And so, I ushered in the morning in this manor built with stone.
The sixth day of the White month.
This was supposed to be the last day of the fourth stall contract. After completing my work, I had an appointment with Yumi’s father to discuss our collaboration, but I had no choice but to skip.
Tomorrow would be the first of my two off days, and I was supposed to sell a large quantity of kiba meat to the 《Cryptic Venerable Inn》 and 《Big Tree of the South Inn》. How was their business? I couldn’t tell as I was held prisoner. Did the Wu clan take over my job? Or were they tied up because of some other incident?
Neil must have told the guards about this. It was unlikely for them to search the city just from that alone, moreover the manor of Pyschkurewuss, an influential noble.
Right now, it was impossible for the Post Station Town to connect this incident with Pyschkurewuss. Even if they felt that this was the doing of Pyschkurewuss, they didn’t have any proof. And the culprit being Pyschkurewuss’ daughter, Lifuria, made things even more complicated.
I entrusted one last bit of hope with Dell, but I knew the chances would be abysmal. She might be on friendly terms with me, but Dell was just someone in the wealthy caste of the city and could only act within the boundaries of the law.
I spent the night brooding and half asleep. With no idea on how to escape this manor or persuade Lifuria, morning came.
“… Let us go to the kitchen…”
When the bell had tolled for the third koku in the morning, I was assigned my first task of the day — making a light meal for Lifuria.
I needed to cleanse my body before working and was brought to the bath hall early in the morning. I refused any help from Chiffon Chel and washed myself in the steam bath.
I changed into a new chef attire and headed to the kitchen. Roy was waiting for me alone too.
“… Use banam honey for the dish.”
Roy said impatiently.
He seemed unhappier than yesterday and didn’t even look me in the eye. He was probably holding a grudge over that incident with Chiffon Chel.
“Banam honey, it’s that sweet honey over there, right? So I have to make a dish that brings out its sweetness?”
Roy turned his face away and said: “… Lifuria prefers desserts to normal dishes. The meals in the morning are usually desserts.”
This young man seemed to know that I have learned the name of his employer.
I didn’t say anything. So I have to make desserts this time, huh.
I was filled with lots of worries, but I still stood here with a serious attitude towards cooking. Lifuria had no credibility at all, but she did say she would give me a silver plate and let me go if I made a dish that could satisfy her. I didn’t want to let go of this meager ray of hope.
But making desserts was another matter. My efforts aside, I was a complete amateur at this.
“Erm, I don’t know anything about the desserts in this world… I mean, in Genos. Will making the fuwano sweets and then adding honey and fruits to them be fine?”
He ignored me. The atmosphere was more awkward than yesterday.
With no choice, I searched the food store by relying on my own memory.
I tasted all sorts of new ingredients in the Post Station Town and came up with new dishes. I already knew that other than vegetables, there were fruits in this world too. And I came across the lemon-like shiru.
But now wasn’t the time to use it. I chose a red raspberry-like fruit that was bunched together like grapes.
“What is this fruit?”
“… Aro.”
Aro, huh.
It was sour, but not as strongly as shiru. The taste was a mixture of strawberry and blueberry; the fruit had great texture and low sugar content.
There weren’t any fruit vendors in the Post Station Town. I remember grandma Mishel whom I had been buying chachi and gigo sold some. I enquired further, and it seemed to be a fruit exclusively used for mixing into fruit wines to enhance its flavor.
“I just need to boil the fuwano with water and bake it, correct?”
Roy nodded silently.
The princess would eat at noon, so I had three hours to cook. This included the basic work of baking fuwano.
I suppressed the sense of emptiness in my heart and put the fuwano powder into a container I grabbed offhand, and brought it to the working platform with the other ingredients. The fuwano powder was comparable to flour that was less sticky, but I could improve that by adding a little water.
To my surprise, fuwano powder was stickier than poitan. I added water until it was no longer powdery, and I could meld it into any shape I liked. It had the texture of a cookie dough.
This feels different from flour.
I flattened it so it would bake easier and then made a test batch.
And so, I baked fuwano that I had only tried a few times before. The result was chewier than poitan and felt like a denser type of naan. With neenon as the base ingredient, I could use the fuwano to wrap various vegetables and grilled kimyusu; this was the recipe for the kimyusu meat bun I ate together with Tara in the past.
But it wasn’t a dessert. So I searched the memories from my hometown and decided to mix fuwano powder into karon milk and then add sugar and a kimyusu egg.
I used karon nyuushi when cooking it. And, of course, I was mimicking the cooking methods of a pancake.
This was the first time I was using a kimyusu egg. The shape was exactly like a chicken egg, but it was one size smaller, about as big as a silkie egg I tried before back home.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkie >
I broke it carefully, and a lemon colored egg yolk and transparent egg white fell onto the plate. It was no different from a chicken egg.
I heard that kimyusu was a strange bird with wings on its head, so it was fortunate that its meat and eggs were similar to chicken meat and eggs.
Anyway, I carried on with the cooking.
I used two large wooden skewers in place of chopsticks to stir the kimyusu egg.
I had not made any pancakes since Reina insisted that I make them for her some time ago.
It was back when we just entered middle school. My childhood friend Reina wanted to make pancakes because Valentines was coming and asked me to teach her.
After I told her to just follow the instruction on the box, she said angrily: “I came to you because I can’t make it well after following the instructions on the box!”
In the end, we made perfect pancakes by following the manual. Reina just didn’t control the fire properly.
And so… Reina decorated the pancakes she made with cream and chocolate and then gave them to me and my dad.
Reina started getting better at making desserts, so my father and I were relegated to just eating them. Now that I thought about it, even though Reina’s culinary skill wasn’t as good as my or my dad’s, she was still really happy when we said her cooking tasted good.
… Now isn’t the time for reminiscing.
I was thinking about Ai Fa and everyone in the Forest's Edge, and my thoughts went further back to Reina and my father, and the emotions almost crushed me.
I concentrated on mixing the kimyusu egg, karon milk, Jaguar sugar, and fuwano and cooking it in the pan.
There wasn’t any baking powder, so the pancakes wouldn’t rise. But thanks to the egg, I could make it into a yellowish and fluffy dessert.
I tried a little and found the texture to be mediocre. It wasn’t fluffy at all and was too hard. But I had not eaten eggs or sugar for a long time, and nyuushi was used when cooking it, so the taste felt perfect to me. The sourness of the nyuushi brought out the sweetness without overwhelming it.
Anyway, I adjusted the ratio of the ingredients and made a few more samples. After thirty minutes, I made a pancake that was satisfactory to me.
However, I was cooking for a noble princess engrossed with delicacies. It felt a little underwhelming to serve this with just banam honey, so I used the aro fruit to make a fruit jam. I just needed to boil the fruit until it turned to mash and then to add sugar to make it into something similar to jam. I washed the fruit, added water into a small pot, and then looked towards Roy for the first time in a while:
“By the way, how many portions…”
And closed my mouth on reflex. Roy was watching me work with incredulous eyes.
He shifted his gaze away when he realized I was looking at him.
“… How many portions should I make?”
“… Just one.”
So Lifuria would be dining by herself. Dell and her father had probably left the manor for business.
Leaving that aside… What was with Roy just now?
Never mind, it’s better for me if we don’t interfere with each other.
I put the washed aro into the pot and boiled it with a small amount of water. The sour and sweet aroma of the fruit spread in the kitchen together with the fragrance of the nyuushi. I crushed and stirred it with a wooden spatula, and added sugar next.
The Jaguar sugar was brown, just like sugarcane sugar, but the grains were larger than white sugar and tasted stronger. It probably meant this sugar was full of minerals.
After adding a little sugar, I started stirring it carefully. When it was about to burn, I added more aro.
The fruit was rather sour, so I used quite a lot of sugar to counteract it. It still didn’t taste quite right, so after putting out the fire, I added a little banam honey.
It looked like a gooey form of salted plum and wasn’t bad for a fruit jam I made on the spot.
“Alright, this should do. But… I want to serve freshly baked desserts so I will wait until it’s almost noon before making the actual product.”
“… Is that so? Then you can stay in your room, I need to use the kitchen.”
“Ah, you are making the dishes for the servants?”
Hence, I gave up my place.
“Ahh, before that, how much karon milk will be left for tomorrow?”
“Karon milk? Those are replenished every morning; the one here will be good for another two to three days.”
“I see. Then can I use a few bottles to prepare for tomorrow’s meal?”
Roy looked at me suspiciously.
“Whatever. But… Why do you need so much milk?”
“Because if I have to make dessert tomorrow, I will need to make a wider variety. So I want to make nyuushi-like ingredients ahead of time.”
After getting his permission, I took the two milk bottles from the food store and poured them into a pot.
One bottle was about a liter. I covered the lid and bade farewell to the white milky liquid.
“To not let it get in the way, I will put this in the food store.”
“… Is that all for the prep work?”
“Yes. If I let it sit, the water and nyuushi will separate, right? I plan to use the nyuushi part as an ingredient.”
The separated nyuushi was the cream. Normally, the milk sold in the market was homogenized to avoid the cream separating from the water, but fresh milk could be separated easily with this method.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogenization_(chemistry)#Methods >
By the way, by stirring the milk fats intensely, it was possible to get more concentrated cream, which could be used to make butter. I thought the nyuushi in this kitchen was prepared through such a method too.
There weren’t any refrigerators in Genos, and I didn’t know what are the other ways to make full use of the cream. But if I stirred it and added sugar, it could be used as a topping for desserts. I thought about that as I carried the pot away when Roy came over.
“… Who are you?”
There was a strange light in Roy’s brown eyes. His freckled face also looked dead serious.
“Why does a brat like you know so many cooking methods? Aren’t you just a whippersnapper chef from the Post Station Town?”
“That’s true, but I’m not from Genos. I helped my father with his work back in my hometown.”
“… But you are just a punk! How old are you?”
“I’m 17.”
“17… Why is a juvenile like you able to cook so many dishes…”
“Erm, did you try my cooking?”
“… Lifuria-sama and the guests all said your dish tastes better than the vice head chef’s. How could I not try it?”
Roy looked as if he was going to grab me by the chest, but he stopped midway and slammed his fist on the working platform gently.
“The head chef went to the Genos castle together with the master. But the vice-chef is a first-rate chef who used to cook in the ‘Selva Lance Inn’. I know how good his skills are! But your cooking is better than his… How is that possible!”
“I’m a foreign chef. They must find my cooking exotic since my cooking is different from the chefs of this country.”
“Hmmp! We also invite chefs from Semu and Jaguar to work here often! But their dishes aren’t well received at all. But, why…”
“Maybe the people here just happen to like the taste of my hometown.”
Or maybe the civilization in my world was more advanced, so my culinary skill was ahead of their time. There was no way to ascertain these hypotheses, so we could only guess.
“I also learned to cook in the ‘White Dress Lady Inn’! I’m just 19! No one younger than me had been recruited to this manor!”
“Hmm…”
“But I can only cook for the servants. I’m still young, so the chefs in this manor don’t understand my skills yet. This is to be expected, but you…”
Roy started choking up and lowered his head. His shoulders were quivering.
“… Move that pot, it’s in the way.”
“Okay.”
I was surprised by him and did what he asked.
At this moment, someone opened the kitchen door from the outside.
“Asuta-sama, Roy-sama, what happened…?”
“Nothing! Leave, you slave girl!”
The guards cast sharp gazes at us from behind Chiffon Chel. They probably thought there was a fight.
“There’s no need to test for poison yet, right…? Asuta-sama, if you have finished your work, I will bring you to your room…”
“No need, I plan to finish right before noon. Can I stay here before that?”
When he heard what I said, Roy glared at me.
“I won’t get in your way. Please, let me practice cooking too. I was planning to practice at home in the first place. Will I get punished for using some of the ingredients for practice?”
“… Whatever.”
Roy said with a hint of anger and started boiling water in two large pots.
I shifted the pot full of karon milk into the food store and then returned to the kitchen with some vegetables and herbs. I was curious about Roy’s culinary skills and stole a glance at him.
I didn’t have any chance to meet the chefs from the city, and I probably won’t get a chance again after leaving this place.
Since I planned to continue working as a chef in Genos, I should see how the other chefs cook. For the sake of cooking dishes in the Forest's Edge settlement and the Post Station Town that wouldn’t lose out to the city, I scouted out the enemy.
And so, I researched the ways to cook the various vegetables and herbs and observed Roy through the corner of my eyes.
As expected of someone who talked big, he chopped the vegetables and meat with perfect form. He sliced the chachi, pula, and neenon thinly and then tossed them into the boiling pot. Just how many portions was he making? It was a light lunch, but the quantity was massive.
He then added rock salt and the bouillon cube-like thing for seasoning and then put in a pinch of a shredded herb I had never seen before. That herb had a cress-like fragrance.
What surprised me was that he added some nyuushi. He split the palm-sized lump of nyuushi into two and added them into the pots. What a generous way of using them.
Next was the meat. It was red meat with lots of fat and weighed about 10 kg.
“Sorry, is this meat from the torso of a karon?”
“… From the karon’s back.”
Karon had the texture of beef, and my guess was that this meat was the tenderloin. Roy sliced it 1 cm thick and then into squares about 5 cm long.
He grilled them in a pot greased with karon fats and put in another type of herb along with its stem. It had a spicy fragrance about it. When the meat slices were almost done, he removed the herbs and then poured the meat along with its juice into the pot of vegetables.
