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It was a simple day on their trip across Japan, one of many where they’d park the Inazuma caravan and practice on the nearby grass fields in the middle of nowhere. Shouts of hissatsu names rang out as some of them executed their signature moves, while others took a break from training to help unload the car and set up the temporary tables and chairs they’d use for lunch. A warm breeze ruffled both grass and hair, buffeting them with the suggestion that this was the perfect day to eat outside.
“I think that’s enough training for now, why don’t we go help out the rest of the group for a bit?” Kidou lifted up his arm and waved at his fellow members on the grass field to call attention to the temporary break.
“Sounds good! Last one there has to refill the water tank!” Endou shouted out the loser’s penalty as he bolted off with a head start, the rest of the group hot on his heels. They all piled up next to the Inazuma caravan, with Kidou bringing up the rear with a slow saunter. Having decided to take the penalty to get some alone time to think after, he’d simply opted to walk over instead of expending excess energy on this trivial matter. Chatter filled the air as cookware and propane stoves were unpacked and passed from hand to hand, with groups naturally forming as to who was helping with what part of prep.
“Here’s the groceries for today,” the plastic tables bowed slightly under the weight of the laden grocery bags as Kazemaru hefted them onto the table. He grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and wiped off some sweat from his face, then looked behind him to see his fellow grocery shopping crew members in the distance.
“There’s more coming, jeez it’s gotten more expensive nowadays. You’d think it would be cheaper when we’re right next to farm fields.”
“What’s more expensive?” Having overheard the conversation, and thinking himself decently versed in financial matters, Kidou came over to where the groceries were getting sorted to see what the problem was about.
“The groceries. See, last stop, the apples were about 100 yen each, but here it’s 150 yen each.” Kazemaru picked up one of the small red apples he’d picked and held it up for everyone to see. “And they’re smaller! I can’t believe they sell them by amount, not weight. What a ripoff.”
That sounds pretty cheap , Kidou thought while surveying the spread of food in front of him that was gradually increasing as the laggards of the grocery shopping crew caught up and began unloading as well.
“Here’s the meat!” Rika’s bright voice rang out as she nearly threw her bag onto the table and everyone watched as it slid slightly, leaving a trail of condensation behind it.
“Extra spices and powders,” Kogure held up his bags, which were taken by Ichinose and brought around to the spice box next to the propane stoves.
“RICE!” Kabeyama bellowed out the contents of his delivery order while sporting the two large bags of rice as shoulder pads. Being the only one strong enough to carry that quantity, he was nearly always sent with the grocery group as a large team like this went through an obscene amount of rice each day. Stepping forward to pitch in and help organize it all, Kidou inadvertently heard all the conversation around him as he tried to corral the carrot bunches together.
“We might have to ask Hitomiko to give us more money next time, we barely managed to make it under budget this time.” Kazemaru fretted over their empty wallets while re-bagging the apples to save for later.
“You really think the prices will rise again?” Rika began moving the packs of meat next to the gas stoves, where Gouenji had silently taken up the station and was beginning to heat up oil.
“I thought the prices would be lower near farmland, but now I’m starting to think that they might be bringing food from outside, which costs more and ends up with higher prices,” rolling his eye, Kazemaru suddenly turned to Kidou in an attempt to include him in the conversation, “Like what do you think a banana should reasonably cost, Kidou?”
“Uh,” numbers ran through his head, none of them reasonably within the range of what his one reference point of what an apple cost earlier. Logically, they were both fruit, but one was softer and from a tropical area which was probably farther away from where the apples came from. That meant it would have a higher price, but by how much he could only guess.
“1000 yen?” The feedback was instantaneous, and Kidou knew enough about his fellow teammates' facial expressions to figure that he was drastically wrong with his guess.
“Ooooooookay,” Kazemaru started to gently correct his rich friend when a head popped up from below the table.
“Did you just say a banana is 1000 yen?!” Kogure’s incredulous voice carried out across the entire Inazuma caravan’s surroundings, which had conveniently fallen into natural silence at this time. A squirming frog jumped away from where they were all standing, as Kogure had been gearing up for a prank only to feel like he just got pranked instead.
“Haha, funny joke right?” At least his wits were quick, as Kidou tried to save himself from this massive fail. He was already planning on looking up banana prices later when he was alone, but for now he had to play along.
