The air in Betsukai Town was thick — you could feel it on your skin.
It was damp and cold, layered with the sour tang of fermenting silage, wet earth, and the unmistakable, musky warmth of thousands of large mammals breathing in one place.
The Jeep had rattled down gravel roads for two hours.
Amy sat in the back, rocking with every pothole, one hand death-gripping the ceiling handle. Her face was pale, her glasses slipping down her nose.
"How much longer…?"
"We're here."
Satsuki snapped her bunkobon shut and looked out the window.
Forget the pastoral fairy tale — wind in the grass, cows and sheep dotting green hills.
What met them was a drab gray concrete wall topped with barbed wire. A stainless steel plaque was bolted to the gate: .
No red-roofed farmhouse. No milkmaid in a floral dress. Not even a guard dog.
Just that suffocating smell, rushing in the second the car door opened.
"Cough, cough, cough!"
Amy was out of the car for half a second before she started hacking. She yanked a handkerchief to her face. Her glasses fogged instantly.
"What is that smell… it's brutal."
"It's the smell of protein."
Satsuki stepped out, lambskin boots sinking into half-melted slush. She didn't cover her nose. Instead, she inhaled deeply, calm as if she were testing a perfume.
"Cough, cough…!!"
Her body vetoed the performance. A few breaths in and she was coughing too.
Amy, still masked, came over and patted her back, half-amused.
"Okay… don't push it. I get it. This is… the smell of fermenting money, right?"
Satsuki straightened, eyes watering from the cough.
"Fine. Who's in charge here? Hygiene standards are unacceptable."
Right then, the iron gates slid open.
A tanned, middle-aged man in dark blue coveralls jogged up. Matsuda — the former owner. Two years ago, the milk surplus crisis left him drowning in JA debt. Now he worked for the Saionji family.
"Young Mistress, welcome."
He pulled off his straw-flecked cap and worried it in his hands. Facing a "boss" younger than his daughter, his smile was all nervous flattery.
For some reason, Satsuki's look as she glanced at him was… off.
"Lead the way. Workshop No. 1."
Satsuki gave him one look, then turned and walked in.
"I'll settle the score with you later…"
Only Amy, beside her, caught the mutter.
Amy shot Matsuda a sympathetic glance, but her attention snapped back at Satsuki's word choice.
"Workshop?" Amy muttered, hurrying after her. "Don't you mean cowshed?"
Matsuda led them into a massive silver-gray steel building.
They pushed through the heavy soundproof door, and heat rolled over them.
Amy went quiet.
You couldn't call this a cowshed.
It was an industrial floor alive with the sound of pumps.
Dead center: a circular turntable over twenty meters across. Motors hummed. The platform rotated slowly, a low, constant drone.
Dozens of massive black-and-white Holsteins lined up like passengers at a boarding gate. One by one they stepped onto the turntable, dropped their heads into feed troughs, and spread their hind legs.
A cow locked into a station.
Workers on the outer ring moved fast — povidone-iodine spray guns and wipes in hand. Clean, disinfect, attach the silver milking cups.
Whole sequence: under fifteen seconds.
"This is a DeLaval rotary system from Sweden," Matsuda said.
"Sixty stations running at once. One rotation per cow, about eight minutes. When it's done, the cups auto-detach and the cow walks off."
He pointed to the web of stainless pipes overhead.
"Milk goes straight into vacuum lines. Fully enclosed. Plate heat exchanger drops it to 4°C instantly, then it's piped to the insulated tankers outside."
Amy looked up.
White liquid raced through clear tubing, streams merging into a single torrent.
"Amazing…" She pushed her glasses up. "It's more precise than our PCB line at the factory."
"It is precise."
Satsuki stood at the control room window, looking down at the endless rotation.
"Meiji and Snow Brand have machines like this. Bigger than ours. If we competed on volume or cost alone, we'd lose to those giants."
"Eh?" Amy blinked. "Then we…"
"We don't sell 'industrial milk' blended from farms all over Japan."
Satsuki drew a circle on the fogged glass with one finger, enclosing the ruminating cows below.
"Meiji's milk is pooled from producers nationwide. It's mixed in giant tanks. Consistent, sure. But it's cafeteria food."
She turned, back to the glass, eyes on Amy.
"Ours comes from only here. It's 'Single Origin.'"
"We'll tell Tokyo housewives: this carton was milked from this pasture in Betsukai yesterday afternoon. No mixing in a tank with milk from who-knows-where. No long warehousing."
"'S-Farm Hokkaido Limited.' We'll price it 20% above Meiji."
"Expensive?" Amy frowned. "Didn't you say we wanted market share? Will people buy it?"
"Because it's 'Hokkaido.'"
Satsuki's mouth curved, confident.
