Vegetable Tempura for the Forced Vegetarian
In truth, people of truly high station tend to live easy lives.
Most of their work is filtered out by those beneath them long before it ever reaches their desks.
Of course, that rule did not apply to Alfred, who was essentially rebuilding Iceland from the ground up.
No matter how thoroughly things were screened, he was still the one who had to sign the final approvals.
And those documents arrived by the cartload every season of the year. They thinned a little in winter, yet the hours Alfred spent buried under every variety of paperwork never changed—even when distinguished guests came calling.
That is, unless Catherine suddenly appeared first thing in the morning with her retainers in tow.
Wondering what on earth was going on, Alfred was left thunderstruck by the confession of the man who followed her in.
"So you're saying you can't eat meat?"
"Meat, fish, milk, oils extracted from animals—basically every ingredient and byproduct that comes from livestock or animal-type monsters."
Ianbert let out a sigh as if trying to drill a hole straight through the floor and rapped the deer-antler helmet that covered his head.
"Haaaah. I barely managed to keep it hidden."
"Atanitas. Is it a curse?"
Tutatis have mercy—to think a curse as dreadful as Catherine's could exist anywhere else in the world. The shock was so complete he could scarcely draw breath. Yet Catherine shook her head with absolute certainty.
"It looks like a curse, but it most certainly is not."
"Surely not, Atanitas, but could you have misread it? How in the world can something like that not be a curse?"
Honestly, if it wasn't a curse the whole thing made even less sense. A curse that forced its victim into veganism? If something like that ever spread, the world would turn to desert overnight and civilization itself would collapse.
"Ugh, seriously. It's classified—I can't just talk about it."
"Classified? Don't tell me this is related to the Great Sword Nobles?"
"Yeah. Even for my brother I can't say a word. There was some messy business, and this is the injury that came out of it…"
The helmeted head tilted sideways. Even he seemed to find his own wording odd.
"…More like a result, I guess?"
"…Hold on. Lord Ianbert Yeats."
"Just use my name. Title or bloodline or whatever—I'm not even a peer, so what's with the 'Lord'?"
"Then, Ianbert."
"…He actually did it."
Fair enough. Even without a formal title the man was still royalty; simply dropping the honorifics felt strange.
Catherine formed a circle with thumb and forefinger, closed one eye, and peered at Ianbert as if through a lens.
"So you've been forced to maintain a diet like some ultra-conservative high elf?"
"Pretty much—sneaking around, stuffing myself with nothing but grass and fruit so no one would notice."
"For how long, exactly?"
"Rough guess? Half a year. I've been like this since last summer."
Catherine's entire body went rigid—the raw, unfiltered reaction of someone who had just heard something utterly impossible.
"…A mana user, and a Bachelor-rank knight at that. A human—not even an elf or high elf—living on nothing but vegetables?"
"Took some work to keep it under wraps."
It sounded nightmarish, but six months… Hearing that much, Karem found himself thinking of a certain someone currently enjoying a belated youth in the Greenhouse.
"Uh, knights still have to eat a lot, right?"
"Of course. And if you're a mana user on top of that, after a serious workout you need to put away at least a quarter of your own body weight—no matter how lightly you try to eat."
"I remember Bachelor sits right under Master—"
"Exactly."
Catherine drove the point home with a nod, then turned back to Ianbert with an expression of pure disbelief, lowering her makeshift monocle.
"Forget about getting caught—how and why in the world did this even happen?"
At those words Alfred's face tightened until the veins stood out. Of course it did; his close friend's little brother was describing a situation that might as well be a death sentence.
"Well, I had help from a magic tool."
"A magic tool… Don't tell me it's that helmet you're wearing right now?"
"As expected of a famous archmage—you spotted it at a glance."
The antlered helmet Ianbert never removed, even indoors, looked as though it had been fashioned from an entire stag's skull. Its appearance alone was anything but ordinary.
