Impulsive Behavior
The brownie fixed them with a blank, razor-sharp stare that demanded the truth without a single word. Even in silence, the force of that interrogating gaze was unmistakable.
Karem and Gordon put on faces of exaggerated, almost brazen bewilderment, as if they had never done anything of the sort in their lives. The shared understanding they had exchanged had stayed strictly inside their heads. Since not a word of it had left their mouths, they were technically innocent.
Karem shrugged with an expression of suspicious purity, while Gordon calmly tore into his fried chicken. To any outsider the two of them looked so perfectly natural that it became suspicious all over again. Mary felt it too. Even so, she decided to take a step back for now.
"Well, the interrogation can wait until later."
"So what's going on? A summons?"
"Yes. A summons."
"Then I'll head over right—"
"However."
Mary stopped Karem just as he started to rise from his seat.
"It is not Junior Karem who has been summoned. It is Sir Stark."
"Hmm. Me? What, need me to play bodyguard or something?"
Gordon kept casually pulling apart chicken, completely unaware of the fried crumbs stuck in his beard.
"Yes. Before the provisional contract is finalized, and before His Excellency the Margrave arrives, she wishes to tour the site with Sir Hartman and meet with him. She says she will need an escort."
Mary nodded in confirmation.
"She said the escort is needed immediately."
"Immediately? Well, I don't particularly mind."
Gordon tossed the bone-only remains into the bucket with a clatter and gave the wooden pail still piled high with chicken a solid thump.
"Mind if I take this with me? I was right in the middle of eating."
"Uh, you're planning to eat chicken while on escort duty?"
"What's the problem with that?"
"...Isn't that an obvious problem when you're supposed to be guarding someone?"
A bodyguard who planned to focus on chicken instead of his charge and the surroundings—and this was a man who now carried the title of baron? Wasn't that just plain rude? Karem kept the thought to himself. He simply looked back and forth between Gordon and the bucket of chicken, sending a silent "are you serious?" signal with his eyes.
"Ha, you worry about the dumbest things."
"I didn't say a word."
"Your eyes said everything. If a little chicken-eating is enough to mess up my escort work, I ought to quit being a Sword Master right now."
Gordon pointed a chicken bone at Mary, who was still standing blankly by the doorway.
"Besides, we've got someone over there who'll be watching the mage more carefully than anyone. Is a bit of chicken really going to cause a problem? And the steward's side will have their own guards anyway."
"Well... when you put it like that, I don't have much of an argument left."
In the end, whatever happened would clearly take place in the city streets. Remembering the chaotic free-for-all against the Grizzly Beavers in the forest last time, even the lingering worry melted away. He still wasn't entirely sure, but Mary herself looked oddly confident about the whole thing.
"Sir Stark. Your contractor is waiting, so if you would come right—"
"Wait, so do I have anything I need to do separately?"
Karem caught Mary just as she was about to leave and asked the question. He was, after all, the exclusive chef (and, nominally, exclusive attendant). Was it really all right for him to just sit around here resting like this?
Of course, it wasn't as if he had done nothing since arriving. He had borrowed the kitchen to prepare Catherine's breakfast and lunch, and he had made snacks together with Mary. Still, that was all he had done for two full days.
Mary tilted her head slightly, as if wondering what the problem could possibly be.
"Is it not the same as the work you performed at the Mage's Tower?"
"There's no way it's the same."
True, various circumstances—mainly Mary—had reduced the number of tasks under his care. Even so, Karem still had plenty to do. At the Mage's Tower he cooked for Alicia whenever she snuck in, or for whatever guests dropped by. He built relationships with the main castle chefs through Jigmeser's exchange gatherings. He conducted half-gambling, half-boredom cooking experiments on his own, and so on.
Well, except for the first item, all the rest were private hobbies, to be honest.
That was the truth of it. To put it bluntly, Karem was bored.
Mary, sensing this, planted both hands on her hips.
"Honestly. I myself am holding back from diving into all sorts of work. I believe Junior Karem also needs to cultivate some patience."
"Wait, you're the one saying that to me right now?"
"This is not the Mage's Tower of Winterhome. The dust visible everywhere, the piles of tasks just waiting to be handled—how tempting—ah, how difficult they are to look at."
"Sounds like you're having a harder time than I am."
"Furthermore, the contractor has said she will take lunch today with Sir Wallace Hartman and the business associates, to discuss important matters."
"Oh, so that means—"
"In any case, Sir Stark. Let us go at once."
Mary left the room without waiting for Karem's reply. Gordon, who had been sitting blankly and eating chicken, glanced at Karem, shrugged, picked up the bucket, and followed her out.
In an instant the splendid guest room where Karem was staying fell silent. Only the smell of fried chicken and a pile of clean chicken bones remained.
"Hmm..."
Faint noise from the city streets drifted in from beyond the fortress walls. Feeling not just restless but downright awkward, Karem slipped out of the chair, kicked off his shoes, and threw himself onto the nearby bed. The mattress sank with a soft poof, and the silky cover wrapped gently around his entire body.
He stared blankly up at the ceiling.
"I'm bored."
It was only natural that someone with zero connection to potions or business deals would be left waiting outside an important meeting. Still, he was far too bored. At Winterhome, as he had just been thinking, there was never a free moment. Meals and snacks for Alicia, who snuck in every other day, or for unexpected visitors like Godwin who dropped by out of nowhere. Occasional trips to the greenhouse. Jigmeser's exchange gatherings. And if none of that was happening, he could always shut himself away and research new dishes...
Here, none of that was possible.
Karem was suddenly finding the complete lack of tasks more awkward than anything. In the end it meant he would have to cook lunch for himself, but the real problem was that a great deal of time still remained until then.
"At least the bed is nice and soft. That part I like."
