A Familiar Taste Is the Scariest: Toast (3)
Bella, a commoner student at Arcadia Academy, had been nursing a headache for days.
The headmaster had abruptly cut off the ingredients, and the student cafeteria had shut its doors. The noble dormitories were another world entirely—every aristocratic student lived with at least one family servant in tow—so the end of meal service barely registered with them. No cafeteria? Then eat out. Or else, My servant will just buy something. Enviable solutions, all of them.
For the great majority of commoner students, those options did not exist. Scholarships were not handed out to every one of them, and simply paying tuition and the cost of a uniform was already enough to put a household on the brink. In that pinched reality, the student cafeteria—cheap, at least by comparison—had always been packed with commoners. That, too, was now a thing of the past.
Haa... I'm going hungry again today.
The day before yesterday, on the walk to school, she had run into a suspicious black-haired man. He asked her this and that about the Academy's meals, then pressed a bag of hardtack into her hands—and not the tasteless, jaw-breaking kind, either. It was that Silbaerin hardtack, the stuff you lately couldn't buy even if you had the coin.
His looks had been on the decent side, honestly, but the greeting—you look like you're running on empty—had sounded far too much like a cult recruiter. Bella couldn't shake her suspicion until she caught sight of the Calius Merchant Guild's insignia in his company, and only then did she let her guard down.
That hardtack was really good.
Set against the cheap bread and hardtack on the market, the Silbaerin kind cost a little more. To Bella, who begrudged every last coin, it had been something to stare at day after day and never actually buy. Tasting it by chance like that, though, she found it on an entirely different level from any hardtack she had eaten before. No—not just hardtack. Set beside other breads, it would still have ranked near the top.
Her stomach growled. The moment she imagined that clean, faintly sweet flavor, the hunger she had been stuffing down with water since morning reared up again, and today's walk to the Academy felt longer than ever. She was trudging along with her eyes on the pattern of the paving stones when it hit her: a familiar, devastating aroma speared straight up her nose.
Bella forgot to walk. Her gaze locked on the source.
White bread? And what's that between the slices?
The manor of the Calius Merchant Guild stood on a stretch of road she always had to pass on the way to the Academy, and the wall was low enough that the front garden showed itself without any effort. Two people there were preparing breakfast, but faces and species never reached Bella's eyes. All she registered was the toast breathing out the nutty scent of bread she knew, of butter and egg—and, hiding behind that familiar fragrance, something sharper, more provocative. Whatever it was, it had her mind in a vise.
Ah, I just want one bite...
Whether or not he sensed that longing, one of them raised a piece of toast dripping vivid red sauce and made to bite in. In that instant Bella's eyes met his. Reason came back only when their gazes crossed, and she bowed at once to apologize for the rudeness. The man she saw, once her head cleared, was none other than the black-haired stranger who had given her the hardtack the day before yesterday.
"Hold on a second. Don't you go anywhere!"
He offered not a word of rebuke for the rudeness. What came back to her was no scolding, but the very piece of warm toast he himself had been about to eat—so fragrant it soaked into every cell, until even those cells seemed to doubt whether a commoner had any right to it.
Bella was hungry, and she was a commoner with nothing to eat today, but she still had a sense of shame. She refused and refused, and the black-haired man forced the toast into her hands anyway. All he asked in return was a small favor: tell her friends about it.
Bella could not grant that favor. More precisely, it would be fairer to say that she was in no position to do any promoting.
"I know this smell... that's exactly why I can't stand it..."
"Just one bite!! Please, just let me have one bite!!"
"C-commoner! Where did you buy that food? I'll pay. Please, just tell me!!"
Because the moment she peeled back the wrapping, meaning to make the toast stand in for lunch, every student around her—commoner and noble alike—came running of their own accord.
After flagging down a girl on her way past and leaving my advertising to auto-farm for free, I headed for the forge quarter to collect the stall canopy I had ordered ahead.
