Berseingeto Cookies and the Last of Alrune's Tear
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Rumble—rumble—rumble—
The Mage's Tower, off-limits to all but staff and authorized guests, was in an uproar.
Of course, the tower growing noisy was hardly rare. In ordinary times the place stayed quiet enough—until calculation errors, botched mixtures, and failed experiments produced a whole menagerie of sounds that, even after one grew used to them, still made people jump.
But the noise ringing out now was of an entirely different sort.
With every bright, clattering impact, marble and other stone split apart; lime was spread across the floors and plywood fitted into place like puzzle pieces. The ruins that had once been laboratories and storerooms, the very epicenter of the blast, were already beginning to take on a faint resemblance to their former selves. Barely a few days had passed.
Overseeing it all were the laborers and master craftsmen dispatched from the stonemasons' and builders' guilds.
It was a trade where one careless moment could cost you an eye or a finger—or your life. That very danger should have made the site a place of raised voices. Instead—
"The measurements are off. Come on, move."
"Who took the lime that was supposed to go here?"
"Junior, fetch more of that. Nowhere near enough."
—the shouting never came.
The overseer managing the site, the laborers hauling stone, the masters hammering and splitting rock—all of them, even when irritated, spoke to one another in low, measured tones as they asked questions, pointed out mistakes, and got on with the work. Mistakes that would normally have sent curses and tools flying only drew a brief flash of temper before it died. Why?
"They're restoring it faster than I expected."
"They're craftsmen and laborers from the guilds my lord hired personally. Every one of them is skilled. The cost must be considerable."
"As if your coffers aren't already overflowing, and still you talk like that."
"Of course I do. It's money going out for nothing… hi—hitchoo!"
Because a person of extremely high station—someone every single worker from the stonemasons' and builders' guilds had to mind—was standing right beside them.
That cough is cute, though, for someone who looks like that.
Isn't she about the same age as my daughter?
Cute little sneeze.
The Duke of Iceland's chief magical advisor coughed, surveyed the site with someone who appeared to be an attendant, then called over an elf mage who seemed to be her subordinate (identifiable by the pointed hoods jutting out on either side of her head).
"Narke. I don't need to spell it out, do I?"
"You mean the defensive wards and the, uh, trap placement, yes?"
The elf in the shabby robe nodded.
Ah. This is going to get extremely annoying, everyone realized at once.
"You seem to be moving a little better now."
"A whole week has passed. Of course I am."
"Still can't use magic?"
Catherine, her nose still red, narrowed her eyes and repeatedly clenched and unclenched her hands. She kept at it while they walked, then finally sighed.
"The sensation has returned to some degree, but full recovery is still a ways off. Still, I should be fine by the start of early winter."
"I see."
"So quit fretting over nothing and—"
Catherine, who had been shifting her mana this way and that, abruptly shut her mouth. The confessions from a few evenings and mornings ago suddenly rose up again; she forced down the awkwardness that came flooding back.
"Never mind. Let's just have a snack."
"Contractor. Do you have any particular requests?"
Mary's voice came from behind them; she had joined them at some point without anyone noticing.
"Hmm. I can't seem to shake the drowsiness, so perhaps a cup of Alrune's Tear. With a few cookies on the side—"
"Then I'll prepare an assortment of cookies."
Mary, standing opposite Karem—on Catherine's right—spoke up.
And yet—
"We baked a mountain of cookies just yesterday."
"Tch."
"You were so giddy about all the nuts that came in that you spent days running back and forth making them in every spare moment."
"How dare you point out the facts!"
Mary clicked her tongue loudly, as if for someone else's benefit. The house brownie had long since mastered the art of inventing work whenever there was none.
"There are a lot of people in the Mage's Tower, so I made them while I was at it."
"Even so, emptying an entire refrigerator shelf and then packing that same shelf solid is a bit much, don't you think?"
"They're excellent for snacking, so it's fine."
"Well…"
That was hard to argue with.
Actually, what Mary made barely qualified as cookies. They were loaded with sugar the way cookies should be, yet not a single spoonful of flour went into them. How was anyone supposed to call that a cookie?
