So This Is What the World Tree Tastes Like... (1)
I'd been sure Arthur and Kailan were the ones who'd fought hard enough to turn the outskirts inside out. I was wrong.
The wreckage that looked like an alien-plant invasion had been Eilenna's handiwork. Once the fighting settled, I gave the area a quick look around, and she was the only one down—collapsed in a tree so high it was suspicious. I couldn't climb up after her, so the elves went whisking up the trunk and brought her down.
"Uh... huh? Jinwoo? What are you doing here... eek!"
What's with her.
The light jolt of being lowered had opened Eilenna's eyes. I had no bad memories with her, so I went over out of worry. She stared at me in a daze, then flushed scarlet and bolted for the house before I could get a word in.
What did she have to be embarrassed about? Stung a little, honestly.
Anyway, three days had passed since that incident. Arthur and Kailan, having come all this way, decided to wait for me so we could head back together. I still had homework to finish here. Today, that homework came to an end.
"Elfina..."
"Y-yes, Chef."
"Congratulations. You survived."
"Elf-yahoo!!"
I took one bite of the risotto Elfina had made and decided to give her a passing mark. A moment later, a handmade Kang Jinwoo apron settled around her neck. She was so delighted she bounced in place, swinging the thing around.
"Hey, hey! I said no running in the kitchen!!"
"Hehe. You're leaving anyway, Chef, so there's nobody left I have to tiptoe around!"
El-haha—!
With Elfina, the last to graduate, behind me, my Elf's Kitchen came to a close as well. The training hadn't even lasted ten days, but cooking has always been about direction first. Flavor and technique—the lesser things—would be built as their days stacked, one upon another.
Iseria received a passing mark without fail. She'd been the first to pass, in fact. They say hang around a village school for three years and even the dog starts reciting poetry; compared with the other apprentice elves, she had kept up remarkably well.
Once Elfina's wild bouncing settled, every graduate of Elf's Kitchen lined up before me. A moment ago they'd been giggling and chattering among themselves. Now, it seemed, the truth had sunk in—that today was the last time they would cook beside me in this kitchen.
"Hnk... hnn...!"
"E-Elfina! Don't cry. It's a... happy day!"
"I'm not crying! The onions, the onions are just too sharp..."
They'd grown skilled enough with a knife to slice an onion without their eyes stinging. Apprentice elves—no. They'd all passed now. Elf Chefs. As proper Elf Chefs, they could cut an onion and keep the juices to a minimum. And yet those feelings had filled them past the brim, and what spilled over came out as tears...!
Hngh. I'm not the type who cries easily...
Maybe that was why the tears never came. If the master started sniveling too, the whole picture would fall apart. I folded my arms with as much composure as I could manage and faced the Elf Chefs.
"Mm!!"
They bowed as one, a single clean motion, and I took the greeting without a flicker.
"Jinwoo, you're back. And you're certain you weren't hurt anywhere?"
"Yes, Your Grace. I've said it however many times—I'm really fine."
"Sir Jinwoo... you haven't been walking along, felt a presence, turned around to find no one there, or had the sense that the furniture and tools in your room have shifted ever so slightly, have you?"
"No. I'm really fine."
With the Elf's Kitchen graduation behind me, I stepped into the conference room where Arthur and Kailan were waiting. The final compensation for the Kang Jinwoo Kidnapping Incident was about to be decided, and these two had fussed over me until my ears were ready to callus over. I kept saying I was fine. They still wouldn't listen. Honestly.
For the past few days Arthur and Kailan had remained in Nuardel as guests. A few elves had bristled at welcoming, in that capacity, men they'd crossed blades with.
"Any elf with a complaint, raise your hand."
"Hieek..."
Every last one of them vanished before Elioren, who'd gone thoroughly dark in his hurry to set the incident to rights.
"I've seen the other elves before, but this will be my first time meeting the Great Elder."
"The same for me, Your Grace."
I hadn't even known there was such a post. In stories you got High Elves, or elder councils packed with ancient ones. Maybe I'd been too busy. It had never occurred to me they might actually exist.
The Great Elder who could commune with the World Tree—Trea—was said to take no part in affairs of state in ordinary times. Elves, in the end, were mortal too, and receiving the World Tree's words with a mortal mind demanded a strength beyond imagining. To spare her that burden as much as possible, she rested or slept whenever she was not in communion.
