By the time everyone recovers from their laughing fits, the food is being served. The meal is pretty quiet, with everyone focusing on eating their food. The grilled vegetables are so tasty, I just eat and enjoy the flavor too. And now that it's in front of me, I feel like I can really smell the way each of them are different. Actually... I pick up one and sniff it. If I focus really closely, I can actually kind of smell the way it tastes. That's really interesting!

"Uhh..." Emily is staring at me. "Are you... ok?" she asks.

"Yeah, I'm just... smelling... the food..." I trail off when I realize that's probably really weird.

"I see." Apparently deciding she doesn't want to know any more, she turns back to her own food. Everyone else glancing at me turns away too. Ahh! I scream internally. Then I hang my head and return to eating. It seems like if I stop paying attention for just a moment, I start doing weird things. But it's not my fault the food smells so good today!

Actually, why does the food smell so much better than usual? I stop when I realize that. I look more closely at the food in front of me. Of course I already made sure there was no lele fruit when I first received the bowl, but now I actually look closely at the food. Was it cooked differently today? I pick up one of the vegetables and examine the coloring. The way a couple sides are darker than others, does that mean it was cooked on a metal pan like they usually do for Shanaday lunches? I'm not sure because I've never looked at them quite this closely before.

I take a slow bite through the vegetable, paying attention to the way my teeth sink through it. It's soft so it's easy, but oddly, the dark outer edges are just a bit harder to bite through. I take a few tiny bites to be certain, then try to pull apart the last bit of the vegetable with my fingers. The sides split easily enough, but this time, the dark part stays together. As I turn the pieces, the dark section actually starts to separate from the rest of the vegetable, kind of like skin. Let's see, this one has red insides with a salty, acidic taste. So it's a reshlan, meaning its outer skin should be white, not a dark brown color.

Hmm... I consider it for a little longer, but I don't know enough about cooking it seems.

"Aria, don't play with your food..." Emily scolds me worriedly.

"I'm not," I assure her quickly. "I'm, uhh, trying to figure something out..." I respond, staring hard at the skin-like part.

"It just looks like you're playing with your food..." she squints a little, then sighs.

"Hey, does the food smell different to you today?" I ask.

She puffs her cheeks out a bit when I ignore her comment, but then says, "No, isn't it the same as usual?"

"Hmm..." I eat the last bit of the vegetable, leaving only the brown skin that peels off. I sniff it, focusing closely. I feel like I can make out the smell and flavor, like before. It's mostly the same as the rest of the vegetable. The same salty, acidic feel as the rest, but with some sort of... richness added. That smell and flavor, I recognize them. I think hard for a bit, trying to remember, before it comes to me. Hobin meat? No, wasn't that the taste of the chewy fat bits attached to the meat? We've had it a few times now, so I sort of remember how the fat attached to the meat is hard to chew through, it just squishes when you try. But it also has a flavor like this, doesn't it?

"Aria, come on. It's going to get cold," Emily scolds me more seriously this time.

"Ah, you're right, sorry." I apologize and quickly work to eat the rest of my food before it all cools off. But as soon as I'm done, I get up and look for the big kids who cooked today.

As always, they're collecting the bowls and spoons after the meal, so I drop mine off and approach the big kid. This one is a girl with clothes that don't look as badly patched up as others, with shoulder length hair. It seems she actually takes some care with her appearance. "Umm, I have a question about the food."

"Yeah?" Her tone is kind of harsh as she looks down at me with a weird expression.

"Was it cooked any differently today?"

"Different how?" she asks, eyes narrowing. She looks a bit angry for some reason?

Suddenly much more nervous, I ask. "Umm, like, did you use hobin fat instead of... something else?"

That one makes her blink rapidly, the anger gone. "Yeah, how could you tell?"

"It smelled like hobin fat. I'm sorry, I don't really understand how cooking works, but I think it made it smell a lot better than normal."

"I didn't notice any difference," she comments, scratching her cheek.

"Hmm..." I turn to the other big kids who worked on the food, listening to our conversation. They all shrug, showing they didn't notice anything either. So it's just me? I scratch my head, confused now. No one else thinks the food smells better today? Maybe I like the smell of hobin fat more than whatever they use normally? "What do you normally use? And umm, what do you use it for exactly?" I ask.

