The Cursed Potato's Secret
Aside from being absurdly oversized, it was unmistakably the potato Chloe remembered from her old life.
Thrilled, she forgot how quickly the light was fading and yanked up the vine beside it as well.
“Jackpot!”
The tuber was so massive that calling it “plump” felt like an understatement. Had they really been starving while these grew all around them?
“My lady! You mustn’t touch a plant so steeped in demonic energy! It’s terribly dangerous!”
Scrooge came sprinting over like a man who had lost his soul. His face had gone deathly pale, and even his voice trembled.
Completely flustered, the old butler squeezed his eyes shut and snatched the dural from her hands, hurling it to the ground.
“What are you doing!”
“It’s dangerous! You must never touch this plant!”
“Why? Is it poisonous?”
Chloe frowned at the potato rolling across the dirt. She had pulled it up with such satisfaction; seeing it tumble in the dust soured her mood.
“It isn’t poisonous, but—!”
“Then why?”
“It’s a plant overflowing with demonic energy!”
“So what if it is? Do you die if you eat it?”
“Well… no, but…”
Even as he answered, Scrooge’s face twisted with confusion. He had never once in his life considered dural edible, and rumor had it that merely touching one would bring three years of terrible luck.
“Butler, is this plant called dural?”
“Yes, so please put that dreadful thing down at once! Goodness! If you had only studied properly, you would never have laid a hand on something so wicked!”
His muttered rebuke carried a strangely pointed tone. Chloe narrowed her eyes and shot him a look that said she found him utterly irritating.
Meanwhile, Scrooge had already retreated several brisk steps until he stood a good two meters away, shifting nervously from foot to foot.
“No. I’m taking them with me.”
“P-pardon? You intend to bring dural into the estate?”
From Scrooge’s reaction, one would think she had announced plans to invite a serial killer to live among them.
“Why? Is that not allowed?”
“As I told you earlier, it is filled with demonic energy—!”
“I’ve been touching the stuff and I’m perfectly fine. See? Nothing’s happening. So stop staring and come help me carry some.”
Since she had already started, Chloe crouched down again to harvest a few more.
So that was why they had left all these potatoes—dural—untouched. Everyone had been too terrified of its demonic energy to even come near the field.
She lifted her head and gazed across the endless expanse of potato plants.
With this many, the estate’s food shortage could be solved for quite some time.
But the real problem was the residents’ deep, instinctive fear of dural. Unless she overcame that terror first, they would stare at food right in front of them and still go hungry.
“Y-you want me to carry it?”
Scrooge’s pupils quivered with anxiety. His expression was so pitiful it looked as though she were forcing him to commit some unforgivable sin, yet Chloe remained unmoved.
“Would you rather I carry everything myself? It’s heavy. Stop complaining and come take these.”
She pretended not to notice his distress and tossed one of the dural toward him.
She had expected him to dodge or drop it, but perhaps an order from his lord could not be ignored. Though his face crumpled in disgust, Scrooge caught the tuber with both hands. From a distance, the watching residents gasped in horror.
“Hic!”
He gripped only the vine, stretching his arms out as far as possible to keep the actual potato as far from his body as he could.
The sight was so ridiculous that Chloe burst out laughing several times before continuing her harvest.
Surrounded by the rich soil and the heavy clusters of potatoes, she lost all track of time. By the time the world had gone completely dark, Scrooge practically dragged her away from the hill.
“No matter how much you dislike it, I really must insist on teaching you proper studies. If you had learned even a little, you wouldn’t be doing… such things.”
“Am I imagining it, or did you just skip over a few words that sounded suspiciously like curses?”
As Chloe was pulled from the dural field, Scrooge gazed toward the Black Forest and spoke in a grave voice.
“The Black Forest has grown even darker.”
“Yeah, you were definitely cursing me.”
“I-isn’t that dural?!”
The head chef recoiled in terror the moment he saw Chloe enter the kitchen with an armful of the tubers. The lumpy, dirt-covered potatoes looked as hideous as an orc’s face.
“Yep. Potatoes.”
Chloe answered in a deliberately casual tone while the cook continued to panic.
“What? You mean it’s not dural?”
At her words, the fear and suspicion that had flooded the chef’s face began to melt away. But then—
“It is dural. I’m just calling them potatoes.”
“Hiiik!”
The chef stumbled backward again in renewed horror.
His eyes darted back and forth between the butler and Delma standing behind him. Scrooge, who had followed her in, already looked completely worn out.
When the chef took another step back and bumped into Scrooge, he noticed the butler’s clothes were also covered in dirt and leaped away with a yelp.
“Yes, that’s right. I brought dural here.”
Scrooge’s eyes looked strangely empty as he answered.
The chef and Delma turned back toward Chloe with expressions that demanded an explanation, but none of them could accurately describe what was happening.
