I'll Teach You Baeksuk (1)

Right up until I had to leave for the restaurant, I was doing what I always did: watching Netflix on my laptop.

I liked the Korean food-travel shows well enough. But the one I loved, the one I had watched more than any other, was this—a Japanese restaurant drama suspiciously devoted to the small hours of the night, whose owner was addressed, with no small amount of style, as Master.

No fixed menu. Whatever a guest wanted, he set it down in front of them without missing a beat. Regulars, won over by that skill, came drifting in to sit and talk. Before I knew it, the way that Master ran his place had become my dream, and the destination I wanted as a cook.

So if I ever retired, I meant to settle in some modest stretch of countryside and run a small restaurant of my own. The kind only people in the know could find. The kind of place with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the air of splitting even a single bean with a regular.

Of course, that would take a lump of money. A rather large lump. Which was why I shut off the drama I had been happily watching and picked up my restaurant uniform.

Across the chest, stitched there with pride, was my name: Kang Jinwoo.

I had bounced through every corner of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠food business before finally putting down roots at this place. With the career behind me and the people I knew, it was an establishment I could be personally well satisfied with.

Still. Going to work is a nuisance, as a rule.

But I had to go. For the sake of my beautiful retirement, if nothing else.

I pulled myself together and reached the staff entrance. All right. Let's give today everything we've got, I told myself—and the moment I opened the door, light swallowed the world in front of my eyes.

It was bright enough that, for an instant, I thought I had gone blind. I lost consciousness...

And when I opened my eyes again, I had been transferred to another world.

From that abrupt otherworld transfer to today: exactly two months.

Today was the historic opening day of my long-held dream. A restaurant where I was the owner.

Open.

Think the word, and a translucent holographic window appeared before my eyes. To get ready for business, I brought up that ability whose nature I still didn't understand—the status window.

Compared with the status windows I had seen in fiction, it was spare, showing only the information that actually mattered.

I still remembered it clear as yesterday: right after the transfer, I had shouted status window in a believe-it-or-not frame of mind, and nearly jumped out of my skin when one actually appeared.

What had puzzled me the first time I looked at it were the traits and the skills. Among them, Hand Taste, Mana Market, and Beginner Spirit Arts.

A modern person's sensibilities had a hard time making sense of them. Fortunately, the status window was not so stingy. Press a trait or a skill, and a supplementary description unfurled in a rush.

Someone might wonder whether an effect like that could possibly be real. But even on modern Earth, there had been arguments about "hand taste."

In Korea, especially.

From Central Asia through the cultures of East Asia, preparing ingredients with bare hands was commonplace. But set aside bread dough, noodle dough, and simply mixing things together. The only country that finished an entire dish by hand—and that reached for its hands even when the tools were sitting right there—was Korea.

Some people will ask whether that dismisses the hand-skill of our friends in India.

And yet. Cooking with bare hands under a beautiful conviction, with nothing wrong on the hygiene front, food that tastes wonderful and comes out refined besides?

Monk Jeong Kwan... what are you, exactly.

Chef's Table, the documentary that had blown up on Netflix. The series followed masters from around the world up close and caught their craft on camera, and in it there was someone who carried the standing of Korean cuisine—and the very idea of hand taste—far and wide.

Interest in vegetarian cooking has only climbed in recent years. And yet, for decades before that, Korea's Monk Jeong Kwan had been turning out vegetarian food of a serious caliber. After his episode aired, Korean temple cuisine, and the monk's way of cooking with it, became a topic of conversation, and a favorable one.

From then on, a debate even sprang up over whether this thing called "hand taste" was actually real.

I was on the side that believed it existed. Honestly, though, it hardly mattered.

There's a status window. What are any of you going to do about that?

Status windows. Simply the GOAT.

Next was not a trait but a skill: Mana Market.

Hand Taste's description mentioned it, so I looked it over with care.

The moment I activated Mana Market in my mind, a window I could scroll appeared before my eyes.

Follow the arrow down, and the ingredient entries kept coming.

Past a certain point, though—

Like that, the list filled up entirely with ???.

I had experimented with this and that after the transfer, and the result was simple. Nothing but ingredients was registered in the market. And the only way to fill in those ??? entries was to come into direct contact with the ingredient here, in this world.

Eggplant, for example. Of course I knew what an eggplant was. But I had never actually touched one here, so no matter how I combed the list or searched it, eggplant was nowhere to be found.

