Elf? Chili-Elf! (1)
Not a strange ceiling after all.
It was the familiar ceiling of my room on the second floor.
What in the world had happened? I worked back through it slowly. I'd come home to a house without a single light on, thought it strange, and stepped inside anyway. The moment I flipped the switch, I'd been dropped where I stood.
"Hey... don't... you can't!"
"Wha... GAAAAH!!"
I was still trying to make sense of it when voices drifted up, faint, from the first floor. One of them was Iseria's. The other, I couldn't place. From the scraps I caught, the conversation sounded urgent. At least there was no sign of anyone in the room, or out in the hall.
Without thinking, I tried to push myself up and look around.
And then—
"Ghk—!"
Crash!
I'd been set upright in a chair with all four limbs lashed to it, so the moment I moved I lost my balance and went straight over. For the love of— what was this supposed to be? So this was what it felt like to star in one of those obsessive-confinement stories I'd only ever heard about. I went down hard enough that the impact rang through the house.
The voices downstairs cut off. Someone came thundering up toward my room.
Fwoosh—!
The door flew open, and light from the hall flooded the dark room white.
Gah!
It was a flashbang straight to the eyes. With both hands bound, there wasn't a thing I could do about it. I squeezed my eyes shut and thrashed, and the person who'd opened the door spoke.
"Jinwoo! You're awake!"
"Huh. Iseria?"
It was Iseria herself. A face I could trust — I let myself breathe.
She looked as if she hadn't been up long: a little puffier in the face than usual, hair a mess. From what I could see, she hadn't been hurt. That was a relief. It did nothing to explain what was going on.
"I have no idea what any of this is, so just untie me first."
"Ah, that's..."
"No. That will not do."
Iseria was still hesitating, only staring at the ropes, when someone else stepped into the room.
Ears pointed to a suspicious degree.
"An elf! Who are you!"
"Hmph. A mere human... Do not raise your voice. Do not raise it so."
"Hah. That line."
The handsome elf in front of me delivered that line with a perfectly straight face. A man with the same blond hair as Iseria, and a body that had clearly been trained. The robed intruders I'd seen just before I blacked out — he was wearing the same robes. So this was one of them.
Iseria only dithered in the space between us. She wasn't especially wary of him. Did they know each other already?
I was about to voice the question crowding my head when the other side spoke first.
"Human. Do not imagine you will walk free after laying hands on Lady Iseria! You will pay what you owe, down to the last coin!"
"Seiran!! Nothing happened to me!!!"
"Did you not cast aside the Elskit you have loved since you were small, as though it were refuse?! You have fallen prey to the sordid schemes of humankind, have you not? You must return to the World Tree at once and be purified!!"
"Elskit just tastes bad... nngh!!"
A full-blown meltdown, starring one beautiful girl and one beautiful young man, both of them elves, right in front of my face. So this elf — Seiran — thought I'd done something like brainwash Iseria. His evidence was a food she'd liked since childhood, something called Elskit. She'd said it tasted bad, so it had to be food.
"I don't even know what Elskit is, but I didn't do anything! I swear! I just gave her a meal!"
"That is precisely the problem, human! You fed the food of greedy humankind to noble elves — and not merely any elf, but the young lady of the Sildiel family! That is a grave crime!"
"What."
Iseria, you were a noble?
Have you been lying to me this whole time?
Iseria looked utterly lost as to where she should even begin untangling the misunderstanding.
That was when it came.
"GAAAAH!! Seiran! My lady! Save me!"
"Haa... still at it. I told you. Anyone could see it was spicy. Why eat it..."
"He's not wrong..."
"Why? What happened?"
A woman's voice, screaming in pain from the first floor. Seiran and Iseria sounded thoroughly sick of it. There had been two robed intruders. So the one left downstairs was the owner of that scream. And something that looked spicy... the only thing downstairs that could do that...
"Don't tell me. Gochujang? She ate that?"
"Human. Did you make it? You dare call that food? The smell alone had sweat pouring off me, and my tongue went numb."
"No — I made that batch extra hot because I was going to eat it myself..."
Aigoo.
Iseria had done the same thing the first time she broke in, snatching whatever she found with no idea what it was. Elf, chili-elf, or the neighborhood mutt — hard to tell the difference.
That gochujang was mine alone, a jar I'd mixed with extra chili powder for the days I wanted it. Most people in this world had no resistance to heat at all; ordinary gochujang would already be too much. If she'd eaten the fire gochujang I'd made for blowing off stress...
Literally losing her mind and leaping around would not be strange in the slightest.
"Look. You can suspect me if you want, but I really didn't do anything. More importantly, the elf who ate that needs the heat cut, now. Otherwise it's only going to hurt worse."
"Hmph. So you laid the trap with even this in mind. Contemptible human."
What is he talking about? I'd had his measure from the moment he started in on the raise-your-voice bit. This elf called Seiran had far too much imagination.
"It's different from the gochujang you put in my bibimbap, right, Jinwoo?"
