Don't Mess With the Food (3)
The garrison in the afternoon was all but empty.
Most of the troops who could fight had gone out beyond the walls, and now and then the noise of battle drifted in from the far north. Those who remained were the noncombatants, each at their own work. The medical unit was counting what supplies they had left and tending the wounded, while soldiers from the supply branch hurried combat materiel back and forth.
Not that I had anywhere else to go.
"Where's the mess kitchen?"
"This way."
I followed the rations clerk.
They weren't serving lunch. The kitchen was only preparing breakfast and dinner.
"Must be the Wave. Hardly a soldier in sight. Like this, I can't even tell what's running short... If you don't mind, could I take a look at the kitchen storeroom?"
"Yes, sir. It isn't a meal-prep hour anyway, so it's fine."
The storeroom off the kitchen was as bare as the rest of their pinched supplies. They logged every ingredient that came in and went out, then added the figures up later and checked them against the supply warehouse. That much was obvious. But there was no digital system, and records that looked this easy to damage or doctor were full of holes.
Five sacks of flour. A hundred kilograms, at least. Turned into flatbread, or into pasta for the stew, it would be more than enough to feed a day's headcount.
On paper, this looks fine...
Documents, though, could be altered however you liked. Even in the Korean army, people swapped shifts against the operations order whenever they felt like it and loafed on watch all the time. I had no reason to think this place was any different.
Poking around the kitchen, I found a small pot. I lifted the lid without hesitating.
And I could not believe what was inside.
"Wh-what is this?"
"Ah, that's this morning's menu. There's a little left. Would you like some?"
"Oh my god..."
"Sorry?"
I left the flustered server behind me and sank into despair.
What was this? Had someone jabbed me with about a thousand doses of Wegovy when I wasn't looking? Obviously not. The only reasonable explanation for my sudden loss of appetite was this substance.
Barley and wheat that someone had chewed and spat back out, crushed about halfway, mixed with loose grains of every sort. Those grains had fused with a pale, cloudy liquid of unknown origin that carried a faint purple cast.
"This is all they eat? No bread or anything?"
"Bread only comes out in the morning, and even then there isn't much of it. What can you do? The farmers are struggling too, with the Wave hitting out of nowhere."
The rations clerk gave a bitter little smile, as if it couldn't be helped. No. It could.
Raid the scene, and the evidence pours out.
The world changes, and there's still always some bastard playing games with the food.
Anger from deep in the chest. Or maybe from something written into the blood itself. A people who can endure almost anything except someone screwing around with a meal. Native Korean fury boiled up until my head went hot.
"Kkh—kkhuk—! Nng!"
"Wh-what's wrong, Jinwoo? Calm down!"
Iseria, startled at the sight of me grinding my teeth to hold it in, tried to settle me.
Hoo... I was furious to the ends of my hair, but I barely kept it down. Make a scene now and all this effort goes to waste.
I pulled myself together and spoke to the rations clerk.
"Would it be all right if I ate dinner here tonight? I'll donate more ingredients."
"Aigo, of course. What you've already given is more than enough... Thank you."
Whatever the branch, a soldier always stashes supplies—or goods he's bought on the side. Look through the past and present of military organizations the world over and it's the same, and it will be the same in the future. Instinct, the way a squirrel buries acorns.
So I could understand, to a point, a knight-order quartermaster tucking things away.
Yes. To a point.
This was embezzlement that had crossed the line and kept going. The cooks and the rations clerks must have noticed a little. But what power did they have? In an organization as closed as an army, blowing the whistle and actually seeing justice done is brutally hard. Which is why an outside inspectorate exists in the first place.
Fine. I'll be the inspectorate.
While we waited for dinner, I asked Iseria to sense mana. The flour I had made carried my mana in it. Track that backward, and we ought to find the quartermaster's rotten storehouse.
"Found it. Not far. Are you going now?"
"No. No need to go right this second."
According to Iseria, my mana was coming from inside one of the knight order's garrison buildings. The quartermaster probably reported for duty over there too. Hidden in something like an office?
But one last thing still needed confirming. That was why I had said I would eat dinner in the order's mess.
Time passed, and before I knew it, it was late afternoon. The kitchen was busy cooking the evening rations. The quartermaster, who hadn't shown so much as the tip of his nose earlier, stood in the middle of the cooking floor watching the cooks. Soldiers began drifting into the mess one by one, and the cooks moved the finished food to the serving line to match them.
