Unexpected Gift (2)
Chili peppers.
Native to the South American continent, they had only stepped onto the stage of history relatively recently—yet in a mere few centuries they had spread across the entire world, cultivated and used almost everywhere.
There was no way Karem could fail to recognize them. How could any Korean not know chili peppers? Searching for a Korean dish that did not contain them was faster than listing the ones that did.
And right now, sitting before Karem’s eyes, was a chili pepper.
Its shape and name were quite different, of course.
“So, Lady Atanitas.”
“What is it.”
“What did you say this thing was called?”
“The Red Witch’s Finger.”
Right. That was the name.
Wearing the protective gloves he had borrowed from Catherine, Karem rolled the strangely shaped red fruit—brought by Catherine herself, no less—around in his palm.
Crimson skin, straight form. And the smell was, no matter how anyone argued, pure chili pepper. A little more exotic in its spicy fragrance, perhaps, but still unmistakably that.
There were clear differences as well. True to the name “finger,” at a quick glance you could almost mistake it for one for a full two seconds; the surface was wrinkled like an old man’s skin, a unique shape.
As Karem turned the otherworldly chili pepper over with fascination, Catherine spoke.
“One of the few plants that grows well in barren Iceland. Or rather, it’s only natural—it’s a poisonous herb that thrives in cold regions to begin with.”
“The chili—I mean, the Red Witch’s Finger is a poisonous herb?”
“Yes. Contact causes pain, and if you ingest it, you feel a burning agony fitting the fire mana the plant contains. No beast, monster, or insect will go near it.”
“That—”
Karem was stunned. Judging by those traits alone, this was nothing less than one of the top three indispensable ingredients for the vast majority of Koreans—alongside garlic and soy sauce.
Even the searing heat on the skin felt intimately familiar. Specifically, it was that welcome, almost nostalgic sensation he used to feel every kimjang season at his grandparents’ house.
Still, you never knew. The ominous appearance that matched the name “Red Witch’s Finger,” plus the fantasy attribute of fire mana… He vaguely remembered some special-forces survival expert saying never to eat or even touch a plant you’d never seen before. Or maybe he didn’t.
In the end, temptation won. With his bare hand—the one not wearing the glove—he tipped the well-dried red skin fragments and seeds he had been holding straight into his mouth.
And chewed.
The sudden act left Catherine completely blank. Karem, by contrast, was trembling with pure ecstasy.
Ten years since his reincarnation. The familiar, burning agony that began on his fragile tongue shot through every nerve, making the fine hairs on his skin stand on end. That stimulation raced all the way to his brain and finally struck his very soul.
The soul-stirring taste that no Korean—no, that the vast majority of Koreans—could ever abandon.
The variety was different, so the flavor and the direction of the heat were a little off. That was inevitable when the world itself was different. But it was chili pepper. It was absolutely chili pepper.
Catherine, still dumbfounded by her personal chef’s sudden bizarre behavior, finally moved when she saw tears of emotion welling in Karem’s eyes. Of course she did. She had clearly said it was a poisonous herb, and here he was stuffing even a piece of it into his mouth. Any normal person would short-circuit for a moment.
“Uwahahahahaha! Hahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha—!”
“...Kid!? Have you completely lost your mind!?”
“Hahaha—huh? Wait, what!?”
Catherine was fast. Overjoyed to the point of roaring laughter, Karem suddenly found her trying to force a mass of magically created ice into his mouth.
“Teacher! Teacher!? Why are you suddenly doing this!!!”
“I’m doing this for your own good, so just shut up and eat it!”
“Even a normal parent would give a kid a seizure acting like that!”
“And what about the one who heard me say it was poison and still stuffed it straight into his mouth—is that normal!?”
“Ah—that’s not the problem! Lady Atanitas! Lady Atanitas! Just listen to me for a second—!”
Crash, thud! Ten-year-old Karem’s body was flattened under Catherine. The impact made the pot boiling on the hearth rock for a moment.
A short while later Mary finished clearing the snow and walked in.
“Hoo, that fragrant smell… is secondary.”
What on earth was this situation? Could her contractor have gone mad with lust and tried to pin down Junior Karem?
Mary entertained the suspicion for a brief, very brief moment. Then she heard the ice in Catherine’s hand and the mutually flustered shouting, and the suspicion vanished at once.
Relieved, Mary approached the two people sprawled on the floor to calm things down.
Thanks to that, the situation settled.
Catherine only released him after she had finally jammed the ice into Karem’s mouth to her satisfaction. The cream stew happened to be finished as well, so meal preparations went quickly.
Catherine kept accepting spoonfuls of stew from Mary, yet her irritation clearly hadn’t faded; she continued warning Karem throughout.
“—As I said. Just because something piques your curiosity doesn’t mean you shove it straight into your mouth. Kid. What are you, a child?”
“Lady Atanitas. May I be rude for a moment?”
“What.”
“I am a child.”
That was—wait, it wasn’t nonsense at all.
Catherine suddenly realized the obvious fact she had been unconsciously overlooking. Anyone who saw him would know: as long as he kept his mouth shut, Karem was nothing more than an ordinary little boy wherever he went.
She took another spoonful of cream stew while she thought, then opened her mouth again.
“Th-this is all your fault!”
“What, all of a sudden?”
“Because you act so mature for your age!”
“Actually, the mature one is more like—”
“Quiet! If I hadn’t been here you wouldn’t have died, but you would have been writhing on the floor in agony bad enough to wish you were dead!”
From there Catherine spent the entire meal scolding her careless personal chef. At first Karem had been confused, but once he understood he quietly accepted the lecture.