"Cernunnos's Abundance. A treasure that keeps the wearer's body in peak condition at all times."
"And with that you lasted half a year on nothing but vegetables?"
"At least while I'm wearing it I'm fine. I can manage for a while even after taking it off. The problem is I simply can't digest meat or bread anymore—"
The way he delivered such a horrifying fact so casually spoke volumes about his mental fortitude. Karem marveled at it while studying the helmet, then let his gaze drop to the armor beneath.
Then is that armor a magic tool too?
The armor Ianbert had worn since yesterday radiated a uniqueness and atmosphere every bit as striking as the helmet. A stag skull served as the pauldron. Up close, root-and-vine patterns covered every plate. It looked for all the world like a matching set.
"So does the armor that pairs with the helmet share the same effect?"
"Huh? Effect on the armor? What are you talking about?"
"What? Aren't they a set?"
"Ah—ahhhh."
Ianbert opened his mouth, then waved both hands vigorously in front of him.
"Only the helmet is a magic tool. This is just regular armor."
Catherine folded her arms and examined the armor for a moment as if appraising it.
"Right. I checked just in case, but it's nothing more than elaborately decorated armor."
"You can tell just by looking…"
Even to himself the question had been stupid. This was someone who handled at least a dozen magic tools a day—and an archmage on top of that.
"The armor looks like this purely for the aesthetic."
"Aesthetic?"
"Wearing this helmet with my old armor just looked wrong."
Ianbert gave the helmet a few demonstrative taps while still wearing it.
"So I had a custom suit made to match the design."
"Then the reason you've been walking around the castle in full armor…"
"I just like the armor, so I wear it. No special reason."
The three people already in the office stared at Ianbert with expressions that could have dried a salt pan a thousand times faster than the sun.
"Then… the reason you threw up yesterday…"
"There were people watching, and the host's face was on the line, so I forced it down. Besides, do you know who prepared that banquet?"
"You idiot."
A deep furrow carved itself between Alfred's brows.
"In this frozen waste, who cares about anyone's face? If your body is hurting you say so immediately."
"There are eyes everywhere—the whole retinue that followed me! What was I supposed to do?"
"You should have at least told your brother! Wait—don't tell me—"
"I made a big promise to him! How was I supposed to admit it after that? It's embarrassing!"
"This brat grew in body but his head is still the same as when he was a kid—"
Men never really grow up, they say. As the two of them launched into dredging up each other's humiliating pasts, Karem felt a distinctly lukewarm sensation settle over him. Catherine seemed to share the feeling; the emotion in her eyes said exactly that.
"Hold on. You said you've been eating vegetables, fruit, mushrooms and the like?"
"—Seriously, I—hm? Yeah, that's right."
"Then even if it isn't a permanent solution, there's an obvious short-term measure, isn't there?"
Ianbert's eyes, which had been bickering with Alfred, went round inside the helmet.
"Right below us there are herbivores that have lived on vegetables as their staple since the Mythic Age."
"Hm?"
"And geographically it's the closest nation to Seophon Island."
The country nearest the backwater of Europa that was Seophon Island—surrounded on all sides by sea—and a place that lived on vegetables: there was only one possibility.
"Berseingeto?"
"Exactly. Of course the elves there don't eat only vegetables, but that doesn't mean they lack recipes that use nothing but vegetables."
"Judging by the way you say that, there must be quite a few?"
"Rumor has it there are even high elves who have lived on nothing but vegetables since the Mythic Age."
That just made them cows whether they were elves or humans, didn't it? Yet Catherine's expression was perfectly serious. Come to think of it, she had already mentioned ultra-conservative vegetarian high elves.
Karem suddenly felt he understood why the dwarves and Seophon nobles hated Berseingeto elves so much.
"Berseingeto elven culture? Out in the open? Pfft."
Ianbert shuddered as if he had heard something unspeakable.
"I'd rather starve to death. Accept the culture of those arrogant long-eared cattle? I'd rather just keep chewing raw vegetables the way I am now."
