Red Witch Kkakdugi (1)
They say humans are creatures of adaptation.
With time, Catherine had grown used to the smell and recovered her composure.
Mary, who had truly lost her mind at the first truly shocking odor of her life—or rather, of her recent years—also managed to get up from the floor, though she still swayed unsteadily.
Whether the same rule applied to house elves was anyone’s guess.
The shock had yet to fully fade; Catherine pressed a hand to her ringing head.
Just in case, Karem asked her,
“Good heavens. I’ve smelled it before, but it’s still a truly shocking stench.”
“You called it… garum, didn’t you?”
“Yes. There’s no way I could forget that appalling fishy reek I once smelled in Servianus. So this is why they sealed it so tightly.”
Garum.
Karem knew the name thanks to a cooking-history video channel he had watched in his previous life. It was definitely the name of the fish sauce the ancient Romans used to make and eat.
They already said this world was similar to his previous one, and now there was garum as well? Convergent evolution, perhaps?
Karem accepted it readily enough. The history of human gourmet cuisine was, after all, the history of umami, so it made sense.
Catherine began muttering as if some unpleasant memory had surfaced, only to stop short when she noticed what Karem was doing.
“Hm? A bowl? Why all of a sudden?”
“I have to taste it first.”
“Have you lost your mind?!”
“Ah—absolutely not!!!”
Mary, still keeping her distance and unable to come any closer, let out a piercing shriek, but Karem’s hands showed no hesitation.
He carefully tilted the barrel so none of its contents would spill onto the surroundings.
The two who had already adapted to the smell could have stopped him, yet the sheer, appalling stench that had erupted the moment the seal broke had locked Catherine’s and Mary’s legs in place.
And the state of the garum—something Karem was seeing for the first time across both his previous life and this reincarnation—was surprisingly ordinary.
No, it was fascinating.
“Somehow it looks completely different from how it smells.”
The liquid was a deep golden color that almost reminded him of olive oil, yet so clear and pure that the scratches on the bottom of the bowl showed through.
Catherine, who had been more horrified than anyone, frowned the moment she saw what was in the bowl.
“Hm? Not a single impurity?”
“Impurities?”
“Yes. And the color is completely different as well.”
“So the ones you’ve seen before were a different color.”
“The ones I saw were a dark brown. Nowhere near this transparent. The method of production might be different.”
Is that so? Karem was thinking when Mary suddenly had a fit.
“You mustn’t! Karem Hubae! Absolutely not!”
“Huh? Not what?”
“What do you intend to make with a liquid that is no different from a mimic—completely different on the inside from how it looks!”
“Wait, how did you know?!”
“Your face is saying everything!”
Karem reflexively touched the corner of his mouth.
Just as she said, the corners of the boy’s lips—looking for all the world like a child about to seize the three sacred treasures—had curled upward.
Even so, setting the garum, or rather the fish sauce, aside for a moment, the greatest obstacle still remained.
Catherine. If Karem tried to do anything with the chili peppers, the same thing as last time would almost certainly happen again.
To avoid another disaster of ice being jammed into his mouth, he somehow had to persuade her.
Danger or no danger, the Red Witch’s Fingers were under Catherine’s management.
And the moment Catherine saw Karem’s face she smacked her own forehead with a sharp thwack.
Of all things, he was making that scheming expression about these.
Still, Karem had never once betrayed her expectations.
No—there had been one time.
He had once skipped the snack while claiming he was making a trial offering for Winter-Ascend.
A mixture of mild disappointment and curiosity.
Catherine tilted her head, weighing the matter, then finally let out a deep sigh and waved a hand toward Karem.
“Haaah, fine. Just do it.”
“Huh? I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“Contractor?!”
Mary screamed as though she had been betrayed, but Catherine raised a hand to stop her.
“Just as Mary said, it’s already written all over your face.”
“In that case…”
Karem pushed the borrowed gloves back toward Catherine and held out both empty hands.
“Hm? What now?”