"Oil usually. We put it in the pan first to keep everything from sticking." Oil? She couldn't mean like the oil Gremory used, right? I've never paid much attention before, so I can't really place what the oil they used smells like, but the food never tasted or smelled anything like that oil Gremory used, that's for sure. Ugh, that stuff was disgusting... So are there different kinds of oil? I guess I should assume that for now, but it doesn't really help me, I still don't know anything about the oil they use for cooking. That said, I don't know if hobin fat smells better if I don't know what oil smells like... While thinking that over, I bow to the big kid.

"Thanks, the food was really good." She just grins awkwardly and nods. Then I return to everyone else. They've all dropped off their bowls as well. We all split up briefly to get our things from our rooms.

Today I don't really have anything to sell, but I'm going to buy things, so I collect all of my money and tie it up in a cloth to carry with me. Besides clothing, there are a number of things I'm thinking of getting, like a basket of my own, a coin pouch, maybe a belt or some other way of carrying my things with me... Even with all the money we've collected hunting, I don't know if it will be enough. I'll also need to earn more to replenish my stock of copper. It is a little troublesome for it to be something I need for testing, but also money I'll end up spending. I guess the same goes for nuvrite coins too.

Emily doesn't have much to sell either, but she does grab the bag of green fruits so we can ask about them at the selling stall. Maybe he'll be able to tell us just what they are and if we can actually use them. Well, for anything beside hobin bait at least. It doesn't take long, so we quickly head downstairs. For once, we're first, so we wait a little while for everyone else to show up. As soon as they all join us, we begin our walk south to the central market. Apparently Andy is supposed to meet Jack there to resolve their competition, rather than the normal market. I... have no idea why. On the way, Andy brags about how many hasha he gathered this week.

"What are hasha?" I ask. In response, he pulls one from his basket and tosses it to me. I catch it and look at it closely. It's a nut. Hard shell, kind of pointy on one side.

"These are hasha. They grow up in the Northern area of the forest this season. They may not be worth much on their own, but they grow in huge bunches in trees. Look at this," he lowers his basket and tilts it a bit for us to see inside. All I can see are nuts, nearly overflowing out of the basket when he tilts it a little.

"Wow, that's pretty amazing," I comment. I sniff the nut. It has a sort of... dark smell? I don't know if that's a good way to describe it. Kind of a mix of salty and savory, with some sort of dry, musky scent too. I rub the hard shell appreciatively, this nut smells good. I jerk a little, barely reminding myself not to bite it or something, since it's not mine. I quickly hand it back to Andy. The streets we're walking through on the other hand, they stink even worse than earlier. I don't know why though. What would cause the smell of waste to get worse? I don't know enough about it to say, so I just push it from my mind and try not to think about it as we keep going.

It's really amazing, just walking through town with everyone, no one staring for once. I... actually kind of feel like I belong here a little. I just listen to everyone chat and show each other what they gathered while we go. Smiling, looking at the interesting plants I'm not familiar with yet, and just getting to chat about normal things. Jess doesn't say much, but Tony and Robin go back and forth boasting that they're getting better at engraving, telling us all about the different things they've engraved the shop's mark onto lately, trying to one-up each other.

We all laugh, then Andy tells us about how he's been going deeper into the forest lately, finding more rare plants, at least up until his challenge with Jack.

"How did that end up happening anyway?" Emily asks. "I didn't know you knew Jack that well."

"Well, sort of. All of us older kids kind of know each other. And we both got to the orphanage around the same time. We've always sort of butted heads," he adds. I don't know why they would all know each other, but if he says so. "So, I was on my way back, and I met Jack hanging out of a tree. He was kind of stuck, so I helped him out. I got a good laugh out of it, but he said I wouldn't do any better. He was gathering hashas so he basically challenged me to show I could gather more of them than him."

"Umm, is gathering hashas hard or something?" I ask. "How did he wind up hanging out of the tree...?"

"Some hasha trees have these spiky vines that grow all over them." I squirm more than a little at the mention of vines. "They're really spiky and it hurts a lot if they poke you, so they make it annoying when you're trying to gather hashas. Apart from that, they grow way out on the branches of trees, so they can be hard to get to. If you aren't careful, the branches will break and you'll end up falling. Lots of people get hurt like that."

"And you accepted the challenge anyway?" I gape at the idea. They sound like a nut that really doesn't want to be gathered! Wait, did he just say tree branches can break?

