Harano followed the villagers digging wild vegetables for two days. After experiencing the folk customs and clearing up some doubts, he quickly lost interest in this "survival activity of Japan's laboring masses in the Middle Ages." After all, he didn't even eat wild vegetables, unlike the villagers of Hibi Village, who needed to rely on wild vegetables as their staple food until mid-February on the lunar calendar, in order to save precious grain for the strong laborers during spring plowing.
So he went back to Yayoi's house to continue running his Black Clinic, except the patients were getting scarcer and scarcer—sometimes not even one showed up in a whole day. When forced to choose between pain and hunger, people in this era were obviously more afraid of going hungry. Lately everyone had been digging wild greens as a priority, so if they got sick, they just toughed it out.
