Aged to Perfection
He would take the steak.
There was some left over from the last university festival.
This is the real thing, if I'm being honest.
The flavor of dry-aged meat scales with the time spent aging. By that measure, what he had done before was unfinished work. The real thing required forty days or more. Running the dates, that much time had already passed.
"You were aging it yourself…"
"Yeah."
"Isn't that really hard?"
"Once you know the tricks, it's not that difficult."
Of course it wasn't easy. You had to hold a low temperature of two to three degrees Celsius and manage the humidity on top of that.
But those are problems that only show up when you're mass-producing.
For the festival he had borrowed a big commercial fridge from a regular restaurant. Ordinarily he just stuck the meat in his own refrigerator. The temperature happened to sit right in that range. All he had to do was pull it out now and then and blast it with a fan to drive off moisture and any bad bacteria.
Slice.
The downside was the terrible yield. Aging time and edible volume moved in inverse proportion. Age it forty days and you threw away forty percent. What remained concentrated the flavor that much deeper. The red meat sat in beautiful balance with the white marbling.
"Want to try a piece raw?"
"Is that okay? Let me see… Oh! It tastes like cheese!"
"Looks like it came out right, luckily."
"?"
When you made it at home, failures happened. After all, rot and aging were separated by a single sheet of paper.
When you're doing it this half-assed, of course you blow a batch now and then.
In a restaurant that was unforgivable. Customer complaints were one thing; the margins took a hit. Failures had to be thrown out. For home eating you could ignore the small stuff and still make it work.
"It'll taste even better cooked, right?"
"Obviously."
"Better than last time."
"Do I even need to say it?"
Sora swallowed hard. Dairy cows were animals that had given birth many times. Taste and aroma accumulated with every year they lived. Eaten plain, the meat was tough and bland. Forty days of dry-aging was what finally let its true value show.
Like a dense, full-bodied milf in her forties reincarnated as a fresh twenty-year-old—youth and sex appeal in the same body.
A perfectly apt comparison. But this sensitive little thing might take offense. He wasn't about to ruin a good atmosphere over it.
Sizzle…!
He seared it in a pan. High heat, just enough to scorch the surface.
"I know this!"
"Know what?"
"You're locking in the juices, right?"
"What an adorably naive idea."
"?"
Sealing the juices. The Maillard reaction. Both were trends invented to make steak easy for civilians to understand.
The era changed, so the rank just went up one notch.
A real specialist started from a different method of cooking. First you browned the surface until it took on color.
Crunch. Crunch.
Then you wrapped it in aluminum foil and let it rest. Resting. In truth it was nothing more than one step in the process of cooking meat.
"You're cooking it again?"
"Yeah."
"That sounds insanely tedious…"
"That's how it is."
While it rested, the meat's aroma slowly bloomed. He raised it once more.
Sizzle…!
Sear the surface, rest, repeat. Only then did dry-aged meat hit one hundred percent of its potential.
Fucking annoying as hell.
And that was with a first-rate chef putting in the work. The numbers simply never added up. That was why people went to sous vide or confit. But a real specialist seared from the start.
"Can you eat medium rare?"
"I love it when the blood drips!"
"I used to like it that way too."
"?"
The heat had carried clean through to the center. There was a reason you took the time to cook it properly.
Like a woman you've been caressing for a long time—the meat heats up.
His mouth itched with the line. He barely held it back and opened the cutting ceremony on the perfectly cooked steak.
Slice.
A beautiful cross-section. Sous vide or confit as a first cook gave you an even interior. Strength and weakness in one. Uniform meant monotonous. Only a properly seared steak revealed a three-tier face this appetizing.
A crisp seared surface. Just beneath it, a moist well-done layer. At the deepest point it looked almost raw. But it wasn't. The fat had melted, so you could enjoy the pure taste of the meat itself, full and clean. Three different horses playing a trio.
Time to feel the payoff of cooking the steak himself.
"Whoa…"
"Hold on."
"Can't I just have one bite?"
"You eat that and you're dating me."
"You really love spouting nonsense, don't you."
He meant Sora. He was really making an ass of himself trying to land one woman.
She's worth this much effort.
Women were the same as meat. How you aged them changed the flavor completely. High-grade. The more experience a woman had, the deeper the taste and the richer the finish.
"Oppa needs a little time to get things ready."
"Do you? That's fine."
"Go put this on in the bathroom and come back."
"…Excuse me??"
Sora's eyebrows shot up. Fair enough—it was a bit of a stretch as requests went. So he pressed hard. He called it his lifelong wish, and she pouted but reluctantly went along with it.
