This Time, It's Different
The second dish. This time, it would be different.
After that first attempt—shocking, and frankly dire—I decided to throw out every last scrap of food I had left.
"Unit 1, take all of this and dump it somewhere."
"......"
Unit 1 looked at me with a stare that plainly said, well, of course that's how your little projects end, then gathered up the pot of scraps and vanished.
Had she been stockpiling complaints about me lately?
...Now that I thought about it, she had every reason to.
Fine. I'd admit it. Pizza and fried chicken were simply too advanced for my level. But it wasn't that I had no talent for cooking at all. I also hadn't had proper ingredients. If I could easily have gotten large, handsome fruit and vegetables, finely milled flour and spices, and a plump, well-butchered chicken with plenty of meat on it, the result would surely have tasted far better than this. That other world at least had a marvel called MSG. I had nothing, so of course I'd failed.
And so, from that day on, I resolved to abandon entirely the notion of cooking anything to eat.
Evelyn had praised me anyway, saying the idea itself seemed good—but even I could tell she was forcing the compliment. Ha. So this was what they meant when they said knowledge was a curse. The flavors were right there in my head, and this world had no way to make them real.
Enough. I was done cooking. I could live without food anyway, which meant there was no reason to put myself through something this annoying and inconvenient. We do it all just so we can eat and live—that saying, at least, no longer applied to me. Besides, the undead were already dead. I couldn't live by eating, and I couldn't eat in order to live.
Having finished that neat little chain of self-justification, I turned my head and looked at the leftover tomatoes and herbs.
Right. I should have told Unit 1 to throw those out too. They hadn't gone into my horrific cooking, so they weren't garbage yet. But if I never meant to cook again, they might as well have been. Unlike spices, things like that were hard to store and spoiled quickly, so I couldn't give them back to Evelyn either.
I considered waiting for Unit 1 to return, then remembered that strange look she'd given me and felt a prick of guilt. I'd just throw them out myself. There weren't many of them anyway...
I picked up the remaining herbs and tomatoes and headed for the garden. Going any farther was too much trouble, and... honestly, burying them in the garden seemed perfectly fine.
When I stepped into the garden—
"Oh, right. You were here."
Only then did I remember Unit 3 lived in the garden, and I hid the produce behind my back. But Unit 3 didn't recoil at the sight of the tomatoes and herbs. It looked interested.
What? Were fruit and leaves all right? Maybe because, to a plant, fruit and leaves were parts that fell away anyway? Or maybe, to a tree spirit, fruit and leaves were basically just hair. So long as it didn't throw a fit at the sight of them, I had no complaints.
"Unit 3, then you take care of these however you like."
I handed over every leftover ingredient at once and went back inside, without the slightest idea of what Unit 3 was about to do...
The next morning, I stopped by the well for water to give Unit 3, same as always, and stepped into the garden.
"Unit 3, I'm he—"
I froze.
What was all this? This was our mansion's garden, wasn't it?
Thinking I might have the wrong place, I rubbed my eyes and looked around again. But everywhere I looked, it was our garden. And yet the view before me was a neatly laid-out farm. On soil turned rich and brown, well-grown tomatoes and herbs stood in orderly rows—more than enough to make me deny reality.
"Wh-what is all this?"
What could possibly have happened overnight?
Too shocked even to pick up the watering can I'd dropped, I walked toward the tomatoes growing in the garden. Right. The tomatoes. Why did they look like that?
The tomatoes I remembered from this world were lumpy and small, wrapped in thin skin, with hardly any juice to them. These matched, in shape and in form, the tomatoes I'd known in my past life. Plump flesh, packed solid inside. Each one the size of my palm, with a living spring and weight to it. They weren't fully ripe—most of the skin was still green—but the red was creeping over them so fast that I could see it happening if I watched for even a moment.
"What in the world...?"
While I stood there dumbfounded, I caught sight of Unit 3. It looked oddly proud. A little worn out, too...
...No way.
"Did you do this, Unit 3?"
The moment I asked, Unit 3 shook its branches as if it had been waiting. A clear yes.
"That's impossible!"
How had it even managed this? Fine—a tree spirit could grow tomatoes. But the tomatoes I remembered were the product of modern breeding across generations. And I had never once described that kind of tomato to it.
"Can you read my thoughts, too?"
Rustle, rustle...
The branches swayed up and down, like a nod. So Unit 3 could read my mind, and even breed plants into exactly what I wanted?
Good lord. This was enormous! I'd never dreamed it was hiding an ability like this!
"Then can you make the plants I'm thinking of right now?"
When I asked, excited, Unit 3 shook its branches with a strangely deflated air.
A soft, dragging rustle...
Judging by the reaction, that was a no. Still—there had to be some way, didn't there?
That noon, I was waiting for someone again.
Not for Evelyn, who had been coming by nearly every day lately. Starting today, she wouldn't be coming for a few days; she had to step up the patrols around the area. Lately, the wild animals had been acting strange, and she needed to find out whether that strange activity had anything to do with my coming to this mansion, or whether it was some separate incident.
Not that she'd understand if I told her. Still, I'd prefer it had nothing to do with me.
Anyway—if not Evelyn, who was I waiting for? The guest of honor was...
Creak, crackle... creak, crackle...
Unit 3. It was here.
The twist of a massive trunk, the weight of those footsteps, the leaves shivering from the impact—I could have heard that from a hundred meters away, half asleep, and still known it was Unit 3. I leaned straight out the window. Unit 3 stretched a long branch toward me and showed me what it had brought.
"Is this them?"