I thought he was done, but he left the simmering pot behind and went into the food store. Roy came out with two Totos eggs that were as large as rugby balls, weighing 1.5 kg each.
He placed the eggs on the counter and then removed a strange cooking tool from the wall. It was a metallic club with a thick head, about 20 cm long and 3 cm thick. I had no idea what use it had.
He started whacking the Totos egg with the thick end of the club. He was putting his back into it, but the shell only cracked a little.
When the crack opened to a certain extent, he placed the tool on top of the egg, and bits of the shell started falling onto the counter. What surprised me was that the inner membrane was still intact.
After removing a quarter of the shell, he made an incision in the membrane with a kitchen knife. The liquid inside was then poured into a new pot.
The yolk was bright orange and the egg white transparent. He stabbed the yolk a few times with a spatula and then poured it into a heated pot before stirring it.
Meat, vegetables, and Totos egg. A large amount of nyuushi and cress-like herbs. He stirred this mixture of ingredients and then scooped some up with a spoon to taste test. There didn’t seem to be a need to season it further since Roy turned down the heat.
I thought he was done this time, but he took out another sack of fuwano, around 10 kg of them. His strides looked a little dangerous and unsteady.
He used a steel bowl to scoop up one bowlful, added water, and then molded them into ping-pong sized balls. He did this really quickly, and the counter was full of fuwano balls in no time.
After making about 200, he dropped them into the pot, taking care not to splash the soup. With that, he was finally done.
He covered the lid, waited some time, tasted the dish again, and looked at the tightly shut door. I asked at this moment:
“Are you finished? Would you mind letting me try some?”
Since he tried the cream stew, he probably won’t get mad at my request. Roy looked momentarily confused but then made a sour face before backing away from the pot. I stood before the stove with a new spoon.
This pot was cooked really well, but adding a large amount of nyuushi resulted in a layer of oil at the top, even after stirring the content. It had the aroma of nyuushi and herbs and felt rather unique.
I had a taste… And a texture that wasn’t bad spread in my mouth. The vegetables mixed with the bouillon cube, with the fragrance of nyuushi and cress-like herbs added on top, and the taste of the grilled meat also merged into it. Part of the Totos egg was mixed in, and the sticky texture of the yolk and the smooth feeling of the egg white felt really pleasant.
In short, this dish had a wide variety of flavors, but I didn’t find it unpleasant.
But I had not eaten other dishes similar to this, so I had nothing to compare it with. If it was up to me, I would have simplified these combinations. Nyuushi could be used very flexibly without fear of disrupting the nutritional balance. But that didn’t mean any combination would do.
Vegetables and herbs needed to be chosen carefully to achieve this texture, and this would take many attempts and precise control of the heat… I could sense the effort spent to make this dish.
“It’s delicious. I never expected such a combination.”
Roy made a complicated expression when he heard my feedback.
But he just clicked his tongue and yelled at the door with a: “Hey! The food for the servants is done! Get the people on duty to come over!”
Chiffon Chel poked her face in and replied politely: “Understood…”
It seemed that the food for the servants didn’t need to be tested for poison.
“… What about Asuta-sama…? It’s almost noon soon…”
“Is that so, then I will get to work.”
I placed the dough I made slowly onto the pan and cooked it in the same way as a pancake. I decided to make two fuwano pancakes 1 cm thick and 15 cm wide.
When the pancakes had a nice yellowish brown color, I shifted them to a white porcelain plate. I decided to put the aro fruit jam and karon nyuushi, which was a substitute for butter, into a separate small silver container.
“Well then, please let me perform the poison testing…”
Roy nodded when he heard Chiffon Chel saying that. He cut a small piece of the fuwano pancake and shifted it to a wooden plate, and then spread the three condiments on them. I felt that his actions were a sign of respect towards this dish.
Chiffon Chel carefully ate a piece then made a satisfied moan: “Ara…”
“It’s very delicious… The banam honey goes well with this fuwano cake… And the taste of the egg is great too…”
Now that I thought about it, Chiffon Chel who had to test for poison was always eating the same things as her master. Even a mouthful of each dish would make her picky about food, so being praised by Chiffon Chel was a great honor.
“By the way, Asuta-sama didn’t eat since last night… What do you plan to do about lunch…?”
“I’m already full from taste testing the fuwano, so I will just eat something simple later. Is it fine for me to stay in this kitchen and continue researching cooking?”
Roy interrupted with an emotionless tone: “Hey, this place is mine during this time.”
He would probably be practicing his culinary skill here too.
“I will take care not to disturb you. Given how big this kitchen is, it won’t be difficult for the two of us to cook at the same time, correct?”
Instead of going back to that brick room and laze around, I would rather spend my time here. I needed to practice my cooking skills so I could make use of this experience once I was free.
Roy looked really unhappy, but he still said: “Whatever.”
2
Noon.
The ingredients for dinner were… kimyusu meat and eggs.
There was a larger variety of egg dishes than karon milk dishes that I could choose from. I decided that the best options out of all these possibilities were omelet and oyakodon, and decided on the former.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyakodon >
It wasn’t difficult to make the side dish for oyakodon in this place, but there wasn’t any ingredient to substitute for rice. I didn’t want to make something that I would regret.
So I chose kimyusu omelet.
It wasn’t difficult to make this since I had meat, aria, and nyuushi. I planned to make an omelet with lots of meat.
But this dish seemed dull, so I decided to work on the sauce. I thought of letting the princess try both the tarapa sauce and white sauce.
The white sauce could be made the same way as yesterday, so I focused my time and effort on the tarapa sauce.
I called it tarapa sauce, but it tasted like ketchup and had a completely different flavor from the white sauce. My goal was to try to make it as close to demi-glace sauce or brown sauce.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demi-glace >
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sauce >
First, I fried the fuwano powder with nyuushi and made some roux. Unlike white sauce, I kept frying the fuwano until it turned brown. While it was cooling down, I made the stock that would enhance the flavor of the roux.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux >
I diced a tarapa as much as possible and then used a grate to shred the aria which took the place of onions. I then cooked them with fruit wine and seasoned the mix with salt, sugar, Pico leaves, and bouillon cubes.
I was hesitant about using karon milk instead of water. The tarapa in this food store was sweeter than the one I bought in the Post Station Town, but I still needed to negate its sourness.
So I added the roux to enhance the thickness of the tarapa stock, and it turned reddish brown. I had a taste, and it had just the right sourness and looked good. This was thanks to the bouillon cube that could improve the taste of any dish drastically.
If I rely on this too much, I won’t be able to cook properly in the Post Station Town.
Bouillon cubes were made by boiling meat and bones. It was an alluring seasoning, but making them would be difficult in the Forest's Edge and Post Station Town. The ingredient cost alone would be huge, and if I considered the time and firewood it would take, it wasn’t feasible to use these in a business at all.
I could get as much kiba bones as I need. If I could get the houses that had plenty of women to help, it might be possible to make something similar.
I decided to stow this away in a corner of my mind.
Could I buy karon milk in the Post Station Town? And process them to make nyuushi and curd? What about the price of kimyusu and Totos egg, were there enough quantity for retail? If there were enough supply, why have I never seen it in any kitchen before? How much does reten oil, mamaria vinegar, Jaguar sugar, and banam honey cost? Also, where could I procure them?
In just 24 hours, I had noted down these things in my mind.
I can’t just let the nobles monopolize this deliciousness. I need to learn from this disaster and make use of it in the future…
I thought as I started making omelet.
This dish wasn’t complicated. I cut the kimyusu chest meat into shreds and then fried it together with aria and neenon shreds. Afterwards, I seasoned it with salt, Pico leaves, bouillon cube, and fruit wine.
After finishing that, I poured an egg mixture into a pan. The egg was mixed with a small amount of karon milk, and I used nyuushi in place of fats to fry them.
Kimyusu egg could be eaten raw, so I decided to make them into a half-cooked gooey state. I added in the other ingredients before the egg hardened completely and then rolled the egg to wrap up the other ingredients. The “Tsurumi restaurant” also sold omelet rice, so I was good at doing this.
I scooped the end product onto a plate and then almost added tarapa sauce and white sauce on both sides… Fortunately, I remembered about testing for poison.
If the taste testing was done after pouring the sauce, it would destroy the presentation. It would be wiser to put the sauces in separate containers, like what I did with the fuwano pancake.
“I’m done. Please test for poison.”
Roy cut off three slices from the right side of the omelet and then poured two types of sauce on them. Chiffon Chel moaned in awe after tasting it.
“I’m speechless… The dishes Asuta-sama makes are incredible… It is really delicious…”
I couldn’t see the princess and Dell’s reaction, so Chiffon Chel’s evaluation was everything. But I wondered how Lifuria felt about a small piece of her pancake and omelet being cut off for poison testing. She had to eat these dishes alone when there were no guests and her father was away.
High-quality cuisine made just for her, which needed to be tested for poison… The ingredients might be top-notch, the chef could be the cream of the crop, but would the food taste good like this?
… Indeed, being a noble isn’t all good.
Anyway, the servants took away the dinner in a blink of an eye.
I asked the guards if I could meet Lifuria, but the answer I got after sunset was a “No.”
“Today’s dish, too, wasn’t bad. The mistress said that if you continue to work hard, she will send you home with a reward in five days.”
“But I have my own life too! If not, let me make preparations to close my stalls in the Post Station Town for a few days. I will come back to cook after making arrangements with the denizens of Forest's Edge.”
My request was turned down.
The curtains I tore last night were taken away by the servants; they also took away the other curtains too, so I lost my means of contacting Dell.
The only thing I can do is to cook…
I thought about where things went wrong and embraced another lonely night.
The next day, 7th of the White Month, I was told to make lunch with Minmi fruit.
I knew nothing about that ingredient. It was the size of a tennis ball, with hair-like spines that were 1 cm long covering it, a strange fruit. On further inquiry, I learned it was imported from the southernmost region of Jaguar, an extremely rare ingredient. I timidly peeled off the disgusting skin and found the insides to be pink and juicy.
The faint aroma was sweet, and the texture was similar to peach. There wasn’t any sourness at all, only a strong sweetness. It was as juicy as a peach, and juices as thick as honey dripped with every bite.
I think it would be best to eat delicious fruit as it is.
I muttered in my mind as I experimented with the samples.
I could make delicious jam by mashing it up and adding sugar, but considering the texture, I decided to heat up the mashed fruit and then add in sugar, honey, and a dash of alcohol-less fruit wine.
I also had the karon milk I left to sit from yesterday.
After sitting for one night, the karon milk had separated into the cream and water layer. Even the color of the cream looked concentrated, and there was more cream than I expected.
At best, fresh cow milk contains 4 percent of fats. So 2 liters would yield at most 80 g of cream. But karon milk could produce twice that amount easily.
I heard that buffalo milk had twice the amount of fats compared with cow milk. Speaking of which, karon curd was similar to Mozzarella cheese, so karon milk should be more similar to buffalo milk.
Anyway, more was better. I skimmed the cream as carefully as I could and shifted it into another container. It was thick and white.
This was already good enough as a cream, but, to improve its texture, I had to turn this into whipped cream. So I shifted it into a smaller container and started shaking it up and down. There wasn’t anything like a whisk in this kitchen after all.
Whipped cream needed air to get its fluffy texture, so I thought this was an effective method.
I learned about this method by chance. I heard that in order to make tastier tea, instead of using mineral water, it was better to use tap water with air mixed into it. If you really wanted to use mineral water, you should shake the bottle intensely to mix the air into it.
I made use of this theory, or rather, I did so rather naturally. Everything I knew about making desserts was from my meager experience and knowledge.
I think Reina said that the cream needs to be beaten for 7 to 8 minutes when not using an electric hand mixer.
Then how many minutes should I go with this method? If I go at it for too long, the fats would get separated into nyuushi, but on the other hand, I didn’t think it would be that easy to make nyuushi.
So I decided to shake it longer than necessary. Roy who was watching me cook with eyes as serious as yesterday was already staring with his eyes wide.
I felt about ten minutes had passed. My muscles would ache if I shook any longer, so I poured the cream I had shaken onto a metal bowl.
The cream that used to viscous fell into the bowl. I poked at it with a wooden skewer in place of chopsticks and found it a little hard, but still acceptable. The cream was in the perfect semi-liquid state.
I then added sugar in it and started whipping the cream with skewers in place of chopsticks. Before doing so, I added water into a bowl one size bigger and put the cream bowl in it. As the cream would melt at body temperature, I had to cool it so it wouldn’t revert back to its liquid form.
After whipping it for 3 to 4 minutes, it finally felt a little bit harder.
“Well, that should do.”
I made another fuwano pancake that had less sugar compared to yesterday’s and tried it. Next was the Minmi fruit jam.
Simply put, this was a weird combination of adding peach jam on pancakes, but since I wasn’t that particular about desserts, it was good enough for me.
The whipped cream I made on the spot wasn’t much, but the fluffy texture would probably feel refreshing to the people here. As it was made from karon milk, there shouldn’t be any complaints about eating it together with banam honey.
So the dish I decided on was a casual dessert served together with Banam honey and nyuushi. From the face Chiffon Chel who tested for poison, this dessert was as good as yesterday’s.
Without sugar and karon milk, I won’t be able to make desserts in Forest's Edge and Post Station Town. I really want to let Rimee Wu and Tara try this.
I thought as I watched the dessert get taken away and then stood before the pot I had left alone all the while.
“Well then, what should I do with this?”
