The Bone Broth of the North
“Ugh.”
A few hours later.
Aiden was certain that this was a form of workplace harassment.
There was no way they actually expected him to eat all of this.
Even when he gave the “GG” sign, signaling he was too full to take another bite, the look of disappointment on their faces forced him to take “just one more spoonful, just one more.” Eventually, he felt as though his throat was packed solid with food.
“I came to check if you were resting well.”
“You’re the mastermind behind this. *Hic!*”
“Pardon?”
Jamie had poked his head in, apparently just as lunch hour had begun.
“If you hadn’t brought that damn meat tower from this morning…!”
At Aiden’s resentful words, Jamie, having witnessed the state of his superior’s bedroom, was rendered speechless. He clamped his mouth shut like a clam.
Even for a glutton like him, it *was* a bit excessive.
The three-meat lunchbox he’d brought. The head chef’s special whole-duck stew. The meat pie that was clearly the work of the head maid.
Beyond that, there was braised veal shoulder, pork and vegetable stir-fry, meatballs in cream sauce, lamb chops served with sauerkraut, and dumplings made of mashed potatoes and fish…
Naturally, there was no way Aiden, who usually ate like a bird, could finish it all. But out of respect for the person who brought it, he had to taste at least a spoonful or two of each.
And the total amount of those “tastes” alone was more than enough to last Aiden—who considered a palm-sized sandwich a full meal—three days’ worth of sustenance.
“Hehe. But doesn’t this just show how much everyone is worried about you, Administrator?”
Still, Jamie felt proud.
This was the true heart of the North.
“If I receive any more ‘worry,’ my stomach is going to burst, not my leg. Ah, take the leftovers and share them. I can’t eat another bite even if I die, but it’s a waste to throw it away.”
Regardless of the “heart of the North,” Aiden simply hated wasting food.
‘Even if things have improved a bit, meat like pork, lamb, and beef is still precious.’
Besides, considering it was food meant for him, they must have picked out the best cuts to prepare it. He couldn’t possibly throw that sincerity away.
“If it were winter, I could have frozen it and eaten it later, but that’s not an option right now. So, please make sure to tell the people who brought it that I’m not ungrateful. No, wait, I’ll write a letter…”
“I’ll take care of it, so don’t go to the trouble.”
“Ugh, but everyone went a bit too far. I know I’m not sick, just injured in the leg, but how can you bring a patient nothing but meat?”
“Because you’re a patient, you have to eat meat.”
“Huh?”
“Pardon?”
They weren’t on the same page.
‘No, shouldn’t you bring a patient soft, non-irritating food that’s easy on the stomach?’
‘No, if a patient wants to get out of bed quickly, they need strength, so eating lots of meat is the right thing to do, isn’t it?’
It was a line of thought that would run parallel forever.
From his past life to the present, Aiden was the type of person who chose to starve when sick. On the other hand, Northerners were born with DNA that dictated that being sick was a result of not eating enough, so they felt compelled to shove something into a patient’s mouth.
Even though Aiden had learned basic life sciences despite being a liberal arts major, it was hard to argue that 21st-century Earth’s scientific common sense was absolute in a world where cats could suddenly transform into humans.
Later, when Aiden quietly caught some of the Lord’s castle workers and asked, “Is it really a cultural norm to feed meat to sick people?”, their response was, “Doesn’t that help them get better?” Seeing that, he realized it wasn’t meant as harassment.
…Though perhaps it was just a Northern thing.
“Even so, I absolutely cannot keep eating like this. Please tell the kitchen for me.”
“Ah, I can’t do that.”
“Oh, I see. Tha— wait, what?”
“If I told them that, the kitchen staff would catch me alive and throw me into a pot of boiling water. They’d say I’m spreading nonsense instead of thinking about how to feed the patient well.”
“……”
“The kitchen staff is already so worried because you eat like a bird. They say that if a storm hits this winter, you’ll definitely be blown away by the blizzard, and they glare at me with hatchets in their eyes whenever they see me, blaming the two adjutants for not serving you properly. How could I possibly tell them that? Oh, I won’t—no, I *can’t*!”
Aiden felt a sense of déjà vu.
So, it was…
‘Grandmother…?’
He remembered his grandmother, who would burn with the desire to “fatten him up,” saying, “My poor puppy, oh my! Is work so hard that my baby is nothing but bones? Eat this, okay? Eat that too. Want more? These tangerines are sweet. Should I peel an apple for you? Have some red bean bread. No, should Grandma boil you a bowl of red bean porridge?”
He chuckled.
A smile escaped him before he knew it.
Aiden suddenly felt his body relax.
‘Is this… home?’
He had to admit it now.
Honestly, he hadn’t fully accepted this new name, face, and world as his reality until now.
That didn’t mean he was negligent in his work or that his interactions with others were all a facade.
It was just that, until now, Aiden had been living like a gamer inside a tycoon or role-playing game, keeping one step back from the world and observing everything as if from a distance.
The food piled high on the table caught his eye.
It was all affection and concern for him.
It wasn’t a bribe offered to curry favor with a high-ranking superior; it was the same kind of love grandmothers showed when they couldn’t bear to see their grandchildren go hungry.