I hadn't worn out my own shoes hunting for a shop, of course. Calius had introduced a suitable carpentry workshop. I'd gone back and forth on the stall itself—a wheeled cart in the style of a modern covered street stall, or a simpler standing setup under a sturdy canopy—and in the end I chose the latter. A cart would have cramped both the size and the tools, and moving the thing would have meant buying a horse. Purchasing a horse just so I could commute to a little street stall sounded exhausting. Better to hire laborers to put it up once, and call them again whenever I eventually closed shop.
While I went to look the stall over, Eilenna said she would stay at the manor and practice the menu. If it went up today, I meant to open tomorrow, and she clearly intended to have everything down cold in time.
A model of excellent judgment.
She already had a delicate palate and a sure hand with ingredients. She'd master it without much trouble. And since I happened to be alone, I figured I could take my time—finish the sightseeing I hadn't managed before, and take the measure of the market while I was at it.
"Wild Boar sandwiches, caught yesterday! Fresh and delicious, try one!"
"Boss, one sandwich, please."
"Welcome, welcome! Thank you kindly~"
A lively marketplace, after so long, loosened my purse strings. I'd just put away a solid breakfast of toast, and still I lost to temptation and ordered some otherworld street food.
A Wild Boar sandwich... Right. The monster Iseria had dropped in a single blow, back then, had been a Wild Boar. Butchering it and selling the meat off had paid rather well—though a Wave broke out right after and we ended up confined to the city.
Memories. Nothing but memories.
Thinking back, we'd only hunted and butchered the thing. I'd never actually eaten it. You could probably tell as much from a look at my restaurant's menu, or at what I cooked for myself. I avoided meat when I could, especially the pork and beef of this world. Chicken I could manage if I cooked it carefully—something like a clean boiled chicken, or a long-simmered bone broth—without that sense of wrongness. The rest of the meats... I simply could not get past them.
I humbly yearn for modern selective breeding...
Setting monsters aside, this world's livestock were animals that had barely been improved at all. The pork and the mutton reeked of gaminess to a degree that made you wonder whether such a thing was even possible, and the beef was impossibly tough. In a world whose technology couldn't support mass production, there was no way people could eat their fill of livestock to begin with, and so breed improvement was bound to crawl. Lately, though, I'd gotten my hands on sap and leaves from the World Tree, and that had given me hope. Sausage packed with every spice I could think of had still stunk of game—until I brushed it with World Tree sap, and the smell died on the spot. The day would come soon enough when I could turn out tender boiled pork, or a proper beef steak.
Ahh. Tear strips of sharp, well-fermented Kimjang kimchi, lay a pale slice of boiled pork right on top, and eat...
"Here's your Wild Boar sandwich! Enjoy~"
"Ah, thank you."
I'd been deep in an early-November Kimjang fantasy, boiled pork and all, and when I came back to myself it had turned into a Wild Boar sandwich. Tch. A shame, but it wasn't an impossible future. I'd have to try it this winter. A few elves from Nuardel who actually liked me, plus Arthur and Duke Kailan, salting cabbage in a great big tub—now that would be a sight. They were all far stronger than I was, so they could probably skip the rubber gloves. A superhuman ought to be able to grit through the chili on fighting spirit alone.
Still, better to focus on the food in front of me than on some far-off Kimjang. I took the sandwich, stepped a little away from the shop, and sniffed.
Hmm... well, this much is acceptable.
There was a trace of gaminess, but nothing so bad it couldn't be eaten—the sort of smell a person with a strong stomach could choke down if they decided to call it pork flavor. Which is to say, not an easy smell for an ordinary person from the modern world. But I was Kang Jinwoo, a man who had survived the pork-offal stalls of Moran Market. Game at this level, I was confident I could eat with a glad heart.
I chewed. Unlike soft white bread, the rye was riddled with great open holes. Onto that tough, coarse bread went sliced, grilled Wild Boar, finished with cheese. Carbohydrate, protein, and fat was not a bad combination, but the smell was uncomfortable all the same. Musty bread, sharp cheese, and gamey meat together—this was absolute testosterone-male food. One thing was certain. It tasted like something no woman would ever eat.
Besides the Wild Boar sandwich, I made a tour of the other street foods: meat pies, simple crepes, nuts, dried fruit, and the like. A little taste of everything, and I was sure.