When Roy heard what I was saying to myself, he stopped his work at hand and said to me: “Hey, if you want to get rid of it, tell the guards to get someone to come. Karon milk stinks once it spoils; there is a designated place to dispose of it.”
“No, this won’t spoil for another day or two, right? I’m thinking about what dish to make with it.”
“… What dish can you make with the milk that had its fats removed?”
“Even without the fats, the milk still has plenty of nutrients. It’s a pity to throw it away.”
Milk with its fats removed was called skimmed milk. By processing it into powder, it would become skimmed milk powder. In Japan, skimmed milk wasn’t held in high regard, but it was still sold in the market as an ingredient for making desserts.
However, it seemed unlikely for this world to have the technology to process milk into powdered form. If the method used to make bouillon cube was employed, salt would need to be added to preserve it, which wouldn’t be ideal.
In any case, I just need to think about using fresh milk. Maybe this isn’t sold in the Post Station Town because preserving it is hard.
My worries stemmed from my hope that I could purchase karon milk in the Post Station Town. I was practicing ahead of time so I would be ready when karon milk was available for me in the future.
In Genos which didn’t have any freezer facilities, fresh milk could only be kept for two to three days. As for their usage, my main focus would be on using them as nyuushi or curd. From my experiment just now, I realized that 2 liters of karon milk could only yield less than 200 g of cream.
It was more than I expected, but that meant that 90% of it would become skimmed milk. I thought the skimmed milk contained a lot of nutrients too, so I didn’t want to resemble the nobles by letting it go waste.
In the Dabag city where the karon are sold, there should be some way to use it.
I would need to research this, but right now, I could only use my own judgment to decide on how to use this skimmed milk.
Okay, let’s see whether it could be used as part of a soup. Next… I think Reina made custard cream with it before. Let’s make the preparation to try this tomorrow.
I never thought that I would depend on my childhood friend in such a way.
With my heart aching from the thought that I would never meet my childhood friend again, I started on the work at hand.
I was asked to use kimyusu meat and curd to make dinner for that night.
She asked for kimyusu meat three days in a row, which showed how much Lifuria liked it.
Kimyusu meat and curd… So a dish with chicken and cheese, huh…
Since there was an oven, how about making a pizza? But there wasn’t one in the Forest's Edge, so I wouldn’t be able to put this experience to use in the future.
So I decided to go wild and make piccata.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccata >
This was an Italian dish made by frying meat dredged in flour and egg.
I had never eaten proper Italian piccata before too and only tried the imitation made by my dad. He didn’t make this for sale but as supper or gifts.
He used chicken breast meat, so I decided on kimyusu breast meat too. I decided to boldly remove the skin and cut it 1 cm thick, and then tenderize it with a stick. I used two slices for a portion, so there were six slices for three portions.
After seasoning it with Pico leaves, I stuffed crushed curd between the slices. The type of curd wasn’t specified, so I chose the Gyama curd that was tougher and easier to crush.
After finishing with that, I cracked an egg. I used the grate to grind the karon curd into powder-like form and then added it into the egg.
That was the gist of making piccata that I learned from my dad; I wondered how real piccata was made. I heard traditional piccata used veal.
Anyway, I used fuwano bits in place of flour and sprinkled it onto the meat, then poured the egg-curd mixture, and finally grilled it in a pan. Grilling it with nyuushi would make the taste too strong, so reten oil should do here. Reten oil was similar to olive oil, and personally, I thought it was suited for Italian dishes.
With that, the main dish was more or less done.
I decided to use the tarapa sauce used for the 『Kiba burger』 for this dish. When I ate piccata back home, the sauce was also tomato sauce with lots of onion bits. The aria that had the fragrance of onion and the tarapa sauce meshes well with the grilled kimyusu meat.
I tried the sample I made, and the texture of the meat, egg, and fuwano bits mixed wonderfully with the chewy curd.
If I could make this dish in the Post Station Town, it would definitely be popular. I just needed oil and eggs to make this in the Post Station Town.
I could purchase Gyama curd from the Semu peddlers and figuring out how to make curd from karon milk shouldn’t be too hard. The reten oil that I couldn’t buy had to be substituted by kiba oil though.
And I had to consider if kiba was suitable for this.
Would the kiba taste be too strong?
I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try it, but I felt I could still make a strong tasting dish. A kiba piccata that tasted like pork piccata… I could wrap it in grilled poitan and sell it at the stall.
But it is hard to fry food at the stall. It isn’t easy to maintain a strong fire, and it won’t taste nice if I leave it alone for too long…
I thought as I worked on the main dish. If I didn’t engross myself in these thoughts, I would break down from my worries about the future.
However, Lifuria didn’t give any special comment today as well.
The next day, the 8th of the White Month, I received a complaint from the princess early in the morning.
She said that she couldn’t stand ‘eating the same thing three days in a row’. Basically, she didn’t want fuwano pancakes anymore.
My complaints that I was an amateur in dessert making didn’t reach her ears. With no other choice, I decided to try making cookies.
I only had memories of watching Reina make cookies and had less experience compared to making pancakes.
First, I added sugar and fuwano to nyuushi, reverting it back to its semi-liquid form. Fuwano powder was added slowly to avoid making it into a dough. I then poured in a little karon milk and kneaded until it was hard enough to be melded into shape.
I then placed this onto a tray with fuwano powder sprinkled on it and then used a thick stirring stick to roll it flat. There weren’t any baking molds, so I used a small wine glass to cut it into round shapes and then used a knife to shape it into squares and star shapes. The dough I removed was flattened again, until I couldn’t repeat the aforementioned steps any longer. The last bits were molded into a circle by hand.
It was time for the oven I had been ignoring to shine. I just needed to lit the fuel at the bottom to use it. To avoid burning the cookies, I set it to the weakest fire. Roy taught me all that, and the fuel in question was charcoal.
In the meantime, I turned the skimmed milk into custard cream. First, I added sugar to the kimyusu egg yolk and poured it on fuwano powder. After mixing them, I added some skimmed milk. From this point, it was the standard method of making cookies. When making western confectionery, flour, milk, sugar, egg, and butter were all necessary.
After the ingredients mixed with skimmed milk turned soft, I heated it up in the pot. When the moisture evaporated and the mixture thickened, it was done.
It wasn’t hard to repeat the process, and the karon milk and nyuushi gave the dish a lot of depth, and the taste was impeccable. For an amateur like me, this was the limit.
At this point, the cookies were done. I tried one after it cooled down, and it was crunchy. It was harder to replicate this, compared to pancake.
The extra dough I made in case of failures was also put inside to be baked. In the meantime, I prepared more of the aro fruit jam that I made yesterday. Cookies were good enough to be eaten alone, but having custard cream and aro fruit jam would make it even nicer.
And so, I completed my task.
All the dough was made into cookies, and I made a whole bunch in the end.
“This dish won’t spoil that quickly, so the leftovers can be eaten as an after-dinner snack.”
I mentioned that, but didn’t receive any reply from Lifuria.
The request for dinner that night was ‘anything made with kimyusu meat’.
Speaking of which, there wasn’t any specific request for lunch either.
Was the competition against the vice-head chef still ongoing? I had not spoken with Dell since the first night, so I didn’t know what was going on.
But “anything” was a troubling request. With so many ingredients, there were a lot of choices.
In the end, I decided to try a dish I was still researching, which was “Kimyusu meatballs”, a dish I had been researching for sale in the 《Kimyusu’s Tail Inn》.
I chose kimyusu breast meat and seasoned it with just salt. I shredded it with a meat cutting knife and then melded them into rod shape instead of balls.
The problem was what flavor I should make.
I decided to try a new ingredient, the kiki fruit.
It was a fruit I saw in the Post Station Town but had not yet tasted. It was one size smaller than a fist, light purple and shaped like a dried permission. It was probably sold as an easily portable fruit for travels, just like aria.
I tried the taste earlier in the day, and it had a slight sweetness, a strong sourness, and a unique texture, something like pickled plum.
I asked around and found out that dried kiki was preserved with a method from Jaguar, by soaking the kiki fruit in salt and fruit wine and then drying it over a few days. Many travelers were adding this into poitan soup, which was a surprise.
The pickle juice was suitable for drinking together with wine. It was spicy and salty and could be mixed into normal fruit wine, water or fruit juice. The kiki fruit that was removed from the pickle juice also had a unique texture.
And so, the kiki fruit was a precious ingredient in the Post Station Town. Dried kiki fruit was also used as a special seasoning in the kitchen of the city.
I discovered dried kiki fruit under complicated circumstances. I was originally looking for ingredients to give more flair to the “Kimyusu meatballs” back then. The dried kiki fruit was dry outside but moist inside. By crushing it, something akin to plum could be made, which would be a good side dish for the meatballs. I hoped to add this into the new menu of the 《Kimyusu’s Tail Inn》.
However, this dish might seem too plain for this place, so I decided to make four meatballs for each diner, with different flavors for each ball.
One was made with nyuushi while the other — with Tau sauce. These were butter flavor and soy sauce flavor in my old world.
The third one was covered in the familiar white sauce.
I decided to put some effort into the last ball.
This was a standard method for seasoning in my hometown. A sweet and spicy teriyaki meatball made with alcohol-less fruit wine, Tau sauce, Pico leaves and sugar, with banam honey as a hidden taste.
But that wasn’t all. I dressed the teriyaki meatball with the tartar sauce I made myself.
Mayonnaise was needed to make tartar sauce. Making mayonnaise was easy if there were eggs, vinegar, and oil.
Start by mixing the egg yolk with salt; then, add vinegar, oil, and keep stirring. That was all.
The key thing was mixing in air before adding vinegar. I had to spend a lot of effort on this since there wasn’t any hand mixer, but I was familiar with this method, so it wasn’t too much of a hassle.
The ingredients I used were different though. Reten oil was similar to olive oil, mamaria vinegar tasted like a cross between western vinegar and balsamic. Mamaria was also a deep shade of dark brown and turned a dark shade of orange when mixed with egg yolk.
The end product was great. The faint raisin taste of the mamaria vinegar seemed a little out of place but the taste of the mayonnaise was spot on. The sourness of the mamaria sauce had been neutralized, so the taste was gentler.
Next would be dicing cooked egg and raw aria and then mixing them together with the mayonnaise. After seasoning it with salt and Pico leaves, the tartar sauce was done. Covering the teriyaki meatball with tartar would bring out its sweet and spicy taste and give it a junk food feel.
“… It’s difficult to test this dish for poison…”
There were three portions with four sauces each. Chiffon Chel was trying to suppress a smile. I could just make all the meatballs into teriyaki tartar flavor, but when I taste tested them within my limited time, I found all the flavors to be good.
It was a given for butter and soy sauce flavors, but the dried kiki meatball was unexpectedly tasty too. After trying the strong taste of the teriyaki meatball, eating the plain kiki fruit flavored meatball was very memorable.
Since there wasn’t any way to escape, I could only make dishes to melt Lifuria’s stubborn heart. I encouraged myself with this thinking and did my best to cook.
But Lifuria neither gave any comments today nor agree to my request to speak with her.
3
Today ended peacefully too…
I was brought back to my room after finishing my job, and I thought to myself as I looked out the open window.
It was already my fourth night here. Dell probably still didn’t have time to leave the city. The situation neither improved nor worsened, as if this would be my new daily routine as time passed.
But Pyschkurewuss would return in the morning two days later. No matter what, this daily routine would come to an end. In any case, this retarded lifestyle would end tomorrow.
This day passed slowly. I cropped myself up in the kitchen, but my heart was filled with sorrow and worries.
Ai Fa… What’s on your mind?
Whenever I remembered this name, my heart started beating erratically, as if my body was being torn apart. I realized just how much I was depending on Ai Fa.
Why am I here, am I really standing here by my own strength, am I really living for myself? I was thinking about things that I normally didn’t consider.
Like a lonely existence drifting in the universe, falling into a deep sea of despair.
I want to see Ai Fa.
And hear her voice.
And feel her body warmth.
I started getting engrossed in these thoughts that were so intense that I felt like a fool.
Aside from Ai Fa, how were the others doing? The Wu clan which I was closest to, the Lutim house, Lei house, Sudora house, Fou house… a long list of them. And the people in the Post Station Town too, they were just a memory to me now. I was drifting in a place apart from them, thinking back of the life I used to have.
I focused on cooking during the day to stop myself from worrying about all that, but once I returned to my room, I was overwhelmed by emptiness immediately. No matter how much I researched my cooking, only Lifuria would get to enjoy it. Although Dell would get to dine too, just that alone wasn’t enough to dispel the emptiness I felt.
I wanted Ai Fa to eat these dishes. I wanted the denizens of Forest's Edge and the people of the Post Station Town to savor them too. The skills and knowledge I obtained here would be displayed before them one day… Even though I cooked with this on my mind, I still felt very depressed when night fell.
“Asuta-sama… It will be bad for your health if you don’t sleep…”
Chiffon Chel came over quietly. Her hands should be touching my arms and shoulders, but my mind was blank and I couldn’t feel anything.
“Sorry, I’m not that tired yet.”
“Is that so… But you can’t rest unless you lie down, please go to bed…”
“… That’s true.”
Whether I was standing by the window or lying in bed, the darkness in my heart would still linger. Still, it was better to let Chiffon Chel feel at ease.
“… The master will return in the morning of the day after tomorrow… I can only spend time with Asuta-sama for one more day…”
“That’s true.”