“Right, yeah, totally!” Knowing fully that that response absolutely wasn’t a joke, Kazemaru graciously let their genius playmaker rescue himself. He reached over and gave Kidou a pat on the back, reassuring him and letting it go. The sound of sizzling filled the air now, and conversation turned to surrounding Gouenji and Rika’s cooking while trying to guess what the final product would be. Excusing himself from the table to go check the water tanks, Kidou tugged at the edge of his cape as he pondered on how to patch this gap in his knowledge. There was only one way, and an idea was already forming in his mind on how to execute it.
—
Armed with a pocketful of money and sharp eyesight to spot grocery prices, Kidou fell into step with the rest of the grocery shopping crew, having volunteered himself for the next available run. Kogure had happily stepped back and told him to just check which spices were running low and get replacements for those. A neatly folded piece of paper was now in Kidou’s jacket pocket—a “shopping list” if you may, that helped restrict oneself to only buying needed items.
The group had parked closer this time to the core of civilization, aka the grocery store. They’d also made a stop on the way here at a farm stand, where Kazemaru had unbuckled and ran up front before anyone could stop him and asked to grab some cheap farm fresh veggies for the team. That had allowed some more leeway in Raimon’s grocery budget, and the speedy leader of the grocery crew had a spring in his step as he was still feeling buoyant from such a great find. They filed past the groups of sparsely parked cars outside, then headed in past the double set of glass automatic doors to be greeted with a gentle stream of cold air indoors.
“Alright everyone, grab what you need, we’ll meet in front of the wine section in about twenty minutes to check out together,” Kazemaru announced to the group, having learned from experience that this was the best amount of shopping time, especially when they all had to orient themselves in a new grocery store nearly every time. They each grabbed a shopping basket, with Kabeyama grabbing a shopping cart instead for carting around the rice. Quickly following suit, Kidou picked up a basket and immediately hit himself in the knee with the hard basket edge. Wincing behind his goggles, he blinked a few times to clear away the pain only to find that everyone had disappeared from around him in a matter of seconds.
Well, at least the store has signs , Kidou had caught sight of the stout boards hanging above each aisle, bold words on them describing the general items contained in the aisle. His was easy enough to find, and he walked through the empty register section to be faced with rows of seasonings and spices. They all looked the same to him, with various sections of different brands of spices only denoted by a change in bottle shape and cap color. He’d thought this would be one of the easier things to shop for, having experienced so many cuisines in his life, but beyond salt and pepper he could barely understand where the rest of these dozens of spices were used. Sure, he’d written down the ones that were low in the pantry box, but that didn’t mean he knew why they were being used up so quickly.
“Salt, that’s easy enough,” he muttered while bending down to look at the way too many options of salt spread out across several shelves. Rock salt, sea salt, pickling salt, Himalayan salt, and just salt salt populated the shelves, along with even more obscure ones in small containers sprinkled in between.
What type of salt do we even use? And what was with the prices on these ones? Hesitating, his mind thought back to the price of an apple and tried to weigh out the importance of salt versus an apple.
Well, they used to trade gold for this stuff, right? But something about how he’d never heard any of them complain about the price of salt had him hesitating from just picking the Himalayan pink salt. Pickling salt also looked intense, in a big box that had pickled vegetables printed on it. They didn’t do any of that stuff on the caravan, so that probably wasn’t it. Now it was back to the other salts, which looked all the same except in different shapes. After some more deliberation, he picked the bag of the most normal looking salt and gave a quick glance at the price. 200 yen, not bad, a lot less than the price of a mysterious banana. However the deliberation had been costly, as he now only had fifteen minutes left to get the rest of his shopping list.
The chili powder was easy enough to find, but then he realized there were multiple chili powders, one from each different set of brands. Pressed for time, he simply got the one in the middle price tier that looked pretty red and chili-y. Luckily those were the only two spices they were low on and which concluded his stint in the spice section. A few more steps had him standing in front of a narrow section composed of shelves of bags of various white powders. The bags on the bottom were printed in the most primitive manner possible, while the ones up top had pictures detailing what the finished products using these powders could look like.
Potato starch was what he needed…but the ones he’d seen in the pantry had already been decanted into a jar. Which brand was an absolute mystery, coupled with the fact that there was potato starch and sweet potato starch, and for the first time ever he was doubting his memory on what he’d seen. Picking up a bag of each, he hefted them both, then rubbed at the bags to feel the substance for no good reason. Back at the caravan he’d simply checked the level of powder content in the jar when noting down what to buy, not what type of texture it had.
OK, trust yourself Kidou, it was potato starch, non sweet. Scanning the section for which brands carried potato starch, he again went with the middle pick. Then he stopped and noticed that the different brands had different amounts of the white powder in each bag.
