Lunch Rush at the War-Torn Cafe
The bell rang out with a clear ding-ding-ding──
"Alright... that's it for today's class. Good work, everyone."
"Thank you!"
"We appreciate it!"
"Goodbye!"
Because I had been fielding questions about Isolde and the day's lesson, the bell signaling the end of class rang before I realized how much time had passed.
The students were still young, so they understood that the best thing to do was end class the moment the bell sounded. I declared the lesson over the instant it rang.
The children immediately bowed at the waist in response and dashed out of the grand training field.
"Hey, run faster!"
"If we're late we won't get a meal ticket!"
"Hurry up, hurry!"
They weren't simply running. The kids were slamming into one another with surprising force as they raced off. Isolde tilted her head at the sight.
"Where exactly are those kids rushing off to in such a hurry?"
"It's lunchtime now, so..."
"Lunchtime?"
At the word lunchtime, Isolde tilted her head once more. She still didn't seem to understand; she blinked at me, so I summed up the reason in simple terms.
"I cook during lunch... My booth is so popular that we're limited to three hundred meal tickets per day."
"Ah, I see. That explains it. Definitely worth sprinting for."
Maybe it was because she had tasted my cooking for the past five days. Isolde nodded in immediate understanding.
Then, as if the memory of my dishes made her mouth water, she swallowed hard.
It wasn't an unreasonable reaction. Even by my own objective assessment, the food I made as Yeonha guaranteed top-class flavor, and no matter how much you ate, your weight never increased. I considered it the ultimate cuisine.
Though it has become a bit of a hassle because of that...
Thanks to the popularity of my cooking, the other chefs had filed complaints with the higher-ups. As a result, my booth was now restricted to only three hundred tickets a day.
What petty people. It was their own lack of skill as chefs, yet instead of working to improve their own cooking, they made sure the students couldn't freely eat my food.
Still, from another perspective it reduced the amount of cooking I had to do, so even though I could have asked Mira to lift the restriction, I deliberately left it alone.
They had kindly reduced my workload on their own. Why would I bother speaking up and returning things to the way they were?
Originally I only needed to feed the representative characters, so I had been secretly issuing extra tickets beyond the limit to those specific students. There was no problem.
Someone listening might call it excessive discrimination against the extra students and blatant favoritism toward the main cast, but I was simply pursuing efficiency.
After all, in the Human-Demon War those extras would be lucky to handle a hundred demon soldiers. It was far more beneficial to invest twice that time and effort on the representative characters.
That didn't mean I ignored the extra students. On the contrary, I treated them well whenever I interacted with them, so there shouldn't be an issue.
Anyway, to pull the story back from that tangent and reach the conclusion: because my booth's tickets were limited, the other extra students were sprinting desperately toward the cafeteria to hand in their tickets and eat the food I prepared.
And because every student was running at full speed, unlike the old days when there had been time to prepare ingredients in advance, I no longer had that luxury. I had Mu handle the prep work ahead of time.
"Shall we check on it now..."
Since the topic had come up, it wouldn't hurt to confirm.
I was heading there soon anyway, but I wanted to check first, so I linked a message spell and reached out to Mu, who should be at the booth inside the cafeteria.
Connection established.
I felt my inner mana shift briefly and link. After confirming that all the students had left, I spoke.
"Mu, can you hear me?"
Yes, Mother.
"Is the prep work all finished?"
Yes! All the prep is complete. I just need to cook according to the orders now.
"Good. Then I'll head over."
If the prep was done, there was no problem. Since I had left it to Mu, there was no chance it wouldn't be finished.
Mu would stake her life on carrying out my commands, so of course the basic preparations for cooking would be perfectly completed.
All that remained was to move to the cafeteria and start cooking. Just before constructing the teleportation spell, I turned to Isolde standing beside me.
"Are you coming along? I'm heading to the cafeteria. If you'd rather not, I can send you to the faculty room instead. But if you follow, you'll have to stand quietly beside me."
Normally, under the pretext of surveillance, I would have dragged her along without asking—just like I did with Morgan, who was probably already with Mu in the cafeteria. But if I teleported her to the faculty room, there was no need to take her with me.
The faculty room was protected by surveillance magic that only Mu and I could release. Simply leaving her there would be enough to keep an eye on Isolde.
For Isolde it was one of the few chances she had to rest away from me, so I assumed she would naturally choose the faculty room. Her actual answer, however, was completely different.
"If I follow, can you make me some food?"
"...Huh?"