“I think it’s a pity… but… it pains me to see Asuta-sama hurting so much…”
Chiffon Chel was smiling as usual, but her purple eyes had a troubling light since she didn’t know the best way to convey her thoughts.
She had worked here as a slave for many years. The toll on her heart was worse than for normal people, but she still had the capacity to think about others.
If she wasn’t with me, I would have broken down already. However… It was hard to fill the emptiness in my heart.
“… Sorry, I’m going to turn in.”
“Okay…”
Chiffon Chel slowly let go of my arm and closed the window. She brought me to my bed and then disappeared behind the screen.
“Asuta-sama, sweet dreams…”
“Yes, you too.”
I collapsed onto the bed weakly. Chiffon Chel extinguished the light, and my vision was covered in darkness.
My body felt like lead, but I didn’t feel sleepy at all. Maybe my mind was resisting the urge to sleep since what awaited me were nightmares.
Nightmare… Isn’t this exactly a nightmare?
If I could go home two days later, I wouldn’t feel such despair. But I would be facing Pyschkurewuss. I couldn’t trust someone with such a terrible reputation.
And, of course, if I wasn’t released but was forced to face Pyschkurewuss, I would try my best to open a path to a peaceful resolution. However, once Pyschkurewuss learns of his daughter’s rash actions, he might think killing me off would be the quickest way to settle this problem… I might not see Ai Fa and the others again and disappear from this world. This was the source of my fear.
I could stand living apart from Ai Fa for a few days, but it would be a life worse than death if I couldn’t see Ai Fa ever again.
The last image of Ai Fa, of her smiling blissfully, was engraved deeply into my mind.
… I hoped that I could make it through safely until we meet again…
Ai Fa was looking forward to us resting together in the house. Our scheduled rest day coincided on the 8th day of the White month, which was today.
… Asuta, don’t let your guard done, and work hard…
I didn’t relax my guard, but got kidnapped by villains and couldn’t return home. I wondered how angry and sad Ai Fa was… I caused Ai Fa to feel even greater despair and worries than me.
Ai Fa…
I twisted and turned, and couldn’t fall asleep.
I heard a strange screeching sound… Like metal grinding on something.
Did the wind blow open the window?
No, the windows could only be pushed open from the inside, so there was no way for the wind to blow it open. But the door leading to the corridor was tightly shut. Did Chiffon Chel open the window?
But I could only hear the rhythmic breathing of her sleep.
I propped myself up to see what it was. And then… A black figure appeared at the screen near the window. The figure was darker than the night, like a compressed form of darkness.
“What…”
“Don’t speak.”
A suppressed voice.
The youth’s voice sounded familiar.
Feral yellow eyes reflected the dim moonlight shining in through the window.
“You are…?”
“Don’t be too loud. It will be bad if the woman sleeping there notices.”
The youth… had the eyes of a wounded beast, and a hoarse voice of a boy said quietly:
“Can’t you see me? Even with this much light?”
My arm was held by a strong force.
My consciousness was blurry, as if I was daydreaming. I was pulled behind the screen forcefully. The window behind the screen was wide open, and the moonlight shone into the room.
Under the pale moonlight, I could see the fiery red hair fluttering in the wind.
“Geta… What are you…”
“Ask yourself that.”
The red-headed Geta said monotonously and let go of my arm.
“You look really lively, Asuta of the Fa house. How’s life in a noble’s manor?”
This was the first time Geta addressed me by my name.
The Marsala hunter with a youthful face, half a head shorter than me and wearing a cape made from spotted hide… The son of the righteous thief Goram, Geta. I couldn’t get used to it no matter how many times I saw his body.
“H-How did you get in here? There are guard dogs and sentries… No, how did you know I’m here…”
“I told you to be quiet; there are guards outside your door, right?”
His delicate features were twisted into an unhappy face, and he glared at me with his yellow eyes.
“Didn’t you open the window just now? That’s how I knew you are in this room. I shot a clawed arrow tied to Fuibaha vines to the roof and climbed up here.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. No one knows that I got abducted to this manor, right?”
“… The denizens of Forest's Edge say the culprit is definitely the aristocrat Pyschkurewuss. I had not discussed this with anyone directly, but the one who told me the address of this manor is Michael of Turan.”
I was surprised by this unexpected name.
“Yesterday, I saw a man who went to Post Station Town question the denizens of Forest's Edge. When that man returned to Turan, I caught him and asked for the address of this manor. That man… It seems that he used to live in this city.”
“Erm, that might be so… But the city is surrounded by rock walls, right? Isn’t entry prohibited without an entry pass?”
“If I have tools, I can find a way. You want me to tell you how I did it…?”
I didn’t really care.
“T-Then, why did you come here?”
Geta’s mouth became a slanted line when he heard my question. I sighed when I realized this youth could show such a childish face too.
“I came here to laugh at you… You fell into the enemy’s hands despite all your big talk. And also…”
There was a sharp gleam in his yellow eyes.
“The aristocrat named Pyschkurewuss who is staying in this manor is the mastermind behind the conspiracy you told me about, correct? I heard about it from the conversation between the denizens of Forest's Edge and Michael of Turan. And… I wanted to see how this manor is guarded.”
“… There are sentries and guard dogs here, you know?”
“Yes, but they’re not as great as you make them out to be. Pyschkurewuss is still so lax on security after all the things he had done, huh.”
A dangerous air came out from the youth’s petite body. It was on par with the feral killing intent from the hunters of Forest's Edge.
“There should be more guards inside the building. With how big this manor is, just searching all the rooms where people are staying would be a pain. It’s not that easy to search for a person.”
“G-Geta, are you trying to… Pyschkurewuss…”
“That guy isn’t in this manor, right? I heard the denizens of Forest's Edge saying that. Today, I’m just here to investigate…”
Geta then lowered his head slightly and checked me out:
“… If there is a way to expose his crime to the public, it will be the best farewell gift to my late father. It doesn’t matter whether your plan fails or not, I will discern the truth and then wield my blade.”
“Is that so, then you…”
“However, if he is not served the death sentence, I swear I will lop his head off. I mean it.”
His voice was even and measured, and he didn’t look angry at all. But I felt a chill running down my spine, which was due to just a fraction of the murderous intent Geta was emitting.
I stood opposite the vengeful youth in the dim room. This still felt surreal to me, and I said:
“… So you are just scouting this place out and were looking for me since I happened to be here?”
“Yes, right… I thought you had already been skinned by your enemies…”
He cast his sharp feral eyes towards me.
“You seemed to be lamenting your own carelessness, what a pitiful man. The denizens of Forest's Edge will be surprised if they learn about this.”
“I have no excuse to refute you. Erm… Geta, how are the denizens of Forest's Edge doing right now?”
I finally blurt out the question I had been meaning to ask.
“They are fine. The Forest's Edge denizens are searching frantically for you; the Post Station Town is a mess.”
“Is that… so…?”
“In the beginning, they almost got into a fight with the guards. Right now, they are running around town, and the sentries at the city gate are ignoring them. They are busy investigating who abducted you.”
“…”
“Many of the people in town are rebutting the guards too, and the guards refuse to yield before their captain returns on the tenth day of the White Month. The guards are as frantic as the people in town.”
Since Pyschkurewuss’ younger brother, the captain of the town guards, was also in the castle, it was natural that the town guards were in a mess. This was the result of Lifuria’s actions.
Even if this commotion reached the castle, the content would just be “A denizen of Forest's Edge doing business in the Post Station Town had been kidnapped.” Since this wasn’t done on his orders, Pyschkurewuss would just ignore it with a laugh. He would probably think any friction between Forest's Edge and the town would be a good thing.
“Erm… Do you know how my house head, Ai Fa, is doing…?”
Geta replied emotionlessly: “That woman, huh.”
“She comes to town every day. But no matter how I conceal my presence, she will always detect me, what a pain. I avoid her as much as possible, so I don’t really know.”
“I see…”
Ai Fa and the other denizens of Forest's Edge, and the people of the Post Station Town were searching desperately for me. Just hearing that ached my heart.
“… Speaking of which, you aren’t injured, so why do you look so frail?” Geta continued quietly: “I’m in your debt, so I will help you relay the message.”
I walked towards Geta.
But Geta backed away immediately, so the distance between us was the same.
“Geta… I shouldn’t be asking you this… But can you bring me back to the Post Station Town with you?”
“Hmmp. Can you hide your presence like a hunter? If not, the guard dogs will kill you before you can take ten steps.”
Geta shattered all hope with those words.
He then stared at my dejected face.
“The denizens of Forest's Edge won’t have any trouble evading the guard dogs like me. And since they know Michael of Turan, it might be possible for them to locate this manor. But they left you here for such a long time… They probably thought it isn’t worth breaking the laws to save you.”
“That’s…”
Geta covered my mouth mid-sentence and said: “Not so loud.”
“… Do I even need to mention that there isn’t any evidence that Pyschkurewuss was the one who abducted me? The denizens of Forest's Edge can’t let Pyschkurewuss get hold of any wrongdoings, and they can’t transgress the law without any justification.”
“But…”
“And the truth is, the one who abducted me isn’t Pyschkurewuss.”
I started explaining my entire ordeal to Geta.
Geta kept quiet impatiently and didn’t butt in until the very end.
“The culprit isn’t Pyschkurewuss, but his daughter… The child of a villain will be a villain anyway.”
“No, I don’t think we can make such an assumption.”
“In any case, the fact that you had been abducted to this manor remains a truth. I still think that compared to your life, the denizens of Forest's Edge place more priority on the law.”
Geta pouted to express his unhappiness. Seeing his naive actions reminded me of Ai Fa, and I sighed. By the way, his feline eyes and angry face resembled Ai Fa a little.
“The life of one’s companions is invaluable. Are the denizens of Forest's Edge a bunch of weaklings who don’t care about the well-being of their companions?”
“That’s not true. What the denizens of Forest's Edge believe in is the justness and fairness of the law and rules. They believe in that more strongly than the townsfolk.”
“Hmmp, so unlike the child of a bandit, they have pure souls?”
“No, I’m not…”
“Never mind. I have my way of doing things, and the denizens of Forest's Edge have theirs. I found you through my own methods, which is something the Forest's Edge couldn’t do.”
Geta spoke softly, but his tone was taunting. He suddenly leaned towards me.
“Now, a question for you. What message do you want to relay to your friends…?”
His face and tone seemed to be asking ‘How may I help you?’
I didn’t know what he was scheming, but I still nodded and answered: “Yes. I hope you can tell them exactly what I said just now. And also tell Zashuma about this too.”
“Zashuma…?”
“He is a townsfolk who provides aid to the denizens of Forest's Edge. He is the only one who can enter the city freely. I hope he can inform Malfreed about this as soon as possible… Malfreed is an aristocrat who wants to uncover Pyschkurewuss’ crimes, just like us. He’s the son of the Genos landlord.”
“I understand. Which means, you might get in danger if Pyschkurewuss learns of this first. I will pass the message.”
After saying that, Geta’s golden eyes shined suspiciously again.
“By the way, is there a Semu named Sangjura here?”
“Huh?”
“The man who broke my shoulder blade is the culprit who abducted you, right? That’s what the wanted notice said.”
“T-There is already a wanted poster in the Post Station Town?”
“Yes. I only saw the sketching. The man called Sangjura and an unknown westerner, the wanted posters of the culprits who abducted you have already been spread in the town.”
So Neil did report this to the guards, and the content had been spread freely in the Post Station Town. Which meant … No one had told Pyschkurewuss and his henchmen about this. This was a ray of hope for me.
“That westerner is probably the bodyguard of Pyschkurewuss’ daughter. Both his stature and voice are similar to the kidnapper. His name is Moose. Please, help me relay that to Zashuma.”
That way, we could inform Malfreed about this once he was available. After that, we just needed to wait for Malfreed, the steward of the law, to take the necessary forceful measures… We could only tell when the time comes.
“I will definitely relay the message. With this, we are even…”
When Geta was about to leave, I called out to him: “Wait. I hope you can tell everyone that I’m fine. And… Please, don’t tell Ai Fa alone, do inform the others in the Forest's Edge too…”
“… I’m not good at dealing with that woman and planned to tell others in the first place. Why did you even mention that?”
“Well… I think… if you only tell Ai Fa, she might come and rescue alone just like you did…”
“With no regards for the law and without telling anyone?”
Geta narrowed his eyes, and his eyebrows were raised in a weird way. He had a complicated face of shock and awe.
“… To think you will show off your lovey-doveyness at this very last moment.”
“T-This isn’t showing off my love life.”
“But, I think that’s how true tribes mates… and true family are.”
With that, Geta put his right feet on the window sill.
“Farewell then. We might not meet again… For the sake of your friends running all over the place, try your best to live past tomorrow.”
“Yes, thank you. Geta, I’m in your debt.”
Geta didn’t answer and vanished out the window.
I rushed to the window and saw his caped figure disappear into the darkness. The tools he used to infiltrate the place had already been retrieved by him, and it seemed that he just leaped down the window. What amazing physical prowess.
I closed the window and sighed in relief.
I could finally inform Ai Fa that I was safe. Not just that, the dark clouds in my heart had dissipated too.
I have to walk out of here safely next.
An unknown power burst out from my body in place of my unease and despair. Geta shed a ray of hope to me as I struggled in the darkness.
Ai Fa, wait a bit longer for me.
I was a little worried about falling asleep while I was so hyped, but I lost my memories of what happened next and fell into deep slumber. There were no nightmares this night.
