united in muted, crippling second hand embarrassment at the spectacle they'd just witnessed. Nothing but the music filled the room for several excruciating seconds, then:
"That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Are you taking the piss or do you actually believe what you're saying Miroku?" SHIZUKU said.
"What!? How dare you insult me like that you cannibalistic delinquent! I-"
"That's enough!" Mebuki snapped. "You both-"
"Pfft...HAHAHAHAHA! What was that supposed to be!? Did you forget your meds!? You're hilarious Yumiko!" Suzume started howling with laughter while hitting Mebuki's legs like she was pounding on a table, her histrionics forgotten.
Yumiko flushed bright red. "You...! First you call me fat, now you insult my spiritually and sanity!? You've pushed your luck too far!"
"GYAAAAAA!"
Yumiko once again lunged at Suzume and tried to pry her off Mebuki's legs. Mebuki barely kept her balance. Resisting the urge to start bellowing at them all, she tried to defuse the situation. "Stop making a scene and listen, all of you!" The pair around her legs stopped their yelling and looked up at her. "Miroku-san...I'll take what you've said into consideration. You too SHIZUKU. Leave it with-"
"What!? You cannot be serious Mebuki-san! I demand-"
Mebuki reached down and gripped Yumiko's entire face with her hand without looking. "I think we've covered everything we need to, so meeting adjourned. I might be here a while so you go on ahead. See you tomorrow, SHIZUKU." Mebuki gave her what she hoped was a normal smile.
"Sure thing. Later." SHIZUKU gave them a casual wave and left. Mebuki let the forced smile on her face drop.
'What the hell.' She couldn't be serious. It had to be a joke, right? SHIZUKU might be aggressive and at times callous, but to suggest eating Aya? That was a whole other level. Mebuki hadn't had a clue she was that depraved.
"Mmm! Mmph!" Mebuki finally registered Yumiko pulling at her hand and let go of her face. She fell back onto the floor and scowled up at Mebuki.
"How dare you silence me in the face of degeneracy! What kind of leader stands idly by and lets their personnel run roughshod over morality and taste while stopping even their comrades from standing up to it!? Are you too weak to-"
"Oh give it a rest Miroku-san," Mebuki said tiredly. "Did you want me to argue with her all night with you raving at the yodeling plant in the background and Suzume screaming constantly until she passed out? I'll talk to her in private tomorrow and try and sort this out quietly."
"Hmph...very well, I suppose. But I was not 'raving', I was focusing my mind's ear! Hearing voices from the spiritual realm requires one to open their heart fully and let go of their inhibitions, I cannot worry about keeping up appearances when I'm channelling the spirits." Yumiko stood up to leave. "I trust you to keep a firm rein on SHIZUKU-san's behaviour then. Good night Mebuki-san, Suzume-san." She shot Suzume a dirty look as she left.
Mebuki looked down at Suzume. "SHIZUKU is gone you know. You can let go now, although I don't know what you thought clinging to my legs would do to stop her eating you. It's not like I could fight her off with you stopping me from moving."
Suzume looked up at her with tears in her eyes and started crying again. "Mebuuu! You're not gonna let her feed Ayaya to everyone, right!? I don't wanna eat Ayaya! I don't want people to stick her in their mouths and chew her up and digest her in their stomach acid! It's so horrible Mebu! Do something!" Suzume wailed up at Mebuki while clinging onto her shirt hem.
Mebuki pushed her off and held her at arms length. "Suzume, relax. I already said I'd talk to her tomorrow. Go and sleep, you'll give yourself a stomach ache if you keep getting yourself worked up like this."
"But Mebu-"
"Bed!"
Suzume finally slinked out of the room, still moaning and crying.
