Depressed, But I Still Want Tteokbokki (1)
A week had passed since the hearing on my abilities and my food, and I was still at the stall, packed with students, grilling toast that sent up a rich, savory aroma.
"Ham and cheese toast, order up~"
"Damn it, what even is this flavor...?!"
The stall's popularity hadn't cooled, but the crowd was plainly thinner than on opening day. Back then there'd been the shine of a grand opening, and no small help from the girl I'd asked to talk the toast up.
What had dwindled were the customers coming to my stall. The number of people on the street itself had grown by a good deal, and for a simple reason: a week ago, Ermia had declared that ingredient distribution would resume. On the strength of that, the academy's market district had reportedly regained its old liveliness. I'd never seen the place as it used to be, so I couldn't really say—but hey, good news is good news.
Even so, however quickly the ingredients started flowing again, a slump that had been driven all the way underground was never going to lift overnight.
Kang. Jin. Woo. You again?
And that impossible thing—somehow, I had pulled it off.
A good restaurant draws people, and people make a street. When the ingredients were cut off, the academy district had died flat, and the footsteps of students and outsiders alike had grown scarce. Then, just before its last breath failed, I'd opened my stall and strapped an oxygen mask to its face. Riding the toast's popularity, the street had been clawing its strength back, and now, a week later, it had reclaimed its former standing.
"Crepes! Delicious crepes, fifteen coppers!"
"Students, getting hungry between classes? Today's dried fruit is incredibly sweet."
"Plump walnuts, finally all shelled! A mere five coppers!"
That last vendor's pitch was a little odd. Was a line like that even allowed at the academy? Anyway, the whole district had returned to normal—more than normal, from what I'd heard. Conditions were better than before. Ermia had played hardball with the noble merchant companies and wrung favorable terms out of the contracts, so the other vendors could sell food at relatively cheap prices, the same as I could.
What wind had blown Ermia into restarting the trade, I couldn't say. But every other piece of it, in the end, was a good result that traced back to my toast. I didn't fish for credit over it, of course, or go around demanding a premium. The toast was delicious, yes, but honestly it had been no different from robbing an empty house.
Still... when you keep a shop and watch the customers, you start to see the current. People set foot on the street to eat my toast, and while they were at it they bought drinks, bought nuts, spent a little on this and that. The other merchants in the district could hardly have missed that, and they were the sort who knew how to be grateful.
"Oh, Jinwoo! How's the lunch trade?"
"Hello, sir. Enough to keep from starving, same as always."
"Ha! Listen to you joke—your place is the busiest on the whole street. Here, take this."
"Huh? What is it?"
"Plump walnuts. Finally got them all shelled. I tossed in pine nuts and chestnuts too, so snack on them when you're bored."
"Aigoo, thank you!"
I'd been wondering what on earth "plump walnuts" was supposed to mean, and the moment I held them, I understood. The savor and richness peculiar to good nuts practically overflowed; the walnuts, which ought to have been dry, glistened as if they'd been rubbed with oil. Truly fine stock.
If something comes in, something ought to go out. I quickly made the man a street toast.
"You should have one too, sir."
"Well now, I didn't give you those hoping for this, but I'll take it gladly! Mmm... delicious enough to make your eyes go wide, same as ever."
"The nuts are nice and savory, too. Oh—looks like you've got customers at your stall?"
"Oh, you're right. Time to move the rest of the stock!"
The moment he saw people lingering at his stall, he took off at a run. A passionate man in every respect, and every merchant on this street had that same feeling about them. I'd braced for a certain amount of territorial coldness, but they were all so decent that I couldn't help being grateful.
"Lady Eilenna. Try a walnut. They're good."
"Mm, thanks, Jinwoo!"
Nibble, nibble—
Eilenna accepted the walnut I offered in both hands, as if it were something precious, and nibbled at it bit by bit, the way a squirrel works at an acorn. It reminded me of that celebrity who'd been roasted for holding a strawberry in both hands and playing cute. Later it turned out the berry really had been enormous, so two hands were fair. Setting all of that aside, though—sometimes you just eat with both hands. Isn't that right?
