Do Humans Eat Food in Places That Smell Like Manure?
Do Humans Eat Food in Places That Smell Like Manure?
"I've had enough. Lucas, be my personal chef! I'll pay you handsomely! A huge signing bonus, too!"
I stared at Camilla, a grain of rice still stuck to the corner of her mouth.
Her eyes blazed with that naked, unmistakable hunger to acquire me by any means necessary.
A merchant lord through and through.
I'd seen that look plenty of times back when I was still with the Imperial Princess's Knight Order in the capital.
—Leave the Princess's Order and come work for me. I'll give you the best treatment in the business.
—You really won't reconsider? I'm quite fond of you.
—If we leverage your cooking properly, we could make an obscene amount of money. You do realize that?
Every few months, like clockwork: quit the knights and come be my chef.
I'd turned her down every single time.
The reason was simple.
Golden Wagon's headquarters is in the capital, and the capital was going to be a disaster zone soon enough.
I had zero intention of standing in the path of a gathering storm.
You build a shelter. You hunker down. You ride it out.
That was why I'd always said no.
But it was pretty clear she'd never taken the rejection seriously.
"I'm sorry. I won't be going."
"I thought as much. The head of Golden Wagon's personal chef—no one turns that down... Wait, what did you say?"
"I won't be returning to the capital, Lady Camilla."
"Is the signing bonus too low? You just haven't heard the salary yet, have you? Fine, let me spell it out. Five hundred thousand gold as a signing bonus, and an annual salary of one hundred fifty thousand gold. That's post-tax, obviously, and I'll specially permit you to reside with me in my personal estate."
That was an enormous sum.
A post-tax salary equivalent to one hundred fifty billion won?
It was wealth most counts would envy.
But money wasn't the issue.
I approached her as she made her proud declaration.
Maybe she took my smiling approach for acceptance, because her face brightened at once.
"I knew it was the signing bonus! You should've just said so from the—"
I'd asked her once, a long time ago, why she was so hell-bent on recruiting me.
—You know what? The best way to make money is to recruit capable talent. At the best possible price. And as far as I can tell, you're someone far too valuable to be sitting in the Princess's Knight Order.
To make real money, she'd emphasized, you need good people and you treat them well.
Five hundred thousand gold signing bonus. One hundred fifty thousand a year.
That was the price she'd assigned to me.
Probably not many people commanded that kind of valuation from her.
I appreciated the recognition. But I still had no intention of going back.
I reached out and brushed the grain of rice from her lips.
"Lady Camilla, you had some rice on your face."
"...Wh-what?"
The moment she saw the grain of rice, her face flushed scarlet.
The wealthiest woman in the empire, second only to the emperor himself, had let her composure slip like that. Mortifying, no doubt.
"No amount of money will make me go back."
"You're refusing?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. I think you'd be better off finding someone else for the position."
At that, Camilla bit her lower lip.
"...Why? Is my offer that distasteful? What am I lacking? Tell me."
Getting rejected by me must have stung her pride hard.
"You can't mean it's because of the Princess? Did that woman Diana pull strings behind the scenes and threaten you not to sign with anyone else?"
Tch, Camilla. That's no way to talk about the future emperor.
One wrong word and you'll be arrested for insulting the imperial family.
Beside me, the viscount—who'd been watching all this unfold with rapt fascination—had gone pale.
Poor rural viscount. Looked like he was about to keel over.
"It's nothing like that."
"Then what is it?"
What was I supposed to say?
I know about the catastrophe that's going to hit the capital in the future.
Once Princess Diana becomes emperor, half the nobles in the capital are going to get purged and there's going to be a rebellion, so I'm planning to lie low in the countryside for a while.
...Yeah, that wasn't an option.
Best-case scenario: everyone thinks I'm a lunatic. Worst-case: I actually get hauled off for insulting the imperial family—no, for insulting the emperor.
I needed a different excuse.
"I like it here."
"What?"
"I like this territory. I can live here at ease."
"You like a rural backwater like this?"
"Yes."
Behind the incredulous Camilla, I caught a glimpse of the viscount's face, now beaming with a deeply contented smile.