Mebuki let out a deep sigh after she'd gone and massaged her temples. Her head was pounding. She sank into her chair and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. As she sat there, what SHIZUKU (and by extension the priestess) had said rolled around in her mind. As determined as Mebuki was to believe that humanity could forge it's own path without the Shinju's helps, she wasn't naive. She knew just how angry people could become if they found themselves in difficult circumstances, and what poor decisions they could make. With millions of people staring down the barrel of starvation, if things weren't sorted out quickly then...
"..."
Should she? Should she actually entertain the notion of eating Aya? Was that really something she could be considering? With a heavy sigh and a heavier heart, she started seriously weighing up their options.
The next morning Mebuki gathered everyone, excluding the Aya plant, on the viewing platform.
"Everyone, I have something important to tell you. The priestess that used to instruct us, who is now in the upper echaleons of the Taisha, has been projecting the most likely scenarios for the world going forward." She paused and chose her words carefully. "...It's not promising news. The Taisha expected their plan to work, so they had no contingency plans and nothing stored away for the future. We're looking at severe food shortages and civil unrest in less than two years. But!" Mebuki raised her voice over the mutters and cries from the group. "There may be a way to stop this." She paused again to let her words sink in. "Put simply, the only way to save ourselves is to use the rice that the Taisha and Aya-chan left behind to feed the world."
There was a moment of dead silence. Then all hell broke loose.
"GYAAAAAAAA! CANNIBALISM! SAVE ME YUMIKO, EVEN MEBU CAN'T BE TRUSTED ANYMORE!"
Suzume started screaming again and jumped onto Yumiko, clinging to her like a koala. Almost the entire group of Sentinels started shouting and in some cases crying. Two girls fainted.
Yumiko pulled herself over to Mebuki, Suzume clinging to her, still screaming and getting louder with every step towards Mebuki that Yumiko took, and jabbed a finger at her in an unladylike way. "Now see here Mebuki-san, how can you stand there and say something so ghastly with such a straight face!? Did I not tell you that Kokudo-san herself rejected this beastly business!? How can you possibly be doing this when you were the one who rejected letting her be sacrificed in the Fire Offering Festival!?"
Mebuki flushed and clenched her fists, but managed to keep her voice steady. "This is completely different. Aya-chan is already gone, there's nothing we can do to save her. Holding onto the plant when we could use it to save people wouldn't be right." She addressed the whole crowd. "It's our duty to do all we can to safeguard humanity's future!"
The group wasn't swayed, and things drifted further into chaos. Mebuki could barely make herself heard over the noise and her attempts at calming the group quickly failed as she fell into a shouting match with Yumiko. This was going even worse than she'd anticipated, how was she supposed to talk them around when they were in such a state?
A loud banging filled the room. "Listen up you bunch of whiny babies!" SHIZUKU roared while hitting one of the pillars with a pipe. The Sentinels quieted down immediately. "You've got two choices here! One: we let everyone drop dead two years down the road and let Kokudo's death and everything we ever did be pointless! Two: we use the damn rice or wheat or whatever the hell we're calling it to survive! What's it gonna be huh!? You going to roll over and die because you got sentimental about a plant!? You want to be the ones that tell the starving mobs that they're not allowed to eat because you're too attached to something that should be food? Or are you going to suck it up and let people eat the damn stuff so we can all live!?"
The Sentinels looked at each other and came to a silent agreement. No one looked happy, but SHIZUKU's words couldn't be argued with. Aya herself wouldn't want the world to be plunged into chaos because they wanted to hold on to her remains. They had no choice but to do what had to be done to guarantee the world's survival, it was what she would have wanted.
"I...I suppose when you put it like that, it does seem like the best option...perhaps the yodeling disrupted my mind's ear enough that I misinterpreted what Kokudo-san was saying," Yumiko forced out through her gritted teeth.
Suzume said nothing, she'd passed out from screaming induced hypoxia and fell unnoticed onto the floor before SHIZUKU had even started speaking.