Okay. Analysis complete.
Otherworld. You're not beating me.
Honestly, the level of the food and the cooking wasn't low. It hadn't developed as far as modern Earth, but given this world's technological background, it sat at a perfectly reasonable level. In some respects it had even moved past Earth's Middle Ages. Magic existed here, after all, so refrigeration, freezing, and control of the flame were actually more convenient than in the modern day. But that was as far as it went. The cuisine of this world still couldn't so much as breach the fortress of a single piece of street toast.
I felt a little easier. In the back of my mind I'd been worrying—what if the business went bust, how would I face Eilenna and Calius...
Lighter of heart, I arrived at the carpentry shop and looked over the stall where it stood in a dry-fit.
"No need to see any papers. You're the black-haired cook Master Calius spoke of?"
"Yes, that's me. Is this the stall?"
"It is. Seeing as it's for the Academy, I kept it neat and respectable. To your liking?"
"The look of it is killer. Thank you."
I'd been afraid of circus-tent red-and-white stripes, but a professional's sense showed through: calm brown timber for the frame, red canvas laid over it here and there. Use blue on a place that serves food, or purple, or a deep green, and appetite drops for psychological reasons. The effect shifts with a person's cultural background, but the colors that generally count against you are more or less fixed.
"Could you install it this afternoon? The street in front of the Academy building."
"Hm. Plenty doable. I'll come by the Calius Merchant Guild manor after lunch, so have things ready."
"Brisk. I like that. Here's the payment. See you shortly."
"Haha! Much obliged!"
Calius seemed to have introduced me to the genuine article. Burly middle-aged men who looked as if they didn't possess a single drop of estrogen. A stall built by men like that, I could trust.
The stall was paid for, and I had no more market research to do. I went back to the manor, waited for the laborers, and then set out for the Academy with Eilenna.
The clerk in the administration office had said the paperwork looked likely to go through without trouble, and told me to come prepared with the stall itself. Even so, putting it up blind was riskier than stopping by the office first to confirm. I sent the laborers ahead to the site and stepped into the Academy's main building with Eilenna.
"What are you having for lunch? Want to head out toward the plaza?"
"Ugh, that's far, and I'm lazy... Our family's servant said they'd have lunch ready. Want to eat with me?"
"Sure. Going back and forth is a waste of time anyway."
"What's your afternoon class?"
"The History of Alchemy and Equivalent Exchange, I think?"
"Wow. The food coma's gonna kill you."
As luck would have it, we'd overlapped with the students' lunch hour, and the place was packed from the entrance inward. This was my third visit, and I'd never seen it like this, so it felt strange. On top of that I had black hair, and Eilenna was a beauty who would have drawn eyes even if she weren't an elf. Like it or not, we pulled every gaze in the place.
"Look at that hair. One of those Easterners you only ever hear about?"
"You're looking at the hair? Look at the elf next to him. Whoa..."
We hadn't done anything wrong, but Eilenna and I ducked our heads and hurried on. We were crossing the corridor toward the administration office when a knot of people, packed into the middle of the passage, blocked the way.
"Just one bite—!"
"Where? Where did you buy it—?!"
Weren't these people going to eat? What were they doing standing around here? I had somewhere to be, and they'd planted themselves square across the path, so I had no choice but to beg pardon and shoulder through.
"Sorry, students, coming through...!"
"Ah—excuse us."
"We were blocking the way. Sorry."
Still, credit to them. They knew they were in the wrong. Students of the Empire's one and only institution of higher learning, as expected. I pushed about halfway through the packed mass, and then someone called out to me.
"Oh—Toast Guy?"
"Hm? You're the girl from this morning?"
It was none other than the girl I'd left running on auto-farm that morning. And the moment she called me Toast Guy—
"Toast? This is the cook?"
"Where are you selling?!"
"You're open for lunch, right? Right?!"
Every head that had been fixed on the girl whipped around at once and pinned itself on me.
They were students, years younger than I was and wet behind the ears, and even so... this was a little frightening. Starting business a day early was starting to look like the better idea. Say we're not open today in an atmosphere like this, and something was going to blow.