Chapter 3: Enduring the Days
1
And so, I ended up greeting the morning within the stone walls of this manor.
It was now the sixth day of the white month.
If things had proceeded normally, today would have concluded my fourth round of contracts for the stalls. And I was supposed to head to The Westerly Wind after work to discuss business with Yumi’s father, but I had broken that promise too.
On top of all that, I was scheduled to take a two-day break starting tomorrow, and was going to sell both The Sledgehammer and The Great Southern Tree a large quantity of giba meat so they could cover the gap.
Since I was being held captive, I had no way of knowing how those business deals had turned out. Had the members of the Ruu clan carried out the deliveries in my place...? Or were they all too busy to worry about something like that at this point?
Nail had surely reported my abduction to the guards. However, I couldn’t imagine that alone would be enough to make them search within the walls of the castle town. And that went even more so for the manor of a noble as influential as Cyclaeus.
I didn’t figure there would be any evidence left in the post town linking the crime to that scheming noble, either. Even if they were thinking, “This is definitely Cyclaeus’s doing!” they had no way to prove it. Plus it actually wasn’t Cyclaeus himself behind things, but his daughter Lefreya, which only complicated matters further.
I had entrusted Diel with my one sliver of hope, but I figured that had very little chance of actually bearing fruit. Though we were close personally, Diel was still a child of a wealthy family, and her priorities were ordered accordingly.
Ultimately, I spent the night stuck somewhere between being asleep and awake, worrying all the while and failing to come up with any ways to escape the manor or persuade Lefreya before the sun rose.
◇
“Well then, let us head to the kitchen...”
My first task of the day when the morning bell for the third hour chimed out was preparing a snack for Lefreya.
I was also to cleanse myself before work, and so I was dragged to the bathhouse early in the morning. After firmly refusing Chiffon Chel’s assistance, I went ahead and washed up in the steam bath.
Then I changed into a brand new chef’s uniform and we headed to the kitchen, where Roy was once more the only one awaiting me.
“You’re supposed to use panam honey for the snack,” he said with a sulky look.
He seemed even more displeased than yesterday, and he wasn’t so much as looking me in the eye. He was probably holding a grudge against me over that whole incident with Chiffon Chel.
“Panam honey’s that sweet stuff, right? So she’s requesting a dish that brings that sweetness to the forefront, huh?”
“Lady Lefreya loves sweets more than other types of cooking. And so, she always wants one for her midday snack,” Roy responded, looking away. Apparently he had heard that his employer’s name had already been revealed.
Still, I was a bit dumbfounded at the fact that I’d be making sweets this time around.
Despite my various worries, I had prepared myself to meet her demands head on and hold nothing back in terms of my cooking. Though I really doubted her honesty, Lefreya had declared that if I made a dish that satisfied her she would not only give me a silver coin but also release me. And I had absolutely no intention of throwing away the only fleeting hope I had.
However, sweets-making was a whole different matter entirely. Whether or not I gave it my all, this was just entirely out of my field of expertise.
“Hmm, I don’t know anything about this worl—... Er, about sweets here in Genos. Would making up some sweet fuwano batter and adorning it with honey and fruit work?”
I didn’t get any response to that question.
It felt even more uncomfortable here in the kitchen than it had yesterday.
Having no other options, I decided to scrounge around the pantry while relying on my memory.
I had already investigated a variety of ingredients back in the post town in my attempts to develop new dishes. And in the process, I learned that there were not only vegetables available, but also fruits. As a result, I finally came across the sheel fruit, which had a taste similar to a lemon.
However, I didn’t see any use for sheel at this particular moment. So instead, I picked out some fruit I didn’t know the name of that was small and bright red like a strawberry, but grew in bunches like grapes.
“What is this fruit called?”
“An arow...”
Arow, huh?
Though not quite as much as sheel, it was still definitely sour. It felt something like a mix between a strawberry and blueberry on that front, and though it had a rather nice flavor to it, it was low on sugar.
They didn’t show up in the post town all that often, so as far as I remembered, the only place I occasionally saw them was at Granny Mishil’s little shop, where I always went to buy chatchi and gigo. From what I heard, it was a fruit only sold to folks who liked how it changed the taste of fruit wine when it was mixed in.
“With fuwano, you knead in water and then bake it, right?”
Roy just gave back a silent nod.
From what I was told, the lady of the house was to have her snack when the sun hit its peak, which gave me around three hours to prepare it. And during that time, I needed to bake fuwano for the first time ever.
As I suppressed the empty feeling in my chest, I went ahead and moved some fuwano flour into an appropriate bowl, then brought it back to the kitchen along with the necessary ingredients.