It was so far from what I expected that I blinked, wondering if I had misheard. But the tiny trail of drool at the corner of her mouth and the way her eyes sparkled proved her words were sincere.
Her gaze carried a clear wish for the answer she wanted. I gave a small nod.
"Well... if I'm cooking with Mu there should be some leeway. I can spare you a portion."
"Then I'll go."
"......"
The moment I said I could give her food, Isolde answered with an immediate yes.
The gap between her usual demeanor and this reaction was so extreme it was almost comical. I stared at her in disbelief, but she ignored my gaze as if nothing had happened and stamped her staff on the ground with her customary cold expression and gesture.
"I'll help you build the teleportation spell. Let's go quickly."
"...Yeah."
She spoke with a deliberately cool face, yet her voice was thick with urgent hunger, practically screaming that she wanted to eat right this second.
I answered awkwardly and constructed the teleportation circle with the cafeteria as the destination. With Isolde's assistance the spell unfolded in an instant, bursting with bright light that enveloped both of us.
Taming Isolde with food... It might be worth seriously considering.
Lunchtime had recently become nothing short of a battlefield.
More precisely, it was the booth run by the chef Yeonha that had appeared a month ago.
After the number of meal tickets for that insanely popular booth was capped at three hundred, lunchtime transformed into all-out war.
The daily lunchtime war at the academy.
The first signs that the battlefield was about to open appeared the moment second period ended.
Around the time the second period drew to a close, students would begin twitching and trembling in their seats.
It wasn't from cold or because they needed the bathroom. They were tensing every muscle, preparing to sprint to the cafeteria faster than anyone else.
Then, when the bell that announced lunchtime finally rang, students exploded out of classrooms, the grand training field, and the practical training grounds all at once like arrows fired from a dozen bows.
Of course, if the professor continued the lesson even after the bell, they had to accept with resignation that they wouldn't get to eat Yeonha's food. Still, some students ignored the professor entirely and bolted anyway.
Once every student had finished class and begun racing toward the cafeteria, the true opening act of the war began.
"Out of the way!!!"
"Damn it, should I just blast everyone with magic?! I really will!"
"Hey, grab that guy's staff! Using magic here means expulsion, you idiot!"
"Who the hell yanked my hair?!"
"Move it! I couldn't eat for two whole days even before the Sky Island incident!"
Whether they poured out of the main building, the annex, the grand training field, or the practical training grounds, there was only one path leading to the cafeteria.
The single road connected to the academy's central promenade.
Students coming from different directions inevitably collided there, and every so often minor scuffles broke out.
Some might claim that students capable of magic had the advantage because they could fly, but those people had no idea what they were talking about.
"Look, that one's flying!"
"Stop him! Throw your scabbard!"
"Who do you think you are, flying around like a damn fly?!"
The sides of the central promenade were blocked by the walls of the main building and practical training ground. Flying students who collided with others and fell were lucky; those still in the air became targets for every attack launched from the ground. The foolish mages who took to the sky usually had to give up on Yeonha's cooking that day.
After fighting their way to the cafeteria through all that chaos, the tangled mob of students would somehow form an orderly line, using the person at the very front as the starting point.
If they were allowed inside like that it would turn into complete pandemonium, so Principal Mira had issued a special directive.
"Everyone line up properly!"
"Anyone who doesn't stand in line and tries to cut will be sent straight to the back."
The line formed under the supervision of the student council, which held the most authority in the academy after the principal and professors.
Only the first three hundred people in that line could purchase meal tickets and submit them to Yeonha's booth for the day.
The rest who failed to make the cut could only shed tears of blood and settle for food from the other booths.
Only after reaching the cafeteria did the desperate war to get into those three hundred spots finally end, regardless of seniority.
But of course, there were exceptions.
"Master! Here are our meal tickets."
"Ah, Kana? And Arin, Shaty, and Riana are with you too."
"Hello."
"We came straight here the moment class ended!"
"Thanks to you we avoided those disgusting fights and can enjoy a peaceful, delicious meal. Thank you."
Getting dragged into that kind of battlefield was not permitted for the representative characters.
Kana handed her ticket to Yeonha through the opening at the back of the cafeteria along with her friends Arin, Shaty, and Riana, then placed their orders.
Looking around, the students seated in the rear of the cafeteria were Pina from Class C, Park from Class D, Fran, and a few others they hadn't properly met yet.
As Kana observed them, the loud commotion drifting from inside the cafeteria made her sigh with relief.
It really was fortunate they could eat in peace like this.