Today... chili peppers.

I tapped Chili Pepper, the most approachable thing on the list.

At once I felt the mana in the air drawing in, gathering around me.

Unlike the common sense of Earth, in this world mana dwelt in all matter. Which meant that if your understanding of a material's composition was sufficient, you could produce that material with mana as the currency. By this world's standards I was an outsider, so I couldn't claim to have it exactly right. For the time being, though, that was how I understood the phenomenon.

After a short stretch of focus, my body felt a little tired. Mana had left me.

And in front of me sat a full box of chili peppers.

Crunch—! Snap!

I picked up one that looked fresh and ate it. A sweetness, edged with a clean, biting heat, curled over my tongue.

No matter how many times I use this, it stays uncanny.

Personally, whenever I cast the spell, I thought of that old argument on a certain internet community: take a billion won in a lump sum, or receive one plate of jajangmyeon—black-bean noodles—every single day.

Of course, this magic couldn't drop ingredients wherever I pleased, the way some jajang-jajang fruit out of a cartoon might...

Even so, for a cook and a cook alone, it went past merely valuable and straight into cheat-tier magic.

If I set my total mana at 100, buying one box of an ordinary ingredient—vegetables and the like—cost, by feel, somewhere between 5 and 10. Unless I lost my mind and went on an all-out jajang barrage, the exchange rate was more than enough to run one small restaurant.

It was also why I, penniless right after the transfer, had made the trip to and from the nearest city, Silbaerin.

I needed to pick up the common sense of society. But I also needed to touch as many ingredients as I could, and build up the number of things I could exchange for.

Besides the chili peppers, I bought the various ingredients I would use today.

More than half my mana drained away, but that was fine. I wasn't about to fight anyone. I only needed to keep a little aside for spirit arts.

I had picked up Beginner Spirit Arts without quite meaning to.

It hadn't been there at first. The spirits took a liking to ingredients bought from Mana Market, and once I started offering them as feed, we got along. Thanks to that, I could lay into fire, water, and cold as much as I liked, with no need to bother lighting a wood fire. Deeply convenient.

About time I started on the ingredients.

My restaurant opens in the evening. So from now—just past lunch—I could take my time with the prep.

You can't get full on the first sip. But since it's the day, I hope a customer shows up anyway...

With a flutter in my chest, I started on the knife work.

Early March, the last of winter not yet gone.

A handsome carriage was making its way toward Silbaerin, the northernmost territory of the Empire.

It lacked only a family crest. In every other respect, it was identical to a noble's carriage.

Ordinarily, if someone of noble rank set out by carriage for another region, word had to be sent ahead. Noble courtesy and the receiving of guests were exacting things, and the hosts needed time to prepare. Visiting a domain with no prior notice, then, was usually one of two things: a related house, or one's own.

Even as darkness began to settle, this carriage did not stop its wheels. It was the latter.

Silk-smooth silver hair. Deep, clear blue eyes. A woman with an impression as white as the north's snowy peaks—Ishilla Silbaerin—rested her chin on her hand at the carriage window and watched the scenery go by.

Academy starts again soon. If I show up like this, Father's going to be so surprised, isn't he??

Her face was proud enough that eye contact alone seemed as if it might freeze a person solid. Ishilla, though, was warm-hearted, prone to sulking for affection, and a mischief-maker at heart.

At the Academy she couldn't show that side of herself, so she kept a personality for dealing with people... but she was human too. No one can live forever hiding who they really are. She needed time to let out the stress of Academy life.

So Ishilla had come home, even though the Academy term began again in two weeks. Summer break there was relatively short. If she failed to stop by the main house this winter, she might go a full year without seeing home.

Gazing blankly out the window, she roughly reckoned the time left until arrival. She had traveled this road since the day she was born, so the lay of the land was already drawn in her head.

Three... two... one! Now!

She counted three seconds and looked to the right. The trees that had packed the view shut a moment ago were gone, and an open lake filled Ishilla's eyes.

"Hyaaah..."

The sound of pleasure escaped her before she knew it. It was Lake Kalian, the pride of the Silbaerin domain.

Formed by meltwater off the eternal snow of the northern range, Lake Kalian was deep, yes—but it was the color that made a spectacle of it. Eternal snow on the mountains, reflected in the rich blue water, laid down a beautiful gradient.