The fuwano was powdery, like cake flour, and as I added water bit by bit, it got nice and sticky. In fact, it was surprisingly even more viscous than powdered poitan. While it was still rather floury, I stopped adding water and molded it freely, at which point it had a mochi-like feel to it.
Yeah, this stuff really is a different ingredient than wheat flour.
For the time being, I went ahead and made up a nice flat shape that would be easy to heat through, then cooked it up as a sample.
And so I was able to successfully prepare some cooked fuwano, which I had only had a few times. It was denser and doughier than poitan, closer to naan. This was the same sort of stuff the kimyuus manju Tara and I once ate was made out of, wrapped around cooked meat and a variety of vegetables, with nenon being the main one.
However, something like that definitely wouldn’t be a sweet. Utilizing my memories from my distant home to their fullest, I added karon milk to fuwano flour, then mixed in sugar and kimyuus eggs as well.
And when it came time to cook it up, I used karon milk fat. Needless to say, I had decided to prepare them like hotcakes.
This was actually my first time tackling kimyuus eggs, too. Their shape was more or less the same as a hen’s egg, but they were a size smaller. I’d put them at about the same size as a Silkie fowl egg in terms of what I had eaten back in my old world.
When I went ahead and timidly cracked one open, a lemon-colored yolk and transparent egg white fell atop the plate. And once again, the shape was pretty much the same as with a hen’s egg.
I had heard a kimyuus was some sort of bizarre bird with wings growing out of its head, but fortunately for me, both its meat and eggs bore a striking resemblance to those of an ordinary chicken.
At any rate, I went ahead and tackled cooking them.
I quickly found some thick wooden skewers, so I used those in place of long chopsticks to beat the kimyuus egg.
I haven’t made hotcakes since Reina bugged me till I made them.
Was that back in our first year of middle school? My childhood friend Reina had asked me to show her how to prepare hotcakes, since she wanted to make them for Valentine’s Day.
I declined and said she just had to follow the instructions off the back of the package, but she angrily retorted, “I’m asking you because that wasn’t working out!” But in the end, we followed those same instructions and they turned out fine. Ultimately the problem wasn’t with them, but rather with Reina’s handling of the heat.
And once she had successfully cooked those hotcakes, Reina decorated them with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, then treated me and my old man to them.
After that, she really polished up her skills at making sweets, while my old man and I fell into the role of the ones eating them. Looking back on it, we always had the better cooking skills, so it must have made Reina really happy to hear the two of us praise how delicious they were.
Ack, this is no time to be reminiscing...
My thoughts were already racing about Ai Fa and everybody at the forest’s edge, so if I started thinking about my old man and Reina on top of that, I was likely to cause my poor heart to break down.
Clearing all the intrusive thoughts from my head, I mixed the fuwano with kimyuus eggs, karon milk, and Jagar-made sugar, then poured the result into the handled pot that looked like a frying pan and started cooking.
Since there wasn’t any baking powder to be had, it didn’t puff up quite as much as a hotcake. But thanks to the eggs it was still plenty soft, plus it had a yellowish color to it in the end, making it look pretty close to a pancake overall.
When I gave it a bite, I found it had a truly gentle flavor.
Sure enough, they were chewier than I’d like thanks to the lack of fluffiness, but it had been some time since I had any sugar or eggs, and they tasted absolutely wonderful when fried up with milk fat. The saltiness from the milk fat really helped the sweetness stand out, rather than hindering it in any way, fortunately.
At any rate, I went ahead and cooked up a number of samples, adjusting the ratios of the ingredients in each one. After about 30 minutes of experimenting, I had something I was satisfied with.
However, I was serving this to a spoiled noble girl who was used to gourmet cooking. And so, I felt more than a little uneasy at the thought of just pouring panam honey on top and calling it a day.
In the end, I decided to make jam out of the arow fruit I had procured. Though I had no experience with the process, I knew it was possible to get something close enough by boiling it down and mixing in sugar. As I started by washing off the fruit and then adding water to a small pot, I turned toward Roy for the first time in a while.
“By the way, how many will be—” I started, only to suddenly trip over my words. That was because Roy was staring at my hands with a startlingly serious look in his eyes.
However, he soon noticed my gaze and looked away.
“I need to know many will be eating the snack, right?”
“Just one...”
Apparently Lefreya was the only one who would be snacking this time. Diel and her father must have been away from the manor doing business.
Still... just what was that look in Roy’s eyes about?
Well, whatever. It’s in our best interest not to interfere with one another.
I plucked up the freshly washed arow and boiled it in a small amount of water, and soon a bittersweet fruit aroma overcame the smell of milk fat and filled the kitchen.