He had ingested a substance she had explicitly warned was poisonous, driven by reckless curiosity. Strip it down to the essentials and the one who had carelessly swallowed a hazardous substance was in the wrong, and Karem knew it perfectly well.
When he finally showed signs of reflection, Catherine ended the lecture and at last enjoyed her lunch in peace.
“Whew, finally over.”
“What was that? I could have sworn I just heard someone say they still had plenty of complaints left.”
“Nothing at all. Really.”
Karem broke out in a cold sweat for a split second and focused on his stew. There was no time to savor the rich, creamy flavor. All of his attention was fixed on the Red Witch’s Finger still clutched in his gloved hand.
He didn’t fully understand it yet, but one way or another he now had chili peppers in his possession. Catherine’s words—and the earlier mention that it had been used as a material for Flower of—meant that, price aside, there was a way to obtain more.
Karem’s chest swelled of its own accord. Of course it did.
I never even hoped for soy sauce, doenjang, or gochujang…
And now the key ingredient for gochujang had fallen into his hands. How long had he missed it?
While he was still lost in the afterglow, a thought suddenly struck him.
Wait—what about the meju?
The ingredients for gochujang were simple once you stripped them down: chili powder, meju, salt, and grain syrup. The syrup could be substituted by making a sugar syrup…
I’ve never made it myself, but I think you use boiled soybeans and rice straw? Something about a specific mold. There’s no way I can get rice straw here. Would wheat straw work as a substitute? No—before that, what about the beans?
Still, there was hope. Even without gochujang he had substitutes. Dry the chilies and grind them for chili powder. Grind them, add vinegar and water, and ferment for hot sauce. Different variety and ingredients, but pickle them like jalapeños. Those three came to mind immediately—and more would keep appearing if he thought about it.
“Karem Hubae. If you’re still hungry, you can just take more, you know?”
“Huh? What?”
“Why are you scraping the bottom of an empty bowl?”
“Ah—no. Just useless thoughts. Or rather, useful ones, but…”
Karem vaguely brushed it off. Looking at everything from every angle, the conclusion was that he somehow had to persuade Catherine. Even now she was watching him fiddle with the red fruit—gloved or not—with a wary gaze.
How was he supposed to get past that first and last real obstacle…
While Karem fretted, Mary fed Catherine the last of the cream stew’s solids and stood up.
“Karem Hubae. So the conclusion is that for the moment it’s still a useless thought?”
“Uh, yes. There’s an obstacle in the middle, so for now…”
“Then stop daydreaming and go fetch that barrel I left in the pantry while I clean up.”
“That barrel? Ah.”
The tightly sealed wooden barrel he had somehow received from the pantry. Catherine, who hadn’t been present at the time, tilted her head at the sudden exclusion.
“Barrel? What barrel are you talking about? Did you receive some liquor?”
“I don’t know what’s inside. I just happened to receive it when I went to the pantry this morning.”
“A barrel?”
“Yes.”
Catherine kept tilting her head. The unrealistically beautiful young girl wearing a full expression of pure curiosity would have made Karem mutter the first line of the Heart Sutra for the sake of his heart if he had been watching—but fortunately Karem returned carrying the barrel just then.
Mary’s cleanup finished at the same moment, and Catherine’s fretting ended as well.
“Here it is—the barrel.”
“Hmm? Smaller than I expected.”
“It seems to have liquid inside, at least.”
“Hmm… not a leather stopper, but expensive cork? And sealed with beeswax on top of that. Every joint between metal and wood is completely covered in wax.”
Catherine’s tilted head shifted into an intrigued expression. Even wines that only produced a few bottles a year weren’t sealed this thoroughly. Valuable potions were expensive, true, but if even the lowest grade received this much effort it would be cheaper to just keep them in ordinary glass bottles.
She gave the barrel a light tap.
“All right. Let’s open it, then.”
“What? Right now?”
“Of course. No reason to wait. Mary.”
Catherine snapped her fingers and Mary immediately seized the barrel’s stopper. The brownie put strength into her thumb, index, and middle fingers and twisted.
Creak-creak-creak—pop!
A cheerful sound of a perfect seal breaking. Then a shocking fishy stench overwhelmed the kitchen.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!”
Mary, who had been closest to the smell, screamed and went silent. The vibration made the barrel sway, and a clear, watery sloshing echoed from within.
Even through the small opening, the stench of an entire stretch of ocean compressed into one place. A smell so intense it felt like a blow to the brainstem.
“Ugh!? Th-this shocking stench—! Why the hell is there insane garum here!?”
Catherine gagged once, then recovered almost instantly from prior experience. She protected her nose with magic and shouted in pure shock.
And Karem.
His reincarnated body had never smelled anything like this crushing fishiness; his nerves were vibrating. But his soul was completely different.
His soul was trembling once more. The meaning that tremor carried left Karem unable even to speak.
That intimately familiar fermented fish stench. And Catherine’s words drove the final nail home.
Garum? Isn’t that just fish sauce? Then…
Chili peppers, fish sauce, garlic.
Not everything, but the essentials that never left the table of most Koreans.
In that moment, a memory from his previous life slammed into Karem’s mind.
Napa cabbage kimchi might be out of reach, but kkakdugi? He could probably make that.
“K-kid! What are you standing there blankly for!? Hurry up and seal that damned hole!”
“...No.”
“Wh-what!?”
“I’d like to enjoy this smell a little longer.”
“You—you’re trying to get revenge for me stuffing ice in your mouth earlier, aren’t you!!!???”
Honestly, Karem couldn’t say the thought hadn’t crossed his mind.
A little. Just a tiny bit.