Stimulus
Breed improvement.
Plant hoarders and environmentalists might claim it is humanity artificially violating the laws of nature out of sheer greed, but that is knowing only half the story.
Throughout the long history of humankind, breed improvement had always walked alongside them. Human prosperity itself could never have come into being without it.
The act of cross-breeding edible plants to yield more crops could already be found in ancient Egypt, the oldest of civilizations, and it was clearly a practice that stretched back far earlier still.
How else could mere foxtail millet have become proper grain? How else could fruits once dominated by seeds and tiny flesh have grown plump? How else could plants that had never been edible in the first place become food?
Cabbages, broccoli, kohlrabi, and every variety of leafy green all sprang from a single mustard-family plant; that alone proved the point. Peppers and bell peppers were the same species; tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants were cousins. Breed improvement was hardly a stranger to humanity.
Of course, even when artificial, the process truly did take ages—long enough to be mentioned in ancient history. Even corn, famous for how unusually quickly it had been improved, still took more than a thousand years.
Karem only remembered that fact once he reached the greenhouse.
"So what is this supposed to be?"
He rolled the red fruit resting in his palm this way and that. Plump, fleshy, and appetizing, it looked ready to burst with juice. Starting from a fat stem end, the fruit curved gently toward its tip.
This was supposed to be an improved Red Witch's Finger?
Well, Karem knew of a similar case. The chubby, stubby variant that had tasted something like paprika—or rather, like a bell pepper. But that one had merely grown milder and changed in fragrance; the species itself had not transformed so drastically.
So what was this, then?
Even Karem, who cooked plants without knowing the first thing about growing them, understood that improving a variety took a long time. All the more so without the bizarre chemicals and tools of modern civilization. That was why the fruit in his hand—slightly different in shape yet unmistakably reminiscent of a tomato—made no sense at all.
"Is there something about it that displeases you?"
A sharp clicking sound. Corvus was rapping his beak together; Karem's reaction had clearly not been the one he expected.
"Hmm. I thought a chef like yourself would be delighted."
"No, I am. How could I not be?"
If this was what Karem thought it was, no chef could possibly dislike it. The sheer number of dishes he could make would leap upward overnight. Preparing paste and the rest would take time, of course, but that was only natural.
"But is improving plants normally this fast? It hasn't even been a full season—just a few months."
"Hahaha. You're still rather innocent, Mr. Karem."
"Excuse me?"
"Obviously it would be impossible by ordinary means, wouldn't it?"
"Then how? Did you use some unholy magic of the mysterious crow monster?"
"Hmmmm."
Corvus shrugged and scratched his beak with a talon.
"It isn't as though no similar sorcery exists."
"So there is."
"But using it would render the result inedible, so that is out of the question. Those arts are meant for cursing or attacking hostile creatures in the first place."
"Then what?"
Corvus plunged a talon into his plumage. Something rattled and clinked for quite a while amid the thicker feathers before he finally drew out a clear emerald sphere the size of an adult's head.
"In the end, every problem comes down to a lack of money."
"Uh... a magic tool?"
"Precisely. It is called the Orb of Life."
Corvus nodded his beak in affirmation.
"I requested it from Duchess Elizabeth and borrowed this horticultural magic tool. It is enchanted with a druid spell that accelerates plant growth."
"Druid magic?"
"Of course that alone was insufficient, so I arranged various conditions and eventually discovered a plump-fleshed variant that gave the best result."
He pointed a talon toward one corner of the greenhouse. Right beside the fields where the Red Witch's Fingers and the bell-pepper variant grew, a small plot had been set aside. Bushes heavy with the same fruit now resting in Karem's hand were thriving there.
"However."
Having tucked the Orb of Life back into his feathers, Corvus turned his head this way and that, searching with pitch-black eyes.
"I do not see the young lady. Has something happened? I was certain she would have come with you."
"What else could it be?"
"Ah, as I thought?"
Corvus looked down at Karem and tilted his head. Meeting his gaze, Karem closed his eyes and gave a small nod.
"As expected."
"Well, one might say 'as expected of Baroness Poppins.'"
"Wouldn't it simply be easier for Lady Alicia if she just sat quietly through her lessons?"
"And yet she follows the lessons themselves diligently, so it must simply be that she dislikes remaining still in one place."
Alicia was only just six years old, and Winterhome was a vast castle. A child bursting with life force, overflowing with curiosity and free-spirited by nature—and the duke's youngest daughter to boot. When environment, status, and personality all aligned, it was only natural that Alicia became the freest breeze blowing through Winterhome. That was the unanimous opinion throughout the castle.
"Lady Alicia seemed to like them as well; she ate several before she left."
"Could I take some of these?"
"Right this moment?"
"Yes. And if possible, regularly from now on—"
"Hmm, that will be difficult for the time being."
Why?!
But Corvus looked equally troubled.