After I coarsely chopped it and stirred it with a wooden spatula, I then went ahead and added some sugar.
Jagar-made sugar was similar in appearance to light brown sugar, had larger grains than caster sugar, and a rather smooth flavor. It was a real rich sweetness, like it included all sorts of minerals.
At any rate, I added sugar bit by bit, then carefully stirred it. It seemed like it was going to burn midway through, so I also went ahead and added just a bit more arow fruit, too.
It had been rather sour to start with, and so it took quite a bit of sugar to sweeten it up. But that left it feeling somehow lacking, so I cut the flame and added some panam honey.
In the end, it came out rather thick, with a brilliant sheen, and delightfully flavorful. For an improvised jam recipe, it really had turned out well.
“Alright, this seems like it’ll work out. But I’d like to present it freshly baked instead, so I’d prefer to cook up the actual dish itself closer to when the sun hits its peak.”
“I see... Then head on back to your room. I’ll be using this kitchen in the meantime.”
“Oh, so you’re making food for the servants?”
In that case, I guess I had to yield the space to him.
“Ah, but before I go, how much of the leftover karon milk is fresh enough that it’ll last till tomorrow?”
“Karon milk? We replace it with fresh stuff every morning. So anything here should be good for another two or three days.”
“Oh, really? In that case, would it be alright to borrow a few bottles in advance to prepare for tomorrow?”
Roy shot me a suspicious glance.
“Do as you please. But what are you even going to use that much milk for, anyway...?”
“Well, I figured if I’m going to be asked to make sweets again tomorrow, I’d need to do something a little extra. And so I was planning on preparing something related to milk fat.”
Since I was granted permission, I went ahead and brought two bottles out of the pantry and emptied the contents into a pot. And since each one seemed to have over a liter packed inside, it made for quite a bit. At any rate, though, I placed a lid over the rippling white milk inside and bid it farewell.
“Now I’d just like to keep it in the pantry where it won’t be disturbed.”
“That’s the extent of your ‘preparations’...?”
“Yes. If you leave it be, the liquid and fat will separate, right? The fat’s the ingredient that I’m after.”
That separated fat was, in fact, cream. Your ordinary cow’s milk sold in stores back home was refined so that the fat wouldn’t separate like that, but with raw milk it should be plenty easy to make the stuff.
As an aside, by fiercely beating that freshly harvested cream in order to further separate out the fat, it would be possible to make butter. I figured that was how the milk fat produced in this kitchen was made.
I didn’t know how much practical use cream had in a place without refrigerators like Genos, but if I whipped it and mixed in sugar, it should certainly serve for adorning sweets. That was the thought running through my head as I reached down for the pot to go carry it, only for Roy to suddenly draw nearer.
“Who in the world are you, really...?” he asked, a strange glint in his brown eyes. And his oval-face with scattered pimples had a desperate look on it, somehow. “Why does a kid like you know all those different cooking techniques? Aren’t you just some brat playing at being a chef out in the post town?”
“Yes. However, I wasn’t actually born here in Genos. And in my home country I assisted my father, who was a chef.”
“But you’re still just a kid...! How old are you, anyway?”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Seventeen... How can someone that young make a dish like that...?”
Those words actually took me a bit off guard.
“Um, did you perhaps eat my cooking?”
“Lady Lefreya and the guests all said that the dish you made was tastier than the one prepared by the sous-chef... You really think I could go without tasting it after something like that?” Roy made a move like he was about to grab me by the collar, but he pulled his hand back midway and instead lightly slammed his fist down atop the work station. “The head chef accompanied the master of the house to Genos Castle. But even the sous-chef is a first-rate cook who had once been in charge of the kitchen at Selva’s Spear. We’re all well aware of just how skilled he is. The idea that someone like you is a better chef is utterly ridiculous...!”
“I was born overseas. It’s possible my foreign cooking methods just seem novel because of how different they are.”
“Hmph! We’ve had plenty of first-rate chefs from Sym and Jagar summoned here! However, their cooking never got praised that highly. So why is it that you—”
“In that case, perhaps the cooking of my homeland just happens to suit the tastes of this land’s people?”
Or maybe it really was the fact that the cultural level had advanced further back in my own world, meaning cooking techniques had also evolved in turn.
I had no way of truly comparing, though, so all I could do was guess.
“Even I trained at The Maiden in White! And I’m still just 19, too! No one else has been invited to work here at this manor at such a young age up till now!”
“Right...”