The only way forward was to show them that this dural—or whatever they called it—was actually incredibly delicious.
“Just wait. I’ll show you.”
“Show us what, exactly?”
“Something amazingly tasty.”
Given how poor the estate was, the kitchen staff consisted of only the head chef and a single assistant. The assistant didn’t dare flee the kitchen but pressed himself against the far wall, watching nervously.
The chef and his helper usually prepared Chloe’s meals and the occasional dishes for rare visitors.
Thud.
When Chloe dropped one of the large potatoes onto the cutting board, the chef sucked in a sharp breath. The assistant clapped both hands over his mouth.
Bringing something so unclean into the kitchen left them utterly horrified.
Chloe ignored the chef’s whimpering and began peeling the potatoes with practiced skill.
From the way he was writhing, it looked less like she was peeling potatoes and more like she was skinning the chef himself.
“What on earth has gotten into Her Ladyship?”
Delma patted the chef’s back as he twitched like a worm and asked Scrooge the question.
“Sigh… I thought everything was finally going to improve…”
“Shouldn’t we wait and see? She really has changed, after all.”
Delma still clung to a thread of hope.
By then the chef had stopped twitching. He stared blankly around the kitchen and muttered, “It’ll take all day to disinfect the cutting board and knife, won’t it?”
“Then how will we disinfect Her Ladyship?”
That last question came from Delma.
“She must have absorbed a lot of impurity from the demonic energy. Would a bath be enough?”
Delma shook her head vigorously.
“Then perhaps we should take her for a walk in the bright sunlight?”
“She hates walking.”
“Sigh, this is quite the dilemma.”
The three of them huddled together, whispering urgently. Their conversation carried clearly to Chloe’s ears.
If she left them to it, they would probably try to scrub her clean and hang her out to dry like laundry. How fortunate that bleach hadn’t been invented in this era.
Tap, tap, tap!
With a few dazzling strokes of her knife, the round potato had already transformed into neat, elongated sticks.
A spark of curiosity began to creep into the worried eyes of the three onlookers.
In truth, they had expected black demonic energy to rise like smoke the moment the dural was cut. Yet even after peeling and slicing it into hundreds of pieces, not a wisp of dark vapor appeared, nor did they sense any strange aura in the kitchen.
The chef and Delma, who had only been standing at the threshold, cautiously leaned their heads inside. Scrooge, however, remained rooted exactly where he had first stopped.
Chloe was now pouring oil into a pot.
“Hah! That precious oil!”
The chef looked ready to faint.
It was an extremely expensive oil used only when important guests visited or during major events on the estate. In wealthy territories oil was commonplace in cooking, but in a place as destitute as Grace it was a rare luxury. For the Grace estate’s chef, cooking with oil was a special treat he only enjoyed on occasion.
And now their clueless young lord was using it up.
Tears began rolling down the chef’s cheeks.
Delma couldn’t bear to look at him directly. She forced a smile and patted his shoulder consolingly.
It’s all right. Everything will be fine. Time heals all wounds.
Yet even Delma couldn’t feel entirely confident as she watched Chloe’s current actions. She simply found it admirable that their lord was working so diligently with such enthusiasm, so she stayed quiet and observed.
Chloe poured oil into the pot and prepared another batch of potatoes for steaming.
More whispering drifted over, but she no longer had time to pay attention.
Steamed potatoes and potato fries.
Just thinking about them made her mouth water.
Whoosh!
The moment the sliced dural hit the bubbling oil, a delicious sizzling sound filled the kitchen.
The pale tubers quickly turned a beautiful golden brown, releasing a rich, savory aroma that spread everywhere.
Chloe repeatedly scooped out the finished fries, placed them in a basket, and dropped in fresh slices. Who would have thought her part-time job at a hamburger chain would prove useful here?
Life really was full of surprises. With that thought, Chloe poured all her care into making the potato—no, the dural—fries.
A short while later.
“W-what is this?”
“What does it look like? Delicious food.”
“M-made from d-dural?”
“That’s right. Try some. Which would you like to eat first?”
She had piled the table with a plate of perfectly crisp, golden dural fries and another heaped with fluffy steamed dural.
The tubers were so large she had needed to cut the steamed ones into quarters just to fit them on the platter.
The smell was incredible. No wonder the dural had looked so healthy—the saying that every great dish begins with great ingredients was true.
Though the savory aroma made them swallow hard, none of the three reached out first.
Fries were best eaten hot!
“Look at these cowards. Watch closely! I’ll show you!”
“You mustn’t!”
All three lunged forward at once, but Chloe was faster.
The perfectly crisp dural fry had already disappeared into her mouth.
“Gasp!”
When Chloe suddenly covered her mouth and widened her eyes, Delma rushed over in a panic, trying to pry her mouth open.
“My lady! Spit it out! Quickly!”