The Snack Bar Owner Hides the Tteokbokki (1)
"Time limit, five minutes. The instant a Life Protection Artifact activates, every attack, every spell, and every movement is forbidden."
"Yes, sir!"
"Well... neither of you is new at this, so you know the drill. Take your positions."
Four days had already passed since the ruckus of combat practice finally died down. In the battle-track classes of the magic department, sparring went on exactly as it always had.
The stars of today's match were the department's celebrities—the pair everyone called one another's only true friends, and one another's rivals. Ishilla, whose specialty was ice, and Kariel, whose specialty was flame.
"Ishilla. You lost again last night, so I'd like to see you actually try today."
"Hmph. Last night was a mistake. I got excited, that's all... This time I'm landing a real one."
"Gasp—did you just hear the young lady and the princess?!"
"Oh no. The two of them, excited enough at night to..."
"Until all her ice magic melts...!"
All it had been was a story of Ishilla thinking she had the match, losing her head, showing her hand, and getting turned around. But these were two flowers blooming on a cliff the whole academy gazed up at, and the imagined sight of those flowers tangling together was a subject students in their prime found very hard to endure.
The shrieks—eek, eek—gradually faded, and before long a hush filled the sparring ground. The only sounds left were Kariel and Ishilla breathing in concentration, and the instructor's whistle to begin.
Fweeeee—!
With the whistle that opened the bout, both of them drew up their mana. From the heart, down through the toes, then one full circuit up to the head—the rotation gathered speed until, at last, the engine fully caught.
Ishilla looked back at herself in combat practice only a few days ago. Set beside then, the speed of her mana's turn and the sheer amount of it were unmistakably different. She couldn't say what had made her stronger. Maybe it was that day, eating the tteokbokki Kang Jinwoo had made and finally working the knot all the way out of her chest. As Headmistress Ermia had said, what mattered most was the caster's own mind and will.
Kr-r-r-rack—
Ishilla thrust a hand forward. In the same instant, spears of cold gathered in a chill mass above her head—pure enough to see straight through, gleaming with a vicious light that would not allow a single flaw.
Kariel did not flinch. She took one step forward, bolder still, and spoke.
"I'll give you the first move. Come in hard."
"Hyaaaah!!"
Shwiiiiik—!
A blue-white ice spear shot out with Ishilla's cry. But for all the force of that shout, the spear's speed bled off almost at once.
Fwoosh—
A barrier of flame roared up, burning as fiercely as Kariel's crimson hair. The threatening heat reached the spectator seats, and the ice spear was stripped of its cold without a fight.
"Your power's improved. Shame. In the end it's the same as last time."
"No. Watch it all the way through."
"What?"
Watch it through—watch what? It would obviously melt away drip by drip, same as every spar before. Even so, Kariel's eyes followed the spear's path. Ishilla might be a precious friend, but a spar was a spar. Better to stamp her flat for certain than look down on her and pay for it. That was Kariel's nature.
But... what was there to see? Most of the ice spear had already melted down to a cute little snowball. Kariel searched her surroundings, brow furrowed.
And then—
Thud!
Kariel had been watching only Ishilla. Something with real weight slammed into the back of her head, and her vision spun.
Thank the sparring artifact for that. In a real fight, the blow would not have ended at dizziness. She staggered and turned.
The empty stretch she'd left behind her when she stepped forward was filled now with small, fluffy tufts of silver fur.
Eeng, oong—!
Spirits of cold, summoned and given their orders at some moment she hadn't caught. The tiny things beamed as they packed snowballs frozen solid. And over them came Ishilla's triumphant voice.
"Since when, exactly, did you get it in your head that all I use is Ice Spear?"
"Ishilla, don't tell me... Double Casting?"
Double Casting. Mishandle the cast and the current of your mana knots on itself, with a mana explosion waiting at the end. A technique even Kariel would not risk in a spar, unstable as it was—and Ishilla had pulled it off?
Shock flooded Kariel's eyes.
Ishilla didn't bother answering that she could. She only curled the corner of her mouth in a wicked little smile.
"Well? The second move is yours."
"You... get over here!!"
In overall strength, Ishilla might still have been the lesser. But in this moment, her control of mana had cleanly surpassed Kariel's.
"Oh, so you won?"
"No..."
"Wait. What."
Ever since the last tteokbokki party, I'd dropped the formalities with Ishilla. I'd eaten with her father, gone on a "trip abroad" to Nuardel—I'd done the whole circuit. Maybe because speaking casually had made us feel closer all at once, she chattered on and on about today's spar, telling it as if she'd won outright. The actual result, apparently, had been something else.
Kariel, who had been listening in silence beside her, cut in.
"Heheh. I didn't see the Double Casting coming, but what matters in the end is finishing power. Ishilla ran clean out of mana halfway through and forfeited."
"Ah, is that so? Classic water rocket. Straight up, straight down..."
"Grr—next time I'm winning! You one-trick, illegal flame-barrier user!"