Oh no, maybe the middle price isn’t the best depending on the weight , Kidou hurriedly put back the starch he was holding and focused on doing some mental math on getting the best per gram. Surprisingly, the winner was the simplistically packaged brand on the very bottom. Hefting the bag in his hand, he wondered how much marketing this brand put into their product or if it simply relied on nostalgia from the previous generation. Having found new respect for marketing methods, he hurriedly put three bags of it into his basket.
Now it was time to find the last item on his list: panko. This one he had seen the bags for, as they weren’t decanted to try and keep them as fresh as possible. Spiky breadcrumbs perfect for breading and frying various foods in, they apparently went through that stuff like water and he needed a good amount of it. With his keen eyesight, he spotted similar packaging at the end of the aisle and briskly walked over to survey the various types of panko. Boxes, bags, and even cylindrical containers of the ingredient stared back at him, daring him to grab one that was different from what he had in mind.
“This one!” Red, white, and blue packaging on a plastic bag was all he needed to see before confirming that this was the brand he wanted. Picking it up, his eyes caught onto another bag on the lower shelf. A larger package of panko from the same brand rested there, and a quick glance at the price tag had him realizing that the greater volume had a lower per gram price.
So many tricks just in getting the best deal! Kidou put down the bag he was holding and grabbed two of the larger ones for his basket, now having much greater respect for homemakers. Mind wandering to how this might be useful for training for a new hissatsu, his basket now weighed down from all the various spices and powders, but there were still just a few minutes left in his shopping time for him to verify one more thing.
Exiting the aisle, he headed towards the rows of greenery at the far wall of the grocery store. A familiar head of blue was bobbing between the rows stacked high of various vegetables, and unfortunately heading right towards the fruit section. Acting as casually as possible, Kidou sidled over to join Kazemaru in perusing the array of fresh fruits.
“Hi Kazemaru, oh what’s that paper?” His friend was clutching what looked like a newspaper that had pictures of vegetables printed on it.
“It’s the ad page for this store, I found a copy of it at the register, there’s a sale on Fiji apples so I’m trying to find them.” Kazemaru absentmindedly replied as he continued carefully reading the tags on each section of apples to identify which one exactly was Fiji.
“I see…,” Kidou stared a little longer, thinking there was so much to learn about grocery shopping, then went in the opposite direction and stared at the tag where the bananas were placed.
[Bananas: 50 yen each]
Ah. Well, that was enough for him to understand that maybe he should go on these grocery shopping trips more often and get to know how the world works better. Heading back over to where Kazemaru was now quickly bagging up apples, he took a bag for himself and set to work helping them get the best deals possible in the short amount of time they had.
—
“Wow, when’d we get fish?!” Tsunami exclaimed as he helped set the table with food as the rest of the group finished up practice nearby. The sun was slowly setting past the hill they were parked next to, casting long shadows tinted with orange and purple across the entire area.
“Ever since Kidou started really getting into grocery shopping with us, he’s gotten scary good at budgeting and getting the best deals, so we have a little extra to spend on special ingredients,” Rika commented, shaking her head with a wry smile. “I swear whenever he’s not working on some new soccer move, he’s tracking the price of rice or something. You should’ve seen his face the first time I showed him a coupon I got outside the store. Now we always check for ads and coupons before going in.”
“Yeah well, I’m tracking when we finally finish that chili he bought,” Kogure sighed while taking an early seat at the table, quickly holding up his hands upon seeing a glare from Gouenji who was manning the cook stoves again. “I washed my hands before getting here!”
“Oh is that why everything’s been so spicy lately? What’s up with that?” Taking some of the plates out, Tsunami began passing them around and inadvertently forced Kogure to get up and begin helping as well.
“He didn’t know that there’s different types of chilis that become powders, and bought one of the spiciest ones,” Rika laughed while relaying the unfortunate discovery they’d all made after the next meal that required chili powder. Gouenji hadn’t thought it was any different from usual, but he had a much higher heat tolerance than any of the rest of the group. Fubuki had spent the rest of that day lying facedown on top of the caravan instead of practicing, which said enough about the spice levels.
“IS FOOD READY?” Endou’s voice rang out from the hill where he was standing on and waving down at the cooking crew.
“YEAH!” Voices rang out in response from the caravan, and the remaining members of the team piled over the hill to join for dinner. A cape flapped in the wind as the genius playmaker of the field led the charge, someone who had recently earned the unofficial title of dealmaker of the grocery store unbeknownst to the boy himself.