While Ishilla was lost in the view, the carriage had already come to a fork.

"My lady, which way should we go?"

The coachman, too, was someone she had hired separately at the Academy for today's surprise visit. He was not a coachman of House Silbaerin, so Ishilla had to give him the way.

The left road led to the city. Follow the right straight on, and you came to a clearing with an unobstructed view of the lake—a hidden spot she had gone out to often since she was small.

"Take the right. We'll look at the view a while, then come down."

"Understood~"

The sun would set soon, but she wanted to hold a little more of home in her eyes. The wheels jolted over ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stones, and even that was part of the joy of coming back.

The clearing, when they arrived, was unchanged by the years, as if time had meant nothing to it. In high spirits, Ishilla stepped down from the carriage and drew a deep breath.

"Haaah... wonderful."

The coachman was marveling at the heaven-sent scenery as well.

The sun, just going down, struck sparks of light across the lake. Washed in orange, the water was beautiful beyond comparison with any costly jewel.

Ishilla had been quietly taking it in for a long while when she felt the surroundings slowly dimming.

"Shall we head down now?"

"Yes, ma'am."

They would reach the city later than she had thought, but the time had been worth that much.

A forest road dense with trees grew far darker than open country once night fell, until it was hard even to see one's own feet. The carriage had no choice but to slow.

Creak— creak!

"Hmm... My lady, might we stop for a moment?"

"Is something the matter?"

"The wheel feels unsteady. I think I ought to check it..."

Even to Ishilla's ear, the carriage's rattling had grown much worse than on the way here.

"All right. Let's have a look."

They stopped in the middle of the road, and the coachman ran practiced hands over the wheel, turning it this way and that. Then he shook his head and spoke to Ishilla.

"Forgive me, but... the wheel is badly unstable. We hurried out from the Academy, and the road was poor, so a spoke has cracked as well. I don't think we can go on like this..."

"Ah..."

He reported the carriage's condition as if he could hardly face her. But it was Ishilla who had pushed them hard the whole way from the Academy to Silbaerin, so she could hardly scold him for neglect.

Little distance remained to Silbaerin. The problem was not the distance. Night had come.

Ishilla trusted her house's keeping of the peace, but there might still, on the off chance, be bandits, and there were dangerous magical beasts that moved only after dark. Worse, the place they had stopped was the heart of Kalian Forest. A beast could come down on them at any moment.

She felt how much more dangerous the situation was than she had expected.

Ishilla's record put her near the top of the Academy's department of magic, but she had little real combat experience. And she had a coachman to protect. The burden sat heavy.

"All right. Let's look nearby for a place to camp."

"Yes... I'm sorry, my lady."

"No. I share the blame for hurrying us. It's all right."

Ishilla and the coachman packed their things simply and went looking for a campsite.

No matter how they searched, nowhere suitable showed itself, and they were wearing down when a faint light glimmered in the distance.

Ishilla made her way slowly toward it.

Not the gleam of a magical beast's eyes, nor an animal's, and not moonlight. An orange light. Like the lights of restaurants brightening a city at dusk...

The light was closer than she had thought. She had not walked far before its source showed itself.

"This building... what is it?"

Standing square in the middle of the forest, it was nothing like the houses one sometimes saw in villages. The design was entirely different. She couldn't tell by sight what the unfamiliar shape was, but a moment later Ishilla was certain. A restaurant.

The smell... rich, and clean.

A delicious scent, beginning inside the building, had reached her nose. She sniffed, drawing it in.

It was the familiar aroma of chicken soup, only far cleaner, and deeper. Mixed in was the scent of some aromatic green she couldn't name, and the smell alone seemed to flush something deep in her body hot.

She had been breathing it in for a long while without realizing it when she came back to herself and called the coachman.

He, too, swallowed hard as the smell grew thicker the closer they came to the restaurant.

Common sense offered no explanation for a strange restaurant standing in the middle of a forest, but that didn't matter just now. What mattered was that they had found a place to pass the night in safety—and that something, she had no idea what, smelled extraordinarily good.

"Tonight... this inn looks like a good place to stay."

"Yes, my lady."

Ishilla and the coachman opened the door and went in.

"Hello...? Is anyone here?"

"Welcome!"

Black hair, black eyes. A man of the East, a sight rarely seen, greeted them with open warmth.