“Please give me a few more dried Red Witch’s Fingers!”
“You weren’t going to use just the one?!”
“Not even close.”
This time, she really had a bad feeling about it.
“I-I still have work left to do!!!”
The moment the ingredients appeared in the kitchen, Mary fled without looking back, kicking up a cloud of dust like a cat that had just spotted a cucumber.
What she left on the table was nothing much.
A basket of purple, fist-sized turnips, some onions, and one leather sack, plump as an adult’s head, stuffed with Red Witch’s Fingers that she had brought from Catherine’s ingredient storage.
“Red Witch’s Finger, huh. That’s an awfully long name.”
“So in the trade they just call them Firehands for short.”
“Got it. Is this the entire sack of Firehands?”
“Yes. Everything left after we burned the rest as five-crown kindling at Winter-Ascend.”
Karem nodded and checked the contents of the sack.
The moment his hand touched them, a searing, spicy pain flared, and he pulled out several thoroughly dried Firehands.
He let out a small sound of admiration.
Not a single drop of moisture remained; they were bone-dry.
With this amount, it would be just barely enough—or perhaps a little short.
Kkakdugi.
Napa cabbage for kimchi naturally did not exist here.
He had no intention of settling for something half-hearted like cabbage kimchi, so the choice naturally narrowed to kkakdugi.
Of course the radishes here were not as large and thick as the modern ones he remembered.
They were more like turnips—fist-sized or a little larger.
Karem immediately began cutting the turnips into kkakdugi-sized cubes.
As long as they were diced into squares it did not matter, and fortunately, aside from a stronger raw flavor and a complete lack of spiciness, they were not much different from the ones in his previous life.
“What, are you trying to make a salad?”
“Closer to a pickle than a salad, don’t you think?”
“Ah, well, if it’s a pickle. But where’s the vinegar?”
“I’ll add vinegar later too.”
While the turnips sat in a large bowl, salted and waiting, Karem had work to do.
He dumped the entire sack of Firehands straight into a mortar.
Catherine’s eyes went wide.
Not just one— the whole sack? Had he lost his mind?
“You were seriously planning to use all of them?!”
“Honestly, even this amount feels a little tight.”
“What on earth are you trying to make?”
“Hmm. First I’ll grind these up, then mix in all sorts of seasonings and toss everything together.”
“…And that seasoning includes that garum, I take it?”
Yes. Karem nodded firmly.
Fine, I really don’t understand anymore, Catherine thought as she stepped back, and Karem immediately began pounding the mortar.
Perhaps because they were completely free of moisture.
Even under the hand pestle the Firehands crumbled like dry autumn leaves or sand, shell and seeds alike scattering into powder with every strike.
The particles ended up a little coarser than flour.
After that there was nothing complicated left to do.
He ground ginger, garlic, and onion and added them to the thoroughly salted turnips, then instead of salt and apple he stirred in apple jam and honey along with a little flour dissolved in water.
And then Karem picked up the long-awaited fish sauce—the garum.
“Hah. A pickle that uses garum, of all things.”
“If we’re counting like that, when I asked permission to use the Firehands—”
“Yes, yes. I’m already starting to regret it, so finish before I change my mind.”
At those words Karem tipped the entire small bowl of garum into the mixture.
Honestly, he was not without worry either.
It was not the Firehands or the fishy smell of the garum that concerned him.
Hadn’t the garum that the ancient Romans had been so crazy about been famous for parasites because they used the entire fish, guts and all?
But when he thought about it, if parasites had been a real problem, something would have gone wrong during the ten years he had spent as a serf long before now.
Even if something did go wrong, he had the loyal faith that Catherine would somehow fix it—and that faith was not misplaced.
After all, she already held his stomach in her grip.
That fact was still known to no one else.
Compared with the time spent preparing the ingredients, finishing the kkakdugi took barely the blink of an eye.
He carefully tossed everything so the seasoning coated every cube evenly.
