Crepe Cake, Rolls, and Suzette of a Small Banquet (3)
They say a beauty looks like a painting even when she's only drinking water.
And dark elves, the elves of the desert, were beautiful in abundance—men and women alike, true to their elven blood.
Adobis was a multi-racial kingdom with an especially high proportion of dark elves, so it was only natural that their envoy included many of them. True to elven form, every last one was a handsome man or a beautiful woman, and at the pinnacle of them all stood Nepaneck.
She had the vibrant charm of a girl racing across desert sands—yet, at odds with that liveliness, a languidness that came from the weight of years. Her skin glowed with a light rarely seen in Europa. Simply puffing out her cheeks, bare of any artifice and touched with a hint of innocence, Nepaneck's sulky expression alone was enough to make people turn and look twice.
But not a chance.
Karem's heartbeat did not so much as stir. His heart remained as steadfast as a stone Buddha, rooted firmly in place.
"Then I'll take my leave. Excuse me."
After all, the people he saw every single day were Catherine and Mary. It was only natural for Mary to radiate killing intent the moment anyone invaded her domain—her work. The guardian of flour who went wild for bread, milk, butter, and jam. Even expressionless Mary, if beauty were measured in numbers, stood on roughly the same level as Nepaneck. And her contractor, Catherine, sat a full step above Nepaneck—possessed of a beauty and innocence that still, with nothing more than a simple expression or gesture, could overload Karem's heart.
Under those circumstances, letting his eyes linger on Nepaneck's looks was a bit much. Karem's standards had grown far too high.
An unshakable heart, like a Moai statue that would never topple. Karem ignored the gaze that seemed to stab into the back of his head and returned to his place. Then he squeezed his eyes shut. Watching Catherine accept cake with cream smeared innocently around her lips, the boy counted primes for a moment.
"Looks like the explanation's finished. Why are your eyes closed?"
"No. I was just restoring the balance of a heart that had been shaken for a second."
"Huh? What would there even be to shake you?"
"I just received a job offer a little while ago."
"What?"
What did I just hear?
Catherine, who had been glancing around at her rivals while deciding what to eat next, whipped her head around like a cat startled by a sudden noise. Even Catherine—renowned as an adventurer long before she became a great mage—had often received employment offers from other nobles. No. This was not an employment offer. In vulgar terms, it was poaching! The most despicable yet unstoppable act in the world of contracts: drowning a coveted talent in overwhelming wealth and snatching them away!
Catherine gestured into empty air. Paying no mind to Mary approaching with a handkerchief, she seized the boy's shoulders and shook him.
"Surely you haven't fallen for the glittering temptation of that wicked desert long-ears? Answer me."
"Hey—until now you've been calling them honored guests! People around will see!"
"Do you honestly think they have the leisure to care about this right now?"
Catherine was right. Even elves, who boasted the best hearing among people, needed the situation to cooperate. Everyone seated at the table—Adobis and Winterhome alike—was either lost in a texture they were tasting for the first time in their lives or too busy marveling over it and discussing it with one another. Catherine and Karem's conversation, conducted in a firm tone without raised voices, did not even register as background noise amid the lively table.
Nepaneck was still watching Karem with a sulky gaze and expression, but even she could not make out what the two of them were saying. She only sensed, instinctively, that it had something to do with the proposal she had offered.
Whether her contractor and coworker carried on or not, Mary watched the scene for a moment and held out the handkerchief.
"Contractor. There's cream on your cheek."
"Huh? Ah—so that's why it felt strange."
Karem, who had been hurriedly spinning excuses whose sincerity even he did not understand, let out a sigh the moment Catherine seemed to have calmed a little.
"It's not over yet."
"Ah. Please. I told you I'm not going."
And Catherine grilled Karem about every last detail until the banquet ended. Only after the boy reminded her of the contract three times did she finally settle down.
"Just cream and sugar, and the right amount of labor?"
"With only that, the cream turns into this texture? No—is it true?"
"Of course."
The boy, Karem, nodded. The chefs of Adobis and Winterhome could not quite grasp it, but there was nothing for it. They had just watched the process of whipped cream being made right before their eyes.
Source technology. So-called secret techniques had been precious in every era. From methods of processing ingredients to combinations, ratios—even a mere movement of the hands could become a secret. Recipes were no different. In the end, a secret technique meant everything its holder possessed. In that sense, Karem's whipped cream was more than enough to qualify as a secret technique in the eyes of the surrounding chefs.
It was an age when even the way one wielded a knife was treated as a secret and charged for. Whipped cream that completely transformed the form and texture of the raw material itself seemed stranger if it were not a source technology. In their eyes, it was a technique worthy of being written into culinary history.
On top of that, Karem was demonstrating every dish he could present on the spot and handing over the recipes as well. Accustomed to him by now, the Winterhome chefs adapted and sang his praises. Chef Karem—you are a god! A little blasphemous? Who cares!
The Adobis chefs were simply bewildered. So they asked:
"Is it really all right to teach this so freely?"
