Mother's Kimchi Stew?!
Upon hearing the details of the first-stage trial, Jeong-Hoon gazed out the window at a distant mountain.
“Hey, Baek Chef. Is that for real right now?”
“I have no intention of grading you harshly.”
“How about something a bit easier? Like making Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, for example.”
Butler Ju felt a sharp wave of anxiety at the sight of Jeong-Hoon staring off at the far-off peaks as he spoke, yet because this was a trial he held his tongue and simply watched.
“If you know how to make Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, then kimchi stew should be easy, no?”
“Well, yeah, that part’s true. Kimchi stew is easy. But the word stuck in front of it is the problem.”
Stage One Trial: Make Mother’s kimchi stew.
The moment he heard those words, Jeong-Hoon asked again and again. It was not that he doubted the trial was genuine; his expression was that of a man about to commit a taboo.
Yet when Baek Si-Hwan drove the point home with absolute certainty, Jeong-Hoon simply kept staring at the distant mountain.
“Does it weigh on you?”
Jeong-Hoon shook his head at the question and began examining the ingredients laid out for him.
On the counter sat ordinary store-bought kimchi—not the kind Flamma fermented and shipped to their chain restaurants—along with ingredients anyone could pick up at a neighborhood supermarket.
Jeong-Hoon’s three-person household had never done kimjang, and they had never thrown fancy ingredients into their kimchi stew.
These were exactly the sort of things his parents had used while they were still alive.
“Well, it’s not about making delicious kimchi stew. I just need to think of it as a trial to see whether I, as a person, still remember the taste of my memories, right?”
“Correct. How insightful of you.”
“Then I have a condition.”
“A condition, you say?”
“No matter what dish comes out, Baek Chef and the vassals of Flamma have to eat every last bit without leaving any behind.”
There was pride in the words—pride that refused to create food destined for the trash even if he lacked confidence in the kitchen. Si-Hwan bowed his head with the smooth grace of a noble and answered.
“Eating food prepared by the Gaju himself is a great honor for a vassal. Why would we leave any?”
The courtesy was flawless, yet the unspoken premise that Jeong-Hoon could not cook sat beneath every syllable. Butler Ju considered offering a word of caution, then held it back.
It was not nagging. He was simply and sincerely worried that the junior he cherished might end up hurting himself.
The moment Jeong-Hoon stepped up to cook and took hold of the kitchen knife, Si-Hwan let out a quiet sound of admiration.
It was not the grip of a clumsy beginner; the way he held the blade showed he had cooked a fair amount.
“It seems the Gaju was burdened by the idea of a chef like me eating the food he prepared.”
“Is that so? We’ll see about that.”
Watching Si-Hwan lift one corner of his mouth in a leisurely smile, Butler Ju kept hunting for the thing that still felt wrong.
Cooking was certainly a field in which Jeong-Hoon would lack confidence, yet the only trial he had ever shown real aversion to was the one at Myeongil Hospital.
And that had been because he felt the weight of conscience at testing people with their lives on the line.
This time, however, the rejection toward cooking burned far more fiercely.
Just why?
“Ah, right. Mom didn’t hold it like this.”
Before the thought could fully form, Jeong-Hoon spun the handle of the knife he had gripped properly for cooking, reversing it so the blade pointed downward.
In dagger terms it was a reverse grip.
Holding it so the edge faced outward rather than inward, Jeong-Hoon stabbed the kimchi and, leaning his hand forward, began to slice.
“What kind of method is that? Are you turning the kitchen knife into a guillotine or something?”
“……Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Having never heard how Jeong-Hoon’s mother used to cook, Butler Ju merely shrugged.
“Well, peculiar kitchen-knife habits turn up now and then. I’ll take it as one of those.”
The technique was somehow unsettling, yet Si-Hwan kept his composure and smiled.
But when Jeong-Hoon began filling a massive pot with water without even stir-frying the kimchi first, Si-Hwan’s brows drew together.
“Putting water in right after slicing the kimchi……”
Before the doubt could fully leave Si-Hwan’s mouth, Jeong-Hoon dumped every ingredient—including the kimchi—into the huge pot already brimming with water.
A whole unsliced block of tofu, a fistful of minced garlic, and meat that turned out to be pork belly.
On top of that he dumped in a generous amount of MSG and sand lance fish sauce, then stirred the pot with a giant ladle, smashing the intact tofu to pieces.
“Um, Gaju, the trial isn’t about creating a new dish—it’s Mother’s kimchi stew?”
“I know. That’s why I’m doing it this way.”
Once the tofu was thoroughly destroyed, Jeong-Hoon pulled out chili powder and gochujang, scooped in a heaping spoonful of each, and stirred again.
Then he clapped the lid on, cranked the heat to maximum, sat down, and took out his phone.
“So that is the Gaju’s ‘Mother’s kimchi stew’?”
“Yes, what about it? It might look like I’m playing around with food, but this is correct.”
At Jeong-Hoon’s words Si-Hwan’s eyes sharpened as if he were angry.
“According to our investigation, the Gaju’s mother worked at a restaurant until she Awakened.”
“Yes—washing dishes.”
Si-Hwan had believed he had thoroughly researched Jeong-Hoon’s “Mother’s kimchi stew” for the trial.
He had visited the restaurant where Jeong-Hoon’s mother once worked multiple times.
Through careful inquiries he had even confirmed that the taste had not changed for years.
Yet Jeong-Hoon’s single remark that she had only done the dishes turned the entire investigation into wasted effort.
“I feel bad saying this about Mom, but our mom was an absolute disaster at cooking. She was the type who thought instant rice was just packaged soaked grains, and that sticking it in the microwave meant it was cooked.”