Push her and she's surprisingly soft.
Sora disappeared. He finished setting the table. If you had high-end steak, you needed a drink to match.
Click—
Glug, glug, glug~
He decanted the liquor and arranged it with the steak in a handsome spread.
"This is embarrassing."
"You look pretty. Why?"
"The chest is cut out and the skirt's short and it's a little…"
"Think of it as a restaurant with a dress code."
"I—is that so?"
Then Sora appeared. She was more provocatively sexy than anything he had pictured in his head.
She'd kill it as a cam girl, I'm telling you.
It was a form-fitting dress. Thin, clinging fabric that left nothing of her figure to the imagination. It put her chest on full display. The kind of outfit that made your hands itch to slip inside.
"Sit here."
"Huh? Not across from you?"
"Leaning against the bed's more comfortable."
"Next to you is a little much…"
She would manage somehow. A makeshift table. He had put together a spread that looked reasonably impressive. She would be looking forward to the steak. He had prepared one more special item as well.
"That's a weird barley-tea bottle."
"…It's liquor."
"Liquor? What kind?"
"I put it in a bottle like this so you'd have to guess."
A decanter. In movies and dramas, chaebols always drank their whiskey out of these.
You try to see what it is and there's never a label, right?
A plain, unmarked surface. There was a reason for that.
Glug~
He poured into a stemmed glass—a tulip shape that gathered the whiskey's aroma.
"How's the nose?"
"Strong."
"…"
"And wood?"
Proof it was old liquor. Go further back, into the modern era, and—
There was a power struggle between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.
Until not long before, they had been commoners. Watching them swagger just because they had made a little money was unbearable. So the old money humiliated them by every method available. One of those methods was this very decanter.
"That oak-cask note is deep. Ballantine's Thirty Year."
"Isn't that a really expensive whiskey?"
"With a major label like this, you're supposed to name it on the first sip."
"?"
Guess the liquor. Guess wrong and you got needled—that kind of social culture had existed. It had come down all the way to the present. The same treatment the aristocracy once dealt the commoners, now dealt out to commoners again.
If you want to become a man of means—
You had to know how rich people behaved. You needed it to deal with people who had money.
"It seems like it'll be too strong."
"That's why you just hold a little on your tongue."
"Mm!"
"Then roll it slowly around your mouth."
Dilute it with saliva. As the temperature rose, the whiskey's taste and aroma came alive.
Don't inhale.
A common mistake for people drinking high proof for the first time. He walked her through it one step at a time so she wouldn't make it.
Gulp.
It slid down that deer-like throat. Only then did Sora let out her breath, her face flushed with a dazed heat.
Ballantine's Thirty Year. It wasn't expensive for nothing. Taste and aroma scaled with the price and left a long finish.
"How is it?"
"I think it's good."
"Good, right? Oppa's stuff is good, right?"
"Get your hand off my shoulder."
The arm he had draped around her so naturally. She pinched the back of his hand and flung it off.
I seriously want to scoop her up and carry her off.
He wanted to wrap her up and go straight for the bed. The outfit was so provocative it was driving him insane. He had to hold back. For the bigger picture, for now, he would play the buffalo.
"All right—try the steak. It should be at the right temperature."
"Should I? Let's see."
"How is it?"
"Sooo good!"
She talked with her mouth full, manners gone. The face that said she genuinely meant it was cute.
Gulp.
His own appetite woke up. He brought a piece of steak to his mouth and demonstrated.
"Chew it with the whiskey like this and it tastes even better."
"Really?"
"Eating it with food, you don't even feel the burn."
It also got you drunk faster. And the flavor really did amplify—that part was true.
Aged meat. Aged whiskey. They met in the mouth and made a harmony.
Chew. Chew.
She was enjoying it thoroughly. It was a nothing studio apartment, but the food at least he had managed to put together decently.
"Good?"
"Yes! You eat too, sunbae."
"Then maybe it's time oppa had a little fun of his own."
One hand held the glass. The other settled on something considerably fuller. Sora froze, not knowing what to do. She tried to peel him off the way she had before, but this time he didn't move.
The grip is different.
His hand rested on her chest. Even over the clothes, the excellent shape and solid weight came through.
"Sunbae, this is really crossing the line—"
"You said I could touch last time."
"?!!"
"You're not going to go back on your word, are you?"
There had been a promise. Just once, he could touch. But as for when—
I never said when or where.
She whipped her head away and didn't answer. But she couldn't quite bring herself to say no, either. Pride. She had always been a stubborn one. He would teach her just how dangerous pride could be for an investor.