In Search of a Nostalgic Flavor
A few days after my duel with Sylvia.
Having finally gotten my hands on a refrigerator of respectable performance, I wore a thoroughly satisfied smile.
“Fufufu… At last, it is complete!”
A mana stone.
An ore containing magic power, usually found in places rich with ambient mana, and commonly used as a material for all sorts of magic tools.
At first glance it was nothing more than a curious rock that held mana, yet the mages of this world had researched it long enough to uncover its true utility.
Magic, by nature, required a mage to actively channel their power for it to take form.
But the moment a mana stone was combined with a magic scroll inscribed with a formula…
That simple stone became something extraordinary—capable of reproducing the written spell all on its own.
“Ohh, it truly is cold.”
With Sylvia’s help, I had placed a mana stone inscribed with a formula inside a wooden crate.
The formula written upon it was a basic freezing spell.
From now on, until every last drop of mana within it was exhausted, the stone would steadily radiate a constant chill.
That alone accounted for roughly eighty percent of a working refrigerator, yet for the mana stone to last any decent length of time, even a simple insulation measure was necessary.
I needed some usable insulating material that could efficiently trap the cold, but…
This world doesn’t have styrofoam, after all.
In that case, I decided the traditional route would serve me better.
Cork.
True to its familiar image as the stopper for wine bottles or potions, it was a material exceptional at sealing out outside interference.
Better still, it was not hard to obtain. Wine existed in this era, so of course the cork used for its stoppers existed as well.
Thus I lined the wooden crate with sheets of natural cork insulation and raised its thermal performance considerably.
“It looks rather presentable.”
And so, though the shape was somewhat unfamiliar, a refrigerator of solid performance was complete.
A true kitchen revolution—a broken item, really.
Spending roughly twenty gold had stung, but the performance more than justified the cost.
With this, storing ingredients became almost laughably easy; I no longer needed to go shopping every single day…
And above all—I could make ice cream without limit!
“Munch munch… Luca likes this. Luca can eat forever.”
“Even so, if you eat too much you will get a stomachache, Luca.”
Partly to test the refrigerator’s performance, I had used the molds from last time to make a few ice pops.
The result was a complete success.
Compared to the blizzard spell, which wasted efficiency by freezing far too wide an area…
the refrigerator’s localized yet reliable cold produced far better results.
Sharing the test ice pops with Luca and luxuriating in the free time felt like the sweetest holiday imaginable.
Looking back, it had been a storm of a week.
From my first customer all the way through the duel.
I had built connections with quite a few people, yet the fatigue was equally real.
After all, juggling both the academy schedule and the shop’s hours at once was grueling work…
So resting like this every now and then was a good thing.
“How lovely it is to be so leisurely~”
A holiday spent sprawled without a single worry, a puppy tucked against my side to stroke, while I idly pondered the evening menu.
It was the very pinnacle of laziness.
Or at least, it was—until a certain thought arrived.
“Yet… I cannot shake the feeling that I am missing something.”
Lying ungracefully on the bed with an ice pop in my mouth, I murmured blankly.
What was this feeling?
A holiday that had arrived after days filled to the brim.
Nothing should have been lacking.
Staring out the window for no particular reason at that inexplicable emptiness, I suddenly understood.
“This is exactly like an overseas trip… isn’t it?”
It was not wrong.
Gazing at the exotic scenery while lounging about was precisely that feeling—like the times I had gone on a trip to Europe.
And after roughly a week of such travel…
there was one thing I always ended up craving.
“I want Korean food…”
With the desire given concrete form, images of familiar dishes rose in my mind.
Spicy stir-fried pork, chicken doritang, kimchi stew, ramen…
And more powerfully than anything else, striking me square in the head—kimchi.
In short, all those sharp, spicy things wrapped in red seasoning.
Come to think of it, everything I had eaten so far had been Western cuisine utterly devoid of that tongue-tingling heat.
Given the setting, finding such spiciness in a medieval fantasy was perhaps a stretch…
yet I could not ignore the image of kimchi pickled in red seasoning that had just bloomed so vividly in my mind.
“…Right. I shall simply make it myself.”
Fortunately, I was a cook.
The sort of person who, so long as the ingredients were present, could whip up a quick-salted kimchi in an instant.
And if I made it well enough, I even had the perfect excuse of adding it as a new menu item for the restaurant.
Of course, that was only if the ingredients existed.
“Luca, watch the house for a moment, if you would.”
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I rose on impulse, flung the door open, and dashed outside.
“Cheap! It’s cheap!”
“Kingdom pork for a mere fifty shillings!”
Accompanied by the boisterous cries of hawkers, I stepped into the nearby market.
I stopped by now and then for supplies, so the scenery itself was familiar.
