One Handful of a Chef
Yet another heavy sigh broke the silence.
Could you give it a rest already? Sheesh.
I furrowed my brow in annoyance, which earned me a worried glance from Nicola. “Um, Ella...” she began.
“I’m fine. Could you wash these fisha for me?”
For the past few days, a heavy atmosphere had hung over the kitchen that made it uncomfortable to say or do just about anything. I gave instructions to Nicola, then looked at the one responsible for the awkwardness. It was Hugo, hunched over with dead eyes as he stirred a pot.
I mean, I understand why he’s depressed, but come on...
Our problems had started when the Othmar Company came asking for ways to expand the Italian restaurant’s menu. They wanted at least one new recipe for the summer, when they received more customers from outside the city. We normally would’ve asked Benno to speak to Lady Rozemyne for us, but she was going to be asleep for a whole ’nother year.
Fran had shot them down fast and told them to think of something themselves, but Todd—the Italian restaurant’s chef—hadn’t managed to think of any good ideas. In fact, when Hugo had gone back to his home in the lower city, Todd had clung to him in tears asking whether he knew anything about Lady Rozemyne’s recipes he could share.
Unable to refuse the request of an old work buddy, Hugo started to think up new recipes. But in the meantime, the Othmar Company determined that Todd couldn’t handle this himself, and so they asked the guildmaster’s personal chef Leise to think of some as well.
I didn’t know what had gone down between Hugo and Leise when he went to the Italian restaurant to tell Todd his new recipes, but I did know that a competition had been organized by the time he came back. They were going to duke it out, and whoever made the better recipe would have theirs used in the restaurant.
Lady Rozemyne liked pretty weird foods, so even with a magic contract limiting what recipes we could share, Hugo and I had plenty of ideas from our time working as her personal chefs. So, he decided to challenge the competition with an original recipe of ours that she had loved.
However, he ended up losing to Leise anyway.
Hugo had been depressed ever since. He sadly hung his head even while in the middle of work, with his poor posture and distant gaze making him seem hardly alive. He usually looked so cool in the kitchen, but this was just pathetic.
He let out another heavy sigh. How many times was that now? I’d done what I could to cheer him up the day after he’d lost, but at this point, I was fed up with it.
So you lost once, what’s the big deal?! All you have to do is win next time!
While I was angrily chopping up the fisha, Nicola finished washing the rest of them and sent a worried glance Hugo’s way. He seemed to notice that, as he turned his gloomy face to her and gave a weak smile, no doubt hoping she’d console him.
The moment I saw that smile, something inside of me snapped. I dropped my knife, stomped over to Hugo, and punched him on the arm.
“I get that you’re sad about losing to Leise, but how long are you gonna be a little baby about it? Just looking at you like this annoys me!”
“Wha?! Wh-Why so harsh?” Hugo stammered, widening his eyes in surprise then grimacing at my unexpected rant. But I was the one who should have been grimacing—not only was he damaging my opinion of him by being such a loser, now he was trying to be all cozy with Nicola right in front of me.
“If you want to try to beat Leise again, I’ll do everything I can to help you, but being this much of a sad sack in the kitchen is just depressing. Your sour feelings are gonna make the food taste terrible. Just take some time off until you’re back on your feet. Hate to say it, but you’re just in our way right now, Hugo.”
I glared at him, and Hugo glared right back, his lips bent into a frown. He then looked to Nicola in hopes of getting some support, but she was just watching us with eyes like saucers.
Sorry, but you’re not gonna exploit Nicola’s kindness here.
I grinned and went back to Nicola’s side, where I picked the knife back up and chopped the rest of the fisha before adding them to a bowl filled with water. “Fran was saying we’ve still got a year until Lady Rozemyne wakes up, you know. Nicola and I can handle cooking for the orphanage just fine by ourselves, so there’s nothing stopping you from taking some time off. Right, Nicola? Don’t you think it’d be better for Hugo if he rested until he was feeling better? His depression’s gonna seep into the food.”
Nicola placed a finger on her chin, tightly knitting her brow in thought. “Mm, well, we can’t really have the food start tasting bad... I’ll ask Fran to let Hugo go back to the lower city.”
“Er, no, Nicola! Wait a second!” Hugo exclaimed. “I’m fine. I’m all better now. You don’t need to tell Fran anything, okay? Please?”
