The Knights' Honorary Mess Officer (3)
The sun of the Monster Wave's sixth day was sinking, little by little.
The beasts, however, did not clock out come evening and resume the attack the next morning. They came down without regard for day or night, and the knights had split into day and night rotations to meet the Wave. The monsters' strength had spiked without warning, and how long this rotation could hold was anyone's guess.
Luke, a rank-and-file knight of the Silbaerin Order on the day shift, swung shield and sword without a breath to spare.
"Kieeeek!!"
"Krrk, krrrrk!"
Lesser beasts — goblins, kobolds, and their like — shrieked and sprayed blood. It was not more than he could handle. Not yet. But what would happen once monsters stronger than these began to appear, one and then another? Luke's blade never hesitated. His head, though, was packed full of that grim arithmetic.
Buuuuu—!
A horn blared across a battlefield that had held nothing but the groans of monster and man locked in a contest of strength, and the clash of cold steel. Luke and every knight who knew the signal began a slow, orderly withdrawal. Right on time, the night combat shift stepped in to take the beasts.
Only after they had come in behind the safety of the walls did the knights let the tension go and strip their gear. Luke did the same — peeled off the stifling armor, set it in order, and checked his weapons.
"Good work, Luke."
"Thank you, sir. You as well, Squad Leader!"
Arthur, squad leader of the 1st Squad Luke belonged to, gave his shoulder a solid, encouraging thump.
"Let's go eat. Menu's nothing special, but we've got to eat if we're going to fight..."
"Ah — now that you mention it, didn't they replace the mess officer? With the owner of that restaurant. From back then."
Yesterday's commotion came back to Luke all at once. Rotten or not, they had taken the mess officer for one of their own — and the man had been embezzling, quietly stacking it up, for years. The one who uncovered it was that oddball: the black-haired chef who ran a restaurant in the lonely stretches of Kalian Forest.
The food he had eaten there on the last reconnaissance of the forest... janchi-guksu, hadn't they called it? Banquet noodles in a clean, cool anchovy broth that warmed the body through — a dish that suited a man of northern Silbaerin down to the bone. It had been delicious, and afterward, for no reason he could name, strength had surged in him until he could barely hold it in. A chef who made food like that could surely make even army slop come out tasting good. Luke let himself keep a sliver of hope.
"Right. Sir Jinwoo agreed to take it on for the time being. Still — the ingredients haven't changed, and this isn't the kitchen he's used to. Don't expect much."
"Ah... I see."
Arthur, it seemed, thought otherwise. Trailing Duke Kailan — long since a standing menace at the banquet-noodle counter — he had met Kang Jinwoo fairly often, and of everyone in the knight order he knew the man's skill second only to the duke himself. Even so, time and circumstance were absolute. To expect some tremendous change in a single day, under conditions like these, would have been shameless.
They had endured the daylight of the sixth day without serious casualties. And the reward at the end of all that labor was grain porridge that tasted as if someone had chewed it and spat it back out — far too cruel a thing to ease a body under that kind of strain. Arthur, Luke, and the rest of the day combat shift trudged toward the cookhouse with slumped shoulders.
And yet, with every step that brought them closer, the exhaustion steeped into the knights seemed to lift. When had it started? Before Arthur or Luke had even noticed, a hot, fierce, spicy aroma had spread through the air. Somewhere in the column heading for the mess, startled murmurs rose together with the warmth.
"What's with this spice smell? Did some noble drop by today?"
"I never heard anything like that... and this isn't even pepper. It's different from the pepper I smelled that time."
"Don't tell me... tonight's menu?"
"Come on. No way."
Gulp.
One line, tossed into the middle of the knights still arguing over what the smell even was. Food that gave off an aroma this bewitching — as tonight's dinner? For men who had fully expected to fill their stomachs once again with that dreadful grain porridge, a single thread of hope appeared. It spread in an instant and set every mouth to watering. Their heads were so full of the scent that no other thought could squeeze in.
Arthur and Luke set their sagging expectations upright again, just in case, and stepped into the cookhouse. And in that moment, they saw the fragrance.
Saw a fragrance? Tell anyone else and you would be laughed off as drunk — and yet that strange, far-off experience belonged to every knight who crossed the threshold. Through the air of a cookhouse built exactly as it always had been, sheets of golden musical staves seemed to drift. Like a sea of ripe grain rippling under a clear autumn sky. Or, failing that, like the deep burning orange of evening glow over the southern sea. Or, failing that as well, like the endless bright-yellow desert unfurled across the east. Every knight starved thin by battle forgot even his empty stomach and simply stared into the empty air.