“And yet I’m only ever permitted to make food for the servants. Because I’m still ultimately just a novice. That’s only logical, since I can’t measure up to the skills of any of the other chefs working here in this manor. And yet, you...” Roy suddenly cut off his rant and hung his head as his shoulders trembled ever so slightly. “Hurry up and clean up that pot... It’s an eyesore.”
“Right.”
Though I was a bit taken aback, I went ahead and earnestly obeyed.
And at the same moment, the door to the kitchen opened from the outside.
“Sir Asuta, Sir Roy, is something the matter...?”
“It’s nothing! Get out of here, you damn slave woman!”
The soldiers were also shooting sharp glares from behind Chiffon Chel. Were they worried we were having some sort of fight again?
“Do you not yet have need of my services to test for poison...? If Sir Asuta is finished with his work, then I can once more escort him back to the room...”
“No, I plan on finishing my dish just before the sun hits its peak. Would it be possible to remain in this kitchen until then?”
Those words earned me a glare from Roy.
“I won’t get in your way. But please, let me practice my cooking, too. I normally do that each day when I’m at home. It’d be alright if I used just a bit of ingredients, right?”
“Do as you please...” Roy ground out as he started two large pots of water boiling.
As I moved the pot of karon milk to the pantry and brought back various vegetables and herbs, I stole a glance at his work. I was honestly just a bit interested in Roy’s cooking skills, to be honest.
Of course, a chef in the castle town had nothing to do with me. In fact, once I overcame this plot, we would probably never meet again.
But if I was going to keep on cooking here in Genos, then I was certain observing other chefs would prove helpful to me in some way. It was a reconnaissance of sorts on the enemy, so that I could make food in the settlement at the forest’s edge and post town that wouldn’t lose out to stuff from the castle town in the least.
And so, as I experimented with how to cook each of the herbs and vegetables, I also observed Roy as he worked out of the corner of my eye.
He really wasn’t just all talk, as his skills at cutting meat and vegetables were splendid. He swiftly and finely sliced the chatchi, pula, and nenon, then added them one after another into the boiling pots. Just how many people was he cooking for, exactly? It was just supposed to be for a snack, but that was quite a lot of food.
Then he added in rock salt, that pseudo-bouillon stuff, and some herb I didn’t recognize. Though I didn’t know what the herb was, it was giving off the smell of wild watercress.
What really shocked me, though, was that he even added in milk fat. He added half a jar the size of the palm of my hand into each of the pots. That certainly was one heck of a cooking method, there.
And then came the meat. It was an unfamiliar ingredient to me again, a red block of meat with plenty of fat on it. In total, it looked to be around ten kilos worth.
“Sorry, but is that perhaps karon torso meat?”
“It’s karon back meat...”
Since karon had a similar taste to beef, would that make it sirloin? At any rate, Roy cut that meat hunk into slices one centimeter-or-so thick, then furthermore cut them into five centimeter wide squares.
He then fried those up in a pot along with karon fat, adding in an entirely different herb from before, stems and all. This one had a stinging, spicy smell to it. Once they were good and cooked, he removed just the herbs, then added the rest of the contents into the pots with the vegetables, fat, and meat juices included.
I figured that was the end, but he then left the pots boiling away and headed once more into the pantry. And when he returned, Roy was holding two totos eggs. Those massive eggs were each about the size of a football, and they looked to weigh around 1.5 kilos or so.
After placing those on the work table, he then grabbed a strange cooking implement from the wall. It was like a metal pole with a bulbous, rounded end. The length was 20 centimeters, and it was three centimeters thick. And honestly, I had no clue what it was for.
Ultimately, he took the end of it and whacked it down on the top of one of the eggs. Though he definitely put some force behind the blow, it was still only enough to cause fractures to run through the shell.
And once those fractures reached a certain size, he moved to tapping with the tool. Shockingly, even once fragments of the shell started falling atop the table, the thin film inside hadn’t even broken.
Then once around a quarter of the top of the shell was cleared away, he cut an opening in that soft, wobbly film with a knife. With that, he was finally able to pour out the contents of the egg into a fresh pot.
The yolk was a brilliant color close to orange, while the egg white was transparent. After breaking that yolk with a wooden spatula, he poured it into the boiling pots without beating it. Instead, he saved the stirring till after it was in the pots.
Meat, vegetables, and totos eggs. A large amount of milk fat, and a watercress-like herb. He stirred the pot full of all those harmonious ingredients with a ladle, then took a taste with a small wooden spoon. Apparently it didn’t need any further seasoning, as Roy just silently lowered the stove’s flame.
I figured with that he had to finally be done, but then he brought in a large bag of fuwano flour. It seemed to be fairly full, so there had to be around ten kilos or so in there. As he staggered and carried it along, his footing seemed a little unsteady.