In the meantime, once the smell had cleared from the kitchen, Mary returned as if she had never fled.
Of course she was staring at Karem with thoroughly sickened eyes.
No—Catherine wore the exact same expression.
“Karem Hubae. I have a question.”
“Uh, didn’t you run away?”
“I did not run away. I merely went out for a moment to clear the snow piled around the tower.”
“Of course you did.”
Indeed, unmelted snowflakes still clung to Mary’s hair, as though she really had been outside.
Having corrected Karem’s not-quite-misunderstanding, Mary asked again.
“You’re doing that with your bare hands. Is that all right?”
“Huh? I washed them thoroughly before I started tossing.”
“That’s not what I mean. Doesn’t it hurt?”
Catherine nodded as if she shared the same thought.
Just as they said, Karem was currently tossing the kkakdugi with bare hands completely coated in seasoning.
Honestly, it looked so red it was almost threatening, and the viscosity only made it worse, yet the smell was strangely ambiguous—neither good nor bad.
A fishy note seemed present, yet it was overlaid by the sharp fragrance of garlic and onion, leaving something subtle.
But more than that—he was handling that stuff with his bare hands?
Karem tilted his head slightly at Catherine’s and Mary’s question.
Of course it had hurt at first.
He had even regretted not simply putting on leather gloves.
Yet whether it was thanks to the memories of his previous life, or because spiciness was something one could adapt to given enough exposure, by now there was no pain—only a hot, tingling sensation.
“It just feels hot, like my body temperature has gone up a bit.”
“…Aren’t you a little young to have such strange tastes?”
“Pardon?”
“No, think about it logically. Who puts this much effort into handling and then eating a poisonous herb that hurts just to touch with bare hands?”
“Is the great archmage really the one who should be saying that?”
He stared at her with an incredulous look that clearly meant, You’re the one with the most absurd powers of anyone, and Catherine was just about to flare up when—
“Anyway. It’s finished.”
After washing the seasoning cleanly from his hands, Karem set the bowl on the table.
He had called it a pickle, but since it had not yet fermented, it was closer to a salad for the moment.
Ignoring the sickened gazes of Catherine and Mary, he speared a piece with a fork and ate it.
A spicy, hot, sharp sensation and a crisp crunch.
Following right behind came the various sweet notes from the seasoning and the bright acidity of the vinegar, so that the fishiness did not appear at all; instead only the deep umami the fish sauce carried came through.
Even so.
It was still some distance from the real thing of his previous life.
Perhaps it was because of the apple jam and honey he had used in place of plum extract.
He had made it with such frantic intensity, yet something about it still felt a little lacking.
To be specific, it tasted like a spicy pickled radish that had stopped just short of becoming proper kimchi.
“It’s decent enough to eat.”
“Decent enough, is it.”
“Yes. Would you like to try some?”
With that, Karem held out the bowl of kkakdugi along with a fresh fork.
Hah, I’m curious, but… am I really going to eat this? No, it’s a little unsettling. Still, he ate it just fine, didn’t he?
It doesn’t smell any fishier. But that garum from earlier is in there, isn’t it?
Master and servant arrived at the same conclusion through different trains of thought.
“Kid. I’ll try it once I’ve steeled myself a little more.”
“I’ll save the opportunity for later.”
Not a rejection, yet something very close to avoidance.
Still, since they had not outright refused, Karem simply nodded.
It might taste different once it had fermented, even if it was nothing special right now.
“Anyway, I’ll be heading out now.”
“Hm? All of a sudden?”
“There’s an exchange meeting today. If I just pack this into a barrel and go, the timing should be perfect.”
“That’s right, there was an exchange meeting. Have you gotten used to it yet?”
“Ugh. I’m still not used to all that flattery—”
The regular exchanges with Head Chef Jigmeser, which took place several times a week, were still ongoing when Karem looked down at the kkakdugi he had begun packing into the barrel.
Should I try feeding this to Jigmeser too?
A sudden spark of curiosity rose in him.