And so, I ushered in the morning in this manor built with stone.
The sixth day of the White month.
This was supposed to be the last day of the fourth stall contract. After completing my work, I had an appointment with Yumi’s father to discuss our collaboration, but I had no choice but to skip.
Tomorrow would be the first of my two off days, and I was supposed to sell a large quantity of kiba meat to the 《Cryptic Venerable Inn》 and 《Big Tree of the South Inn》. How was their business? I couldn’t tell as I was held prisoner. Did the Wu clan take over my job? Or were they tied up because of some other incident?
Neil must have told the guards about this. It was unlikely for them to search the city just from that alone, moreover the manor of Pyschkurewuss, an influential noble.
Right now, it was impossible for the Post Station Town to connect this incident with Pyschkurewuss. Even if they felt that this was the doing of Pyschkurewuss, they didn’t have any proof. And the culprit being Pyschkurewuss’ daughter, Lifuria, made things even more complicated.
I entrusted one last bit of hope with Dell, but I knew the chances would be abysmal. She might be on friendly terms with me, but Dell was just someone in the wealthy caste of the city and could only act within the boundaries of the law.
I spent the night brooding and half asleep. With no idea on how to escape this manor or persuade Lifuria, morning came.
“… Let us go to the kitchen…”
When the bell had tolled for the third koku in the morning, I was assigned my first task of the day — making a light meal for Lifuria.
I needed to cleanse my body before working and was brought to the bath hall early in the morning. I refused any help from Chiffon Chel and washed myself in the steam bath.
I changed into a new chef attire and headed to the kitchen. Roy was waiting for me alone too.
“… Use banam honey for the dish.”
Roy said impatiently.
He seemed unhappier than yesterday and didn’t even look me in the eye. He was probably holding a grudge over that incident with Chiffon Chel.
“Banam honey, it’s that sweet honey over there, right? So I have to make a dish that brings out its sweetness?”
Roy turned his face away and said: “… Lifuria prefers desserts to normal dishes. The meals in the morning are usually desserts.”
This young man seemed to know that I have learned the name of his employer.
I didn’t say anything. So I have to make desserts this time, huh.
I was filled with lots of worries, but I still stood here with a serious attitude towards cooking. Lifuria had no credibility at all, but she did say she would give me a silver plate and let me go if I made a dish that could satisfy her. I didn’t want to let go of this meager ray of hope.
But making desserts was another matter. My efforts aside, I was a complete amateur at this.
“Erm, I don’t know anything about the desserts in this world… I mean, in Genos. Will making the fuwano sweets and then adding honey and fruits to them be fine?”
He ignored me. The atmosphere was more awkward than yesterday.
With no choice, I searched the food store by relying on my own memory.
I tasted all sorts of new ingredients in the Post Station Town and came up with new dishes. I already knew that other than vegetables, there were fruits in this world too. And I came across the lemon-like shiru.
But now wasn’t the time to use it. I chose a red raspberry-like fruit that was bunched together like grapes.
“What is this fruit?”
“… Aro.”
Aro, huh.
It was sour, but not as strongly as shiru. The taste was a mixture of strawberry and blueberry; the fruit had great texture and low sugar content.
There weren’t any fruit vendors in the Post Station Town. I remember grandma Mishel whom I had been buying chachi and gigo sold some. I enquired further, and it seemed to be a fruit exclusively used for mixing into fruit wines to enhance its flavor.
“I just need to boil the fuwano with water and bake it, correct?”
Roy nodded silently.
The princess would eat at noon, so I had three hours to cook. This included the basic work of baking fuwano.
I suppressed the sense of emptiness in my heart and put the fuwano powder into a container I grabbed offhand, and brought it to the working platform with the other ingredients. The fuwano powder was comparable to flour that was less sticky, but I could improve that by adding a little water.
To my surprise, fuwano powder was stickier than poitan. I added water until it was no longer powdery, and I could meld it into any shape I liked. It had the texture of a cookie dough.
This feels different from flour.
I flattened it so it would bake easier and then made a test batch.
And so, I baked fuwano that I had only tried a few times before. The result was chewier than poitan and felt like a denser type of naan. With neenon as the base ingredient, I could use the fuwano to wrap various vegetables and grilled kimyusu; this was the recipe for the kimyusu meat bun I ate together with Tara in the past.
But it wasn’t a dessert. So I searched the memories from my hometown and decided to mix fuwano powder into karon milk and then add sugar and a kimyusu egg.
I used karon nyuushi when cooking it. And, of course, I was mimicking the cooking methods of a pancake.
This was the first time I was using a kimyusu egg. The shape was exactly like a chicken egg, but it was one size smaller, about as big as a silkie egg I tried before back home.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkie >
I broke it carefully, and a lemon colored egg yolk and transparent egg white fell onto the plate. It was no different from a chicken egg.
I heard that kimyusu was a strange bird with wings on its head, so it was fortunate that its meat and eggs were similar to chicken meat and eggs.
Anyway, I carried on with the cooking.
I used two large wooden skewers in place of chopsticks to stir the kimyusu egg.
I had not made any pancakes since Reina insisted that I make them for her some time ago.
It was back when we just entered middle school. My childhood friend Reina wanted to make pancakes because Valentines was coming and asked me to teach her.
After I told her to just follow the instruction on the box, she said angrily: “I came to you because I can’t make it well after following the instructions on the box!”
In the end, we made perfect pancakes by following the manual. Reina just didn’t control the fire properly.
And so… Reina decorated the pancakes she made with cream and chocolate and then gave them to me and my dad.
Reina started getting better at making desserts, so my father and I were relegated to just eating them. Now that I thought about it, even though Reina’s culinary skill wasn’t as good as my or my dad’s, she was still really happy when we said her cooking tasted good.
… Now isn’t the time for reminiscing.
I was thinking about Ai Fa and everyone in the Forest's Edge, and my thoughts went further back to Reina and my father, and the emotions almost crushed me.
I concentrated on mixing the kimyusu egg, karon milk, Jaguar sugar, and fuwano and cooking it in the pan.
There wasn’t any baking powder, so the pancakes wouldn’t rise. But thanks to the egg, I could make it into a yellowish and fluffy dessert.
I tried a little and found the texture to be mediocre. It wasn’t fluffy at all and was too hard. But I had not eaten eggs or sugar for a long time, and nyuushi was used when cooking it, so the taste felt perfect to me. The sourness of the nyuushi brought out the sweetness without overwhelming it.
Anyway, I adjusted the ratio of the ingredients and made a few more samples. After thirty minutes, I made a pancake that was satisfactory to me.
However, I was cooking for a noble princess engrossed with delicacies. It felt a little underwhelming to serve this with just banam honey, so I used the aro fruit to make a fruit jam. I just needed to boil the fruit until it turned to mash and then to add sugar to make it into something similar to jam. I washed the fruit, added water into a small pot, and then looked towards Roy for the first time in a while:
“By the way, how many portions…”
And closed my mouth on reflex. Roy was watching me work with incredulous eyes.
He shifted his gaze away when he realized I was looking at him.
“… How many portions should I make?”
“… Just one.”
So Lifuria would be dining by herself. Dell and her father had probably left the manor for business.
Leaving that aside… What was with Roy just now?
Never mind, it’s better for me if we don’t interfere with each other.
I put the washed aro into the pot and boiled it with a small amount of water. The sour and sweet aroma of the fruit spread in the kitchen together with the fragrance of the nyuushi. I crushed and stirred it with a wooden spatula, and added sugar next.
The Jaguar sugar was brown, just like sugarcane sugar, but the grains were larger than white sugar and tasted stronger. It probably meant this sugar was full of minerals.
After adding a little sugar, I started stirring it carefully. When it was about to burn, I added more aro.
The fruit was rather sour, so I used quite a lot of sugar to counteract it. It still didn’t taste quite right, so after putting out the fire, I added a little banam honey.
It looked like a gooey form of salted plum and wasn’t bad for a fruit jam I made on the spot.
“Alright, this should do. But… I want to serve freshly baked desserts so I will wait until it’s almost noon before making the actual product.”
“… Is that so? Then you can stay in your room, I need to use the kitchen.”
“Ah, you are making the dishes for the servants?”
Hence, I gave up my place.
“Ahh, before that, how much karon milk will be left for tomorrow?”
“Karon milk? Those are replenished every morning; the one here will be good for another two to three days.”
“I see. Then can I use a few bottles to prepare for tomorrow’s meal?”
Roy looked at me suspiciously.
“Whatever. But… Why do you need so much milk?”
“Because if I have to make dessert tomorrow, I will need to make a wider variety. So I want to make nyuushi-like ingredients ahead of time.”
After getting his permission, I took the two milk bottles from the food store and poured them into a pot.
One bottle was about a liter. I covered the lid and bade farewell to the white milky liquid.
“To not let it get in the way, I will put this in the food store.”
“… Is that all for the prep work?”
“Yes. If I let it sit, the water and nyuushi will separate, right? I plan to use the nyuushi part as an ingredient.”
The separated nyuushi was the cream. Normally, the milk sold in the market was homogenized to avoid the cream separating from the water, but fresh milk could be separated easily with this method.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogenization_(chemistry)#Methods >
By the way, by stirring the milk fats intensely, it was possible to get more concentrated cream, which could be used to make butter. I thought the nyuushi in this kitchen was prepared through such a method too.
There weren’t any refrigerators in Genos, and I didn’t know what are the other ways to make full use of the cream. But if I stirred it and added sugar, it could be used as a topping for desserts. I thought about that as I carried the pot away when Roy came over.
“… Who are you?”
There was a strange light in Roy’s brown eyes. His freckled face also looked dead serious.
“Why does a brat like you know so many cooking methods? Aren’t you just a whippersnapper chef from the Post Station Town?”
“That’s true, but I’m not from Genos. I helped my father with his work back in my hometown.”
“… But you are just a punk! How old are you?”
“I’m 17.”
“17… Why is a juvenile like you able to cook so many dishes…”
“Erm, did you try my cooking?”
“… Lifuria-sama and the guests all said your dish tastes better than the vice head chef’s. How could I not try it?”
Roy looked as if he was going to grab me by the chest, but he stopped midway and slammed his fist on the working platform gently.
“The head chef went to the Genos castle together with the master. But the vice-chef is a first-rate chef who used to cook in the ‘Selva Lance Inn’. I know how good his skills are! But your cooking is better than his… How is that possible!”
“I’m a foreign chef. They must find my cooking exotic since my cooking is different from the chefs of this country.”
“Hmmp! We also invite chefs from Semu and Jaguar to work here often! But their dishes aren’t well received at all. But, why…”
“Maybe the people here just happen to like the taste of my hometown.”
Or maybe the civilization in my world was more advanced, so my culinary skill was ahead of their time. There was no way to ascertain these hypotheses, so we could only guess.
“I also learned to cook in the ‘White Dress Lady Inn’! I’m just 19! No one younger than me had been recruited to this manor!”
“Hmm…”
“But I can only cook for the servants. I’m still young, so the chefs in this manor don’t understand my skills yet. This is to be expected, but you…”
Roy started choking up and lowered his head. His shoulders were quivering.
“… Move that pot, it’s in the way.”
“Okay.”
I was surprised by him and did what he asked.
At this moment, someone opened the kitchen door from the outside.
“Asuta-sama, Roy-sama, what happened…?”
“Nothing! Leave, you slave girl!”
The guards cast sharp gazes at us from behind Chiffon Chel. They probably thought there was a fight.
“There’s no need to test for poison yet, right…? Asuta-sama, if you have finished your work, I will bring you to your room…”
“No need, I plan to finish right before noon. Can I stay here before that?”
When he heard what I said, Roy glared at me.
“I won’t get in your way. Please, let me practice cooking too. I was planning to practice at home in the first place. Will I get punished for using some of the ingredients for practice?”
“… Whatever.”
Roy said with a hint of anger and started boiling water in two large pots.
I shifted the pot full of karon milk into the food store and then returned to the kitchen with some vegetables and herbs. I was curious about Roy’s culinary skills and stole a glance at him.
I didn’t have any chance to meet the chefs from the city, and I probably won’t get a chance again after leaving this place.
Since I planned to continue working as a chef in Genos, I should see how the other chefs cook. For the sake of cooking dishes in the Forest's Edge settlement and the Post Station Town that wouldn’t lose out to the city, I scouted out the enemy.
And so, I researched the ways to cook the various vegetables and herbs and observed Roy through the corner of my eyes.
As expected of someone who talked big, he chopped the vegetables and meat with perfect form. He sliced the chachi, pula, and neenon thinly and then tossed them into the boiling pot. Just how many portions was he making? It was a light lunch, but the quantity was massive.
He then added rock salt and the bouillon cube-like thing for seasoning and then put in a pinch of a shredded herb I had never seen before. That herb had a cress-like fragrance.
What surprised me was that he added some nyuushi. He split the palm-sized lump of nyuushi into two and added them into the pots. What a generous way of using them.
Next was the meat. It was red meat with lots of fat and weighed about 10 kg.
“Sorry, is this meat from the torso of a karon?”
“… From the karon’s back.”
Karon had the texture of beef, and my guess was that this meat was the tenderloin. Roy sliced it 1 cm thick and then into squares about 5 cm long.
He grilled them in a pot greased with karon fats and put in another type of herb along with its stem. It had a spicy fragrance about it. When the meat slices were almost done, he removed the herbs and then poured the meat along with its juice into the pot of vegetables.