"Huh? Wasn't this a trade from the beginning? You all added spices and everything else to your recipes when you gave them to me."
"Well… um."
The dark elf chefs from Adobis scratched their heads and glanced at one another. Of course, secret techniques could be traded if one asked whether they could or could not. But how many people casually handed over their secrets for a price? Even when they did, the usual practice was to make the explanation as long-winded and hard to follow as possible. And the receiver rarely complained. After all, secret techniques were simply like that. Even for payment, who would pure-heartedly surrender something that was practically their entire self? You were lucky if they did not swindle you outright.
In that light, Karem was nothing short of a rare breed to dark elves who had lived longer than other races. Confused by an experience they were having for the first time in their long lives, the dark elves were at a loss. Was his trading spirit simply that thorough? Or was he pure because he was still young?
After exchanging glances for a moment, the Adobis dark elf chefs decided to set aside, for now, the political games they had honed in the palace of their homeland.
"…Are you interested in cuisine from regions other than Adobis, by any chance?"
"Oh, other regions?"
"Yes. The cooking of the tribal peoples of the Arcadia Wasteland—"
As a rule, a great nation was great because of its capacity. How could they not find it admirable that someone so young was pouring out his talent without reservation and trying to share it without deceit—they who took pride in being dark elves of Adobis? The dark elves decided, for the first time in a long while, to display the magnanimity of a great power.
"I'm interested, but first wouldn't it be better to try making the whipped cream myself and experiment with a few things? We can share after that. Exchanging looks better that way, doesn't it?"
"—Hmm. Now that you mention it, you're not wrong. There are a few things I'd like to test before this sensation fades."
"Any leftover butter cake and syrup? There's something I want to try."
"Here. I'll need to make more syrup, though."
The chefs of Adobis and Winterhome began to scatter in twos and threes. Only then did Karem finally have a moment to breathe. He let out a long sigh and turned to the dark elf girl sitting beside him, watching him intently—Nepaneck.
"Excuse me, Lady Nepaneck. As an envoy of the Adobis New Kingdom, aren't you rather busy?"
"How many people in this remote corner of Iceland are even qualified to meet me in person?"
A question returned in reverse. In other words, those who fell short of the mark never got past her subordinates. Of course, that still left her with a considerable amount of work. Perhaps that was why—despite Catherine watching with fire in her eyes—Nepaneck somehow found every gap and kept making her proposals.
"I've told you any number of times—"
"But how about reconsidering? With talent like that at your age, think of the future. Wouldn't a bigger pond suit you better than this backwater of Europa?"
"Hmm. A bigger pond."
Of course he was not so enlightened as a Buddha; naturally he had desires. More money and better cooking tools. Better ingredients and spices. A better kitchen and people to command under him.
But let's think about it.
Even with more money, there was nowhere he particularly needed to spend it right now. Cooking tools? When he had gone to collect the copper grills and other items ordered last winter, Catherine had already paid and even returned the deposit. Ingredients and spices? Among everything that entered Winterhome, goods that were not imports were the rarer ones—and they arrived in condition that rivaled modern supermarket products. No thief bold enough to play games with quality in a great noble's kitchen would last long. Even if one did, after a swift beheading the townsfolk would be dipping their bread in the scattered blood.
A better kitchen? People under him? With the house elf Mary already here, did he really need better facilities or more hands? No—before any of that, Mary would never quietly watch other servants or workers enter the Mage's Tower.
As Karem's expression, which had first been tempted, gradually shifted into something oddly negative, Nepaneck grew flustered in turn and asked:
"What—at an age overflowing with dreams, do you have no ambition at all? If you want, I could even attach an oasis in a prime location."
"Hmm. A territory with an oasis…"
Thanks to the grace of the sun god Bowhasa and the Sobek River, water shortages in the Adobis New Kingdom—despite most of its territory being desert—were rare enough to count on one hand. Even so, because the land was overwhelmingly desert, water remained precious, and oases more precious still. Water was the source of life. Where water existed, plants grew, animals gathered, people gathered, and villages formed. Bestowing an oasis was no different from granting dominion over the surrounding lands.
"Still not interested."
"Ha? Why on earth not!"
Of course, real estate was valuable enough to wake the dead. In his previous life, Karem would have been confident he could kneel and lick Nepaneck's feet until they smelled of mint cleanser. But after reincarnation?
They said great power came with great responsibility. If he received one of the desert's finest honey-lands—an oasis—as a territory at this age, envious eyes would appear without fail. Even if he accepted, he might end up spending far more time in Nepaneck's kitchen, or the royal kitchens, than on the oasis itself. What would be the point of owning it then?
More than anything, accepting Nepaneck's offer would mean abandoning the foundation he had already built—and was still building—and starting again from the very bottom. Karem had no confidence he could recreate the results he had now. Even setting aside every prior advantage, the people he had met here, his benefactors… the bonds he had accumulated kept catching at his eyes, too many to cross a great ocean for.
"Thank you for the generous offer, but I must decline after all."