He roughly scooped some out using a metal bowl, added water, and kneaded it thoroughly. The shapes he was making were round, and about the size of ping pong balls. And he was doing this super quickly, too. In no time at all, there were an incredible number of fuwano balls on the large tray sitting atop the work table.
My rough estimate put it at around 200 of them, and he plopped them one after another into the pots so that the soup didn’t spill out. With that he was finally finished.
Roy added a lid on the pot and after enough time had passed, he gave it one more taste test before glancing over at the closed door. It was at that point that I finally spoke up.
“Is it finished? Um, would it be alright if I had a taste?”
Since he had also tasted my cream stew, that shouldn’t have been asking too much. Roy’s expression showed just a moment of hesitation, but it soon tightened up and he took a step back from the pot. And so, I took up a fresh wooden spoon and moved into the space he left.
It was certainly bubbling away nicely. But thanks to all the milk fat he had added, there was a fatty film stretched over top despite the fact that he had stirred it. And it had a really unique aroma to it, thanks to the mix of milk fat and herbs.
But when I gave it a bite, I found that the flavor really wasn’t half bad.
The stock oozed naturally out of the vegetables, and then there was the deliciousness from the pseudo-bouillon, and the intertwining of the milk fat and watercress-like herb, plus the taste of the grilled meat on top of that. And though what I had eaten was just a spoonful of soup, the bit of totos egg mixed in added a lumpy texture from the yolk and a smoothness from the egg white.
At any rate, it was definitely an incredibly complex taste. However, it also certainly wasn’t one I hated. It just didn’t resemble any dish I had ever had before, so I didn’t know what to compare it to.
If it were me, I would have gone with something simpler. The use of milk fat was a bit too much of a dynamic element, and I couldn’t help but worry about the nutritional value. However, I could also keenly tell this wasn’t just some haphazard concoction.
To create this flavor, he must have carefully selected the herbs and vegetables used, adjusted the amount of heat until just right, and tasted it again and again. I really could sense just how much effort went into it.
“It’s delicious. I really don’t think I could ever come up with such a combination of ingredients,” I threw out there, which caused Roy to break out in a rather complex expression in response.
Ultimately, though, he just clicked his tongue one last time before yelling out, “Hey!” at the door. “The dish for the servants is done! Let everyone on duty know!”
Chiffon Chel peaked inside upon hearing that and politely responded, “Understood...” Apparently that dish didn’t require testing for poison. “What about you, Sir Asuta...? There is not that much time left until the sun hits its peak...”
“Oh, really? I guess I’ll get mine together too, then.”
I went ahead and dropped the casually completed batter into the flat pan, then set about frying up my pancakes. Ultimately, I made two of the little fuwanocakes, each around a centimeter thick and 15 in diameter.
Once those were a nice golden brown, I stacked them atop a white clay plate. And then I added panam honey, arow jam, and karon milk fat as a butter substitute each to their own silver ramekin to go alongside the dish.
“Well then, allow me to test for poison...” Chiffon Chel stated.
Roy gave a nod in response, and cut a small portion out of the edge of the stacked fuwanocakes. Then, he moved that to a separate plate and added the three toppings with a wooden spoon. And somehow, he felt more respectful toward the dish and gentle with it than he had been yesterday.
Chiffon Chel carefully brought each bite to her mouth, letting out a satisfied “Ah...” after chewing. “It is truly delicious... The panam honey and fuwano pair so smoothly, and the flavor of the egg is simply wonderful...”
Now that I thought about it, by testing for poison day in and day out like this, the variety of dishes Chiffon Chel must have tasted had to be just as great as her masters.
Even if it was just one bite at a time, her palette must have naturally grown more and more refined. And so, receiving such compliments from her really might have been quite an honor.
“By the way, you have not eaten anything at all since last night, have you, Sir Asuta...? How about eating a snack once the sun hits its peak...?”
“Right, well I’m already plenty full from tasting the fuwano, so just pecking at something should be plenty for me. If it’s alright, could I actually stay here in this kitchen and continue to experiment with my cooking?”
“Hey, this space is reserved for me during this time, you know,” Roy interjected in a tone devoid of emotion.
He must have been planning on training his cooking skills, too.
“I’ll take care not to get in your way. It shouldn’t be hard for two people to prepare food at the same time in a kitchen this huge, right?”
Personally, I’d rather spend the whole day here in this kitchen rather than returning to that brick room with nothing to do. And I’d find it intolerable to not polish up my cooking skills and at least bring something back from this whole ordeal.
Roy looked seriously annoyed, but even so, he still answered, “Do as you please.”
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