Mebuki looked at SHIZUKU with heightened respect. Her speech had been blunt, but she'd argued the point well and gotten the situation under control quickly. Mebuki had been preparing to argue her position for hours. SHIZUKU really was a reliable comrade when push came to shove. Maybe she should-
"Now!" SHIZUKU yanked out a box, opened it, and held it high to reveal a rice bento shaped and coloured like Aya's head. "Let's eat the fuck out of Kokudo!"
Mebuki smacked her hand into her face so hard it hurt.
The Sentinels again variously burst into tears, screamed and started shouting at the laughing SHIZUKU. One of them vomited dangerously close to the passed out Suzume's head. Mebuki grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her out of the way.
"You despicable lout! I'll let you have it!" Yumiko bellowed as she flung herself through the crowd towards SHIZUKU.
Mebuki cursed and waded in to get the situation under control. It was going to take the entire day to salvage this mess.
Six months later, Mebuki watched as the government trucks drive away laden with rice. Or possibly wheat. It had taken some trial and error to figure out how to grow it, but the government had risen to the challenge, with a decent amount of help from the Taisha remnants and the Sentinels. With the experience they'd gotten while they still had leeway they'd be able to produce enough crops to keep people going when stockpiles ran out, she was sure of that.
In the end they hadn't had to sacrifice the original Aya plant, they'd simply managed to clone the original (no one cared enough to do the same to the ex-Taisha rice/wheat). While the Sentinels had still found the idea of it all disconcerting, to put it mildly, this had been enough to bring them on board and they'd helped grow a fair proportion of the crop. Mebuki felt her chest swell with pride. Finally they'd found a duty that they could stick with for the long term and that was a true help to the world. Nothing could crush them under the wheel now.
Turning away from the fields of rice (or possibly but probably not wheat), she walked the short distance to the small out-building where the admin side of the operation was being handled. She greeted the technicians and secretary as she entered and walked into a small room at the back. "How are things going? Any breakthroughs?" Mebuki asked Yumiko, who was doing something boring looking on the computer. Yumiko had kindly volunteered to help with the scientific research into the rice/wheat, given that one of her second cousins was a horticulturist. As far as Mebuki could tell her help was almost entirely minor administrative duties and free manual labour, but every pair of hands helped she supposed. Why exactly Yumiko had taken to wearing a lab coat everywhere she wasn't entirely sure.
"Actually, yes. My dear cousin has made an enormous breakthrough," Yumiko replied, adjusting her non-prescription glasses. "I have to say though, before I reveal it, it's quite unprecedented so no one can be faulted for not predicting it. Really, anyone with common sense would think quite the opposite. Clearly it's a result of the abnormal circumstances surrounding it's creation, no one who knows anything about plants could really think that-"
"Get to the point please," Mebuki said.
Yumiko glared at her and adjusted her glasses, but let it slide. "It's a new type of rice that just so happens to look exactly like wheat. Given that it was my great family which discovered this I've taken the liberty of giving it it's colloquial name myself. I call it..." She paused dramatically. "...Wice."
"Wice."
"Wice!"
"...Don't you think that just sounds like you've got a speech impediment?" Mebuki said.
"Don't be rude. Jealously is unbecoming of you Mebuki-san, if you want to have the honour of naming something you'll just have to head into the horticultural field like myself," Yumiko said, distinctly turning her nose up at Mebuki.
"If you say so." It wasn't Mebuki's problem if Yumiko wanted everyone to think she had a speech impediment. It'd never catch on anyway. "So, have they decided how much they're going to allocate per person yet? I'm still worried about people being wasteful with it. Old habits die hard after all."
"Oh don't you worry about that, I have a plan! A plan that will ensure that none of our crop goes to waste no matter how sloppy people are with it! Come to this address tomorrow Mebuki-san and I'll show you the future of our endeavours!" She handed Mebuki a piece of paper with a dramatic flourish.
