A Feast? Noodles (3)
Silbaerin — a city that boasted of its prosperity even under the bitter climate of the north.
But Silbaerin had not enjoyed such abundance from the beginning.
In ages past, the Demon King had thrown the whole continent into the boil of war. South, west, and east alike were reduced to wasteland, and the region left most desolate of all was northern Silbaerin. The mana of the north was pure, and that very purity left it vulnerable to corruption; the miasma the Demon King scattered ate into it until the mana itself was consumed. The beasts of the north had already been ferocious. Add tainted miasma to them, and their destructive power surpassed imagination.
The northern forces were struck down with no answer to give, until voices rose insisting that Silbaerin would have to be abandoned.
It was then that the lord of the house in those days, Serandir Silbaerin, found the single point on which everything turned. Within the host of monsters rolling in like a wave, there was a leader — one creature amplifying the miasma of all the rest.
By then, half the army was already dead. A counterattack was out of the question; even holding the walls was more than the survivors could manage. Watching the war unfold, Serandir confided his intent only to his closest aide and set out alone to slay that leader. It was a last resort. Continue as they were, and he would have to surrender the Silbaerin his ancestors had protected.
But Serandir had strength. Strength enough to make succeed a plan others would have called reckless — a gambler's throw.
Serandir cut through the relentless swarm and took the leader's head. At once the savage monsters lost their strength in a rush, and the troops who had been scrambling merely to hold the line struck down the weakened enemy and restored the front. When they joined their strength and drove the entire host back, what they found was Serandir's body, fallen in glory upon a desolate field of snow.
Gazing down at the banquet noodles, Kailan let hot tears fall.
A war so terrible the white snowfield had looked like a river of blood. He could stand where he stood only because ancestors and honorable dead had given their lives to keep that ground. Upon land defended in blood, Silbaerin had rebuilt its civilization, and the territory was a city now, where the beauty of winter wove together with cultures of every kind. Thanks above all to a peaceful age, his daughter Ishilla — prettier than the stars in the night sky — could live without a care.
So Silbaerin itself is held in these noodles.
Having grasped what the dish meant, Kailan steadied his heart and took up his fork. He mixed the toppings through the noodles with care, then lifted a heaping forkful. Heat that had been trapped among the strands escaped as white steam and scattered, and that alone was enough to guess how hot they were. Kailan blew on them — huff, huff — and put them in his mouth.
They were still hot, but not enough to scald his tongue. A pleasant heat that thawed the cold thawed his tongue as well, and only then did it feel as if senses of taste long shut were opening: the deep savor unique to anchovy broth, black pepper, onion, and green onion, and a paradoxical refreshment born of the heat itself.
Anyone could see it was a blazing-hot dish, steam rolling off it in sheets. So why did it taste refreshing? And not merely refreshing. As a child, Kailan had once eaten bread without a thought and made himself properly sick, and his mother had brewed him medicinal herb tea with her own hands. This was like that — like the waterfall of Lake Kalian, a clean rush that swept indigestion away in a single stroke.
Before he knew it, Kailan had lifted the bowl in both hands and was gulping the broth down. The sort of behavior that would easily rank among the top three things a noble must never do at table.
"Kraaah!"
He swallowed a mouthful, set the bowl on the table, and his wits returned. The realization that he had made a spectacle of himself struck all at once, and Kailan looked around.
"Kyaaah!"
"Graaakh!"
"Pyuh!"
Not a single knight of the order was exempt. Every one of them was drinking the broth straight from the bowl and crying out in wonder — even that stone-faced Arthur, draining his with a kraaah of his own. Reassured that the others were carrying on exactly as he was, Kailan returned to the meal with an easy heart.
Slurp. He shoved in a full mouthful of banquet noodles and worked his ballooned cheeks with everything he had, chewing through the crunch. Over the savory, clean anchovy broth, the toppings — kimchi, carrot, young zucchini — came together and filled out the seasoning and the texture with uncanny precision. The thin wheat noodles themselves were perfectly cooked, chewy and springy, yet without the crisp snap of the toppings the dish would have felt incomplete. A dish that satisfied all five senses.
Kailan did not ordinarily pursue fine dining. It was not that he begrudged the coin, or that he lacked the leisure. He had simply never felt any need to go that far for a meal. He was human; he liked it well enough when food tasted good. He had just never possessed the passion to go hunting for it.
That way of thinking broke, here and now.
Food like this... is worth coming all the way out to eat.
At the same time, he understood why Kang Jinwoo ran a restaurant in a forest like this.
Are the ones shut inside a castle, taking their meals the way livestock take fodder, truly the ones walking the path of gastronomy?
Kang Jinwoo was shouting it. Nobles who hired famous chefs into their manors and sat still, receiving only whatever those chefs set before them — did people like that have any right to style themselves gourmets? Food existed for people, and it was made between people. Gastronomy, the pursuit of food, ought therefore to be sought out in the wide world. To live by that philosophy, Kang Jinwoo had opened his restaurant in the Kalian Forest.
The moment his thoughts reached that far, even the last sliver of doubt in Kailan's chest vanished. He finished every bite, picked up the empty bowl, and went into the restaurant. Then he spoke to Kang Jinwoo, who was tidying the kitchen.
"I believe you. You are a Master, sure enough."
"Pardon?"
"Might I have another bowl?"