What I meant to check was that meal.
I had spent my life with cooking, and I had some experience with large-batch and institutional work. Look at a dish and the estimate comes to you. Whether that food had really been made with all of those ingredients, at a quality that matched the headcount.
Iseria and I took our places at the very back of the long serving line. The soldiers glanced over—who are they?—but lost interest almost at once. After a hard fight, the only thing their eyes could see was food.
"Ah, just a little more. There's barely anything solid in it..."
"I'm sorry. There are still a lot of people behind you..."
"Ugh... this isn't right, is it?"
"Just eat it. What else are you gonna do."
Complaints spilled from the soldiers receiving their food and from those already seated with trays. A glance at those trays, and I had a rough idea. The hothead living in my chest was slowly lifting his head.
At last my turn came. I held my tray out to the cook.
One wet ladle of liquid that might have been porridge or stew, flowing without a scrap of flavor.
Just as I thought. The quality was miserable.
Snap.
The moment I registered it, the thread of patience I had been clinging to broke. I set the food down on a table. Iseria must have assumed I was about to sit; she was halfway into a chair when she saw me heading straight for the cooking floor, and she startled.
"Hey, where are you going?"
I didn't answer. I strode on. Not so much that I refused to answer—more that I didn't hear her. Iseria came after me a beat late, but she was slow.
I was already on the cooking floor, glaring at the quartermaster, planted in front of him. He looked at me with an expression of pure disbelief.
"Who are you? Who said you could just walk in!"
"You been eating?"
"What?"
Have you eaten. Let's grab a meal sometime. Even a dog doesn't get bothered while it's eating.
A people who live by rice and die by rice. I hit him with Korea's unofficial national greeting.
"Yeah, I ate."
"Did you...?"
At his answer a sneer settled on my face. He flushed red and went pale by turns and opened his mouth.
My anger burst first.
"Of course you ate!!! You pig!!!"
"Wh-what? Who do you think you're talking—"
The quartermaster, abruptly charged with what amounted to truthful defamation, tried to raise his voice. I didn't yield the floor.
"You little bastard. You think I hauled that flour in so a thieving piece of shit like you could line his pockets? Huh?"
"Flour...? Don't tell me—"
"Yeah. I'm the 'don't tell me,' you bastard!!"
The curses rang loud through the open cooking floor. One speaker was a black-haired man no one had seen before. The other was a quartermaster whose reputation had never been especially good. Even a couple of grunts scrapping would have been entertainment. This was several times more stimulating.
Every eye in the mess locked onto the two of us. Feeling all those interested stares, I went on.
"I've brought in four hundred kilos of flour so far—no, six hundred, counting today. And the food is this? It can taste bad. Fine. But you do not lie about how much went into it!!"
He seemed to grasp what I was saying. His momentum sagged a little.
"No, I didn't lie..."
"Didn't lie, my ass!!! This morning's serving was a mouse tail's worth, and from what I hear it hasn't been once or twice!!"
I hadn't actually heard anything. I'd just figured a guy like this had been doing it the whole time and talked over him. Luckily, I'd hit the mark. The quartermaster clamped his mouth shut like a mute who had swallowed honey.
The soldiers who had been listening began to murmur.
"He's right. The menu's been pretty bad lately."
"Yeah. I enlisted because at least they feed you proper bread, and I've been eating worse than when I was farming."
"Wh-what are you all doing!! Drag this lunatic black-hair out of here!! What do you think you're doing to a soldier who defends the city!!"
Seeing opinion turn against him, the quartermaster shouted at the soldiers instead of me. It did no good. The muttering aimed at him only grew, and the heat it fed in me hit its peak. I grabbed the collar of his uniform—he looked ready to burst—and yelled.
"Have you ever seen a traitor this complete?!"
"Guhk! A commoner dares—! Let go!!"
"J-Jinwoo! Calm down!"
"Let go of me, Iseria! A bastard like this, I'll just—"
Iseria, who had been watching me in a fidget beside us, tried to stop me the moment I had him by the collar. Maybe she thought I'd gone too far. Fair enough. I was a commoner, and rotten or not, he was a soldier. There was risk in it.
"Everyone, stop!!"
Just as the clash reached its peak, someone burst onto the cooking floor with a ringing voice.
None other than Arthur, captain of the knight order's First Squad.