Even so, Karem did not object.
It's exactly the stuff I used to see every day at Costco.
Those anonymous cookies packed by the dozens into clear bulk plastic tubs, the kind that somehow never seemed to dwindle no matter the season. Once you started eating them, you could not stop until the entire shortbread-like batch was gone—that same devilish flavor. Mary's were simply an upgraded version of it.
"They really were delicious, though."
"Mary baked cookies? Why didn't I know about that?"
"Because yesterday you spent the entire day snoring in bed?"
"Mm. Describe the taste, roughly."
"It'll be faster if you just try one yourself."
As they neared the cold room, Mary strode ahead and took hold of the door handle.
"Hm?"
"What's wrong all of a sudden?"
"I can hear something inside."
She tilted her head and yanked the door open.
The cold room looked no different from usual: sacks and wooden crates of vegetables sorted by type; sausages and dried fish hanging in clusters from the ceiling; mammoth meat taking up the entire far end.
Crunch-crunch-crunch… crunch…… crunch.
And there, in front of the shelf packed with cookie jars, stood Robin, stuffing cookies into his mouth by the handful.
Crunch……… crunch………… crunch.
"…"
"…"
"…"
"…Young Master Robin. What exactly are you doing glued to that shelf?"
"Why are you looking at me like that? I was researching and my head started to hurt, so I'm eating!"
Crunch! Robin protested even as he kept packing his cheeks full from the jars lining the shelf. Come to think of it…
"You look just like Lady Alicia."
"What?"
"No, really—identical."
"I am nothing like that pig!"
Robin screeched in genuine horror, shot between Mary and Karem, bolted out—then spun right back, snatched an entire cookie jar, and fled again.
Clatter-bang-thud!
"…What was that about?"
"Who knows. Mary, grab some cookies."
"I'll get the Alrune."
Karem slipped past Mary as she headed for the cookie jars and went a little deeper into the cold room, lifting the jar of roasted Alrune. He frowned.
Lighter than I expected.
A light shake produced the soft clatter of wood chips rolling around—barely a handful left. He would have to mention it later. While he was at it, he grabbed some fresh cream too.
Preparing the snack did not take long.
While Mary arranged nut cookies from the jar onto a plate in neat stacks, Karem tipped every last scrap of dried Alrune remaining in the jar into a kettle of water and set it on the hearth.
Before long a rich, savory aroma of roasted beans filled the kitchen. A short while after that, Catherine took a sip of the steaming Alrune's Tear.
"Perhaps because the kitchen is cool, it tastes even better. Hi—hitchoo!"
"Once you've finished your snack, you should go rest a little more."
"I was going to do that even without you saying so."
House brownies really do talk too much, Catherine muttered under her breath while Mary waited on her. Karem, meanwhile, picked up one of the cookies heaped on the plate and bit into it.
Crunch—
Definitely better than the ones from my past life.
Paper-thin slices of nuts tossed in buttered caramel and baked in the oven— the cookie stayed cracklingly crisp right up until the moment it turned to powder between his teeth.
Almonds, walnuts, pistachios and more, sliced thin as paper and roasted until fragrant, bound with caramel that had butter worked into it. That was the entire ingredient list.
Nothing particularly spectacular about the flavor.
And yet, across both his lives, it was more addictive than any cookie Karem had ever eaten.
Because they were so thin, the oven-roasted nuts released a deep, nutty fragrance with every crunch against his teeth. Then came the hardened butter caramel. Ordinarily it would have set as hard as candy, but the butter had softened it first; it had worked its way between the slivers of nut and stamped its sweetness into every bite. On top of that came a texture completely different from the thin-sliced roasted nuts themselves—an even livelier crackle that scattered through his mouth like autumn leaves.
One sip of Alrune's Tear brought up coffee's distinctive aroma and pleasant bitterness, rinsing his palate clean.
And then he stuffed another cookie into his mouth.
Crunch, crackle-crackle, crunch-crunch, snap!
"You said all that just a moment ago, yet it seems you rather like them."
"I think these might be my favorite cookies of all, actually."
"Including your past life?"
