Today I'm the Jajangmyeon Chef (2)
He had always figured he would run into a great noble someday.
This was the royal palace, after all, and with the festival nearly upon them, nobles and great nobles from every corner of the kingdom had poured in. Given the sheer density of them, it would have been stranger if he hadn't crossed paths with one.
Was that why Catherine had warned him?
Maybe the fact that she wasn't dragging him around this time—unlike before—was her way of telling him to get used to it.
And at last Karem found himself face-to-face with someone who ranked second only to the dukes in the entire kingdom.
Flap-flap-flap—
"Ah-bururururu—"
"Henry's looking forward to it just like Alicia. That smell is so savory it's hard to hold back."
They were the chief culprits who had wildly inflated the average headcount of the private room Lumierix had granted them.
Surrounded by guards, Prince Henry sat beside Alicia—who had brought Poppins along—drooling as he flapped his arms against the table.
Clank—
Belladonna Gladstone. The female knight leading the guards rested a hand on her breastplate from the same position as Poppins. Her short crop, shorter still toward the back of her head, was striking.
"I apologize for the sudden visit."
"Oh, please. An apology? Take those words back at once."
"Ordinarily Her Highness would have heeded me well, but..."
Belladonna's brown eyes slid toward the back of Alicia's head.
"Her Highness seems thoroughly elated by the first friend she has ever made, so..."
"My condolences in advance for the hardships ahead."
"Baroness?"
At the sudden warning wrapped in condolences, Belladonna blinked. Guards and a royal knight, a baroness, a prince, and a young lady.
With the population exploding in an instant, William tapped Karem's side. When Karem—still fishing noodles from the pot—looked over, William whispered,
"You stir-fried that mountain of vegetables. Did you see this coming?"
"Me? I'm just a chef who doesn't know a thing."
"Then what do you call this scene right now? Some kind of prophecy, or—"
"I'm not a mage."
Of course the present situation was more than a little awkward.
But it wasn't inexplicable.
"Lady Alicia has a... ahem. Excellent sense of smell, doesn't she?"
William went "Ah," studied Alicia carefully, and nodded in understanding.
There's no way Little Ogre Alicia would miss a smell like this.
The scent of jang frying in oil was ferociously strong. From past experience he could tell: no scent-masking magic had been cast on the room.
"Alicia is curious about that brown sauce."
"Aeeeeee! Ebururu—"
"Your Highness. You've drooled."
Belladonna and Poppins wiped the spit and drool from their respective charges.
"All that's left is to plate it."
"So what meat went into this?"
"It was labeled wolf-pig."
"Wolf-pig?"
"Yes. Young Master should have a bowl as well, shouldn't you?"
At that, William reflexively peered into the huge pot on the stove. Onions, cabbage, and meat swam in a brown sauce given real body by the starch that had been stirred in.
Frankly, looking at it did nothing for the appetite. The smell was superb. The eyes, however, flatly refused.
"A little for His Highness the Prince, then for Young Master and Young Lady. Ah—Sir Gladstone. Baroness. How shall we handle the tasting?"
The two of them shot him looks that said of course it had to be tasted, so Karem wordlessly pulled out extra bowls. Thankfully he had boiled plenty of noodles, and the freshly stir-fried jajang was generous as well.
"Wow. The smell is great but it looks totally bland!"
"Hmm... that brown is a bit much."
Alicia's single remark upon seeing the small bowl and the larger bowls of jajang on the tray spoke for every sentient being in the room except Karem.
For a fleeting moment Belladonna's face creased deeply at the contents of the bowl set before her.
Belladonna Gladstone.
As her name made clear, she was not a native of this place.
Eldest daughter of a Servianus craftsman-noble house that had fled into exile in the kingdom.
Even a woman becoming a knight met fierce resistance; for that woman to also be a foreign noble meant opposition from every direction. Yet in the end she had crushed every objection—from her own house and from outside it—with effort, skill, and luck, and won the glory of joining the Royal Guard.
And now she was supposed to eat this.
For the first time Belladonna felt a flicker of doubt about the honor of guarding the prince. She lifted the bowl and tilted it slightly.
...Slither.
Look at that. Sauce? Paste? Something she had never once seen in her life oozed stickily. Yes—slime. Metaphorically it was closest to slime.
And what filled it was essentially all vegetables. Even if she was not as meat-mad as the people of Seophon, this was a bit much.
Where had things gone wrong?
When His Majesty had allowed the prince to run free as much as possible? When he had met the youngest daughter of the Duke of Iceland? Or—
But it was already too late.
"Ababa—um-um—nyam."
"Your Highness? Your Highness?"
Henry was eating the jajang with his bare hands.
Babies are, as a rule, impatient.
And baby Prince Henry, who still had no concept of time, felt for the first time in his short life the sensation of time itself stopping.
What is this?
Henry's head filled with questions.
It had not been long since he started eating real food. Before that it had been nothing but bread porridge boiled in milk, meat porridge, and fruit.
The solid foods he had tried so far could be counted on one hand.
So Henry's still-undeveloped little mind hauled in every scrap of information it possessed—real or imagined—and tried to describe the taste he had just encountered.
Less sweet than that sweet thing from before.
This is supposed to taste bad, right? So why is it good?
Crunch, crunch—munch, munch—and there's meat in it.
What kind of flavor even is this?
"Aaaah?"
"Hen—right, I'm supposed to call him Your Highness. His Highness is asking what this is."
"...He's just going 'aaaah.' How does Lady Alicia even..."
"Hm? It's not that different from the way Flora talks."
"Aaaaaah!"
When are you going to answer me!