Mushrooms of every kind, leaves, and fruit... What Unit 3 was telling me was that these were the plants with the flavors I wanted. Come to think of it, I'd heard somewhere that mushrooms weren't plants. So its searching wasn't limited to plants after all.
As a test, I picked from the basket caught on its branch the fruit that looked safest to eat raw, and put it in my mouth. And then—
"Mm! That's exactly it!"
Sweet-and-spicy seasoning. A little more sour than I remembered, but that was nothing a bit of adjustment couldn't fix. Confidence rising, I picked up a dark leaf and chewed. A sharp bite, and a strange aroma... It called to mind cola with the sweetness taken out. Steep this as a tea and add some sugar, and I might actually be able to make cola!
Then this mushroom, too? I tore off a small piece and put it in my mouth—and sure enough, the taste and texture were close to brined chicken.
"Perfect..."
With ingredients like these, maybe I could hope again to taste the foods I'd given up on!
After several days of patrol, Evelyn was heading for the mansion when a strange sense of wrongness came over her.
"The mansion's quiet today."
The mansion was always a quiet place. But today's quiet was different. Ira, who was usually leaning at a window, watching the view outside, was nowhere to be seen. Had something happened? Outside, aside from Unit 3's footprints, there was no sign anyone had come or gone.
Puzzled, Evelyn pushed through the front gate—its broken places roughly patched with wooden boards—and went inside.
Creeeak...
Quiet, as expected. No clacking from Unit 1, and no sign of the dust spirit that usually drifted through the halls with its little whine. Where had everyone gone?
She was searching the mansion for the missing ones when she felt a presence from the garden.
Rustle.
"Ira? Are you in there?"
No answer came back. Well, that wasn't a particularly strange result. Ira's voice was never very loud, and except when she screamed in a panic, she spoke almost in a whisper—so hearing nothing was perfectly normal. Evelyn turned her steps toward the garden anyway. If anyone was here, that was where they would be.
"...Huh?"
Until a few days ago, this garden had been nothing but weeds, aside from the tree spirit, Unit 3. But now... Soil, well turned. Crops planted in even rows. Tomatoes glittering in the sunlight. Herbs giving off a faint fragrance. And in the middle of it all, the enormous tree spirit stood with its branches spread wide, as if showing off a treasure.
"This is..."
Could these be the tomatoes I brought? And these—the herbs? Did the tree spirit and Ira grow them?
Looking at the large, appetizing fruit, Evelyn swallowed without meaning to. And Unit 3, seeing that...
Tap.
At the tree spirit's gesture, offering a ripe tomato, Evelyn nodded her thanks and took it. She had heard old tales that a tree spirit's power included growing plants, but seeing it with her own eyes was startling all over again. To raise fruit this lush in only a few days...
A scene overflowing with life, green and bright. Of course, looked at closely, it didn't resemble the garden in her memory at all. Back then the mood had been ornamental plants, neatly kept, rather than fruit like this. But maybe a place cultivated like farmland, full of all kinds of growing things, wasn't so bad either.
And...
"It's delicious..."
That tomato was the best she had ever tasted in her life.
At that moment—
"Evelyn! You're here!"
Ira came looking for her in a voice that was, unusually, brimming with excitement.
"Did you try that tomato? Well? It's really good, right?"
"Y-yeah. It is. It really is good."
"Right?!"
Did she feel some sense of accomplishment from someone else eating a tomato she'd grown? Today's Ira was nothing like usual—her voice was loud, and she looked full of confidence. Evelyn was briefly thrown, then decided to smile and accept it. A sudden change, but not a bad one.
And Ira went on.
"It really was the ingredients. The food I made this time is actually delicious."
"Oh? You cooked again?"
"Yes! Come on, this way!"
Pulled along by Ira's hand into the kitchen, Evelyn found something bizarre laid out before her. Fried food drenched in red sauce, a black liquid that looked as if it were boiling, and something like radish cut into squares...
What... is this?
"Um, Ira? What exactly is all this...?"
"Seasoned fried chicken, chicken radish, and cola!"
Mmm. Chicken radish? Cola? I have no idea. And didn't she say chicken was a fried bird...? This... isn't chicken. And this bizarre drink... What on earth did the Elysia family used to eat...?
Even so, the smell was wonderful. It felt completely different from the last failure. Still, with Ira watching her so expectantly, refusing would have been difficult. But if Ira was putting it forward this confidently, the taste had to be good... right?
Thinking that, Evelyn carefully took a small piece from the plate of red fried food and put it in her mouth. And then—
It's delicious!
The food was every bit as good as Ira had promised. A glaze that was faintly spicy, sour, and sweet; beyond the crisp fry, a texture like biting into meat. Pressed between the teeth, it tore along the grain with a tenderness no different from meat a master chef had aged for a long time and cooked until it was soft. In that festival of flavors, Evelyn couldn't get a word out for a while.
"Well? It's really good, right?"
She couldn't answer Ira's request for a review, either. Not as a figure of speech—her body had actually locked rigid. Because the mushroom in the food Ira had cooked was a poisonous mushroom carrying a powerful paralytic toxin.
"Say something. Is it that good?"
Body gone stiff, Evelyn rolled only her eyes toward Ira and worked her paralyzed mouth.
"I... ra... you..."
"Huh? Huh? Wh-what's wrong?"
Had she realized, too late, that something about the reaction was strange? Only then did Ira panic, utterly at a loss. Seeing that, this wasn't a deliberate attempt to poison her. That, at least, was a relief. Otherwise the sense of betrayal would have been staggering.
Ira must have tasted it while cooking, to serve it so confidently—so had she not noticed anything wrong...? Ah. Maybe, because Ira was undead, the poison simply hadn't worked on her.
And with that, Evelyn's vision cut out.