A Feast? Noodles (1)
The brilliant March sun was going down.
The Silbaerin Knights, out patrolling Kalian Forest since before dawn, were at last putting their backs into the march home. With fewer men to keep an eye on, they could sweep the woods for danger all the faster.
"Another year without much trouble, it seems."
"Yes, my lord. So it appears."
Kailan took the report and answered as if it were nothing worth remarking on. The patrol had originally been the 1st Squad's to run, and yet Duke Kailan had, for reasons of his own, announced that he would ride along. The sudden whim of a superior had left Arthur, captain of the 1st Squad, wound tight from head to toe.
"Hm... It's only March, I suppose. The days are still short. Night will fall on us before we're back."
"Judging by the sun, I believe so, my lord. Shall we quicken the pace from here?"
"No. No need for that."
They had left the city at first light, and lunch had been the field rations issued to the knights. Duke Kailan had eaten the same as the rest of them. Being meant for the field, the food was bone-dry and stubbornly chewy. It put back the calories a body needed to keep moving, but anything like satisfaction, or the feeling of a full stomach, was in short supply. The soldiers seemed to feel it too. Snippets of their chatter kept drifting over—how peckish they were, how badly they wanted something that actually tasted good.
Duke Kailan looked around. The right-hand fork through Kalian Forest, and, about halfway along it, a narrow side path. Follow that, and a restaurant waited at the end. Measuring the ground against the directions Ishilla had given him, he judged they were close.
He had not joined the patrol because he was bored. If anything, the business of running a city lay piled on his desk like a mountain.
A promise is a promise...
He had promised to go to the restaurant himself, take the measure of the master's character and his cooking, and help spread the word. Keeping that promise to Ishilla was the whole reason he was out here.
Duke Kailan cleared his throat and spoke to the men.
"All units, halt!"
"Halt!"
"Halt!"
The soldiers repeated their supreme commander's order in proper form, and the warhorses drew up short.
"We'll rest here a moment before we go on. At ease, all of you."
"At ease!"
The patrol had turned up nothing difficult, and they weren't covering any great distance, so the order to rest was a little puzzling. Even so, the men dismounted, found places for themselves, and sat. One did not question an order. In plainer words: if they told you to do it, you did it. A truth that held for an army in any age.
"Arthur. You alone, come with me."
"Yes, my lord. First Squad! Do not leave this position. Rest where you are."
Having called only Arthur aside, Duke Kailan turned not onto the proper road but down a strange little trail. Arthur stole glances at him even as he stuck close to the duke's side.
"Don't stand so stiff. The truth is, I made a promise to Ishilla."
"A promise... my lord?"
What sort of promise required walking this deep into the forest? Arthur waited for the duke to explain.
"Ishilla's carriage broke down on this road and left her stranded, and as chance would have it, there was a restaurant nearby. A restaurant belonging to a Cooking Master, no less."
"Say again, my lord?"
An enormous word had been hiding inside that calm sentence. A Cooking Master, in a forest that could not even be called the outskirts of anywhere—nothing but nature itself? Struck by a story he could hardly credit, Arthur fired at the duke a Say again? he had not used since he was a raw recruit.
"Ha. Fair enough. I doubted it myself. But Ishilla raised such a fuss, insisting it was true... and really, what reason would she have to lie about a thing like this?"
"That... is so, my lord. Even so, a Cooking Master. If it is true..."
"Yes. The first in the history of the Empire."
Through the long history of the Empire, the title of Cooking Master had always been a blank on the rolls. Arthur knew the weight of that name, and a low groan escaped him.
"Oh. That must be the place. Closer than I thought."
"The restaurant is... most peculiar in its construction, my lord."
"I feel the same."
Darkness had settled without their noticing. A yellow lantern picked it out only faintly, until the restaurant's sign came clear enough to read.
"Go on, then. Call for him."
"M-me, my lord?"
"Would you rather I went?"
Well... no.
Cornered by nothing more than the duke's rank, Arthur edged up to the entrance.
Clank! Clank! Bang!
The gauntlets he wore turned the knock into something rather intimidating.
"Is Mr. Kang Jinwoo in?"
Just as Duke Kailan had instructed, Arthur called the master's name. An answer came before long.
"Yes, I'm coming...!"
The voice carried through the wall, and the door opened with it.
The master who showed his face was Kang Jinwoo, a man of quietly solid build with sharp eyes. Black hair and black irises, rare sights in the Empire, left an impression at once. He stared at Arthur as if he had no idea what any of this was about.