After thrashing his legs around on the mattress for a while and thumping the sheets with his heels, Karem used the rebound to sit up with a sudden whoosh. His gaze naturally drifted toward one corner of the room.
In a corner that looked utterly out of place in the otherwise lavish chamber sat a bag stuffed with various spices and ingredients, and beside it two wooden barrels. One held soy sauce.
The other...
"Doenjang, huh. Hmm."
Karem stared at the barrel for a long moment through half-lidded eyes. Then he slowly lowered his legs, pulled on his shoes, sprang up with a whoosh, and walked over to crouch in front of the barrels.
"Hmm..."
He had never set out to make fermented bean paste in the first place. Meju simply happened to be the raw material for both soy sauce and doenjang. It had been a lucky windfall, a two-for-one result. After all, both products came from the exact same fermented blocks.
While he was at it, a pseudo-gochujang would have been the same story. Even in his previous life he had never once felt homesick when traveling abroad; while everyone else was struggling he had been happily gorging himself on local food. After reincarnating and letting so much time pass, the idea of making something out of pure nostalgia simply never crossed his mind.
Come to think of it, hadn't he started making soy sauce in the first place because of the First Prince's diet plan?
Anyway, that was still how he felt—for now.
But every person has moments like this. Moments when some perfectly natural action you never normally notice—like breathing or blinking—suddenly becomes something you cannot stop thinking about once you notice it.
You could call it an impulse. The kind of primal urge that hits after more than a year of dedicated dieting, when one day you are suddenly possessed and start inhaling all the foods you had been denying yourself.
"Doenjang jjigae... hmm... ah, come on, I don't even have tofu or zucchini."
That was what his mouth said, but his mind was already racing at full speed, calculating stock bases, supplementary ingredients, and substitutes for everything he lacked.
For the broth: dried kelp and dried seafood. Even if I don't have dried fish it should still be plenty. No onion, garlic, green onion, or chili, so I'll use Red Mason powder. Potatoes... turnips have a different flavor but a similar texture. Meat, of course, I can get—
The recipe in his head began to take sharper and sharper form.
"Doenjang jjigae... should I try making some?"
He had no worries about the smell. The infamous reputation of doenjang and gochujang for smelling bad came from the active microbes during fermentation. Thanks to the 100x Magic Barrel, these pastes had already finished aging—no, they had gone far beyond that. They were now the kind of premium, decades-old masterpieces you only found in ancestral houses. Instead of any sharp funk, they carried the rich, nutty aroma of oil-toasted beans and nuts, or freshly steamed barley.
Truly, all hail Goddess Skadi for making the meju fermentation succeed. All hail the magic tool that compressed years of time into nothing.
Well, since I already brought the doenjang along...
He wasn't giving it to anyone else. He was going to eat it himself. There was no reason not to.
Besides, I'm starting to get hungry. Might as well make it and eat.
His internal clock announced that lunchtime was approaching. While he had been blankly kicking his legs on the bed, that much time had already slipped by.
Karem braced himself and easily lifted the wooden barrel.
Let's see. The kitchen was... this way, right?
Naturally he still did not know the layout of Afterglow Fortress well. He had arrived less than a week ago—barely even a few days—so there was nothing to know. Still, over the past two days he had only visited a handful of places, so at the very least he remembered the kitchen's location, as well as the rooms where Catherine, Mary, and Gordon were staying.
Karem left his room and walked down the corridor toward the kitchen. The fortress felt more like an actual fortress than a noble residence; it was not decorated with lavish ornaments. Even so, a certain level of dignity was maintained, with various decorations hanging on the walls.
Equipment that looked ready to use at any moment. Portrait paintings and landscapes that belonged in a museum. But something else stood out more than anything.
"Whoa. Those are some vicious-looking things."
Mounted heads and hide trophies of various beasts and monsters lined the walls. On the walls of Afterglow Fortress, two things caught the eye above all else. Winterhome had leather and taxidermy decorations too, of course, but none of them were wall-hanging trophies the size of a three-headed elephant-wolf hide, or the head of an ancient mammoth (complete with tusks) that looked four thousand years old, complete with nameplates.
Every massive hide and every head that looked ready to spring back to life made it clear just how skilled the taxidermists had been. You could almost feel the creatures' former majesty and size.
"They do say beasts from cold regions grow larger."
While idly thinking about thermal conductivity and body fat and other random trivia, he found himself admiring the wall trophies. He nearly walked right past his destination in pure appreciation before hurriedly turning around and entering the kitchen.
Every time I see it I think the same thing—this kitchen is ridiculously huge.
Unlike Winterhome, Afterglow Fortress had only a single kitchen. That one kitchen had to feed the fortress's enormous population, so its scale was far larger than most assembly halls. The hearths, ovens, and pots were all enormous as well.
The absolute centerpiece was the massive fire-pit set in the middle of the kitchen. Hairy, Viking-looking cooks streamed with sweat as they turned the rotisseries or took turns adjusting the positions. Dozens of animals and monsters of every size and unidentifiable species, skewered on the spits, slowly rotated over the smoking wood fire, roasting to a perfect golden brown.
Fat and juices dripped down into the fire below, sending up fragrant smoke rich with the flavor of roasting meat. The smoke naturally escaped through the ceiling chimney—but not before first brushing against the dense clusters of sausages hanging from the rafters. The smoke from the wood, meat juices, and fat gently smoked the sausages. Beads of moisture, juice, and fat formed on their surfaces and dripped back into the fire, creating still more smoke.
"Winterhome never had anything like this."
"Of course not! Even beyond the Highlands, in the entire Seophon Kingdom you would be hard-pressed to find a kitchen and hearth of this size!"
A booming voice full of goodwill cracked like a whip across Karem's back.