"What in the world is going on, Sir Jinwoo. Quartermaster!"
"Sir Arthur! Perfect timing! This insane traitor of a bastard has been skimming the order's food!!"
"Pardon? Skimming? What does that— Do you mean he has embezzled something?"
"Yes, embezzlement!! This is straight-up espionage, isn't it? You're a stooge for the demon beasts!"
"N-no, that's not— Captain! How could I..."
Arthur strained to grasp the situation and listened to me in my full fury. The quartermaster tried every way he could to cut me off, only to be stopped by Arthur, whose manner had gone cold. The man's everyday reputation really must have been poor.
"Sir Jinwoo. It is not that I doubt you, but have you proof? If all of this proves to be mere suspicion and the quartermaster is blameless, this will not be a matter we can simply overlook."
"Th-that's right! You've got no evidence and you're branding a man a criminal?"
"Barley and wheat, assorted grains, and five sacks of flour... What exactly is the problem with that?"
"Sir Arthur. Look at this morning's menu and the meal that just came out. Does this food look like it was made from the ingredients written there?"
Arthur looked at the impoverished, thin porridge served for dinner. He muttered to himself. "Hm... it certainly..."
"Slander!! This is slander! What do you know about feeding a company? Can you prove it wasn't made from these ingredients!"
"Enough. Quartermaster. Sir Jinwoo is a Cooking Master from the East. Do you imagine he would fail to know?"
"A... a master? Of cooking?"
At the words Cooking Master from Arthur's mouth, the hall stirred. Not a single person in the Empire had ever been granted that title. The shock was understandable.
I pressed the advantage and laid out every piece of evidence and testimony. Anything about my ability, of course, I dressed up as a lie.
"I understand what you are saying, Sir Jinwoo. I do not know why you meant to donate in secret... You left the flour beside the warehouse in the dead of night, and the quartermaster diverted it somewhere other than the supply warehouse. Along with the flour you had donated before that. Is that correct?"
"Yes. Exactly!"
"That much can be proven by checking the rations clerks on duty these past few days, and the paperwork. What I question is where, and how, he meant to move that quantity of flour. The quartermaster may not look it, but he is an officer who has handled provisions for our order for a long time. That such a man would try to embezzle several hundred kilograms of flour—something not easy to spirit away in the first place..."
At Arthur's point, the quartermaster, who had gone quiet, brightened and spoke.
"Th-that's right! I'm not an idiot. Would I steal that much! I am truly wronged, Captain!!"
"We'll know once we check. Iseria?"
"Honestly. So that's why you had me find it?"
At the quartermaster's wail I called Iseria at once and stepped outside. I told Arthur and the quartermaster to come too.
At first the quartermaster looked puzzled, unable to tell where we were headed. As my steps drew nearer the knight-order garrison, his anxiety became obvious. Once we were inside the camp I kept following Iseria, who led the way. Every last scrap of aggro there was to pull had already been pulled, and a good number of soldiers were watching our every move.
At last we reached the quartermaster's office, the room at the very end of the garrison building.
"Here. The stuff he diverted is in this room."
"Thanks, Iseria."
"H-hmph! Whatever!"
Leaving Iseria, who had slipped into tsundere mode without fail, I turned to Arthur.
"Sir Arthur. The flour I donated, and the other things the quartermaster embezzled, are hidden in here. Please permit a search."
"Lies!! This is a lie! Where in a room this small could anyone hide that much!!"
"Search it, Sir Jinwoo."
The quartermaster screamed himself hoarse, but when Arthur fixed him with a menacing look, he finally shut his mouth.
From the outside the office didn't look large. A few hundred square feet, if that. I went through every corner, turning things over as I searched.
Thud.
Thud.
Tonk.
Wait. Tonk?
A sound that didn't belong reached my ear. Step anywhere else and the floor gave a solid, packed note.
Tonk.
Only this stretch rang hollow.
Arthur, watching me, realized it too and ordered the soldiers who had followed.
"Pry up that floor."
"Yes, sir!"
At his command the soldiers took up tools and lifted the flooring.
What lay beneath was an underground room the size of the kitchen storeroom, and a tunnel running out toward the far side of the wall. Filling that room were my flour, all manner of ingredients, and the knight order's own supplies.
The whole truth laid bare, Arthur spoke.
"Seize him. The quartermaster!!"
"N-no!!!"
The howl of a man blinded by greed rang through the garrison.