I thought he was done, but he left the simmering pot behind and went into the food store. Roy came out with two Totos eggs that were as large as rugby balls, weighing 1.5 kg each.
He placed the eggs on the counter and then removed a strange cooking tool from the wall. It was a metallic club with a thick head, about 20 cm long and 3 cm thick. I had no idea what use it had.
He started whacking the Totos egg with the thick end of the club. He was putting his back into it, but the shell only cracked a little.
When the crack opened to a certain extent, he placed the tool on top of the egg, and bits of the shell started falling onto the counter. What surprised me was that the inner membrane was still intact.
After removing a quarter of the shell, he made an incision in the membrane with a kitchen knife. The liquid inside was then poured into a new pot.
The yolk was bright orange and the egg white transparent. He stabbed the yolk a few times with a spatula and then poured it into a heated pot before stirring it.
Meat, vegetables, and Totos egg. A large amount of nyuushi and cress-like herbs. He stirred this mixture of ingredients and then scooped some up with a spoon to taste test. There didn’t seem to be a need to season it further since Roy turned down the heat.
I thought he was done this time, but he took out another sack of fuwano, around 10 kg of them. His strides looked a little dangerous and unsteady.
He used a steel bowl to scoop up one bowlful, added water, and then molded them into ping-pong sized balls. He did this really quickly, and the counter was full of fuwano balls in no time.
After making about 200, he dropped them into the pot, taking care not to splash the soup. With that, he was finally done.
He covered the lid, waited some time, tasted the dish again, and looked at the tightly shut door. I asked at this moment:
“Are you finished? Would you mind letting me try some?”
Since he tried the cream stew, he probably won’t get mad at my request. Roy looked momentarily confused but then made a sour face before backing away from the pot. I stood before the stove with a new spoon.
This pot was cooked really well, but adding a large amount of nyuushi resulted in a layer of oil at the top, even after stirring the content. It had the aroma of nyuushi and herbs and felt rather unique.
I had a taste… And a texture that wasn’t bad spread in my mouth. The vegetables mixed with the bouillon cube, with the fragrance of nyuushi and cress-like herbs added on top, and the taste of the grilled meat also merged into it. Part of the Totos egg was mixed in, and the sticky texture of the yolk and the smooth feeling of the egg white felt really pleasant.
In short, this dish had a wide variety of flavors, but I didn’t find it unpleasant.
But I had not eaten other dishes similar to this, so I had nothing to compare it with. If it was up to me, I would have simplified these combinations. Nyuushi could be used very flexibly without fear of disrupting the nutritional balance. But that didn’t mean any combination would do.
Vegetables and herbs needed to be chosen carefully to achieve this texture, and this would take many attempts and precise control of the heat… I could sense the effort spent to make this dish.
“It’s delicious. I never expected such a combination.”
Roy made a complicated expression when he heard my feedback.
But he just clicked his tongue and yelled at the door with a: “Hey! The food for the servants is done! Get the people on duty to come over!”
Chiffon Chel poked her face in and replied politely: “Understood…”
It seemed that the food for the servants didn’t need to be tested for poison.
“… What about Asuta-sama…? It’s almost noon soon…”
“Is that so, then I will get to work.”
I placed the dough I made slowly onto the pan and cooked it in the same way as a pancake. I decided to make two fuwano pancakes 1 cm thick and 15 cm wide.
When the pancakes had a nice yellowish brown color, I shifted them to a white porcelain plate. I decided to put the aro fruit jam and karon nyuushi, which was a substitute for butter, into a separate small silver container.
“Well then, please let me perform the poison testing…”
Roy nodded when he heard Chiffon Chel saying that. He cut a small piece of the fuwano pancake and shifted it to a wooden plate, and then spread the three condiments on them. I felt that his actions were a sign of respect towards this dish.
Chiffon Chel carefully ate a piece then made a satisfied moan: “Ara…”
“It’s very delicious… The banam honey goes well with this fuwano cake… And the taste of the egg is great too…”
Now that I thought about it, Chiffon Chel who had to test for poison was always eating the same things as her master. Even a mouthful of each dish would make her picky about food, so being praised by Chiffon Chel was a great honor.
“By the way, Asuta-sama didn’t eat since last night… What do you plan to do about lunch…?”
“I’m already full from taste testing the fuwano, so I will just eat something simple later. Is it fine for me to stay in this kitchen and continue researching cooking?”
Roy interrupted with an emotionless tone: “Hey, this place is mine during this time.”
He would probably be practicing his culinary skill here too.
“I will take care not to disturb you. Given how big this kitchen is, it won’t be difficult for the two of us to cook at the same time, correct?”
Instead of going back to that brick room and laze around, I would rather spend my time here. I needed to practice my cooking skills so I could make use of this experience once I was free.
Roy looked really unhappy, but he still said: “Whatever.”
2
Noon.
The ingredients for dinner were… kimyusu meat and eggs.
There was a larger variety of egg dishes than karon milk dishes that I could choose from. I decided that the best options out of all these possibilities were omelet and oyakodon, and decided on the former.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyakodon >
It wasn’t difficult to make the side dish for oyakodon in this place, but there wasn’t any ingredient to substitute for rice. I didn’t want to make something that I would regret.
So I chose kimyusu omelet.
It wasn’t difficult to make this since I had meat, aria, and nyuushi. I planned to make an omelet with lots of meat.
But this dish seemed dull, so I decided to work on the sauce. I thought of letting the princess try both the tarapa sauce and white sauce.
The white sauce could be made the same way as yesterday, so I focused my time and effort on the tarapa sauce.
I called it tarapa sauce, but it tasted like ketchup and had a completely different flavor from the white sauce. My goal was to try to make it as close to demi-glace sauce or brown sauce.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demi-glace >
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sauce >
First, I fried the fuwano powder with nyuushi and made some roux. Unlike white sauce, I kept frying the fuwano until it turned brown. While it was cooling down, I made the stock that would enhance the flavor of the roux.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux >
I diced a tarapa as much as possible and then used a grate to shred the aria which took the place of onions. I then cooked them with fruit wine and seasoned the mix with salt, sugar, Pico leaves, and bouillon cubes.
I was hesitant about using karon milk instead of water. The tarapa in this food store was sweeter than the one I bought in the Post Station Town, but I still needed to negate its sourness.
So I added the roux to enhance the thickness of the tarapa stock, and it turned reddish brown. I had a taste, and it had just the right sourness and looked good. This was thanks to the bouillon cube that could improve the taste of any dish drastically.
If I rely on this too much, I won’t be able to cook properly in the Post Station Town.
Bouillon cubes were made by boiling meat and bones. It was an alluring seasoning, but making them would be difficult in the Forest's Edge and Post Station Town. The ingredient cost alone would be huge, and if I considered the time and firewood it would take, it wasn’t feasible to use these in a business at all.
I could get as much kiba bones as I need. If I could get the houses that had plenty of women to help, it might be possible to make something similar.
I decided to stow this away in a corner of my mind.
Could I buy karon milk in the Post Station Town? And process them to make nyuushi and curd? What about the price of kimyusu and Totos egg, were there enough quantity for retail? If there were enough supply, why have I never seen it in any kitchen before? How much does reten oil, mamaria vinegar, Jaguar sugar, and banam honey cost? Also, where could I procure them?
In just 24 hours, I had noted down these things in my mind.
I can’t just let the nobles monopolize this deliciousness. I need to learn from this disaster and make use of it in the future…
I thought as I started making omelet.
This dish wasn’t complicated. I cut the kimyusu chest meat into shreds and then fried it together with aria and neenon shreds. Afterwards, I seasoned it with salt, Pico leaves, bouillon cube, and fruit wine.
After finishing that, I poured an egg mixture into a pan. The egg was mixed with a small amount of karon milk, and I used nyuushi in place of fats to fry them.
Kimyusu egg could be eaten raw, so I decided to make them into a half-cooked gooey state. I added in the other ingredients before the egg hardened completely and then rolled the egg to wrap up the other ingredients. The “Tsurumi restaurant” also sold omelet rice, so I was good at doing this.
I scooped the end product onto a plate and then almost added tarapa sauce and white sauce on both sides… Fortunately, I remembered about testing for poison.
If the taste testing was done after pouring the sauce, it would destroy the presentation. It would be wiser to put the sauces in separate containers, like what I did with the fuwano pancake.
“I’m done. Please test for poison.”
Roy cut off three slices from the right side of the omelet and then poured two types of sauce on them. Chiffon Chel moaned in awe after tasting it.
“I’m speechless… The dishes Asuta-sama makes are incredible… It is really delicious…”
I couldn’t see the princess and Dell’s reaction, so Chiffon Chel’s evaluation was everything. But I wondered how Lifuria felt about a small piece of her pancake and omelet being cut off for poison testing. She had to eat these dishes alone when there were no guests and her father was away.
High-quality cuisine made just for her, which needed to be tested for poison… The ingredients might be top-notch, the chef could be the cream of the crop, but would the food taste good like this?
… Indeed, being a noble isn’t all good.
Anyway, the servants took away the dinner in a blink of an eye.
I asked the guards if I could meet Lifuria, but the answer I got after sunset was a “No.”
“Today’s dish, too, wasn’t bad. The mistress said that if you continue to work hard, she will send you home with a reward in five days.”
“But I have my own life too! If not, let me make preparations to close my stalls in the Post Station Town for a few days. I will come back to cook after making arrangements with the denizens of Forest's Edge.”
My request was turned down.
The curtains I tore last night were taken away by the servants; they also took away the other curtains too, so I lost my means of contacting Dell.
The only thing I can do is to cook…
I thought about where things went wrong and embraced another lonely night.
The next day, 7th of the White Month, I was told to make lunch with Minmi fruit.
I knew nothing about that ingredient. It was the size of a tennis ball, with hair-like spines that were 1 cm long covering it, a strange fruit. On further inquiry, I learned it was imported from the southernmost region of Jaguar, an extremely rare ingredient. I timidly peeled off the disgusting skin and found the insides to be pink and juicy.
The faint aroma was sweet, and the texture was similar to peach. There wasn’t any sourness at all, only a strong sweetness. It was as juicy as a peach, and juices as thick as honey dripped with every bite.
I think it would be best to eat delicious fruit as it is.
I muttered in my mind as I experimented with the samples.
I could make delicious jam by mashing it up and adding sugar, but considering the texture, I decided to heat up the mashed fruit and then add in sugar, honey, and a dash of alcohol-less fruit wine.
I also had the karon milk I left to sit from yesterday.
After sitting for one night, the karon milk had separated into the cream and water layer. Even the color of the cream looked concentrated, and there was more cream than I expected.
At best, fresh cow milk contains 4 percent of fats. So 2 liters would yield at most 80 g of cream. But karon milk could produce twice that amount easily.
I heard that buffalo milk had twice the amount of fats compared with cow milk. Speaking of which, karon curd was similar to Mozzarella cheese, so karon milk should be more similar to buffalo milk.
Anyway, more was better. I skimmed the cream as carefully as I could and shifted it into another container. It was thick and white.
This was already good enough as a cream, but, to improve its texture, I had to turn this into whipped cream. So I shifted it into a smaller container and started shaking it up and down. There wasn’t anything like a whisk in this kitchen after all.
Whipped cream needed air to get its fluffy texture, so I thought this was an effective method.
I learned about this method by chance. I heard that in order to make tastier tea, instead of using mineral water, it was better to use tap water with air mixed into it. If you really wanted to use mineral water, you should shake the bottle intensely to mix the air into it.
I made use of this theory, or rather, I did so rather naturally. Everything I knew about making desserts was from my meager experience and knowledge.
I think Reina said that the cream needs to be beaten for 7 to 8 minutes when not using an electric hand mixer.
Then how many minutes should I go with this method? If I go at it for too long, the fats would get separated into nyuushi, but on the other hand, I didn’t think it would be that easy to make nyuushi.
So I decided to shake it longer than necessary. Roy who was watching me cook with eyes as serious as yesterday was already staring with his eyes wide.
I felt about ten minutes had passed. My muscles would ache if I shook any longer, so I poured the cream I had shaken onto a metal bowl.
The cream that used to viscous fell into the bowl. I poked at it with a wooden skewer in place of chopsticks and found it a little hard, but still acceptable. The cream was in the perfect semi-liquid state.
I then added sugar in it and started whipping the cream with skewers in place of chopsticks. Before doing so, I added water into a bowl one size bigger and put the cream bowl in it. As the cream would melt at body temperature, I had to cool it so it wouldn’t revert back to its liquid form.
After whipping it for 3 to 4 minutes, it finally felt a little bit harder.
“Well, that should do.”
I made another fuwano pancake that had less sugar compared to yesterday’s and tried it. Next was the Minmi fruit jam.
Simply put, this was a weird combination of adding peach jam on pancakes, but since I wasn’t that particular about desserts, it was good enough for me.
The whipped cream I made on the spot wasn’t much, but the fluffy texture would probably feel refreshing to the people here. As it was made from karon milk, there shouldn’t be any complaints about eating it together with banam honey.
So the dish I decided on was a casual dessert served together with Banam honey and nyuushi. From the face Chiffon Chel who tested for poison, this dessert was as good as yesterday’s.
Without sugar and karon milk, I won’t be able to make desserts in Forest's Edge and Post Station Town. I really want to let Rimee Wu and Tara try this.
I thought as I watched the dessert get taken away and then stood before the pot I had left alone all the while.
“Well then, what should I do with this?”