It was no exaggeration to call the Great Elder the linchpin of Nuardel, and that elf would soon walk into this room—all because of a little ball a human chef had tossed into the air, one that had grown far too large. It was the sort of matter that could have been settled internally with the Sildiel family they belonged to. Then Duke Kailan of Silbaerin, the Empire's northern territory, had come to rescue me in person, and the problem had swollen with him.
Well. Nothing to be done about it.
They'd kidnapped me because the food was delicious—a motive so awkward that, as a chef, I couldn't decide whether to be pleased or furious. Still, a crime was a crime, and the price had to be paid.
"So, about the compensation... are you truly all right with that much, Jinwoo?"
"He's right, Sir Jinwoo. I believe you could ask for more."
"Hmm. You think so?"
On the first night after Arthur and Kailan came for me, we'd already finished talking the compensation through. They did their best to respect my opinion as the one involved, but they still seemed to feel my demands fell short. Enough. It wasn't as if I meant to pick the elves clean and live in luxury off the proceeds. They had no appetite for possessions to begin with—no gold, no jewels, nothing at all. Theirs was still a society of barter and shared labor, with no currency, so there wasn't much worth taking.
Creeeak— Just as I finished sorting my thoughts, the conference room door opened, and five elves came in quietly. The perpetrators: Iseria, Veila, and Seiran. And, for the talks, Elioren and Great Elder Trea. Elioren and Trea sat across from us. The other three stood behind them.
In the awkward silence, Trea was the first to speak.
"First, allow me to apologize once more for the disgraceful incident born of our elves' fault."
"We are sorry."
"Ah... yes."
All five elves bowed to me at once. Unlike the graduation a little while ago, this felt awkward. Uncomfortable. I'd already spent more than ten days in Nuardel and received every apology there was to receive, and I held no ill will toward Trea. Hearing my flustered reply, she went on.
"I would ask what punishment and compensation Sir Jinwoo and Lord Kailan Silbaerin desire."
"You said Nuardel's highest penalty is exile, didn't you?"
"Yes. That is correct. But these three elves have already come to know the taste of the human world, and we cannot risk exiling them only for them to harm Sir Jinwoo again..."
Before today's final plan for damages, I'd asked about Nuardel's highest penalty. The answer was nothing other than exile. To elves who held tending and serving the World Tree as the highest virtue, exile carried a special weight—like castrating a man of fierce desire, or cutting the wrist from a first-rate swordsman. A cruel sentence that erased the purpose of a life itself.
Then why not just execute them? The thought flashed through me. But after living in Nuardel, I understood. The elves truly loved the World Tree, and followed it blindly. They leaned on it so completely that they'd die, even as a joke, if the World Tree told them to. If I can become fertilizer for the World Tree, I don't mind dying! That was the mad creed of their kind.
For a people like that, I could accept that exile weighed heavier than death. The three who'd kidnapped me, though, were an exception. Iseria, Veila, and Seiran. Their reverence for the World Tree had thinned, and they had tasted human civilization—more precisely, my Hand Taste. Whether exile would even work on elves like that was doubtful, and there was the risk of further harm besides.
True enough. A problem inside Nuardel would have been elf against elf. This time the other party was human, so they couldn't simply cast them out. It called for thought from every angle. Duke Kailan caught my eye and yielded me the first word. I took the hint and laid out the punishment I'd settled on.
"First... fifty years. For fifty years, forbid those three elves from leaving the realm, and put them to labor from morning until evening."
"Yes. Understood."
The reason it was fifty was simple. After that much time, I'd be dead and gone anyway. Well—maybe Mana Market and Hand Taste would fire off some whatever-effect and I'd live forever. The odds of that were vanishingly thin. An exception among exceptions. The labor I'd thrown in just because. For an elf, a fifty-year ban on leaving was basically an order to live an ordinary life for fifty years. They'd committed a crime. Better that some kind of punishment exist. That way they'd feel a little more guilt, and maybe even reform.
Once I confirmed Trea had written my words down, I went on.
"Also, have those elves cook. I'll provide the list."
"Yes. Underst— ...pardon? Cook?"
"Yes. Cook."
I answered Trea's double-take without hesitation. Behind her, Iseria, Veila, and Seiran—standing there squirming through their repentance—looked startled. Fair enough. They'd been sure it would be fifty years of fieldwork, and now it was cooking? But I'd thought this through.