"To Tokyoites, 'Hokkaido' is a religion. It means pure nature. If they can buy that faith — that 'straight-from-the-udder freshness' — for a few dozen yen more, they'll feel like they got a deal. Or rather, we'll make them feel that way."
"So… affordable luxury?"
"Exactly."
Satsuki snapped her fingers.
"Come to the back. I've got a secret weapon for the future 'Hokokuya' chain."
Past the milking hall, the smell shifted. If the front was fermented lactose, the back was heavier — sultry, thick with testosterone.
The beef cattle area.
Pens of powerful animals. But they looked… off.
Not pure black Wagyu. Not black-and-white Holsteins either. Black coats, but with white faces or mottled patches. Built thick, muscle obvious, eyes a little dumb.
"What breed is this?" Amy leaned in. "Kind of Wagyu, but not."
"Crossbreeds."
Satsuki answered flatly.
She went to the railing, unbothered by the dirt, and patted a cow's back. It turned, huffed hot air, and tried to lick her hand. She dodged smoothly.
"F1. First-generation cross — Holstein dairy cow x Kuroge Wagyu."
Matsuda chimed in: "Usually we AI Holsteins that are dropping in milk yield with frozen Wagyu semen. Male calves get raised for beef."
"Why raise… mixed breeds?" Amy asked. "Isn't pure Wagyu more expensive? I saw A5 in Ginza — several thousand yen for 100 grams."
"Because we're not raising cattle for Ginza politicians."
Satsuki scooped a handful of yellow-green feed from the trough. TMR — Total Mixed Ration. Corn, soybean meal, alfalfa, chopped and blended by machine. Sweet-sour smell.
"Pure Wagyu are divas. Massages. Beer. Mozart. Thirty months to market. That cost makes them toys for the 1%."
She offered the feed to the F1. It ate like it was starving.
"But F1 is different. It gets the dairy cow's growth speed and hardiness, plus some Wagyu marbling. Industrial formula feed, force-fed on schedule — market-ready in twenty months."
Satsuki wiped her hands, then pulled a handkerchief to clean them properly.
"Its meat has marbling. Not A5, no. But way better than dry imported Aussie beef, and way more tender than culled dairy cow."
She turned to Amy, testing her.
"Amy, what's your take on a Yoshinoya beef bowl?"
"Beef bowl?" Amy thought. "Cheap. Filling. But the meat's tough, no flavor unless you drown it in sauce. And I heard it's frozen U.S. or Australian."
"If I open a chain called 'Hokokuya'…"
Satsuki's voice went casual.
"…all the beef is this F1 domestic. All the onions are sweet Tokachi onions we grow. Even the rice is Hokkaido rice."
"A steaming bowl of tender, marbled domestic beef on rice."
She held up five fingers.
"Selling for 450 yen."
"Yoshinoya is 400. We're 50 yen more."
Amy pictured it.
One coin difference.
Dry imported meat vs. tender domestic marbled beef.
And it's domestic. In Japan, that word alone adds value in people's heads.
"If it were me…" Amy swallowed. "I'd pay the extra 50. Domestic beef feels like a treat."
"Exactly."
Satsuki nodded, satisfied.
"We're not trying to undercut Yoshinoya. In a bad economy, people are broke, but they crave comfort more. 'Domestic premium' at fast-food prices — that psychological hit is Hokokuya's edge."
She glanced at Matsuda.
"Mr. Matsuda, adjust the feed formula. I want fat deposition up, even if it adds a month to market. If they see marbling when it's sliced, Tokyo salarymen will think that bowl's worth a thousand yen."
"Yes, understood." Matsuda nodded, scribbling notes.
Outside the barn, the sky had gone dark.
Hokkaido twilights hit different — dramatic.
The sun bled deep purple-red across the horizon. Pastures turned dark green under the afterglow. Distant snow peaks held the last gold.
Satsuki stood at the fence, watching a landscape that looked like an oil painting.
"So quiet here," Amy said.
"Yes."
Satsuki smoothed wind-tangled hair.
"Funny, isn't it? This quiet countryside is manufacturing Tokyo's loudest cravings."
"Milk. Beef. Onions. Potatoes."
"They'll ride our logistics network into that giant city."
"And at midnight, they become hot milk for some exhausted office worker, or a bowl of beef rice that keeps someone going."
She turned to Amy.
"Amy, don't you think it's romantic? Using industrial efficiency to sell 'warmth' and 'the taste of home'."
Amy looked at her, pushed up her glasses, and gave a helpless, resigned smile.
"It all sounds like math… but if you're the one doing it, Young Mistress, it probably will be romantic."
Wind moved through the pasture. Rustling.
In the distance, the herd ambled toward the barn, low moos rolling out.
The sound carried far across the open land.
Like a long, slow greeting from the North.