Watching Eilenna gnaw the walnut clutched tight in both hands, eyes sharp with concentration, I could only think she was cute.
"Mm. Savory and rich—it's good! But... is there something on my face?"
"Ah, sorry. No, it's just that you were eating like a squirrel, and it was cute."
"Wh-wh-what? What do you mean by..."
Even a light jab, and Eilenna flushed like a radish, shrinking with embarrassment. I could almost hear it—the hiss of hot steam escaping. Pssh. When the reaction is that delicious, sometimes I just can't help myself.
I was sitting front row for Eilenna's embarrassment when a commotion carried over from the direction of the academy's main gate. What was that? Were there still people out protesting? I lifted my head and craned toward the gate.
Before long, several large freight wagons came into view, and swordsmen on horseback—and with them, carriages full of students, drained to the last drop, wearing the vacant faces of people whose souls had stepped out. It wasn't one carriage, or two. Something like seven or eight of them were heading for the academy buildings. A hundred students, easily. Most of them had to be noble children, and yet they looked grimy and worn to threads.
What was this? Had the students been sent out on deployment? Short of that, there was no capturing the vibe—training over, piled into a transport, shipped back to the unit. And that was exactly the air hanging over them now.
I couldn't sit on the curiosity rising in me, so I asked the vendor next door, the plump-walnut man.
"Sir, who are those students? What did they do to end up looking that wrecked?"
"Mm. An annual event. First time you're seeing it, I suppose. They've been out on combat practicum."
"Combat practicum?"
"Right. For the combat-track students, experience matters more than anything, so they train at the grounds the academy manages and come back."
"Whoa. Ranger training."
Now that I'd heard him out, their state was exactly the look of people back from ranger drills and individual combat training.
"They really run students that hard, huh. Every one of them looks awful."
"Well, of course. Most of them will be facing magical beasts for the first time."
"Magical beasts? You're saying they actually make them fight the real things?"
"Hm? Obviously. If they didn't, what kind of practicum would it be?"
He had a point. Even so, the thought of young students having gone out to fight magical beasts didn't sit right with me at all. Early education, otherworld style, really was a different animal.
Perhaps out of consideration for the students collapsed with exhaustion, the carriages passed at a distinctly leisurely pace. Thanks to that, I could make out the faces of students steeped in hard labor. I hadn't meant to stare. They were rolling right past my nose—what was I supposed to do?
Most of them had their eyes shut in a light doze, or were nodding off where they sat. But in that heap of students, one stood out. Everyone around her was dead asleep, and she alone sat with blue eyes open. Dust had smudged her, yet the silver-white of her hair did not easily give up its light. Whatever beauty she must originally have possessed, fused with the exhaustion of combat training, gave off a charm that was hard to put into words.
Huh... I feel like I've seen her somewhere.
The face was familiar, like someone I'd only passed once, and déjà vu prickled at me. Now that I thought about it—she was a bit grimy at the moment, but wasn't that hair an awful lot like the Duke's? Just as the answer tickled at my brain, close enough to touch and not quite, she seemed to feel my gaze, and our eyes met.
The moment our looks crossed, her eyes blew wide and round. The corners of her mouth, pressed shut and turned down as if she were holding in a grudge, sprang open into a grin. We recognized each other at the same instant.
"The Cooking Master of Kalian Forest?!!"
"The Duke's kid, Ishilla?!!"
"What are you doing here?"
Sole heir of House Silbaerin, and the woman who had graced the monumental first day of my shop. The silver-white-haired girl I was meeting again after so long—Ishilla Silbaerin.
The dear old streets of the capital, which she had walked for four years, came into view. Which was to say the academy was not far now.
"Haaah..."
Unlike the clamorous streets of a still-bright afternoon, a hush hung inside Ishilla's carriage. The friends who had come through the combat practicum with her were already bound for dreamland, soaked in fatigue. So as not to disturb them, Ishilla let her sigh out quietly.