"Forgive the sudden intrusion. I am Arthur, captain of the 1st Squad of the Silbaerin Knights."
"Ah, yes. I'm Kang Jinwoo. Did you... come for a meal?"
"Are you serving now?"
Duke Kailan answered in his place and stepped forward, running a quick eye over the self-proclaimed Cooking Master, Kang Jinwoo. Something about the man was strange.
Mana skimmed the surface of Kang Jinwoo's body, not his soul. Mana and magical power were not the same thing. Mana was the energy that composed the world; it could dwell in anything, and in a living being it dwelt in the soul. Magical power was the force one gained by converting the mana a soul possessed. There had never been a case, until the man standing before him, of mana simply failing to sink in at all. He was not absorbing it from outside, either. It beaded and ran off him the way water slid from a waterproof cloak.
Curious, that... but it isn't what matters right now.
Kailan called himself back to the business at hand.
"Yes, we're serving. Will it be just the two of you?"
"No. There are more."
"How many more are there?"
"Twelve, counting the two of us?"
"Pardon?"
The party order had come out of nowhere, and it left Kang Jinwoo's head spinning. On modern Earth, a group that size usually reserved ahead. This was a medieval fantasy world. Reservations were not unheard of, but an ordinary restaurant did not take them.
"Twelve, then. Will that be difficult?"
"Not difficult, exactly... It'll take a little time."
"Time is no trouble. We'll be looking over our gear. It'll pass quickly enough."
"Understood. Would it be all right if I chose the menu myself?"
Kailan stopped and thought for a moment. He wanted to see what this so-called master could actually do, and so he had meant to put as few conditions on the cooking as possible. But the sunlight had already vanished, and the chilly air of early spring was making itself felt. At a time like that, the longing for one mouthful of hot broth was the same in every land.
"The day's cold. I'd like something with a warm broth. Aside from that, make whatever suits you."
"A broth... understood. It should take about an hour. Would you like to wait inside?"
"No. I'll fetch the others. Might we borrow the front yard for a little while? They're all wearing a great deal, and indoors would only be more uncomfortable."
"Sure, that's fine. I'll get the food ready, then."
Kang Jinwoo went into the kitchen to cook, and Kailan and Arthur turned back to collect the men.
Kang Jinwoo, was it. The man's got backbone.
A commoner was meant to feel both gratitude and fear toward the lord of the city he lived in. Kalian Forest was Silbaerin territory all the same, and yet Kang Jinwoo had not shrunk an inch in front of Kailan, nor spared him so much as a wary glance. Interest flickered in the duke's eyes. Arthur, for his part, understood none of it. He only wanted to get off duty as soon as he could.
They'd popped out of nowhere, put in an order for twelve, and walked right off again. Cooking wasn't something you snapped together in a blink, and twelve people was a number you were supposed to have prepared for well ahead of time.
"Ugh. Damn Middle Ages."
Back on Earth I had hated the sound of a ringing phone. Now, of all times, I missed it.
Those customers hadn't looked like commoners, either. They were knights, for one thing, and they'd said Silbaerin Knights outright, so I probably had to treat them as minor nobility. And the man I'd actually spoken with, the one who wasn't Arthur—who was he? Whatever his station, it seemed to stand above Arthur's. Arthur had done nothing but steal nervous little glances from the side. Someone important, clearly. I just couldn't tell how important.
Not my problem. Just cook.
What mattered right now was the meal. Feeding twelve in an hour meant I couldn't use rice. I didn't have a pressure cooker, and boiling that much rice in a pot was no simple thing. On modern Earth an electric rice cooker did the job at the click of a button. Nothing like that existed here. A pot or a great iron cauldron would do it, but rice cooked that way demanded real skill—enough that even roadside inns kept someone whose only job was tending the cauldron at the fire. Better to skip the know-how of long years that I couldn't honestly force myself to copy, and just make something else.
Fortunately, one suitable dish had already settled in my head. A chilly day in early spring. Soldiers fresh off a mission. And on top of that, they wanted a warm broth?
"Then you're banquet noodles."
Korean YouTube had three great pillars of mukbang.
The man from Pohang and his mulhoe, that ice-cold raw-fish broth.
Pork belly in a cast-iron pan, and kimchi seared alongside it until it crackled as if it were being deep-fried.
And...
The banquet-noodle man, who finished a bitter winter's work and then all but drank the noodles, pushing them straight into his mouth. I was going to show the soldiers of another world exactly that. The devastating power of banquet noodles, eaten after you'd suffered through the cold.