But the ingredients I sought today were different from the usual.
I would have to look somewhere other than the shops I normally frequented.
First: napa cabbage.
Making kimchi without cabbage was simply unthinkable.
Ordinary cabbage was everywhere, but what I needed was a different variety—the long, pale-headed napa cabbage typically used for kimchi.
I walked my feet raw searching, yet no matter how hard I looked, the cabbage of the shape I wanted was nowhere to be found.
I was just considering pivoting to cubed radish kimchi and hunting for radish instead when…
“Wares from a far-off foreign land~ Come take a look, everyone~”
The word that suddenly caught my ear was “foreign land.”
Normally I would not have given it a second glance, yet here “foreign” meant the Eastern sphere.
Naturally so—this place was Western, after all.
If memory served, there had even been a swordsman of Eastern origin among the academy students…
It had never been explored in detail, but it seemed there were nations modeled after East Asian countries such as Japan or China.
And that meant a clear possibility.
If such countries existed, so too would their food cultures.
Though different, the cuisine of a “foreign land” that shared many points of commonality with Korean food might just hit the right notes.
Perhaps I could even find familiar ingredients here.
“Hmm, shall I take a look…”
A quick visual scan revealed that most of the displayed goods were ceramics and ornaments.
Well, that stood to reason.
Hauling easily spoiled vegetables all the way from a distant foreign land would have been an adventure in itself.
They had no reason to undertake something so unprofitable.
I could not hide my disappointment.
“As expected, there is no napa cabbage here either…”
“Hey there, missy! Cabbage? Why’re you looking for that? If it’s regular cabbage you want, I’ve got plenty.”
The shopkeeper was a hearty-looking middle-aged woman who, for some reason, had overheard my muttering and spoken up.
“What I require is not this sort of cabbage, but the pale yellow-headed napa cabbage. It is essential for the dish I have in mind.”
“Ah, that stuff’s hard to bring in. But if you really need it, I can sell you one or two.”
“Pardon…?”
Grinning, the shopkeeper pulled a pouch from beneath the stall.
“It’s my personal stock, but I can share with someone who’s serious about cooking.”
What emerged from the pouch was, astonishingly, a fresh head of napa cabbage.
The exact shape I had imagined, realized before my eyes—I could not help but be stunned.
“Good heavens, what on earth is that item?”
“This is a spatial pouch. Expensive, but it keeps things fresh and it’s handy. My husband bought it for me. Whenever I miss the cooking from home, I just pull things out of here and make them.”
Was it really all right to use something like that just to store vegetables?
With that level of dedication, I found myself curious about her occupation.
“Might the shopkeeper also be a cook, like myself?”
“You’re a cook, missy? No wonder. You’ve been staring at the stall for ages.”
Apparently she had taken an interest after watching a girl roughly her daughter’s age prowling around the market.
Being treated like a little girl still felt strange, but whatever the reason, I was grateful for it.
“Then I shall not refuse—I will purchase it.”
Roughly one gold.
A bit steep, yet reasonable enough for something that had crossed the sea.
“Come again!”
And just like that, I had my cabbage.
The supporting ingredients were easy enough to find.
Garlic and onions hung in bunches at any vegetable stall, so they posed no problem…
and anchovies, which could stand in for fish sauce, were sold in quite a few places.
After all, European anchovies were simply salted and fermented anchovies.
In essence they were just slightly larger pickled anchovies, so they belonged to the same family as anchovy fish sauce.
But the greatest hurdle of all was chili powder.
“This is nowhere to be found in the entire market…”
I walked until the market street ended, yet there was no chili powder.
Come to think of it, I recalled that the red kimchi we know was actually a relatively recent invention.
The reason being that chili peppers themselves originated in a completely different country.
Before chilies were imported in the Joseon era, kimchi had essentially been nothing more than radish pickled in salt…
Perhaps the very concept of edible chili peppers did not exist in a medieval fantasy.
At this rate I may be forced to settle for white kimchi…
Just as I faced that crisis, a certain spicy scent drifted to me.
Too acrid to call purely edible, yet too appetite-stirring to call medicinal—the smell was utterly familiar.
It was like a stroke of fortune that had arrived by pure chance the moment I had given up on everything.
“I half expected it, yet I never thought I would find it in a place like this.”
Following the scent, I arrived at a rather shabby alchemy workshop.
The moment I opened the door bearing a sign that read “Open for Business,” the longed-for aroma filled my lungs.
The distinctive smell that rose when well-dried chilies were ground.
“Huh? A… a customer.”
Certain of my success, I turned my gaze upon the slight alchemist who appeared to be the owner.
To the workshop master who seemed somewhat shy of strangers, I declared as if it were the most natural thing in the world:
“I shall buy all of this!”