When Roy heard what I was saying to myself, he stopped his work at hand and said to me: “Hey, if you want to get rid of it, tell the guards to get someone to come. Karon milk stinks once it spoils; there is a designated place to dispose of it.”
“No, this won’t spoil for another day or two, right? I’m thinking about what dish to make with it.”
“… What dish can you make with the milk that had its fats removed?”
“Even without the fats, the milk still has plenty of nutrients. It’s a pity to throw it away.”
Milk with its fats removed was called skimmed milk. By processing it into powder, it would become skimmed milk powder. In Japan, skimmed milk wasn’t held in high regard, but it was still sold in the market as an ingredient for making desserts.
However, it seemed unlikely for this world to have the technology to process milk into powdered form. If the method used to make bouillon cube was employed, salt would need to be added to preserve it, which wouldn’t be ideal.
In any case, I just need to think about using fresh milk. Maybe this isn’t sold in the Post Station Town because preserving it is hard.
My worries stemmed from my hope that I could purchase karon milk in the Post Station Town. I was practicing ahead of time so I would be ready when karon milk was available for me in the future.
In Genos which didn’t have any freezer facilities, fresh milk could only be kept for two to three days. As for their usage, my main focus would be on using them as nyuushi or curd. From my experiment just now, I realized that 2 liters of karon milk could only yield less than 200 g of cream.
It was more than I expected, but that meant that 90% of it would become skimmed milk. I thought the skimmed milk contained a lot of nutrients too, so I didn’t want to resemble the nobles by letting it go waste.
In the Dabag city where the karon are sold, there should be some way to use it.
I would need to research this, but right now, I could only use my own judgment to decide on how to use this skimmed milk.
Okay, let’s see whether it could be used as part of a soup. Next… I think Reina made custard cream with it before. Let’s make the preparation to try this tomorrow.
I never thought that I would depend on my childhood friend in such a way.
With my heart aching from the thought that I would never meet my childhood friend again, I started on the work at hand.
I was asked to use kimyusu meat and curd to make dinner for that night.
She asked for kimyusu meat three days in a row, which showed how much Lifuria liked it.
Kimyusu meat and curd… So a dish with chicken and cheese, huh…
Since there was an oven, how about making a pizza? But there wasn’t one in the Forest's Edge, so I wouldn’t be able to put this experience to use in the future.
So I decided to go wild and make piccata.
<TL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccata >
This was an Italian dish made by frying meat dredged in flour and egg.
I had never eaten proper Italian piccata before too and only tried the imitation made by my dad. He didn’t make this for sale but as supper or gifts.
He used chicken breast meat, so I decided on kimyusu breast meat too. I decided to boldly remove the skin and cut it 1 cm thick, and then tenderize it with a stick. I used two slices for a portion, so there were six slices for three portions.
After seasoning it with Pico leaves, I stuffed crushed curd between the slices. The type of curd wasn’t specified, so I chose the Gyama curd that was tougher and easier to crush.
After finishing with that, I cracked an egg. I used the grate to grind the karon curd into powder-like form and then added it into the egg.
That was the gist of making piccata that I learned from my dad; I wondered how real piccata was made. I heard traditional piccata used veal.
Anyway, I used fuwano bits in place of flour and sprinkled it onto the meat, then poured the egg-curd mixture, and finally grilled it in a pan. Grilling it with nyuushi would make the taste too strong, so reten oil should do here. Reten oil was similar to olive oil, and personally, I thought it was suited for Italian dishes.
With that, the main dish was more or less done.
I decided to use the tarapa sauce used for the 『Kiba burger』 for this dish. When I ate piccata back home, the sauce was also tomato sauce with lots of onion bits. The aria that had the fragrance of onion and the tarapa sauce meshes well with the grilled kimyusu meat.
I tried the sample I made, and the texture of the meat, egg, and fuwano bits mixed wonderfully with the chewy curd.
If I could make this dish in the Post Station Town, it would definitely be popular. I just needed oil and eggs to make this in the Post Station Town.
I could purchase Gyama curd from the Semu peddlers and figuring out how to make curd from karon milk shouldn’t be too hard. The reten oil that I couldn’t buy had to be substituted by kiba oil though.
And I had to consider if kiba was suitable for this.
Would the kiba taste be too strong?
I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try it, but I felt I could still make a strong tasting dish. A kiba piccata that tasted like pork piccata… I could wrap it in grilled poitan and sell it at the stall.
But it is hard to fry food at the stall. It isn’t easy to maintain a strong fire, and it won’t taste nice if I leave it alone for too long…
I thought as I worked on the main dish. If I didn’t engross myself in these thoughts, I would break down from my worries about the future.
However, Lifuria didn’t give any special comment today as well.
The next day, the 8th of the White Month, I received a complaint from the princess early in the morning.
She said that she couldn’t stand ‘eating the same thing three days in a row’. Basically, she didn’t want fuwano pancakes anymore.
My complaints that I was an amateur in dessert making didn’t reach her ears. With no other choice, I decided to try making cookies.
I only had memories of watching Reina make cookies and had less experience compared to making pancakes.
First, I added sugar and fuwano to nyuushi, reverting it back to its semi-liquid form. Fuwano powder was added slowly to avoid making it into a dough. I then poured in a little karon milk and kneaded until it was hard enough to be melded into shape.
I then placed this onto a tray with fuwano powder sprinkled on it and then used a thick stirring stick to roll it flat. There weren’t any baking molds, so I used a small wine glass to cut it into round shapes and then used a knife to shape it into squares and star shapes. The dough I removed was flattened again, until I couldn’t repeat the aforementioned steps any longer. The last bits were molded into a circle by hand.
It was time for the oven I had been ignoring to shine. I just needed to lit the fuel at the bottom to use it. To avoid burning the cookies, I set it to the weakest fire. Roy taught me all that, and the fuel in question was charcoal.
In the meantime, I turned the skimmed milk into custard cream. First, I added sugar to the kimyusu egg yolk and poured it on fuwano powder. After mixing them, I added some skimmed milk. From this point, it was the standard method of making cookies. When making western confectionery, flour, milk, sugar, egg, and butter were all necessary.
After the ingredients mixed with skimmed milk turned soft, I heated it up in the pot. When the moisture evaporated and the mixture thickened, it was done.
It wasn’t hard to repeat the process, and the karon milk and nyuushi gave the dish a lot of depth, and the taste was impeccable. For an amateur like me, this was the limit.
At this point, the cookies were done. I tried one after it cooled down, and it was crunchy. It was harder to replicate this, compared to pancake.
The extra dough I made in case of failures was also put inside to be baked. In the meantime, I prepared more of the aro fruit jam that I made yesterday. Cookies were good enough to be eaten alone, but having custard cream and aro fruit jam would make it even nicer.
And so, I completed my task.
All the dough was made into cookies, and I made a whole bunch in the end.
“This dish won’t spoil that quickly, so the leftovers can be eaten as an after-dinner snack.”
I mentioned that, but didn’t receive any reply from Lifuria.
The request for dinner that night was ‘anything made with kimyusu meat’.
Speaking of which, there wasn’t any specific request for lunch either.
Was the competition against the vice-head chef still ongoing? I had not spoken with Dell since the first night, so I didn’t know what was going on.
But “anything” was a troubling request. With so many ingredients, there were a lot of choices.
In the end, I decided to try a dish I was still researching, which was “Kimyusu meatballs”, a dish I had been researching for sale in the 《Kimyusu’s Tail Inn》.
I chose kimyusu breast meat and seasoned it with just salt. I shredded it with a meat cutting knife and then melded them into rod shape instead of balls.
The problem was what flavor I should make.
I decided to try a new ingredient, the kiki fruit.
It was a fruit I saw in the Post Station Town but had not yet tasted. It was one size smaller than a fist, light purple and shaped like a dried permission. It was probably sold as an easily portable fruit for travels, just like aria.
I tried the taste earlier in the day, and it had a slight sweetness, a strong sourness, and a unique texture, something like pickled plum.
I asked around and found out that dried kiki was preserved with a method from Jaguar, by soaking the kiki fruit in salt and fruit wine and then drying it over a few days. Many travelers were adding this into poitan soup, which was a surprise.
The pickle juice was suitable for drinking together with wine. It was spicy and salty and could be mixed into normal fruit wine, water or fruit juice. The kiki fruit that was removed from the pickle juice also had a unique texture.
And so, the kiki fruit was a precious ingredient in the Post Station Town. Dried kiki fruit was also used as a special seasoning in the kitchen of the city.
I discovered dried kiki fruit under complicated circumstances. I was originally looking for ingredients to give more flair to the “Kimyusu meatballs” back then. The dried kiki fruit was dry outside but moist inside. By crushing it, something akin to plum could be made, which would be a good side dish for the meatballs. I hoped to add this into the new menu of the 《Kimyusu’s Tail Inn》.
However, this dish might seem too plain for this place, so I decided to make four meatballs for each diner, with different flavors for each ball.
One was made with nyuushi while the other — with Tau sauce. These were butter flavor and soy sauce flavor in my old world.
The third one was covered in the familiar white sauce.
I decided to put some effort into the last ball.
This was a standard method for seasoning in my hometown. A sweet and spicy teriyaki meatball made with alcohol-less fruit wine, Tau sauce, Pico leaves and sugar, with banam honey as a hidden taste.
But that wasn’t all. I dressed the teriyaki meatball with the tartar sauce I made myself.
Mayonnaise was needed to make tartar sauce. Making mayonnaise was easy if there were eggs, vinegar, and oil.
Start by mixing the egg yolk with salt; then, add vinegar, oil, and keep stirring. That was all.
The key thing was mixing in air before adding vinegar. I had to spend a lot of effort on this since there wasn’t any hand mixer, but I was familiar with this method, so it wasn’t too much of a hassle.
The ingredients I used were different though. Reten oil was similar to olive oil, mamaria vinegar tasted like a cross between western vinegar and balsamic. Mamaria was also a deep shade of dark brown and turned a dark shade of orange when mixed with egg yolk.
The end product was great. The faint raisin taste of the mamaria vinegar seemed a little out of place but the taste of the mayonnaise was spot on. The sourness of the mamaria sauce had been neutralized, so the taste was gentler.
Next would be dicing cooked egg and raw aria and then mixing them together with the mayonnaise. After seasoning it with salt and Pico leaves, the tartar sauce was done. Covering the teriyaki meatball with tartar would bring out its sweet and spicy taste and give it a junk food feel.
“… It’s difficult to test this dish for poison…”
There were three portions with four sauces each. Chiffon Chel was trying to suppress a smile. I could just make all the meatballs into teriyaki tartar flavor, but when I taste tested them within my limited time, I found all the flavors to be good.
It was a given for butter and soy sauce flavors, but the dried kiki meatball was unexpectedly tasty too. After trying the strong taste of the teriyaki meatball, eating the plain kiki fruit flavored meatball was very memorable.
Since there wasn’t any way to escape, I could only make dishes to melt Lifuria’s stubborn heart. I encouraged myself with this thinking and did my best to cook.
But Lifuria neither gave any comments today nor agree to my request to speak with her.
3
Today ended peacefully too…
I was brought back to my room after finishing my job, and I thought to myself as I looked out the open window.
It was already my fourth night here. Dell probably still didn’t have time to leave the city. The situation neither improved nor worsened, as if this would be my new daily routine as time passed.
But Pyschkurewuss would return in the morning two days later. No matter what, this daily routine would come to an end. In any case, this retarded lifestyle would end tomorrow.
This day passed slowly. I cropped myself up in the kitchen, but my heart was filled with sorrow and worries.
Ai Fa… What’s on your mind?
Whenever I remembered this name, my heart started beating erratically, as if my body was being torn apart. I realized just how much I was depending on Ai Fa.
Why am I here, am I really standing here by my own strength, am I really living for myself? I was thinking about things that I normally didn’t consider.
Like a lonely existence drifting in the universe, falling into a deep sea of despair.
I want to see Ai Fa.
And hear her voice.
And feel her body warmth.
I started getting engrossed in these thoughts that were so intense that I felt like a fool.
Aside from Ai Fa, how were the others doing? The Wu clan which I was closest to, the Lutim house, Lei house, Sudora house, Fou house… a long list of them. And the people in the Post Station Town too, they were just a memory to me now. I was drifting in a place apart from them, thinking back of the life I used to have.
I focused on cooking during the day to stop myself from worrying about all that, but once I returned to my room, I was overwhelmed by emptiness immediately. No matter how much I researched my cooking, only Lifuria would get to enjoy it. Although Dell would get to dine too, just that alone wasn’t enough to dispel the emptiness I felt.
I wanted Ai Fa to eat these dishes. I wanted the denizens of Forest's Edge and the people of the Post Station Town to savor them too. The skills and knowledge I obtained here would be displayed before them one day… Even though I cooked with this on my mind, I still felt very depressed when night fell.
“Asuta-sama… It will be bad for your health if you don’t sleep…”
Chiffon Chel came over quietly. Her hands should be touching my arms and shoulders, but my mind was blank and I couldn’t feel anything.
“Sorry, I’m not that tired yet.”
“Is that so… But you can’t rest unless you lie down, please go to bed…”
“… That’s true.”
Whether I was standing by the window or lying in bed, the darkness in my heart would still linger. Still, it was better to let Chiffon Chel feel at ease.
“… The master will return in the morning of the day after tomorrow… I can only spend time with Asuta-sama for one more day…”
“That’s true.”