Henry slammed the table in pure irritation.
Slap! Slap!
It was cuteness incarnate, yet Belladonna and the guards recoiled in shock. That gentle Prince Henry throwing a tantrum?
No—something even more appalling was happening.
A native of the Seophon Kingdom eating vegetables with that much relish?
Whether the guards and Belladonna gaped or not, Karem spoke slowly, the way one teaches a baby.
"It's jajang. Put it on noodles and you get jajangmyeon."
"Jaja."
"Jajang."
"Jaja! Jaja!"
"Your Highness, you're covered in it. First—"
"Jjaa jjaa!!!"
Pak! A tiny brown-smeared hand slapped away the handkerchief in Belladonna's grip. That was not important right now.
"Noo—"
With an expression of almost holy solemnity unsuited to a baby, Henry raised both hands, lifted the brown-coated noodles, and carried them to his mouth.
Slurp-slurp-slurp!
Through teeth only just beginning to come in, Henry chewed a food he had never tasted before and experienced a texture he had never known.
"...Is it really that good?"
Belladonna forgot all about tasting. She kept glancing back and forth between Henry—who was attacking the jajangmyeon with passionate, almost martial fervor—and her own bowl, then carefully took a bite.
Slurp—slurrrp—
"...Even though you put in that much cabbage and onion..."
After one forkful, disbelief bloomed openly across William's face.
"You ate Giant's Rose and ratatouille just fine."
"Yeah, but those had other things in them. I watched the whole process. How does this end up tasting like this?"
William started to take another forkful, then paused to look at the bowl.
"It really does look awful, though."
"That's because of the bean garum. Can't be helped."
"Bean garum?"
Belladonna blinked.
"Bean garum... beans?"
As a daughter of Servianus—the heir to ancient Palatino, which had loved garum since time immemorial—she could not possibly be ignorant of how garum was made.
Even nobles knew the basics.
Garum was made from oily fish.
But... beans?
"How..."
William set down his fork and clapped the shoulder of Karem, who was inhaling jajangmyeon with enough force to devour the bowl itself, just like Alicia.
"This is the secret sauce personally crafted by Karem, the greatest genius chef in the history of Iceland—no, of the entire Seophon Kingdom."
"Young Master. That's embarrassing."
"What? Why? Did I say anything wrong?"
William, who had come and gone nearly as often as Godwin if not quite as much as Alicia, had once watched Karem bow and pray in front of a strange brick bound with straw.
"You made it... with beans? You made garum?"
"Naturally. But I can't tell you how."
"No... well..."
Belladonna frowned as though she still could not believe it and carefully ate more of the brown jajangmyeon. And... it was surprisingly fine.
"It lacks the dignity to grace a proper table."
"Dignity...?"
"Meaning there are far too many vegetables."
People born in the Seophon Kingdom loved meat.
And one of the symbols of Seophon nobility was precisely that—eating a great deal of meat.
Poppins, a classic meat-loving Seophon aristocrat, was speaking with that exact meaning. There were simply too many vegetables.
"Certainly... for a formal occasion..."
Belladonna trailed off and turned her head. Poppins did the same. The guards straightened their postures at once.
Knock-knock-knock-knock—
"That will be the Grandmaster."
"Sir Michael Jackson, you mean?"
"Yes."
"...One moment."
Thud-thud. Creeeak—
Belladonna was right. Michael Jackson. The swordmaster so handsome even the man nicknamed Bloody would have to admire him. Commander of the Royal Guard. A reincarnator.
"Oh God."
At the words that burst out of nowhere, everyone except Alicia and Henry—who were utterly lost in their jajang—froze in confusion.
"I followed the sacred aroma."
"Sir Jackson, calling someone a god the moment you walk in—"
"No. You are unmistakably my god. Excessive humility becomes arrogance."
What on earth was being said right now? The mad atheist Bloody? The jajang was delicious. What had that guy done this time?
"...First, please take a seat."
Feeling countless questioning stares stab into him, Karem ushered Michael inside. At least the man had said he didn't have to use informal speech in front of others; that was something. Once Michael sat, Karem quickly filled a bowl with jajangmyeon and held it out.
"Here. The jajang you spoke of."
"Oh. Ohhh. Ohhhhhh."
Michael Jackson quietly sobbed. The men felt a simultaneous surge of jealousy and bewilderment; Belladonna's heart raced even as she went cold at a side of him utterly unlike anything she had seen before.
"It isn't black, and the smell is subtly different, but... this is definitely..."
"Yes. It's the one Sir Jackson mentioned."
"Jajang."
"Yes. Jajangmyeon."
The noodles were not the familiar factory-yellow ones either.
Coarse, knife-cut kalguksu noodles.
The color was brown rather than black.
Yet Michael picked up a fork, mixed the unfamiliar dish with careful, unpracticed motions, and took a cautious bite.
Slurrrp—slurrp—!
At the blatantly loud sounds that trampled every rule of table manners, Poppins frowned, but Michael slowly savored the taste of home he had not known for a span as long as his previous life.
Before long he had the bowl pressed to his mouth, cheeks stuffed to bursting as he inhaled jajangmyeon, silent tears sliding down his face.
Anyway. Glad he's enjoying it.
The color, the noodles, the flavor—all a little different, and the umami a touch short—but the man who had wanted it looked satisfied enough not to care about the stares around him.
Right. Now then.
Karem slowly twirled his own jajangmyeon with a fork and lifted his head.
Everyone except the child and the baby was staring at him.
Fuck. Where do I even start cleaning this up?
Lady Catherine. This was force majeure.
Attached Materials
— Jajangmyeon —
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.