"But there's nothing here. No proper infrastructure. The road to the nearest city is little more than a dirt track. There's hardly any foot traffic, so you've practically got no customers. And there's nothing here that's uniquely profitable, so outsiders almost never come. What could you possibly like about...?"
With every word Camilla let fly, the viscount's expression sank a little further into gloom, but I pretended not to notice.
"It's still better than the capital."
"You're serious?"
"Yes."
Camilla studied me for a moment, then let out a sigh.
"I can see you mean it. So you're truly turning down my offer of personal chef?"
"Correct."
"There won't be a second chance."
"I'm aware. I know how fast you calculate profit and loss, Lady Camilla, and how ruthlessly decisive you are."
"......."
The corners of her mouth twitched upward at the praise.
For a woman so brutally pragmatic about money, she had a remarkable weakness for flattery.
"You think praising me is going to make me give you money?"
"You do still have to pay for your meal."
"I'm going to pay!"
She stuck out her lower lip in a pout and shoved a coin pouch at me.
"Take it. Two hundred gold."
"Two Doenjang-jjigae and one sundubu doesn't cost nearly that much."
"That's not all I'm paying for."
"What else, then?"
She pointed toward the kitchen.
"The tofu you made and the leftover Tuu meat. I'll buy all of it. This is the deposit."
"It'll need refrigerated transport. Are you sure that's all right?"
"Don't underestimate Golden Wagon."
"The meat, maybe. But the tofu will spoil on the road."
"That won't be a problem. I'll have my attendants and myself eat all the tofu while we're staying here."
Hold on.
"You'll be staying a few more days?"
"Yes. I told you. Since I came all this way, I intend to wring every last drop of value out of this trip. I failed to recruit my number-one target, so out of sheer spite I'm taking something else home with me."
"......."
The tofu must have really gotten to her.
"Refusing my offer is infuriating, but at least it wasn't because of that woman Diana."
She smiled at me.
Something stirred uneasily in my chest.
That mischievous smile radiated a strange, nameless menace.
How to put it?
I found myself thinking I should've made the food taste worse.
"One more question."
"Go ahead."
"Diana—has that woman been here, too?"
I shook my head.
Please, don't even say things like that.
If the princess shows up here, we're all in deep shit.
"She hasn't."
"Hmm, is that so? Good. That's all I needed to hear."
With that, she added:
"Prepare some food for my attendants as well. They haven't had a proper meal all day, either."
"Understood."
That much, at least, was simple enough.
She'd paid me handsomely. No reason not to.
"And Lord Britten?"
"How may I assist you, Lady Camilla?"
"I believe the two of us have more to discuss. Shall we return to the castle together?"
"Certainly."
***
Camilla Wagon clenched her teeth over a rejection unlike any she'd ever experienced.
She'd proposed the chef position to Lucas before, and she'd been turned down before.
But this time, the meaning was entirely different.
Back then, Lucas was in the Imperial Princess's Knight Order and couldn't simply jump ship, so Camilla had tossed out the recruitment offer lightly. His refusal at the time had felt only natural.
—I'm still with the Imperial Princess's Knight Order.
—My apologies.
She'd expected the same this time around.
But.
Four months of waiting after Lucas left.
Two weeks of travel.
The rush of emotion when she finally tasted his cooking again after so long.
He was the man who'd satisfied her palate, and now he belonged to no one. The desire to snap him up on the spot consumed her.
So she'd made an offer she'd never once extended to anyone else.
A five-hundred-thousand-gold signing bonus and a hundred-fifty-thousand-gold annual salary.
If he'd asked for more, she'd been prepared to go higher.
Not even Kobi—her chief manager and a founding contributor to the company—was paid on that scale.
This was a one-of-a-kind offer, tailored solely for Lucas.
And he'd refused.
—I like this territory. I can live here at ease.
—It's still better than the capital.
He can't come?
He reshapes my palate to suit himself, makes me incapable of living without his food—and now he says he likes it here too much to come?
How could anyone say something so staggeringly irresponsible?
If that was his plan, he shouldn't have done this to me.
He shouldn't have smiled as he fed me.
At the very least—not today. He shouldn't have given me food this good today.