And she was the type who would microwave that instant rice and proudly declare she knew how to make rice.
“So that was the source of the dissonance.”
Butler Ju, who had been turning over the strange unease of Jeong-Hoon constantly staring at the distant mountain and avoiding the trial, finally understood the truth and laughed.
For Jeong-Hoon, who had lived a hard life, food was both important and precious.
Yet boiling Mother’s kimchi stew produced something other people could barely force down.
As Jeong-Hoon himself had said, it felt like playing around with food—so he had tried to dodge it.
“So about that—it’ll be done in thirty minutes like this, you know? I told you clearly: you can’t leave any leftovers?”
“W-well…… Understood. But why did you cook it in such a huge pot?”
Having started to deny something and then simply accepted it, Si-Hwan finally asked the question that remained.
He understood the reluctance, but the mountain-like quantity still made no sense.
“You said it was Mother’s kimchi stew, right? If our mom had ever controlled portions or seasoning, would I have picked up a kitchen knife from the age of ten?”
Having laid bare that shocking childhood, Jeong-Hoon looked over the vassals of Flamma with a dark smile.
The vassals of Flamma could not refuse the Gaju’s order to leave nothing behind.
They had agreed to the condition from the start, and besides, this was the Gaju’s “Mother’s” kimchi stew.
Throwing it away because it tasted bad would be the same as vassals insulting the Gaju’s mother.
The result was the completely soul-drained faces of Flamma’s vassals.
“So you could’ve just compromised with something like a nostalgic kimchi stew, you know?”
Watching the Flamma vassals repeatedly fight the urge to fling their spoons while eating Mother’s kimchi stew, Jeong-Hoon felt thoroughly displeased.
Even if he had recreated it exactly, it was still the taste Mom used to make for him. And that taste was now being criticized in the most obvious, merciless way.
Of course he could not feel good about it.
On top of that came the looks in the Flamma vassals’ eyes.
At those eyes that openly doubted his cooking skill, Jeong-Hoon used the counter again and boiled yet another kimchi stew.
“Gaju…… What is this?”
“Not Mom’s taste—more like our family’s taste of memories, I suppose.”
Kimchi stew bubbled merrily in a stone pot.
The spicy, sharp aroma of kimchi stabbed the nose and stimulated senses that had just been thoroughly abused.
Ramen noodles danced with the kimchi in the heat of the pot.
“Our mom’s kimchi stew was so terrible that the first food I ever made was kimchi stew. That’s why, whenever my parents came back from conquering a dungeon, they asked me to boil kimchi stew for them.”
And this was the kimchi stew that recreated the taste he had once made for his parents.
A special element no other family possessed—something that belonged only to Jeong-Hoon’s household.
The taste of memory: parents returning from a dungeon, easing their fatigue with a glass of soju and the kimchi stew their son had boiled.
“This trial isn’t about my cooking skills. It’s about judging through cooking whether I value family and memories, right?”
With the kimchi stew he had not made in a long time, Jeong-Hoon briefly closed his eyes and sank into memory.
“Well, thanks to this I got to enjoy those memories again after a long time. But personally I have some regret that the trial could have considered my special circumstances better.”
“Indeed. As the one in charge of the trial, failing to keep those special circumstances in mind is my failure.”
While speaking, Si-Hwan took a spoonful of the newly boiled kimchi stew and was startled.
Not because it tasted bad.
The flavor was so outstanding that comparing it to the previous kimchi stew would have been an insult.
“Gaju, this is extremely delicious.”
“It’s for my personal honor. I’m confident in this dish, at least.”
Whether the claim of holding a kitchen knife from age ten and taking responsibility for the family’s meals was no lie, Jeong-Hoon’s kimchi stew was excellent.
“Gaju, if it wouldn’t be too forward, may I try some as well?”
Baek Si-Hwan, the vassal in charge of Flamma, was a man who fully embodied Flamma’s dual nature.
The family’s greatest assassin, and a chef.
Especially as a chef, his pride ran extremely high.
When a man like Si-Hwan was moved, Butler Ju’s curiosity about the taste was stirred as well.
“Of course. I boiled a whole lot, after all.”
Nodding, Jeong-Hoon naturally offered another stone pot he had just finished to Butler Ju.
“Then I’ll help myself.”
Lifting a spoon with careful manners and tasting the stew, Butler Ju smiled warmly.
Staring hard at that expression, Jeong-Hoon scratched his head.
“This is truly excellent. But is something the matter?”
“No—I just realized this is the first time Butler Ju has eaten something in front of me.”
“That’s because I always handle my meals in places the Gaju doesn’t see. But I don’t eat carelessly, so you needn’t worry.”
“Really? Even though you’re always stuck to me whenever I’m awake?”
He had said not to worry, yet worry lingered. Even an SSS-class Awakened could not go without eating anything.
Considering that Butler Ju spent almost the entire day attached to Jeong-Hoon’s side, there was simply no time left for meals.
Even while Jeong-Hoon ate, the man only stood nearby watching for cues or checking manners—never properly sitting down to a meal himself.
“Pizza, hamburgers, and 1.5 liters of cola are the elixirs of longevity.”
“That’s an extremely worrying statement. You’re saying you make do with fast food.”
Concerned now about the eating habits of the head of the 12 Vassals and chief butler, Jeong-Hoon decided he would have to come up with some plan to improve Butler Ju’s diet.
And Si-Hwan, finally emerging from the rapture of the properly made kimchi stew Jeong-Hoon had prepared, declared that he had passed the first-stage trial.