“I think it’s a pity… but… it pains me to see Asuta-sama hurting so much…”
Chiffon Chel was smiling as usual, but her purple eyes had a troubling light since she didn’t know the best way to convey her thoughts.
She had worked here as a slave for many years. The toll on her heart was worse than for normal people, but she still had the capacity to think about others.
If she wasn’t with me, I would have broken down already. However… It was hard to fill the emptiness in my heart.
“… Sorry, I’m going to turn in.”
“Okay…”
Chiffon Chel slowly let go of my arm and closed the window. She brought me to my bed and then disappeared behind the screen.
“Asuta-sama, sweet dreams…”
“Yes, you too.”
I collapsed onto the bed weakly. Chiffon Chel extinguished the light, and my vision was covered in darkness.
My body felt like lead, but I didn’t feel sleepy at all. Maybe my mind was resisting the urge to sleep since what awaited me were nightmares.
Nightmare… Isn’t this exactly a nightmare?
If I could go home two days later, I wouldn’t feel such despair. But I would be facing Pyschkurewuss. I couldn’t trust someone with such a terrible reputation.
And, of course, if I wasn’t released but was forced to face Pyschkurewuss, I would try my best to open a path to a peaceful resolution. However, once Pyschkurewuss learns of his daughter’s rash actions, he might think killing me off would be the quickest way to settle this problem… I might not see Ai Fa and the others again and disappear from this world. This was the source of my fear.
I could stand living apart from Ai Fa for a few days, but it would be a life worse than death if I couldn’t see Ai Fa ever again.
The last image of Ai Fa, of her smiling blissfully, was engraved deeply into my mind.
… I hoped that I could make it through safely until we meet again…
Ai Fa was looking forward to us resting together in the house. Our scheduled rest day coincided on the 8th day of the White month, which was today.
… Asuta, don’t let your guard done, and work hard…
I didn’t relax my guard, but got kidnapped by villains and couldn’t return home. I wondered how angry and sad Ai Fa was… I caused Ai Fa to feel even greater despair and worries than me.
Ai Fa…
I twisted and turned, and couldn’t fall asleep.
I heard a strange screeching sound… Like metal grinding on something.
Did the wind blow open the window?
No, the windows could only be pushed open from the inside, so there was no way for the wind to blow it open. But the door leading to the corridor was tightly shut. Did Chiffon Chel open the window?
But I could only hear the rhythmic breathing of her sleep.
I propped myself up to see what it was. And then… A black figure appeared at the screen near the window. The figure was darker than the night, like a compressed form of darkness.
“What…”
“Don’t speak.”
A suppressed voice.
The youth’s voice sounded familiar.
Feral yellow eyes reflected the dim moonlight shining in through the window.
“You are…?”
“Don’t be too loud. It will be bad if the woman sleeping there notices.”
The youth… had the eyes of a wounded beast, and a hoarse voice of a boy said quietly:
“Can’t you see me? Even with this much light?”
My arm was held by a strong force.
My consciousness was blurry, as if I was daydreaming. I was pulled behind the screen forcefully. The window behind the screen was wide open, and the moonlight shone into the room.
Under the pale moonlight, I could see the fiery red hair fluttering in the wind.
“Geta… What are you…”
“Ask yourself that.”
The red-headed Geta said monotonously and let go of my arm.
“You look really lively, Asuta of the Fa house. How’s life in a noble’s manor?”
This was the first time Geta addressed me by my name.
The Marsala hunter with a youthful face, half a head shorter than me and wearing a cape made from spotted hide… The son of the righteous thief Goram, Geta. I couldn’t get used to it no matter how many times I saw his body.
“H-How did you get in here? There are guard dogs and sentries… No, how did you know I’m here…”
“I told you to be quiet; there are guards outside your door, right?”
His delicate features were twisted into an unhappy face, and he glared at me with his yellow eyes.
“Didn’t you open the window just now? That’s how I knew you are in this room. I shot a clawed arrow tied to Fuibaha vines to the roof and climbed up here.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. No one knows that I got abducted to this manor, right?”
“… The denizens of Forest's Edge say the culprit is definitely the aristocrat Pyschkurewuss. I had not discussed this with anyone directly, but the one who told me the address of this manor is Michael of Turan.”
I was surprised by this unexpected name.
“Yesterday, I saw a man who went to Post Station Town question the denizens of Forest's Edge. When that man returned to Turan, I caught him and asked for the address of this manor. That man… It seems that he used to live in this city.”
“Erm, that might be so… But the city is surrounded by rock walls, right? Isn’t entry prohibited without an entry pass?”
“If I have tools, I can find a way. You want me to tell you how I did it…?”
I didn’t really care.
“T-Then, why did you come here?”
Geta’s mouth became a slanted line when he heard my question. I sighed when I realized this youth could show such a childish face too.
“I came here to laugh at you… You fell into the enemy’s hands despite all your big talk. And also…”
There was a sharp gleam in his yellow eyes.
“The aristocrat named Pyschkurewuss who is staying in this manor is the mastermind behind the conspiracy you told me about, correct? I heard about it from the conversation between the denizens of Forest's Edge and Michael of Turan. And… I wanted to see how this manor is guarded.”
“… There are sentries and guard dogs here, you know?”
“Yes, but they’re not as great as you make them out to be. Pyschkurewuss is still so lax on security after all the things he had done, huh.”
A dangerous air came out from the youth’s petite body. It was on par with the feral killing intent from the hunters of Forest's Edge.
“There should be more guards inside the building. With how big this manor is, just searching all the rooms where people are staying would be a pain. It’s not that easy to search for a person.”
“G-Geta, are you trying to… Pyschkurewuss…”
“That guy isn’t in this manor, right? I heard the denizens of Forest's Edge saying that. Today, I’m just here to investigate…”
Geta then lowered his head slightly and checked me out:
“… If there is a way to expose his crime to the public, it will be the best farewell gift to my late father. It doesn’t matter whether your plan fails or not, I will discern the truth and then wield my blade.”
“Is that so, then you…”
“However, if he is not served the death sentence, I swear I will lop his head off. I mean it.”
His voice was even and measured, and he didn’t look angry at all. But I felt a chill running down my spine, which was due to just a fraction of the murderous intent Geta was emitting.
I stood opposite the vengeful youth in the dim room. This still felt surreal to me, and I said:
“… So you are just scouting this place out and were looking for me since I happened to be here?”
“Yes, right… I thought you had already been skinned by your enemies…”
He cast his sharp feral eyes towards me.
“You seemed to be lamenting your own carelessness, what a pitiful man. The denizens of Forest's Edge will be surprised if they learn about this.”
“I have no excuse to refute you. Erm… Geta, how are the denizens of Forest's Edge doing right now?”
I finally blurt out the question I had been meaning to ask.
“They are fine. The Forest's Edge denizens are searching frantically for you; the Post Station Town is a mess.”
“Is that… so…?”
“In the beginning, they almost got into a fight with the guards. Right now, they are running around town, and the sentries at the city gate are ignoring them. They are busy investigating who abducted you.”
“…”
“Many of the people in town are rebutting the guards too, and the guards refuse to yield before their captain returns on the tenth day of the White Month. The guards are as frantic as the people in town.”
Since Pyschkurewuss’ younger brother, the captain of the town guards, was also in the castle, it was natural that the town guards were in a mess. This was the result of Lifuria’s actions.
Even if this commotion reached the castle, the content would just be “A denizen of Forest's Edge doing business in the Post Station Town had been kidnapped.” Since this wasn’t done on his orders, Pyschkurewuss would just ignore it with a laugh. He would probably think any friction between Forest's Edge and the town would be a good thing.
“Erm… Do you know how my house head, Ai Fa, is doing…?”
Geta replied emotionlessly: “That woman, huh.”
“She comes to town every day. But no matter how I conceal my presence, she will always detect me, what a pain. I avoid her as much as possible, so I don’t really know.”
“I see…”
Ai Fa and the other denizens of Forest's Edge, and the people of the Post Station Town were searching desperately for me. Just hearing that ached my heart.
“… Speaking of which, you aren’t injured, so why do you look so frail?” Geta continued quietly: “I’m in your debt, so I will help you relay the message.”
I walked towards Geta.
But Geta backed away immediately, so the distance between us was the same.
“Geta… I shouldn’t be asking you this… But can you bring me back to the Post Station Town with you?”
“Hmmp. Can you hide your presence like a hunter? If not, the guard dogs will kill you before you can take ten steps.”
Geta shattered all hope with those words.
He then stared at my dejected face.
“The denizens of Forest's Edge won’t have any trouble evading the guard dogs like me. And since they know Michael of Turan, it might be possible for them to locate this manor. But they left you here for such a long time… They probably thought it isn’t worth breaking the laws to save you.”
“That’s…”
Geta covered my mouth mid-sentence and said: “Not so loud.”
“… Do I even need to mention that there isn’t any evidence that Pyschkurewuss was the one who abducted me? The denizens of Forest's Edge can’t let Pyschkurewuss get hold of any wrongdoings, and they can’t transgress the law without any justification.”
“But…”
“And the truth is, the one who abducted me isn’t Pyschkurewuss.”
I started explaining my entire ordeal to Geta.
Geta kept quiet impatiently and didn’t butt in until the very end.
“The culprit isn’t Pyschkurewuss, but his daughter… The child of a villain will be a villain anyway.”
“No, I don’t think we can make such an assumption.”
“In any case, the fact that you had been abducted to this manor remains a truth. I still think that compared to your life, the denizens of Forest's Edge place more priority on the law.”
Geta pouted to express his unhappiness. Seeing his naive actions reminded me of Ai Fa, and I sighed. By the way, his feline eyes and angry face resembled Ai Fa a little.
“The life of one’s companions is invaluable. Are the denizens of Forest's Edge a bunch of weaklings who don’t care about the well-being of their companions?”
“That’s not true. What the denizens of Forest's Edge believe in is the justness and fairness of the law and rules. They believe in that more strongly than the townsfolk.”
“Hmmp, so unlike the child of a bandit, they have pure souls?”
“No, I’m not…”
“Never mind. I have my way of doing things, and the denizens of Forest's Edge have theirs. I found you through my own methods, which is something the Forest's Edge couldn’t do.”
Geta spoke softly, but his tone was taunting. He suddenly leaned towards me.
“Now, a question for you. What message do you want to relay to your friends…?”
His face and tone seemed to be asking ‘How may I help you?’
I didn’t know what he was scheming, but I still nodded and answered: “Yes. I hope you can tell them exactly what I said just now. And also tell Zashuma about this too.”
“Zashuma…?”
“He is a townsfolk who provides aid to the denizens of Forest's Edge. He is the only one who can enter the city freely. I hope he can inform Malfreed about this as soon as possible… Malfreed is an aristocrat who wants to uncover Pyschkurewuss’ crimes, just like us. He’s the son of the Genos landlord.”
“I understand. Which means, you might get in danger if Pyschkurewuss learns of this first. I will pass the message.”
After saying that, Geta’s golden eyes shined suspiciously again.
“By the way, is there a Semu named Sangjura here?”
“Huh?”
“The man who broke my shoulder blade is the culprit who abducted you, right? That’s what the wanted notice said.”
“T-There is already a wanted poster in the Post Station Town?”
“Yes. I only saw the sketching. The man called Sangjura and an unknown westerner, the wanted posters of the culprits who abducted you have already been spread in the town.”
So Neil did report this to the guards, and the content had been spread freely in the Post Station Town. Which meant … No one had told Pyschkurewuss and his henchmen about this. This was a ray of hope for me.
“That westerner is probably the bodyguard of Pyschkurewuss’ daughter. Both his stature and voice are similar to the kidnapper. His name is Moose. Please, help me relay that to Zashuma.”
That way, we could inform Malfreed about this once he was available. After that, we just needed to wait for Malfreed, the steward of the law, to take the necessary forceful measures… We could only tell when the time comes.
“I will definitely relay the message. With this, we are even…”
When Geta was about to leave, I called out to him: “Wait. I hope you can tell everyone that I’m fine. And… Please, don’t tell Ai Fa alone, do inform the others in the Forest's Edge too…”
“… I’m not good at dealing with that woman and planned to tell others in the first place. Why did you even mention that?”
“Well… I think… if you only tell Ai Fa, she might come and rescue alone just like you did…”
“With no regards for the law and without telling anyone?”
Geta narrowed his eyes, and his eyebrows were raised in a weird way. He had a complicated face of shock and awe.
“… To think you will show off your lovey-doveyness at this very last moment.”
“T-This isn’t showing off my love life.”
“But, I think that’s how true tribes mates… and true family are.”
With that, Geta put his right feet on the window sill.
“Farewell then. We might not meet again… For the sake of your friends running all over the place, try your best to live past tomorrow.”
“Yes, thank you. Geta, I’m in your debt.”
Geta didn’t answer and vanished out the window.
I rushed to the window and saw his caped figure disappear into the darkness. The tools he used to infiltrate the place had already been retrieved by him, and it seemed that he just leaped down the window. What amazing physical prowess.
I closed the window and sighed in relief.
I could finally inform Ai Fa that I was safe. Not just that, the dark clouds in my heart had dissipated too.
I have to walk out of here safely next.
An unknown power burst out from my body in place of my unease and despair. Geta shed a ray of hope to me as I struggled in the darkness.
Ai Fa, wait a bit longer for me.
I was a little worried about falling asleep while I was so hyped, but I lost my memories of what happened next and fell into deep slumber. There were no nightmares this night.