"Bert."
"Don't stop me, Brother. More importantly, what would the other nobles think if they ever found out?"
At the very least it would become an unforgettable piece of gossip that high society would chew over for years whenever the opportunity arose. To Catherine, who had experienced both kingdoms, that much was obvious… wait.
"Then as long as it isn't Berseingeto cuisine, you don't care?"
"Well… yeah?"
"What if it were dishes personally developed by a genius chef born in the Seophon Kingdom?"
"How would a chef like that even exist in this land… huh?"
Something clicked. The genius chef—or rather, chefs—under the Duke of Iceland who poured out countless recipes no one had ever seen before.
"Then… don't tell me…?"
"That 'don't tell me' is exactly right."
Catherine whipped her head to the side. Naturally Ianbert's gaze followed hers and landed on Karem.
"Kid."
"Just like that, all of a sudden?"
"Can you do it?"
"Hell, why not. I'll give it a shot."
Karem—Garam in his previous life.
Homeland: Republic of Korea.
A citizen born in a country that turned every wild herb and toxic plant under the sun into side dishes.
While he temporarily borrowed Jigmeser's personal kitchen and gathered ingredients, Karem thought.
Vegetarians do not eat meat.
Therefore vegetarians do not gain weight.
That was the kind of statement made by someone who knew nothing yet pretended to know two things.
The largest land animal on Earth—the elephant—is a herbivore. Karem himself, back in his childhood, had once spent half a year eating nothing but namul bibimbap in an attempt to lose weight and only succeeded in becoming an even sturdier little pig.
Moreover, the vast majority of modern people, whose tongues and brains have been thoroughly corrupted by seasonings, simply cannot endure a pure vegetarian diet. Yet corporations still pour time and money into creating "delicious vegetarian food" aimed at those who, for whatever reason, walk the vegetarian path.
And the easiest way to make food delicious is to increase the calories.
The fastest, most efficient way to do that is to deep-fry the living daylights out of it.
As the saying goes, even a shoe tastes good if you fry it.
Of course, only idiots who live on bread and meat would think that way.
Proud citizens of the Korean peninsula had been eating seaweed since ancient times and, not satisfied with that, had consumed every wild herb and tree sprout imaginable—removing the poison when necessary or eating the plants while they were still young and harmless. Seasoned deodeok and grilled deodeok, zucchini dumplings, japchae, tofu kimchi, cold cucumber soup, kongguksu, dozens of stews, countless varieties of jeon and namul, bibimbap, drinks, snacks, gangdoenjang…
But he couldn't make any of that right now.
Ingredients aside, they simply took too long. The man before him was staring with such desperate, haggard eyes that he looked ready to starve to death on the spot, and for the first time in his life Karem felt a vague, hard-to-define sense of duty.
So he resigned himself to following the first approach.
Deep-fry the vegetables in oil.
Even picky children who claim to hate vegetables will, after biting into a freshly fried vegetable tempura, mutter, "Huh… maybe I like vegetables after all?"
There was not the slightest chance that a man who had been forcibly twisted into vegetarianism—looking as though he had pulled all-nighters for a month and starved for a week—would refuse it.
Yet Ianbert, watching every ingredient in its raw state, broke out in a cold sweat.
"Young pea pods, carrots, onions, beets, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, asparagus… all sorts of mushrooms, bell peppers, and more eggplant."
"Is that boy really one of the archmage's personal chefs?"
"Hm? One of them? He's my only personal chef."
"…Fine, let's set that aside for now."
Looking even more haggard, Ianbert tore his eyes away from the mountain of fresh vegetables piled beside Karem, who was dumping white powders into a large bowl with abandon.
"…So these vegetables are…?"
"What Your Highness will be eating shortly."
"Ugh."
Ianbert made no attempt to hide his disgust.
Just hearing it was enough to make green bitterness rise in his throat.