"Of course. The bowl, if you please."
"You have my thanks."
The Coldest Wall of the Empire, Kailan Silbaerin, had acknowledged Kang Jinwoo as Master.
That man's a little... particular.
I'd served out all the noodles, given the kitchen a reasonable once-over, and watched them eat — and the man had cried. Had it really been that good? When someone reacted that hard, I wanted to do something more for him. He'd come back for a refill at just the right moment, so I'd handed it over gladly, and somehow he'd acknowledged me as Master.
Well. Inside my own shop, I was the master. I didn't particularly deny it. I just heaped his bowl generously full of noodles, and he ate them with a joy so plain it needed no translation.
"Kraaah! This is seriously delicious."
"It was a bit cold today, but this has thawed me right through."
The other knights, not just the man himself, seemed satisfied with the banquet noodles too, eating while praise welled up out of the soul.
Kraaah. Pyuh!
There was a story that went around: boil beef-bone soup for Westerners, and they'd sweat buckets and finish every last drop. Apparently it was true. Different people, different cultures, and still the feeling a hot broth gave you was the same for everyone.
Now that I think about it, the reaction this time is pretty tame.
Last time, when Ishilla ate the baeksuk — that clear boiled chicken — her eyes had gone soft, as if she'd taken medicine. A cool, silver-haired gentleman in his prime tearing up over banquet noodles wasn't exactly an ordinary reaction... but everyone else was fine. Fair enough. Compared with baeksuk, banquet noodles were a lighter dish, so maybe the effect was milder too. I was turning that over when—
"Damn it... what the hell is this food! My body's heating up!"
"I... I can't stand the heat either!"
"Kehahahaha!!!"
The knights who had been twitching as they ate ripped their tops off to the accompaniment of lines that did not bode well.
"My body's itching for it. Todd — sparring!"
"Just what I wanted!"
Two grown men, skin gleaming with sweat from the hot broth, dropped into bare-handed sparring stances and faced off. I'd settled in to watch what I thought was a healing food show, and suddenly it was putting the UFC out of business. The other knights watched the pair with something smoldering in their eyes. Even the man I'd taken for their commander, and Arthur, fixed their gazes on the match with rapt expressions.
"Here I come!"
"Yes, sir!"
Do you know what fighting meant to a medieval knight? For them, unarmed combat was a last resort, something used only when they could no longer fight with a sword. So what developed was not a striking art like boxing or Muay Thai, but grappling — judo, jiu-jitsu, wrestling. On a battlefield where every second counted, flipping a man and pinning him was more efficient than flicking out jabs.
The reason I was suddenly explaining all this:
"Ah, fuck, my eyes!!!"
Because I had just witnessed, live and in person, two muscular men glossy with sweat claiming to wrestle while they ground against each other, hot and heavy. A tactical nuke had been dropped on me from a direction I never saw coming, and I couldn't even vent the rage. A knight in a medieval fantasy was basically a human weapon. If those two so much as flicked a finger, an ordinary cook like me wouldn't stand a chance.
"Oh, Todd! Overflowing with strength today! Same as me!"
"Kkh — Platoon Leader Luke, your grip is nothing like usual either!"
Their conversation from another world made my head swim. Whether I swam or not, the knights watching the fight each tossed in a remark.
"Todd's holding out better than usual today, that's for sure."
"Luke's taking him pretty hard, too. Did the two of them train on the side?"
That they felt something off about the growth of comrades they saw every day was probably because my skill had taken effect. The effect of the banquet noodles was not, to be clear, making two sturdy grown men grind on each other. More like a rise in body heat, the kick to the metabolism that followed, and something on the order of increased strength. Cook long enough and you pick up a little knowledge of ingredients, of how a body reacts when it eats them, of nutrition. Between that knowledge and a dish carrying my particular skill, even a rough estimate of the effect came easily.
The effect had probably landed on everyone who ate the noodles. So why were only those two losing their damn minds?
"Graaakh! Tap!! I tap!!"
"You chose this bout. Endure it on spite and grit!!"
Probably no grand reason. Those two just had less patience than most.
After a long and winding course of events, the knights' meal came to an end, and the man and Arthur approached.
"It was my first time eating it, but it was truly delicious."
"I'm glad it was to your taste. Please come again."
Arthur was calm and sane compared with the other knights, which made me like him. I traded a light greeting with him.
"I ate well myself. To think a man like you resides in my Silbaerin — I am proud of it, truly."
"Ah, yes... thank you."
"Master, you said. If I simply call you Master, there's no way to tell you apart. Is there a title I might add?"
"Hmm... then please call me Master Jin. Now that I hear it, something added on does sound better."
Hearing the title, the man smiled with satisfaction and added one line more.
"Very well, Master Jin. I shall repay you properly."
"Repay? For what..."
Having dropped a remark I couldn't parse, the man turned on his heel as coolly as his face suggested and was gone.
Nothing I need to worry much about.
And for good reason. The food had come to one silver and twenty copper, and the silver-haired gentleman had cheerfully laid down five silver. Had he factored in the labor, the service, and emotional damages for a mandatory BL viewing? The generous hand eased my shock a little.
And just in case, I didn't close early. I kept the restaurant open until dawn. It had been fairly busy today; someone might see that and come looking, mightn't they?
As if.
I stared blankly at nothing but the moon until the hours of business came to an end.