“Really...? You’re better now?” Nicola asked, blinking with surprise.
Hugo nodded over and over again, now looking especially panicked. “Yup! Lemme get back to cooking!” he said, swinging his arm like an exaggerated windmill. I couldn’t help but laugh as he tried to distract Nicola with the thought of delicious food.
Nicola was raised in the temple, so she didn’t quite understand how some things worked. If she had told Fran that Hugo needed some time away because his food tasted bad, he would be considered a failure of a personal chef and fired—there was no point paying a chef who couldn’t make good food, after all. But that wasn’t something Nicola really considered, probably due to her upbringing. All she focused on was making and eating tasty food.
“Nicola, can you handle the pot?” Hugo asked. “Ella, once you’re done with the fisha, come help over here.”
I couldn’t tell whether my yelling had actually whipped him into shape or he was just faking it well, but it looked like Hugo had kicked aside his depression. He picked up a knife to start peeling some potatoffels, apparently intending to make something fancy to both distract Nicola and show that he had fully recovered.
I drew some water from a jug and cleaned my knife, while Hugo plopped down into a chair next to me in the corner of the kitchen. He grabbed a potatoffel out of a bag fully packed with them and started to peel it.
“Curse you, Ella. I’ll make you pay for this...” he grumpily muttered at me under his breath.
I waved a hand dismissively. “You can try, but I’m not scared of someone who lost to Leise and then tried to cozy up to Nicola for comfort.”
“Wait! Never mind, I take it back. Forget this ever happened.”
“Noooooope.”
I don’t want to forget a thing about the guy I like, so...
I chuckled at his expense and started peeling a potatoffel as well. Hugo sped through his one like he wasn’t depressed at all anymore. Life had returned to his eyes and he was sitting up straight; in fact, he was looking kinda manly again.
There we go. This is the Hugo I want to see at work.
I hummed to myself as I continued to peel, earning me a raised eyebrow from Hugo. “You sure are in a good mood,” he muttered out of annoyance—well, it was more awkwardness than annoyance. He was aware he had been killing the mood in the kitchen and was now trying to cover for it. The fact I thought that was cute probably showed just how bad my taste in men was.
I dropped my peeled potatoffel into a bowl and shot Hugo a smile as I picked up another. “Don’t feel so down. There’s gonna be another competition at the end of summer, right? All you have to do is beat Leise there. We should definitely use some mushrooms for the autumn menu. We could cook them through with butter, freshen them up with vinegar, or—”
“Ella, do you actually think I can beat Leise?” Hugo asked, sounding like he had suddenly lost all confidence in himself.
“Yep,” I replied without missing a beat. Hugo’s eyes widened in disbelief, but I really didn’t understand why he was feeling so unsure. “I mean, you lost last time because you’re just too good at making food Lady Rozemyne likes, not because you’re a bad chef. You can win next time for sure.”
“I’m surprised you can say that when Leise bashed the dish so hard...”
Hugo was starting to hunch over again, likely remembering all the things Leise had told him: that the recipes were innovative, but much too salty; that he should have added resha or pitses to draw out the flavor; and all sorts of other minor quibbles.
“Okay, quit it. That’s enough.”
I thrust a peeled potatoffel right in Hugo’s face to stop him from hunching forward any further. He grimaced, and this time I returned a grimace myself. We’d finally gotten him to cheer up; I didn’t want him getting himself all depressed again.
“You’d dominate any competition about making food Lady Rozemyne enjoys, but the one you lost was about a recipe for the Italian restaurant, right? Your problem was making a meal with Lady Rozemyne’s tastes in mind. I mean, she likes her food salty, so...”
Hugo had lost the competition because he was too focused on Lady Rozemyne’s own preferences. It was the job of a personal chef to learn what their boss liked, slowly change their seasoning to match their tastes, and not to use ingredients they weren’t fond of. As such, the food they made was catered to the wants of a single person, not an entire restaurant.
“Todd asked for some new recipes from Lady Rozemyne, so that’s what you brought him, right? That’s why you lost.”
“Yeaaah... I guess it’s the rich merchants who decide on what tastes better. Only makes sense Leise would win when she just took normal noble food and added consommé to strengthen the flavor...”