"Yeah. That jar's something I made to eat on my own. Leave her like that and she'll wreck her stomach."
Seiran folded his arms and hummed, turning it over. Iseria, out of patience, shouted, "Hey!! Knock it off!!" Only then did they untie me and take me downstairs. Seiran still hadn't lowered his guard. He followed at my back, glaring the whole way.
In the kitchen on the first floor was a female elf with her eyes rolled back, jumping like she'd lost her mind. No — a chili-elf.
She really was leaping out of her skin.
"H-hot! Water!!"
"Hey. Drink this, then keep rinsing your mouth and tongue under the running water. Do not rub your eyes like you're washing your face. Not even once."
"Urk—ghhk—gk."
I scooped her a cup of cold water, put it in her hands, and turned the tap on so she could rinse. The cold water put the fire out. Bit by bit, her face settled.
Iseria, watching from behind, spoke.
"Veila, feeling a little better?"
"Hrrk — y-yes, my lady. It's a bit better now..."
"See? Why would you just grab food without the owner's say-so..."
"Eek! A human!!"
She hadn't noticed me in the middle of losing her mind, then. The elf called Veila took one look at me, startled hard, and dropped into a guard.
If she'd been like that from the start, I might have tensed too. But I'd just watched her bounce around like an overexcited monkey, so nothing came to mind at all.
"Human!! Whatever vile scheme you've—"
"He already did that one."
"O-oh. Did he?"
Let's not run the same speech in a loop. It wears everybody out.
I looked from Seiran to Veila and back. I wasn't threatening anyone, and I was plainly on easy terms with Iseria, so their wariness had come down from where it had been. Iseria herself kept insisting she'd never been brainwashed or hit with mind magic, and it dropped further still. The air was finally calm enough to talk.
"So... why did you come to our restaurant? Were you here to see Iseria?"
"No. We came to collect the young lady. To escort her back to the family!"
"Hm?"
Right. Iseria had run away. I'd never heard a word about her house, so I hadn't given it much thought — but if the daughter of a family with a name ran off into the human world, of course they'd send people after her.
Iseria, though, answered with a face full of spite.
"I'm not going! I said I'm not! I like living here. And more than anything... the food in Nuardel tastes absolutely awful!!"
"What are you saying, my lady!! We brought so much of the Elskit you love!!"
Veila opened a pack stuffed with white biscuits. Hardtack?
Whatever it was, she held up the food called Elskit: white, rectangular, cracker-like. Pale powder flaked off the bone-dry surface like chalk dust.
Hmm. A look that killed the appetite.
Set beside the Barren Snowflower I'd designed, that stuff looked flavorless and dry as dust.
I took hardtack I'd set aside and dusted it with powdered sugar, holding it out.
"Iseria, want this?"
"Yeah!!"
Chomp, chomp.
She crunched into the sweet hardtack, sugar powder and all. Watching her, the two elves lost focus in their eyes. It was the look of a father whose treasured daughter had announced she had a boyfriend and dragged some deadbeat home. Despair and betrayal poured off Seiran and Veila together.
Yeesh. A little frightening.
"Um... you two ought to try some as well."
"You think a noble elf would simply open wide for human food whose making we do not even know?!!"
"N-no, I wasn't putting it quite like—"
"Then eat."
Caught in their own trap, Seiran and Veila agonized for a long moment, then accepted the hardtack I held out. And tipped it into their mouths.
"Hnnngh!!"
"Th-this is... hardtack? You can't even compare it to Elskit..."
Crunch, crunch — and before long, both elves had gone round-eyed. They tried to compose their faces. The pleasure tugging at the corners of their mouths was not something they could stop.
Sigh. Why did this feel like the exact same routine as the first time I met Iseria?
I turned that question on her with a look.
She flinched.
Iseria pulled a face like a nervous emoji checking the mood, and dodged my eyes.
So you felt it too.
Growl—
Watching three chili-elves happily nom their way through hardtack made me hungry as well. I'd meant to eat dinner the moment I got home, and then I'd been knocked flat, so of course I was. Still, eating by myself felt wrong. Judging by how fast the hardtack was vanishing, these elves hadn't had dinner either.
I snatched the plate before they could finish it.
"Ah! My hardtack!"
"Give it back, human! We must confirm that food does the young lady no—"
"Enough nonsense."
I cut them off with a full stop pose, and Seiran and Veila halted mid-word.
Snack too much before a meal and the meal doesn't taste like anything. I started on the dinner I'd meant to make in the first place. Even Iseria, used to my cooking by now, had never seen this one. A dish that might earn me my first bad review — and still something a Korean had to eat on a regular basis.
While I was slicing zucchini, onion, and potato, Iseria scurried over and asked.
"Jinwoo, what are you making?"
I grinned, a sly little smile.
"Doenjang-jjigae."
Good on its own. Good with thin wheat noodles dropped in. Good eaten with meat. Even good ladled, broth and all, into bibimbap and stirred through. Soul food, if anything was: a deep stew of fermented soybean paste.