Thud— I set the cooking list I'd prepared on the conference table. Among well-known vegan cookbooks from abroad, there is one called The Plant. Back when I'd briefly taken an interest in vegan food, I'd read it with a translator running the whole way. The list now on the table was a dense collection of the varied vegan recipes from that book, together with the vegan recipes I'd already known.
The sudden appearance of a recipe book flustered not only the elves, but Arthur and Kailan too. I hadn't warned them. The surprise was fair.
"In here are recipes most elves can eat without strong likes or dislikes. About... a hundred of them."
"Yes... and what would you have us do with this recipe book?"
"Until those three can make every dish in it perfectly. Have them cook at dawn and at night—the hours when they aren't at labor. And for each dish they pass, reduce the sentence by one year."
"Pardon? A reduction?"
My radical sentencing left everyone dumbfounded. Look closer, though, and it wasn't such a merciful offer. Iseria, standing behind them, kept sneaking glances at the book. She read a recipe scrawled across a few loose pages and wore the face of someone staring down a brutal math problem. Just as that reaction suggested, making every one of those dishes perfectly would take a considerable amount of time. From Korean jang—the fermented sauces—to tofu, kimchi, and all manner of fermented foods: dishes that took ages and demanded endless trial and error. And then there were recipes of punishing difficulty that even Iseria, who had tasted plenty through me, could never have imagined. Vegan sashimi. Vegan nuggets.
I had several reasons for proposing it.
Affection. That was the problem.
Living alongside Iseria, Veila, and Seiran, I'd grown far too fond of them. My own feelings—the part that mattered most—had already bought them a pardon, and I didn't want a cruel punishment either. Better to show them how hard cooking really was, and let them feel the shame themselves: that kidnapping me just to eat my food straight off the plate had dismissed every effort I'd poured into the craft. And if their skills improved in the bargain, and Nuardel's food culture grew with them, wasn't that all to the good? No more victims like me. The elves would be able to make delicious food with their own hands.
Whether they'd grasped my grand design or not, emotion wavered in the eyes of the five elves before me.
"Sir Jinwoo. You are... what are you..."
"Jinwoo—no. Chef!! I really was wrong. Only now do I understand it, deep down."
"Tch. Human. What even are you... art, right to the end."
"I'm not confident when it comes to cooking, but I'll do my best...!"
Great Jinwoo—
only now do I understand.
How did you ever live that way?
I ignored the ballad that had started playing in my ears of its own accord and settled them down.
"Mm-hm. All right. Everyone, calm down."
"No, Jinwoo. Didn't you say you wouldn't forgive them in some outrageous fashion like this?"
"Sir Jinwoo. Are you truly serious?"
"My heart is always two hundred percent sincere."
Arthur and Kailan, seated beside me, were kicking up a fuss of their own. In the unsettled air, Trea drew every eye.
"Sir Jinwoo. What of the compensation? It ill befits us to say so, but please—do not hold back. Speak freely."
"He is right, Sir Jinwoo. As a father and as head of the house, my failing was great, and I am ashamed you named so merciful a punishment."
"Ah, don't worry. I'll make the compensation count."
At that, every gaze in the room gathered on me.
"Nuardel has no currency, and its measure of value differs from the Empire's. So this is closer to a debt than a payment, but... I want a blank check I can use whenever I wish."
"Yes. Considering the trouble we have caused Sir Jinwoo, we can grant as much. How would you set the terms of this blank check?"
"We'll speak of the details later. And..."
The first of my demands was the blank check. I wasn't sure I'd ever have a special use for it, but there truly was nothing in Nuardel worth stripping away. Leaving it in the form of a debt seemed the more useful thing. I drew a short breath and spoke the second—a chef's desire I'd kept secret even from Arthur and Kailan.
"Let me eat the World Tree."
Clatter—... At my words, everyone in the room froze. Trea dropped even the pen she'd been writing with. The other elves stared at me with faces of pure shock and awe. Only Iseria was different. Her face had gone red, and she stared at the floor, drowning in shame.
What's with her.
Seemed I'd need to drive the point home one more time.
They were the ones who'd told me not to hold back—to say whatever I wanted.
A price... had to be paid, didn't it?