After they had finished going through all the boxes of rice currently growing koji on and in it, they left the small room to rejoin the rest of the workers well after the end of their daily exercise routine. All in all about half the boxes had been marked with red chalk, while a bit more than two thirds of the remaining ones had white chalk marks on them.

Looking around a bit, Eva soon found Asahi and made her way over to him.

“Hey.” He began before interrupting himself with a barely concealed yawn, eyes seemingly ready to fall shut any moment. “Hey Eva. Done with whatever secret work The Boss had you help her with?” He then followed up with a second yawn.

“Yes, so what’s left to do now this afternoon?” She asked, a little curious why he seemed so exhausted suddenly, but unsure how to broach that subject right now.

“Well. We- yawn - We’ll start with the actual brewing today now that you two finished.” He said while sluggishly leading her into the room she first arrived here, though now water hoses had been rolled out and ladders set against about half the barrels in here. They were also connected by what looked like small temporary walkways near the top of each one.

“I see.” Eva said as she followed him to a small group of workers gathered around one of the barrels, which did include Asahi’s friend Eva met the day before during their break.

After some quick back and forth where Eva barely managed to grasp the gist of them debating what she should be allowed to do now, or if she’d be allowed to help at all, they handed her a long wooden pole and told her to go up and stir it all while they did the important work.

Which it turned out consisted mostly of carrying trays of rice in and dumping them into the barrel. Looking closely, Eva noticed that they brought in about 2 white marked ones for everyone with a red chalk mark. It was also quite obvious from her vantage point that Asahi seemed to be more exhausted than early this day, or even yesterday after they were done. Ms Satou had to keep him from slipping and dropping the rice more than once, despite them only needing to reach one of the barrels closest to where the rice was kept.

One of the workers also carefully ascended the ladder with a beaker full of a cloudy brown liquid, which was probably a mix of various yeast cultures that would end up producing the actual alcohol and reduce the amount of sugars in the mixture of rice and water Eva was currently stirring.

About half an hour or so later, everything had been added, but Eva was told to keep stirring it for a while longer by one of the workers she was unfamiliar with. While it was quite boring and menial, it also gave the Kitsune a chance to observe the rest of the room. Most people seemed to actually be taking turns doing the stirring, usually switching off every other time someone brought something new to be added to the barrel in question.

The only other curious thing she noted during that time was Ayami’s granddaughter shooting her outright hostile glares a few times, before quickly turning to look at Asahi. She even seemed to smile the few times he nearly fell from one of his stumbles.

All in all, it was a rather boring second half to the work day for Eva. Though that did allow her to mentaly go through some ideas of how to approach the next few lessons for Hanako. And make plans to spend some more of her own time trying to improve with all the magical abilities she only kind of understood at the moment.