"They were force-grown, so I cannot use the orb any further. We will need to secure seeds first; it will be some time before that is possible."
"That's really quite a shame."
They said the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment. Faced with an unforeseen problem, Karem felt a hollow emptiness settle deep in his chest. No—he shook his head.
"But once enough time passes, we will be able to secure volume somehow, right?"
"Indeed. Once several months have gone by and we have enough seeds, we should even be able to freely export them outside the castle."
Karem closed his eyes for a moment and soothed his disappointment. Only a few months. Compared to the ten years he had wasted in his previous life, it was nothing.
Having come to terms with the situation, he accepted the small basket Corvus held out—filled with a fair number of the variant-of-a-variant, that is, tomatoes—and rose to his feet. It was almost time to prepare Catherine's snack.
As Corvus escorted him out, he asked, watching Karem roll the plump tomato in his palm,
"Are you only going to roll it around in your hand?"
"Pardon? What do you mean?"
"That fruit you keep rolling."
"I just like the soft texture a little."
"Try eating it first. It is juicier than you might imagine, and fairly sweet as well."
Well. From Corvus's words it seemed the flavor was decent at least. But what mattered was that Karem himself had to know the taste.
He wiped the skin roughly on his clothes, then without hesitation bit into the tip of this second variant of the Red Witch's Finger.
Pop! Crunch!
First impression: the texture was surprisingly firm—far firmer than the tomatoes Karem remembered from his previous life.
Second: there was far less juice than he had expected. A tomato of the sort he knew should have been packed with seed-laden juice that burst forth the moment teeth sank in. That flavor had been so peculiar that even past-life Karem, who was not a picky eater, had hesitated to eat them raw.
This variant was nothing like that. The juice was scant, yes—but the flavor was far richer than anything from his previous life. Compared to those old tomatoes, it was as though paste itself had been condensed into fruit form: deep umami and a gentle sweetness. The dense flesh, which sliced with a crisp crunch, shattered between his teeth and filled every particle with savory depth and sweetness. Had he not been expecting the familiar umami of his past life, the accompanying sweetness might almost have made him mistake it for a fruit.
Yes—unfamiliar yet familiar. A thoroughly contradictory taste. Different from both the raw tomatoes and the tomato sauces of his previous life. If anything, it resembled foreign pastes and sauces more closely. And since foreign tomato sauces and pastes had always tasted better, this was a very fortunate miscalculation.
Lost in savoring the flavor, Karem suddenly realized he was short of breath. He had forgotten even to breathe.
"Hah! Holy—damn. Haaaah..."
"Does it please you?"
"Does it please me?"
Panting, Karem stared back and forth between the half-eaten fruit and Corvus in blank astonishment, then bit off the remaining half.
"With this I can easily make more than ten different dishes."
"High praise indeed."
Karem was completely sincere. If one were to name the representative sauces of East and West, soy sauce and tomato paste would stand at opposite ends—tomato was used that extensively in Western cooking.
At this point, he had no choice but to make soy sauce. Just as there was yin and yang, plus and minus, light and dark, the idea of being able to make tomato paste while lacking soy sauce was something Karem could never accept.
Peas were still beans, after all—plant protein. Straw was still straw. So he could make soy sauce! First he would have to experiment with meju this way and that, of course. And fortunately, Karem just happened to possess a magic tool that would drastically cut the time needed for those meju and soy-sauce experiments.
"Now we only need to give it a proper name—"
"Let's call it tomato."
"Tomato?"
"We never named the other variant last time either, did we?"
"No. At present it is simply called the Red Witch's Finger variant. Now that there are two variants, names will certainly be necessary."
"That one can be bell pepper—"
And so Karem chatted with Corvus for a little while longer.
On the way back after pressing a basket of the gift into the still-chatting Karem's hands, Corvus tapped his beak uneasily.
"I feel as though I have forgotten something. Hmm, what could it be..."
Crossing his wings and repeatedly rapping his beak with a talon, he passed his nest and stepped into the fields where the Witch's Fingers and their variants—the bell peppers and tomatoes—were growing before the realization struck.
He froze.
"Ah. That's right."
Scratching the feathers on his head, Corvus glanced toward the greenhouse entrance. He had originally meant to show Karem the beans he had been entrusted with earlier as well. But having returned after watching Karem leave, the boy had surely left the greenhouse long ago by now. To call him back he would have to ask the guards to send a runner...
"Well, they are not fully grown yet anyway. It will not matter if I show him later, once they are larger."
Corvus crossed the field where the magic tool was installed and moved to the small plot behind it—less a field than a hobbyist's flower bed. Rich black-brown soil. Upon it, egg-shaped flower buds stood alone.
Stroking beneath his beak with a talon, Corvus tilted his head.
"I thought they were beans. Were they not beans after all?"
Attached Material
— Appearance as close as possible to the tomato in the story —
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.