"Hey. Don't just stand there gaping — come and get it. You'll want it while it's hot."
"Eh... ah. Yes, sir!"
What snapped the dazed knights back was a voice that sounded offhand and, at the same time, looked out for the people about to eat. Everyone in the order already knew the story: the mess officer arrested on the spot yesterday, a temporary one installed this morning. The man at the center of that story, the black-haired chef — the honorary mess officer, apron on and ladle in hand — spoke.
"More?"
"Y-yes! Please, more!"
"Eat plenty."
He served them in turn, a beautiful stew the color of gold. He even asked first whether they wanted more, and if they did, he piled it on without stinting. Only yesterday they had been issued a single measured ladle of grain porridge without a scrap of flavor worth the name. Faced with a reality they could not believe, Arthur and Luke let out a hollow little laugh.
"Squad Leader... that. What is that food? I've never even heard of anything like it..."
"I don't... really know either."
In an age when spice mostly called pepper to mind, there was no way Arthur could have recognized curry — that gathering of spices in their golden ratio. What he did know, though — no. What came back to him, all over again, was this. Kang Jinwoo. That man was a master of cooking.
The serving line crept forward, and Luke and Arthur's turn arrived. Recognizing them, Kang Jinwoo greeted them brightly.
"Oh, Sir Arthur. And... UFC?"
"Pardon? I'm Luke."
"Ah... sorry. Luke. Here you go — curry. It's good with bread, the way you'd have a stew."
"Thank you, Sir Jinwoo. Though even at a glance, it looks terribly expensive..."
The modesty in Arthur's words was a lie his eyes refused to tell. They shone, slick with appetite. So even Arthur — the very image of the cool, upright knight — came apart in front of a spice bomb. Kang Jinwoo was rather pleased by that. Any chef, seeing eyes that wanted his cooking like that, could not help but be glad.
"Please, eat a lot. And thank you for always protecting the city."
"Hrgh... I'll eat it with gratitude, Sir Jinwoo."
At the sincerity in those words, Arthur pressed down the swell rising in his chest, carried his curry to a table, and sat. Luke, beside him, hesitated over his spoon with the curry set before him. He was waiting for Arthur to eat first. For Luke, itching for a taste — and for Kang Jinwoo, who had put his whole heart into the dish — Arthur scooped the stew the moment he sat down.
Spicy... salty. No — sweet, maybe. Sour? There's bitterness in it, too.
Five flavors, feasting together like a rainbow. Sweet, salty, sour, spicy, bitter — all of them present, and not one shoving its way out ahead of the rest. And riding with the taste came a sharp tingle, a warmth, a deep savor, an aromatic fragrance. Could his nose really take in this many scents? So vast a range of aroma washed through his nasal passages, wave after wave, that he began to doubt it.
Huuuk. Gulp. Mmf.
Arthur forgot his dignity entirely and kept shoveling curry. Each time a mouthful went down his throat, a savory finish clung to his tongue and begged, without pause, for the next spoon. This was the domain of instinct, past anything reason could govern. Every kind of scent that existed in nature shattered even the reason of a northern knight, tempered by brutal training, and woke what lay underneath.
But the true ambush, hidden beneath that stimulating taste and aroma, was umami. That savory sensation lingering on the taste buds to the very last. An overwhelming heft that seeped all the way to the roots of the taste cells and hauled every flavor into balance. Curry powder, chicken stock, good vegetables — all of it thrown in and simmered for hours. How much umami lay sleeping in a stew like that? Even Kang Jinwoo, who had made the curry, could not have said.
What... what is this taste? My hand won't stop...!
Arthur wolfed the curry and tore the flatbread served with it into bite-sized pieces, plunging them deep into the stew. The pure-white bread melted into the curry, drinking the broth all the way through to its heart. With a practiced hand he loaded potato, carrot, soaked bread, and curry broth onto a single spoon and put the whole of it into his mouth.
Six flavors, and an aroma so explosive it could not be counted. He had thought that alone was the height of taste. Above it, there was a further above — a heaven beyond heaven. All sorts of nutrients had dissolved into the curry, yes, but one still went unmet. Carbohydrate. After a body has burned through great stores of energy, what it wants, down at the level of instinct, is carbohydrate. So what happens if you scatter curry across a pure-white canvas made of energy itself?
The marriage of curry and carbohydrate. That was the heaven outside of heaven. Past rare delicacy, and into deliciousness itself. The instant he took in that combination—
Click—
Deep in his inner world, Arthur heard the sound of something coming undone.