He laughs it off. "It's not really that bad. A ton of them grow this season, so you can get a lot of them and make a lot of money. Besides, I'll be able to show Jack just how good I've gotten at gathering." He puffs his chest out. I still don't really understand exactly, there's probably more between them than I know about.

We keep walking for a while until we get to the central market. Once there, we meet Jack, standing right near the line. Looks like it is the Jack I know after all. "Took you long enough," he complains.

"I can't walk that fast with these guys," Andy chuckles, so Jack shrugs. Then, they both grin, glaring competitively at each other and we all get in line for the selling booth. Like before, it's a long line, but it moves quickly. While waiting, they go at each other.

"Remember, if I win, you're gonna do my cooking next week," Jack smirks while he nudges Andy in the side.

"And if I win, you empty the chamber pots for me next week," Andy returns the smirk. I can practically feel sparks flying between them as we approach the counter. Once we're up, they both step up to the counter, grinning when they face the man. He just chuckles a little.

"Let's see," he says knowingly. The line behind us fans out a little so they can see better. How many times have they done this before...?

They both turn over their baskets, carefully dumping their piles of hashas on the counter. Just looking at them, they're both about the same size. The bald man nods a few times at the piles. Then he interlocks his fingers, and kind of stretches them out in front of himself, making a series of popping sounds. Are his hands supposed to do that?

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then he grabs two of the small nuts, sweeping them from the counter into a basket. He rapidly counts the nuts, two at a time. "Two, four, six, eight, ten..." The numbers roll out of his mouth so fast they're hard to follow. I'm impressed by how quickly he goes. Of course there are so many nuts that it takes a little while as he works through the pile.

Then I twitch a bit when I hear his numbers go wrong. "One twenty five, one twenty seven, one twenty nine..." Furrowing my brows, I take note. It happens a few more times as he counts, and I frown a little. Maybe he's counting too fast? It seems that sometimes, he messes up and only counts up by one instead of two. As I listen, I start to notice a pattern, because I hear him messing up on the same numbers. For every twenty six nuts he counts, he only counts twenty five. Then, does he not have a solid grasp of some numbers maybe? It only started at one hundred twenty six, rather than twenty six, so is it that he has trouble counting with the extra digit? Isn't he an adult? Shouldn't he be able to do that?

He counts through Andy's pile first, finishing in a remarkably short time, despite his issues counting. Since he only missed one nut out of twenty six, he's off by... a little less than four percent. Maybe in terms of speed and accuracy, that isn't that bad? Even so, I tug on Andy's sleeve, but he pushes me away a little, obviously focused on the man behind the counter. Emily pulls me back as well.

"Aria, we have to wait our turn," she chides me.

"No, uhh," but I stop when the man begins counting Jack's pile. He goes the same way, counting in twos at a breakneck pace. Again, I notice him start making mistakes after he gets past one hundred. But this time, he's messing up his numbers every twenty-second time. One out of twenty two is... closer to five percent off. Isn't that kind of a lot? I rub my chin and think, I have no idea what would be considered a large or small error when counting something like this.

He soon finishes Jack's pile, having nearly filled the large basket he's dumping all of the nuts into. "Five hundred seventy seven hashas," he says to Andy, clicking away at some tool on a counter behind him. "Two barr each, one thousand one hundred fifty four total." He pulls out some money, placing a copper, five nuvrites, and four tins on the counter, then he taps down a coin smaller than the others, and silver, with a loud snap. That must be iron.

He repeats the process for Jack, quickly poking at his little device before saying, "Five hundred ninety seven hasha."

Immediately, Jack pumps his fist in the air and Andy mutters, "Damn!"

I shake my head. Wait, but he has the wrong number. While the man is putting Jack's money on the counter, I try to get Andy's attention again, but Emily grabs me. "Aria, they're in the middle of this, we have to wait," she says, looking at me with an expression that says 'what's gotten into you?'

"But he counted wrong!" I tell her. I instantly feel all attention snap to me. My heart jumps into my throat as every person nearby is suddenly staring straight at me. I glance all around. What is this?

"What do you mean?" I turn back to see the man looking right at me past the two older boys as he questions me. With so many eyes on me, I try to be extra polite and careful speaking.

