A Good Idea

The dried fruit making was going well, if I had to say so.

The reason I put it that way came down to two things.

First, drying fruit simply took time, so the production pace wasn’t fast.

And second, to be honest, I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of Tree Village’s dried fruits.

—I only realized it after trying, but fruits that tasted good fresh and fruits that tasted good dried were completely different.

For example, I had eaten dried persimmons a few times as dessert.

At home, they were quite sweet, with the sugars rising to the surface and turning white.

But when I tried making dried persimmons from my trees, they didn’t turn out that way.

True, I could taste the strong sweetness, but the flavor felt blurred somehow…

I wondered if it was the drying method, so we experimented, but it seemed to be a problem with the variety itself rather than the process.

Crossbreeding let me combine different trees, but I couldn’t use it for breeding within the same species to refine varieties.

So I couldn’t do something like crossing grapes with grapes to make a distinctive grape.

Ah, the only exception was the House Tree.

Its size and appearance changed drastically depending on the trees it was combined with, so it was fairly flexible for house-making.

“Munch munch… there’s enough sweetness, but I feel like something’s missing.”

No, the dried fruits were definitely tasty, don’t get me wrong.

Since the cost was practically nothing, selling them would certainly bring profit.

But honestly, the dried persimmons I ate at home had tasted better.

Normally, when I ate fruit from the trees I planted, no matter the type, it always tasted better than anything I’d had before.

But dried fruit was different.

Sure, in this desert where there was no real sweetness, they were valuable as sugar sources… but my palate, spoiled from eating many things, just couldn’t be satisfied yet.

“I think they’re plenty delicious myself.”

“Yeah, I’d say Woody’s just asking too much… munch munch.”

Saying that, Aira served fruit tea made with dried apples.

Meanwhile, Nadja was happily munching on raisins.

Yes, thanks to their intense sweetness, our dried fruits worked wonderfully in tea like this.

Fruit tea made with fresh fruit in iced tea was so sweet and tasty it felt like syrup had been added.

And probably, raisins and such would work really well in baked sweets too.

I finished my tea and popped the dried apple from the bottom into my mouth.

Its concentrated sweetness filled my refreshed mouth with bliss.

Not only did it sweeten the tea itself, but you could also eat it deliciously at the end. Truly, two pleasures in one bite.

“Delicious… our fruits really do pair well with tea.”

“But there aren’t that many people around here who drink tea in the first place, right?”

“We don’t have trouble with water thanks to the Oasis and our human Oasis, but yeah, probably not.”

“What did you just say, Flat-chest?”

“At least call me the Flat-chested Sword Saint! —No, wait, don’t call me that either!”

“Busy little flat chest.”

“Stop calling me flat-chested! I’m not flat, I’m beautifully shaped!”

Well, whether Nadja was well-shaped or flat could be set aside.

“I got set aside!?”

True, I could drink tea so freely because we had a stock of tea leaves at home, and Aira supplied the water.

But how many people in this desert region even had tea in the first place?

Even if some cared about their drinking water, few would brew tea with it.

“…Hey, what if we made fruit tea from our fruits?”

“Fruit tea…? But haven’t we already been drinking that normally?”

Aira was right—I had been drinking fruit tea already.

For example, adding dried fruit into hot tea, or fresh fruit into iced tea.

But that always required tea leaves.

As someone who loved tea, I felt anxious seeing our dwindling supply of leaves.

I had been thinking that I needed to do something about it.

It might not be familiar, but… what if we could make tea just from fruits, like with dried fruits?

See, like how black soybean tea or barley tea didn’t use tea leaves.

Wait, could this actually… be a really good idea?