The Italian restaurant’s menu didn’t need anything too unique; what mattered was having a traditional, slightly modified recipe that could be made with easily purchasable ingredients and seasonings.
“Guess I’d need to make something that appeals to more people than just Lady Rozemyne. The restaurant not having an ice room like we do didn’t help either; I couldn’t use most of the summer recipes I’m used to making.”
“True. A bunch of Lady Rozemyne’s summer recipes need things that can only be kept in an ice room.”
Lady Rozemyne was weak to the heat, and her poor health meant she was often quick to lose her appetite. As a result, she mainly wanted light meals in the summer or slightly chilly things that could be eaten without much effort. But the ice rooms were made with magic tools, so it wasn’t possible for the Italian restaurant to rely on them.
“So basically, I’m just thinking too much like a noble, huh? I need to think more about what commoners eat. Hm... Yeah. I’ll have more options for autumn recipes.”
Now that Hugo was facing the reasons he lost head-on, his mood was starting to brighten even without my efforts. I saw his lips rise up into a motivated grin, which made me grin myself.
There we go! That’s the face I kinda like to see.
Satisfied that he was once again wearing the expression I most loved to see on him, I got back to peeling my next potatoffel.
“Um, Hugo?” I asked, noticing he was just sitting there in a daze with his knife. “You’ve stopped working. C’mon. Peel, peel, peel.”
He quickly snapped back to reality and started peeling again, but it seemed like his heart wasn’t properly in it. For once, he was actually peeling slower than I was, and the fact he kept glancing my way was really making me curious.
“Is there something else you’re worried about, Hugo? You don’t need to think up a new recipe for the competition right away, you know. There’s still plenty of time.”
“Y-Yeah... Right. I’ll handle it later,” he murmured. He was looking right at me, but it didn’t sound like he was paying much attention at all. Whatever he was thinking about, it must have been important.
What is it this time? Gosh, he sure is a handful.
Was there anything else that Hugo had to worry about? Nothing came to mind. I pursed my lips in thought, trying to figure it out while I continued to peel.
“Hey, Ella...”
“Yeah?” I asked casually, leaning forward in anticipation of another discussion about a dinner menu or something.
“Want to get married?”
Did I... Did I mishear that?
It was so sudden that my mind went blank. There was such a slim connection between his question and what we had just been talking about that I couldn’t believe my ears. I just stared at him, blinking in shock.
“Well, er, I mean... You always cheer me up, and, y’know... I was thinking it might be nice to spend my life with you,” he mumbled awkwardly before slapping a hand against his forehead. His ears had gone red, along with the rest of his face. “Man, why’d I say that? If you don’t want to, go ahead and tell me. I’m used to it.”
Hugo grabbed the half-peeled potatoffel out of my hand, quickly finished it, then stood up with the bowl of potatoffels to flee to the other side of the kitchen. Without even thinking, I reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Actually, I’m... glad you asked. I, um... I like you too, so... I’m really glad. But could we at least talk about this when Nicola’s not around...?”
Nicola didn’t have enough common sense to read the mood and give us some space; instead, she was staring at us closely, like a kid interested in a conversation between adults. I naturally couldn’t talk about romance with her watching like that.
“R-Right. Good point,” Hugo stuttered. “I’ll, uh, bring it up again after work. Right.”
And so, he proposed to me again on our way home. My love for him had finally borne fruit, but that didn’t make him any less of a handful.
“I can’t believe this...” he complained. “Waiting for Lady Rozemyne means I don’t get to be center stage for the next Star Festival either!”
We had gone to Fran for permission to get married, only to be told that no decision could be made until Lady Rozemyne woke up. Hugo was still agonizing over that, since he had been beyond excited to finally participate in the Star Festival as a groom.
I took his hand and consolingly patted him on the back as we walked away. He stopped grumbling once I intertwined my fingers with his, calloused as they were from holding knives all day.
“Anyway, Hugo—let’s forget about the Star Festival and start thinking about that cooking competition that’s coming up. You wanna beat Leise this time, right?”
“Yup, and I’m gonna. You think of a dessert for me, Ella. Something that uses rafels,” he said, looking down at me happily. His brown eyes were filled with newfound motivation, and the moment I saw them, I knew he would win this time for sure.
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