"After reaching one hundred, you started making mistakes while you were counting." I explain. "You missed nineteen for Andy, and twenty three for Jack," I say, indicating to each of them since I feel like he probably doesn't know them by name.

The man crosses his arms. "Pretty sure I didn't count wrong." He says. "You got any proof?"

"Umm?" Proof? The nuts are the proof. There's a specific number of them... but that would require them to count again. I glance at all the surrounding people. They're looking at me with a mix of disbelief and annoyance. These people are all waiting to sell their things too, it would take him too much time to count all of those nuts again, wouldn't it? But that's not necessary, I realize it's really obvious. He was counting by twos.

"You were counting by twos. There wasn't one left over at the end for either of them, but you counted five hundred seventy seven and five hundred ninety seven for them. That isn't possible." I see the man's eyes flinch a little. He must have realized his mistake.

But then he says, "What do you mean? How does counting by twos mean I can't get to those numbers, that doesn't make any sense, little girl." He gives a big shrug and shakes his head sadly.

"Huh? Of course you can't reach an odd number when counting evens," I say, looking around to all the people nearby. Why are they all looking at me with pity and disgust? What did I say? I look to Emily and her friends, but they shrug. I can see it in their faces, just like earlier. They don't know what I'm talking about. I look around again. None of these people do either?

My head snaps back to the merchant when I realize. None of these people know about the differences counting evens and odds! So even though he realized he was wrong, he's just lying about it?! I grit my teeth. If no one understands how it works, they won't understand the proof he's wrong, so he doesn't need to admit it. Staring hard, I can see the glint in his eyes, he knows he has me here. No one believes me. I close my eyes and sigh defeatedly. Words of annoyance at me fly all around from the crowd. Taking that as a sign to move on, he pays the boys and sends them on their way, while Emily and I move up to the counter.

I just stand quietly with my head down while she puts half of the bag of green fruits on the counter. We still owe the other half to the orphanage after we find out what they are. The only reason we haven't given them up yet is because we don't know what they are. Hobins may eat them, but they could be poisonous to humans for all we know. The man inspects one of the fruits for a little while, turning it around in his hands.

"These are rare, don't see them often... They're gomo fruits. Not exactly poisonous, but you can't eat them, they'll give you a stomach ache." He shakes his head to show he won't buy them. "Nothing else today?" he raises an eyebrow and while asking if that is the only thing we have with us. Emily just nods, thanks him, and we leave with our fruit.

----------------------------------------

As soon as we're away from the stand, we join up with everyone else. "What was that about, Aria?" Andy asks. "Why would you say he counted wrong?"

"Because he did! He even realized it when I pointed it out, but he didn't admit it because no one else understood the math that proved it."

"The math that proved it?" Emily asks.

"Yeah, it's really simple," I say. They've seen the math I can do, so it looks like they want to believe me, but can't say anything since they don't understand. I glance at Jack, he wasn't there for our conversation earlier. "I mean, actually simple." I know my view on math is completely different from theirs, but this one really is about as simple as it gets.

"Hmm," Andy scratches his chin, "let's hear it."

"It's just even and odd numbers." It's called parity, but I'll keep it to words they'll understand.

Unfortunately, he shakes his head. "I don't know what those are." So he doesn't even know of even number and odd numbers...

"Like I said, it's really simple." I step back even further to explain it, "One is odd, two is even, three is odd, four is even. They alternate back and forth."

He nods. "Yeah, that's not hard to understand. How does it prove he counted wrong though?"

I think for a bit. How do I explain this in a simple way? It seems that sticking with small numbers helps, I remember them having a lot more trouble as soon as the numbers got larger. "Well, every other number is even, and every other number is odd. Two, four, and six are even. What is two plus two?"

"Four," he answers.

"Four is?"

"Even."

"Four plus two."

"Six."

"Is?"

"Even." He seems to be beginning to lose his patience with me asking questions about what I just told him, so I move on.

"See the pattern?" I ask. Everyone nods. "Every other number is even, so if you add two to any even number, you get an even number," I explain it clearly. "Now, is five hundred seventy seven even or odd?" And I've lost them. They all scratch their heads.

"How are we supposed to figure that out? Count up to it by two?" Andy asks.

"No no no," I wave my hands. "This is why I said it was really simple." I'll just lead them upward so they can see the pattern. "Is ten even or odd?" I start with a much smaller number for them. I know how I'll explain this.