"Sure," Mebuki agreed with a shrug. Yumiko had probably just assisted her second cousin in creating a preservative or something, but any advance was valuable and people needed acknowledgement for their efforts. She'd show up and look suitably impressed at whatever science they'd brewed up and be on her way.
"...The hell is this..." Mebuki stood in the factory with her mouth agape. Frazzled looking workers rushed around ferrying equipment here and there while lorries reversed up to the building and accepted stacks of crates. A mechanical roar emanating from further back forced her to strain her ears to hear what Yumiko was saying.
"Are you immensely impressed Mebuki-san? You should be! With our soon to be patented cutting edge technology we've turned the wice into a nutritionally fortified desiccated matrix of plant fibres and dusted it with a flavour enhanced sucrose powder for a delectable taste!" Yumiko declared, brandishing the box she was holding in Mebuki's face. "I call it...Shredded Wheat!"
Mebuki's face spasmed as various expressions flickered across it. "Shredded...what the hell happened to 'wice'!? No, more than that...what the hell is that packaging supposed to be!?"
On the front of the bright blue box was, first and foremost, a close up of Yumiko's face, smugly declaring that 100% of surveyed nutritionists agreed that Shredded Wheat was an ideal way to feed one's family. To the side of that was a picture of Aya and Yumiko, in which Aya was clinging onto Yumiko's arm like they were bosom friends. It took a moment for Mebuki to realise why it looked so off. She recognised the picture of Aya, it had been cropped out of a group photo they'd taken. Mebuki distinctly remembered that it had been her that Aya had been clinging to.
"You cut me out of the photo and edited yourself in!? How narcissistic can you get!?"
"Oh stop being so self-righteous Mebuki-san, the Miroku family is an important part of the brand and so is Kokudo-san, I had no choice but to do this to show off how close we were. It's hardly my fault she turned into wice before we happened to have a chance to take a decent photo together."
Mebuki felt like her head was going to explode. "How can you be an important part of the brand when it's never been on sale?" she ground out through her gritted teeth. "And we're not supposed to be telling people where the rice-"
"Wice!"
"-where the God damn rice came from!"
"You just don't understand how marketing works Mebuki-san," Yumiko dismissed her. "And never fear, if anyone asks I intend to tell them that Kokudo-san is on the packaging as a tribute to her because she was such a good cook for her age. There's no problem at all!"
Mebuki's headache intensified. "Why 'Shredded Wheat', and in English at that? Like I said: what happened to 'wice'? And how the hell did you get this whole operation up and running without me noticing?"
"It's the power of the glorious Miroku family! But as far as the name goes, it's to capitalise on nostalgia. There was once another brand of cereal like this-made from actual wheat mind you, not rice that looks like wheat which was formed from the bodies of divinely ascended Taisha priests and mikos-and I decided to utilise the name to produce greater levels of trust in my product!"
"I've never heard of anything like that. How long ago was it actually made?"
"...About 300 years or so. Give or take."
"How the hell can you be capitalising on nostalgia with a brand that hasn't existed for 300 years?" Mebuki rubbed at her temples. "...The fact that it's an old brand from before the Divine Era might be selling point, at least. I suppose you could push it as something our ancestors used to eat back when we had to take care of ourselves like we do now, it's not like they know the source of the rice is dodgy."
"Oh no, not really," Yumiko said. "It was a foreign brand, barely anyone in Japan back then ate it."
Mebuki stared at her. There were many things she could say right now. Many arguments, comments, curses, side swipes she could make, but she just didn't have it in her. "...I see. Good luck with that then, Miroku-san," she finally settled on.
"Why thank you Mebuki-san! Your support means a lot to me! Here, take this complementary box of Shredded Wheat. No, in fact, take this entire crate of them!" Yumiko hefted up a crate and dumped it in Mebuki's arms. Mebuki didn't bother protesting. "Make sure you tell your friends about us as well, hmm? Word of mouth is important! I have final preparations to make here so I will be staying for some time, please give my regards to the others."