She was dizzy herself from overusing her mana, and having failed to wash properly, her body felt unbearably grimy. Days of marching under a heavy pack had every muscle screaming on top of that, so her flesh was begging for even a speck of rest. And yet, stewing in frustration, she couldn't bring herself to sleep.
I trained so hard... and in the end, I still couldn't beat Kariel.
Kariel, the empire's one and only princess. Ishilla was the daughter of the northern duke; Kariel was imperial blood, and no long explanation was required. The two had known of each other even before entering the academy—the sort of acquaintance that kept only a formal distance, barely exchanging a word even at social gatherings.
That distance had crumbled in an instant once they enrolled. Similar station, after a fashion; the same age; the same department; the same combat track. However lofty the blood of high nobility and the imperial house, peel away a single layer and they were only young ladies of a bright, spirited age. With that much else in common besides, the two of them had no way of not growing close.
Sometimes they were best friends, gossiping over cookies deep into the night. Sometimes they were worthy rivals, striking sparks off each other's skill. Either way, it was certain they had become friends unlike any other.
Lately, though, Ishilla had begun to feel anxious about that bond. Since her visit home in the spring, the growth of her mana had stalled once more. Unlike Kariel, who grew stronger if even a single day passed, she felt as if she had been marching in place for some time now. And so she had come into this combat practicum with her blade honed.
The academy's training ground lay a generous two days out by carriage. That vast forest, raised by the headmaster's overwhelming power, teemed with every kind of magical beast, and Ermia's conviction that experience mattered above all else was stamped into the place itself. The greatest pains had been taken to prevent accidents, so there was no need to worry that a beast beyond the students' level might appear, nor about an unexpected fall or a case of poisoning. It was a place suited to laying one's skill bare, exactly as it was.
Ishilla had wrung out her strength to the very last and piled up a formidable record of beasts slain. Even so, she had lost to Kariel.
"Hnn..."
Kariel's skill climbs as if the sky has no top. When am I ever going to catch her? No... maybe the gap will open until it can't be closed, and she won't even face me as a rival anymore.
She was still wallowing in that depressed, stifled mood when she realized the carriage had already entered the academy grounds. Before they'd left for the practicum, the place had been in an uproar over cutting off the ingredient supply; seeing the lively street now, it seemed the trouble had been neatly settled.
Ishilla, who had been staring without focus at the floor of the carriage, suddenly felt a gaze on her. A junior she knew, perhaps, or one of the faculty. She was back after so long—maybe they'd been looking because they wanted to say hello. She raised her head and sought out the source of it.
Someone she had never expected was watching her.
Forgetting, in that instant, that she had been sunk in gloom at all, Ishilla's voice burst out in delight.
"The Cooking Master of Kalian Forest?!!"
"The Duke's kid, Ishilla?!!"
"What are you doing here?"
The other side was no different. She was glad—of course she was glad. But the moment she laid eyes on Kang Jinwoo, Cooking Master of Kalian Forest, a tingling itch ran all through her body.
Fwoosh—!
From the far side of her mind surged the memory she had buried there: that baeksuk, a whole chicken gently boiled, bliss and despair in the same breath. The bliss was the meat, so tender it yielded; the broth, clean and coolly refreshing; and the chicken porridge, a bomb of savor. The despair was never being able to eat food like that again, while the threshold of her palate had only climbed higher.
Shards of taste like shackles, which had tormented Ishilla every time she ate a chicken dish at the academy. Having gone on longing for that flavor, her body answered the way a long-trained dog answers—pure conditioned reflex.
Slurp. Gulp—
Saliva welled on her scarlet tongue like water in a little spring. Thighs locked stiff with fatigue began to tremble, and her snow-white skin flushed red. Tears clear as crystal brimmed, unable to hold back the feeling overflowing in her.
"Hic..."
"Huh? Wh—why are you crying."
"Hk— food... food, please...!"
"Uh."
The combat practicum had been far too exhausting, and in the end she had not beaten Kariel. Through all of it, the academy's food had never once given her a pleasure to match Kang Jinwoo's cooking. A refuge for the heart, stumbled upon while she wandered through feelings that were depressed and soggy and miserable—and before she knew it, Ishilla had let the whimper slip.