Andy thinks for a moment before answering. "Even."

"What about twenty?"

"Umm... even."

"And twenty two?"

"Even," he says simply. I frown a little. With the difference in his response speed, he's definitely adding twos to figure these out. It'll be harder for him to understand that way...

"This would be a lot more clear if I wrote it down..." I mutter, glancing around to see if there's anything I could use. I spot a small area where some grass and dirt sticks up a little past the outer edge of the market, so I lead everyone over there. "Can you read numbers?" I ask. They all shake their heads, except Tony and Robin. I guess they need that for their work, like Gremory does. "Well... it should be fine anyway."

I take one of my coins and use it to start writing in the dirt. I've never written before, and it's a lot harder than I expected, but I just try to be as careful as I can. I make a sort of round thing that looks like a circle first. It's not really as oblong as it should be, but that doesn't matter that much. Then I make a single line. This one isn't too hard. The last is really hard and I need to do it a few times to get it right.

"These are zero, one, and two," I explain while pointing to them. Those are all they'll need to understand this. Everyone nods. Even if I can't write them well, they all look very different from each other. Then I write a one and a zero together to make ten. "These are?"

Having just heard them a moment ago, Andy points each one out. "One and zero."

I nod, then say, "Written like this, one and zero makes ten."

"Ten? How?" he asks. Everyone else nods, they definitely don't understand. I blink a few times. Maybe I've been thinking about this wrong.

"Umm, sorry, let me check something..." I scratch my head. "Andy, what is ten plus two?"

"Twelve," he answers simply.

"One hundred plus two?" This time he stops to think, eventually coming up with an answer.

"One hundred two," he grins a little.

"One thousand plus two?"

"Uhh..." When he can't answer easily, I know that my feeling was right. Without it being written out before, they don't think of numbers as individual digits like I do. How do they think of numbers then? How do they add them and multiply them? I have no idea.

I sigh. "Nevermind, I just realized we think of numbers in completely different ways. It actually would be difficult to explain how I figured it out. I'll just try to explain it this way." I messily write out five hundred seventy seven. "This is five hundred seventy seven, the number of hashas the shopkeeper said Andy had." I draw a circle around the last seven. "This is the number seven." Everyone looks at the number on the ground and nods a few times. "Is seven even or odd?"

"Odd," Andy answers.

"Yes. Because this seven is odd, this entire number, five hundred seventy seven, is odd." I draw a big line under the whole number. "Since we think of numbers differently, it would be hard to explain exactly why it works like that, but it does."

"Ok, I'll go with that for now, I guess." Andy shrugs. "So five hundred seventy seven is an odd number. What next?"

"As I said, he was counting by twos. Two, four, six, eight, and so on. They're all even numbers. Counting up by twos..." I gesture to him.

"Only adding two, you'll always have even numbers," he finishes.

"Exactly. Always even, never odd. Five hundred seventy seven is odd, so you will never get that number counting up by two with even numbers."

"You were right after all..." Jess says.

"Wow, that's some seriously impressive math," Jack comments. Everyone else looks away, grinning knowingly.

"Well, you said he was wrong, do you know the actual count?" Andy asks. He suddenly looks excited. I'm confused for a few moments, before it dawns on me. He thinks that if the count was wrong, he might have actually won the contest.

I shake my head. "Sorry Andy, you got five hundred ninety six and Jack got six hundred twenty. His count actually helped you a little. He said you lost by twenty nuts, you actually lost by thirty four," I explain. Hearing that he just hangs his head.

"Haha, so it's still my win," Jack laughs. "Looks like you're doing my cooking next week."

"Yeah yeah, I get it..." Andy pouts a little, which is kind of funny to see from an older kid like him.

"Anyway, thanks for explaining that to us, Aria," Jack pats my head. "Now I know who to ask if I need any math help," he grins.

I smile back and nod. "Just don't go overboard," Andy says in a scolding tone. At first, I think he's talking to Jack, but then I see he's looking right at me.

"Umm?" Jack raises an eyebrow, also noticing Andy seems to be speaking to the wrong person. But then everyone else nods emphatically, and I sigh.

"Yeah, I'll try not to go overboard..." I agree while under their worried gazes.

Everyone lets out small chuckles except Jack who just looks even more confused. But he just shrugs, and we finally move on from the issue with the shopkeeper.