"What? You limited-edition summer ice machine!"
They seemed to have forgotten I was standing right there, squabbling away in perfect harmony. It had been like this every day since their dramatic reconciliation over tteokbokki a few days back. Friends getting along was nice. I just wasn't sure why it had to happen in front of my stall. Still, at least I wasn't bored.
"Anyway, Master, could you pack a little of that for me? I want some tonight."
"Haah... Your Highness. That isn't even on the menu. If you keep this up, I'm going to have a problem."
"Oh my. Are you getting snippy with a princess? That's about two bowls of that worth of insolence."
"Please. Fine, I'll make it. And it's a secret from the other students, yes?"
"Master, me too. Me too, please!"
What Ishilla and Kariel were so desperately after—that—was tteokbokki. Hiding it behind a pronoun felt like a bit much, but you never knew. If anyone besides these two showed up at a toast stall and demanded tteokbokki that wasn't on the menu, I'd be sunk.
I'd thought about putting it on the menu properly, but making the rice cakes took more hands than I'd expected, so it was on hold. Batch them up and freeze them solid and I'd have some breathing room, so the plan was to start once I had a surplus of wheat-flour rice cakes laid in. Until then, I had no choice but to keep the fact quiet and cook it through back channels.
I set water on the single burner inside the stall. I was adding the sauce and bringing it to a boil from the recipe in my head when Eilenna, beside me, spoke.
"J-Jinwoo. Could I have a little, too?"
"Of course. For you, Lady Eilenna, absolutely."
"Master, that's unfair. Would it kill you to say yes to us that easily?"
"Then you come work here. Employee benefit: meals, provided. Generous, isn't it?"
"Stingy. Wait. If it's eating a Cooking Master's food for free... is that actually a good benefit?"
"Which is why I'm not a Master—ugh. Forget it."
No matter how many times I said it, the Master misunderstanding would not come off. At this point, should I just go and become the Empire's first real Cooking Master?
Not that I was the type to hang my neck on rank and honor. A quiet, peaceful life running a restaurant had always been the goal. Hang the title of the Empire's first Cooking Master on the door, though, and wouldn't I become a tourist landmark of Silbaerin overnight? You could see it plain enough in every country already sick from overtourism. People say indifference is a frightening thing, but sometimes you're desperate even for that. Carriage wheels and horses neighing around the place day and night. Nightmare customers of every species, in patterns too many to sort out. Mm. Just picturing it was already making me dizzy.
I was still laying out the worst possible future of becoming a Master when Kariel spoke.
"Deny it all you like, Kang Jinwoo. You can't fool my tongue. Really—if you wanted to hide being a Master, you should have made it a little less delicious."
"A sad reality, that no one believes a word I say."
"Hehe. Oh, that is lovely and all, but it's quite spicy. Make it less so, though, and I feel the flavor would die. Isn't there a good way?"
"A good way... There is a proper method, yes."
Koreans have had their brains pickled in heat so thoroughly that ordinary food doesn't even register as spicy anymore. There are foreigners who will come right out and say, Koreans are insane. They claim this isn't spicy. But we aren't some superpowered species. There is no ability that turns burn into sweetness. What there is, instead, is the ultimate match for spicy food—a mariage only the locals know.
I'd been so buried in making tteokbokki that I hadn't even thought of making those drinks. The recipe was simpler than you'd expect... Well. Would it be all right to make some?
"There is a drink that goes with it..."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes. But, hmm... just giving it away is a little..."
"If that's all it is, say so freely. Who do you think is standing in front of you?"
Clink—!
Kariel smiled like a provocation and flicked a single coin off her finger.
She talked as if she were about to hand over a fortune, and it was one coin? The thought crossed my mind even as I caught the thing cleanly out of the air. Then I looked at what had landed in my palm.
"Th-this is a gold coin? It's real?"
"Of course it's real. Would an imperial princess walk around carrying counterfeit gold?"
"Even so, this is far too much..."
"Think of it as the drink, the food, and a few other things besides."
Wow. Between the hardtack business and the stall I was already making a decent amount, but a gold coin was a first. It wasn't as heavy as I'd pictured, and yet the feel of it was stupidly pleasant. I hadn't said any of that hoping for money like this, but there was no need to refuse what was offered. Between running the stall and Eilenna's wages, I needed a little more just now anyway. Sincerity on this level was more than enough reason to make it.
Every school has at least one stationery shop out front. Open the freezer case and one whole section is always packed solid with frozen drinks in milk cartons. For less than fifty cents the shopkeeper snips the top off on the spot, and you scrape from the corners with the wooden stick he hands you—that exact taste. Or the drinks a snack bar always keeps stocked in every flavor. Tteokbokki, fire chicken, spicy chicken feet: wherever Korean heat went, that drink followed. A fruit-flavored yogurt drink, peach far and away the favorite.
Coolpis—or, by its other name, Juicy Cool. It was time to make it in another world.