“…I want some bone broth.”
“Pardon? Bone broth?”
“If you put beef bones that have been soaked in cold water to remove the blood into plain water and boil them for several hours, you get a milky, rich broth. I want to eat that.”
“Ah, yes! Understood! I’ll tell the kitchen right away!”
Jamie’s face brightened in an instant.
Looking back, this was the first time his superior had asked for something for his own sake.
His chest felt ticklish.
‘Is it because I haven’t been doing chest exercises lately?’
Jamie attributed the ticklish sensation to a lack of exercise.
“It’s a bit… plain, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
The next day.
People murmured to one another as they looked at the menu in the Lord’s castle cafeteria.
Unlike usual, today’s lunch was served individually.
They had expected some kind of special dish, but all they were given was a bowl containing thin noodles and—
“Alright, next person!”
“……?”
—nothing but white broth.
It was a truly white broth with absolutely nothing in it. When they sat down with a sense of dejection, there was one type of vegetable pickle on the table, but even that was just some greens and radish slices floating in the whitish broth.
Still, since they usually had black bread and at least two vegetable side dishes, quite a few people felt today’s meal was even more meager.
“The kitchen must have been in a rush today.”
“Indeed. Look at this soup. It looks like they served it while it was still boiling without even letting it cool down.”
“But is this even soup? There’s nothing in it.”
The servants stirred it with their spoons, only to find nothing but pale flour noodles. They couldn’t help but wish there were at least a few pieces of potato.
“Come on now. Everyone’s complaining about the side dishes just because life has gotten a little better!”
At that moment, an old veteran soldier spoke up and was the first to pick up his spoon.
He added, “You don’t even know how to be grateful when you’re being fed for free.”
At those words, the necks of the people who had been complaining unnecessarily shrank back like turtles.
Thinking about it, he was right.
‘Since when did we live eating three meals a day?’
‘It’s all thanks to the Lord.’
‘The Administrator is lying down injured, after all… The kitchen staff must have been out of their minds.’
Just as they were about to take a spoonful of the thin, watery flour stew (as they thought it was),
*Slurrrrrp!*
A slightly unrefined sound echoed from somewhere.
But the sound, which stimulated something primal, made everyone turn their heads.
The focus of their gaze was the veteran soldier who had told them not to complain.
Without fear, he had lifted the bowl of boiling, watery stew and drank it down, then let out a long sigh that seemed to rise from his very core: *“Huuu…”*
Then, without much thought, he picked up a piece of the pale radish from his bowl and ate it.
*Crunch.*
“Ahhh!”
A sound of pure satisfaction escaped him before he could stop it.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
*Slurp.*
*Slurp!*
From all sides, people began drinking the broth by the bowlful.
There was no great commotion, but—
“Hmm! The reaction is good.”
The head chef, who had come out of the kitchen to observe, left a short review.
Seeing everyone buried in their bowls, devouring the meal, was proof enough that this was a menu that touched the hearts of these Northern bumpkins.
“I never imagined the Administrator would have such a talent for cooking.”
“Indeed, brother. Hehe.”
Jamie and Brikal, who called each other brothers in private, swallowed their saliva in unison.
As everyone had likely guessed by now, today’s lunch menu was *sagol-guk* (bone broth) and *dongchimi* (radish water kimchi).
It was a menu Aiden had suggested, thinking it would be better than being forced to eat meat while he was stuck in bed, and it was a nostalgic dish that reminded him of his mother.
The pot of *gomtang* (beef bone soup) she would boil from dawn whenever he caught even a slight cold.
The combination of milky broth, white rice, and bright red cabbage kimchi.
In this world, there was no culture of boiling livestock bones for so long to create a milky broth. Occasionally, skilled chefs would use stock made from meat and bones as a base for stews or sauces, but the method of skimming off the fat and simmering the broth for hours was quite unfamiliar to them.
That was why the kitchen staff had been skeptical when they first received the recipe Aiden had dictated.
- Are you saying that if we keep boiling this, the broth will turn into milk?
- Sigh, as much as I respect the Administrator’s words, that’s a bit…
- Huh? Wait? Look at this! It’s really turning milky!
And thus, the North’s first *sagol gomtang* was completed.
Aiden had finished a bowl with a satisfied face, and the kitchen staff shared the rest with the adjutants.
They had been skeptical at first, but—
‘It’s become a meat broth richer than milk.’
‘No, it’s a taste much deeper than any meat stock!’
‘Doesn’t drinking it piping hot without letting it cool down suit the Northern winter?’
They couldn’t believe such a thick, soul-warming broth existed.
They had sweated profusely, their pores seemingly bursting open, yet they couldn’t stop and finished a bowl in an instant.
They had simply cleaned the scraps of bone that were usually considered useless and thrown away like trash, then boiled them in plain water—how was this possible?
Looking down at their empty bowls, everyone thought the same thing.
This was truly a dish worthy of becoming a staple of the North.
The scraps of bone that everyone thought were useless and ignored were like themselves, living in the barren North, and this broth, which had been carefully boiled to feed everyone, was their future with the Administrator.
When Aiden heard that story later, he was horrified by their interpretation.