To show me how blindingly brilliant his worth was, and then refuse me outright—
'What exactly am I supposed to do about that?'
She wanted him.
The greed seethed and roiled inside her.
The smell of that restaurant still clung to her body.
That man's scent.
Fine. If he liked it here so much that he couldn't become my chef—
'Then I'll simply come here.'
He'd made her like this. He ought to take responsibility.
She now had something special that required her presence here.
Something special she'd gladly pay any price for.
"Lord Viscount, I'd like to purchase exclusive trading rights for this Britten territory."
Camilla fixed her eyes on Viscount Britten across the desk, and they gleamed.
***
"The scent goes all the way here."
The robed woman had arrived in Britten territory after three full days of travel from Conwell Village.
Tracking the scent had taken longer than she'd anticipated.
It absolutely was not because she had a terrible sense of direction.
The scent of Tuu led all the way here.
Without question, it had been transported to this place.
'Someone killed a Tuu and moved it to their own territory.'
She recalled the last traces she'd seen of the living Tuu.
A single-blow kill.
The carcass had been butchered, carved into pieces, and brought all the way here.
'A fighter of that caliber, hidden in a little castle like this?'
It made no sense to her.
Anyone that skilled would naturally gravitate toward the imperial capital or a major city.
To find such a fighter holed up in a tiny castle like this—
it defied all logic.
She'd find out soon enough by going inside.
"Who goes there?"
As she approached the castle gate, the guards on duty stopped her.
A familiar smell rose from them.
'Tuu scent.'
Could it be this man?
The one who slew the Tuu?
No.
Not this one.
His frame was too frail. He'd trained, certainly, but he hadn't reached the realm of mastery.
"I understand a Tuu was hunted. Is that correct?"
She spoke.
At the sound of her voice—a beautiful voice that bewitched any ear that heard it—the suspicion in the guards' eyes faded.
"It is, but what business brings you here?"
"Who hunted the Tuu?"
"Ah—are you perhaps a knight hoping to dine on Tuu?"
She nodded.
Saying yes would be the simplest way past them.
"I'm not certain if there's any left in stock. Inside, you'll find a place called the Knight Restaurant. I believe the owner there hunted it himself."
"The owner did?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Thank you."
"Before you enter, we'll need to see your identification."
Courteous, yet still following procedure—a model of proper soldiering.
Well drilled.
She lifted the sword fastened at her hip.
The imperial seal affixed to the pommel.
Proof that she was a knight of the empire.
The object alone served as both a travel permit and identification. The guards parted at once.
"Ah—verified."
Once inside, she registered it: not just the gate guards, but even the laborers moving about the grounds carried the scent of Tuu on them.
'This many people have eaten Tuu?'
In her understanding of human customs, eating Tuu was a declaration of strength.
Even frail-looking women reeked of Tuu.
'Could they be concealing their true abilities?'
If all of these people were knight-class fighters...
This was a formidable castle.
Hiding its true strength.
She spotted a building where a crowd had gathered.
Above the entrance, massive unfamiliar letters were engraved. Beside them, a signboard written in the imperial tongue caught her eye.
==============
★★★★★
&§∂%^※$%#@
==============
"Damn."
She could speak and understand the imperial tongue, but she couldn't read it. She had no idea what this meant.
Lots of stars, apparently.
"Some kind of wanted poster?"
Maybe a guild house where mercenaries gathered?
But the guard had distinctly called it a restaurant.
Puzzled, she stepped inside.
The smell hit her the instant the door opened.
"Hrk—!"
How to describe it.
Something not unlike manure jabbed at her acutely sensitive nose.
"Koff! Koff!"
This was the smell a restaurant produced?
What kind of deranged bastard would spread feces inside an eating establishment?
'Are the other humans not bothered by this?'
They sat there, happily eating while inhaling this stench.
A few glanced at her as she coughed, smirked, then went right back to their meals.
Some didn't even look up, utterly absorbed in their food.
Humans were an incomprehensible species.
She endured the air, thick and choking, and swept her gaze around the room.
And the moment she saw the man who appeared to be the owner—
'That's him.'
She understood at once. That man was the one who had killed the Tuu.
"Welcome!"
She strode toward the owner.