Mebuki gaped after her as she ran up the stairs to bark orders at her workers. She looked down at the crate in her hands, put it back on the stack after checking that Yumiko wasn't looking and left before she did or said something she'd regret, shaking her head and mumbling to herself in sheer disbelief the whole time.
Soon afterwards, the wice was dished out nationwide, first as it's plain self and then as part of Yumiko's new cereal empire. The knowledge that there was a steady food supply being cultivated did a lot to boost the people's morale and the government projected a rosier outlook for the next five years and beyond. Sadly, as far as Mebuki was concerned, the population had taken to the name 'wice' without argument.
"...and a whole 18% of surveyed people declared that they preferred my Shredded Wheat to basic wice, even though wice is the new national dish! This is a resounding success not just for the glorious Miroku family but for the health of our nation!"
Yumiko was addressing the Sentinels who had gathered to eat their first batch of Shredded Wheat together. They'd held off on trying any plain wice at Yumiko's insistence, although none of them seemed too upset about having to wait it had to be said. Yumiko had, quite reasonably, wanted to give a speech about the wice, Aya, her new company and the contribution the Sentinels themselves had made to cultivating said wice before they ate. She was currently on her sixth page of the speech. Very few people were listening anymore.
Letting her attention drift, Mebuki glanced at the pot containing the original Aya plant. The ukulele wielding sunflower grinned back at her. They'd never gotten around to getting a proper plant pot in the end. 'Ah well.' After all this time it was starting to grow on her.
She glanced around the table as Yumiko blathered on. Although everyone had agreed that cultivating the wice was for the best, and managing to keep the original Aya plant intact had quelled most of the discontent, more than a few people were still queasy at the prospect of eating the wice considering where it came from. Suzume in particular seemed to be stuck in a permanent state of lower lip wobbling these days and barely went a day without crying at the sight of a random plant. Still, she was less trouble than SHIZUKU, who'd taken to shouting about renaming the Shredded Wheat to 'Aya Bites' whenever Yumiko entered her line of sight.
Yumiko finally finished her speech and sat down, to muted applause. She raised her hand and waved as if she was an old head of state being driven past cheering crowds. SHIZUKU seized the moment. "Miroku! Rename it to Aya Bites!" she shouted, banging her spoon on the table. Yumiko resolutely refused to acknowledge her and SHIZUKU quickly gave up.
Mebuki stood up and began to speak. "I'll keep this short. We've been through a lot this last year, but through it all you've gone above and beyond the call of duty and excelled in everything we set out to do. I'm proud of you all and I look forward to continue serving with you no matter what the future may bring, and I'm certain that if Aya could see us now she'd be just as proud of you all as I am. To Aya!" Mebuki raised her glass of milk in a toast.
"To Aya!"
The Sentinels looked somewhat less queasy than Mebuki thought they would as they filled their bowls. She was glad they were starting to accept the wice as a normal(ish) food source rather than something to shy away from. As Mebuki poured milk onto the cereal, she had a feeling that everything was going to work out just fine from then on.
Further down the table, SHIZUKU paused with the Shredded Wheat halfway to her mouth. "Man, it sure would be gross if whatever it was that turned 'em into rice could wear off and we ended up with bits of dead people in our mouths and stomachs," she said, loudly. "Meh, whatever. What are the odds?" She shoved the Shredded Wheat into her mouth and started chewing.
The other Sentinels were once again rendered distraught. Yumiko leapt up and started screaming about slander and financial damage to her company. Suzume fainted clean away, narrowly avoiding ending up face first in her bowl but hitting the side of it as her head fell. The filled bowl flipped up and landed on her head, covering her in milk and mushy Shredded Wheat. Mebuki stared at the spoonful of cereal she was holding dully, before mechanically raising it to her mouth and starting to chew. She paused with the cereal in her mouth for a long, silent moment, then finally swallowed.
"Huh. Tastes like wheat."