NOVEL WEB Chapter 20: Keeping a Balanced Diet in One's Meals
[What…… another boar?]
Machida, a security guard, sighed at the sight before him.
A large boar had repeatedly struck the galvanized iron wall surrounding the company, trying to break through it, and was caught in the cracks, dead.
As MCTBH has expanded its operations, the company has built additional company buildings and has more and more equipment that are targets for theft.
For this reason, the company employs a security guard who is on duty at night.
Machida was introduced to MCTBH through the city’s Silver Staff Agency after retiring from a local medium-sized machine parts manufacturing company.
The president of the company was big and looked scary, but he felt that founders who raised their own company were just like that. He feels it’s not a bad place to work as a place where many young people come and go, so this would be a great place to live the latter half of one’s lifespan peacefully———— Except for a few strange and troublesome incidents.
[I think it would be better to build an electric fence to enclose the area…… or at least, change it to wire mesh.]
The company he was dispatched to, MCTBH, seems to have suddenly gotten prosperous recently, buying up the surrounding land that has been abandoned and left in disrepair to expand warehouses and parking lots where dump trucks come in and come out.
Thanks to this, there is now a mountain right behind the company.
Animals have been coming down from that mountain and crashing their heads into the company’s galvanized iron walls, killing themselves.
Just in the last month alone, from what Machida knows, there were four deers that had such a thing happen. There were also five other boars that died in the same position and from the same cause.
"
"
[I wonder if there’s something with an appetizing smell wafting from the company’s property.]
Grumbling to himself, Machida pulled out his radio to request for someone from the company to take care of the boar.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
When Hiroki received the call, he dragged the boar carcass with a rope across the property to the hole to dispose of it, and the employees, seeing this, backed away with frowns on their faces.
[You’d better take your distance. Wild animals have ticks.]
A boar who had died just recently may look warm, but if you carelessly touch its fur, the ticks that had been parasitic on it will vigorously jump on you, trying to change hosts.
The first time Hiroki handled a carcass, he had carried it on his shoulder, and he had a rough time because of it.
Since then, he had been dragging carcasses with a rope so that he wouldn’t have to touch it directly.
[Even if you don’t say that, I wouldn’t go near it. President, make sure to take a shower later.]
[President, you’re handling it again? It doesn’t have to be you who does things like this……]
The employees’ eyes are cold, and they don’t hold back with their comments.
[However, boars are heavy.]
Wild boars are much heavier than what their short and stout appearance shows.
A male boar is heavier than a man of standard build, and this carcass Hiroki was dragging probably weighed 90kg.
Dragging it with a single rope would be a heavy load for an ordinary person, and no matter the case, the job of throwing it into the hole is handled only by him.
It’s better if he just does it alone from the beginning to the end.
[It will just attract insects if left alone, so I’ll just bring them like this and deal with it.]
The carcasses of wild animals that die on the property are equivalent to general waste, so Hiroki’s company can dispose of them.
This boar will be disposed of as a fresh carcass, with no time for insects to spring up.
[For these things to die by a waste processing company…… Is this good luck or not?]
Throwing the boar into the hole, Hiroki thought of the several delivery companies in the city and wondered if he should eat tonkatsu for lunch.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
[There aren’t enough places for employees to eat!]
After Hiroki showered and went to the office, he was caught by an employee who was waiting for him.
[Ahh, errr…… you are……]
[I’m a part-timer, Kizaki!]
[Ahh, yes, Kizaki-san, yes?]
As I recall, she was that female student who insisted on making me buy a suit.
She was wearing a white coat and glasses. Short hair with little makeup.
Hiroki guesses that she’s a graduate student at the local university.
With her hands on the sides of her hips, Hiroki wonders.
Is she trying to be threatening?
Outside of manga and anime, Hiroki hasn’t seen anyone do something like that since that play he watched back in kindergarten.
[You see, there are now more employees recently, right?]
[That’s right.]
Thanks to Ishida’s skills, the company has continued to expand steadily, and now has more than 10 permanent employees.
If the student part-timers who came in and out of the company were to be included in the count, the total number of employees is probably three times as many.
The business started as a small, individual company, but now it has become a respectable small-to-medium sized enterprise.
[President might be fine with it. You have your own house on the premises, so you can cook for yourself. However, us part-timers and employees who commute to the office have nowhere to eat!]
[We’re in the countryside after all.]
About 500 meters away from their company, there’s a crumbling ramen shop, but even that would be packed after serving 5 people.
The female student insisted that they had to buy bento boxes at convenience stores or make one before work, but even this can be tiring and burdensome.
[However, it would be difficult to run a company cafeteria. It would be different if the company is 10 times its current size though.]
It’s not unusual for large factories to have a company cafeteria for their workers.
In the countryside where the workshop is located though, there’s no food service industry that can satisfy the stomachs of all the workers, so they have no choice but to produce their own necessities by themselves.
This is a decidedly different situation than in an office district in the middle of a big city.
[I understand that! That’s why I talked to a bento delivery company in the city! They will deliver bento boxes to the office everyday at a reasonable price.]
[Hohh, that’s amazing.]
Hiroki guesses that she was asking for some subsidy from the company.
However, if it’s half the price, Hiroki would be willing to offer it as a benefit.
[The discount is based on that company’s request that we allow them to dump their waste at our place.]
[……Ahh, so that’s how it is.]
In spite of their thin profit margin, the bento box business is one where they have difficulty controlling food loss and waste.
It would also cost a lot of money to dispose of business waste.
[If you could order me a katsudon bento, we can take up that offer.]
[Really? Then I’ll make the arrangements right away!]
Lightly flipping off her white coat, the female student went outside to make a phone call.
Hiroki wouldn’t have minded if she made the call inside the office though.
[Containers…… boxes…… Either way, we’ll need to come up with some way to keep the bugs from springing out.]
It may have been Hiroki’s imagination, but he had a feeling that it would be better to throw not only hard things, but also soft things into the hole.
There should be nothing wrong with throwing not only deer and boar carcasses, but also human food.