"Including my past life."
"So Europa was more similar than expected."
"The big things, not so much—but the little details were almost identical."
Mary let out a soft hum through her nose and held a cookie out to Catherine. The day after Karem had told Catherine the truth, Mary had somehow learned of it as well; her interest had mainly been in the cooking side of things.
"Did they call this cookie Berseingeto cookie over there too?"
"That's just it—I can't quite remember the name."
"Didn't you say it was your favorite?"
"Whenever I went there it was always just… there, so I only ever called it the nut cookie. Cream?"
Mary took the kettle and poured. As the black Alrune's Tear turned cloudy, she added three generous spoonfuls of sugar.
"Ah, by the way—this dried Alrune. This is the last of it."
"Hm? There was so much. Already?"
"We were drinking three or four cups a day even at the fortress, and on the way back too."
"Mm. We did drink rather a lot."
In his past life the results of that much coffee would have been obvious: a hole in the stomach, sleepless nights, heartburn. But this was a different world, and strictly speaking the dried, roasted Alrune only resembled coffee—it was not coffee. Taste and aroma were identical, yet that was all. Black tea with coffee's flavor and fragrance painted on, the actual effects stripped away.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—
"Mm. Snow, is it?"
Outside the window, fat flakes the size of a thumb were pouring down, yet Catherine merely murmured the observation without much interest while she chewed her cookie.
"The laundry!"
Mary's eyes flew wide and she shot to her feet.
"What, were you drying laundry outside?"
"I hung it on the tower roof. I need to bring it in at once. May I be excused for a moment?"
Catherine waved her off with a go-on gesture. Mary bowed hastily and bolted straight out of the kitchen.
She could have just teleported the way she always does.
She was flustered enough that the thought never even crossed her mind.
Crunch—crunch—crunch—
"At any rate, if it's dried Alrune we need, we should stop by Coldon's Adventurers' Guild."
"The Adventurers' Guild? Not an herbalist?"
"Unlike the heads and fruit, the stems have only limited uses. Rather than hunting through every herbalist who might still have stock, it'll be faster to just post a request."
"I see. Ah—excuse me a moment."
Catherine tilted her head, wondering what that was about—then suddenly went rigid.
It was nothing dramatic. He had not brushed her hair back or stroked her cheek. Karem, who had never had any real experience with women, knew those gestures in theory but still lacked the nerve to actually do them—confession or no confession. All he had done was pinch a crumb of almond from the corner of her mouth between thumb and forefinger and lift it away.
But this was the first time the two of them had been left alone since the confession, and the sudden intimacy made every ordinary act of waiting on her in Mary's place feel different. That could not be helped.
"…"
"…"
Karem, belatedly realizing what he had just done—and everything he had been doing in Mary's place all this time—set the almond crumb down on the table with unnatural care.
"…A-anyway! Once your cold is fully gone we can visit the guild! It's a shame we won't be able to drink Alrune's Tear for a while, but—!"
"It was nice having something that reminded me of coffee. Too bad. Should I try making a substitute?"
"Coffee from your past life? That would be fine too! For now just bring me some more cookies!"
Eager to escape the awkwardness, Karem set down cup and cookies for a moment, picked up a fresh one—and froze.
Catherine's hands were cursed; she could neither pick up nor consume any food or drink other than water by herself. Dried Alrune she seemed able to hold, but that was about it.
Which meant the only way she could eat or drink was if someone else fed and watered her.
In other words: Karem had to feed her by hand.
"…Your hands stopped. Kid. Planning to eat them all yourself?"
"Ah—right. Just a second."
Karem put strength into his fingers.
Snap.
The Berseingeto cookie broke cleanly in half with a cheerful crack. Perfectly halved, it looked ideal for feeding someone.
Karem stared hard at the half-cookie.
"…It feels weird all of a sudden. Awkward, I guess."
"Ha. Just yesterday morning you were waiting on me at breakfast, and now you say that?"
"You're looking pretty awkward yourself, Lady Atanitas."
"Quiet and move your hands already."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Mm. The drink too."
"Yes."
Attached Reference Material
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.