Selecting the Festival Special Menu (1)
Today happened to be a weekend, and every student at the Academy was off. Thanks to that, Eilenna and I—having gone to bed late—could luxuriate in a long, lazy morning's sleep.
Put that way, it sounds as if we'd slept together. We hadn't. Separate rooms, obviously.
I washed the hangover's wreckage off my face just enough to pass for human, dropped onto the sofa, and drained a glass of cold water.
Water really is the best cure for a hangover.
The more alcohol you drink, the more moisture your body gives up. I was just finishing the glass when Eilenna crept over and settled onto the sofa beside me.
Wait. Thinking about it, today was a day off. So why had she hounded me so hard last night? If we were off anyway, coming home a little late shouldn't have been a problem. The objection popped into my head, and I said it out loud.
"Lady Eilenna. Did you sleep well?"
"Haaahm... Yeah. I slept great. I love that I get to sleep in on days off..."
"Right? It is a day off. But..."
"Mm?"
"Then why were you so angry that I came home late last night? We're off anyway."
"Ah, that. Well, I mean..."
There it was. A hole in the logic.
Eilenna avoided my eyes and scrambled for something to say. Fresh out of bed, though, her head was still stiff, and nothing seemed to come.
"I-it's just... I was worried, okay? How many times have you been dragged all over the place, Jinwoo? Once or twice?"
"Even so, this is the capital. The guard patrols late into the night."
"Nngh... Jinwoo, you and I are friends, right? Right?"
"Huh? Well... I suppose you could see it that way."
Her claim that she was simply worried had been shot down on the spot. She dragged the silence out a moment, then suddenly brought up our friendship.
We weren't lovers, and calling us mere coworkers would have undersold how close we were, so it wasn't wrong. If I'd said we weren't friends, she probably would have been rather hurt.
"If we're friends, we can stay up gossiping about the day! We could even go out for a drink together, couldn't we?"
"Uh..."
"See? Even if an elf's sense of time is different, being bored is exactly the same..."
"I can't argue with that."
Now that I heard it, she was right. I'd assumed that reading in her spare time, or staring blankly out at the garden, was enough for her. But she'd specialized in winemaking. Of course she might be curious about other drinks. And even if she'd grown used to life in the capital, to humans an elf was still another race. Wandering these streets alone might have taken more courage than I'd given her credit for.
"I wasn't considerate enough. I'm sorry."
"No, it's fine. Really..."
"Still, we're colleagues who work together, and you're an elf living in human society. As a human friend, I should have looked out for you."
"Hmm... You think so? Then next time, will you go out and have fun with me?"
"Sure. One outing won't kill me."
"Yay!"
Partway through the conversation, Eilenna's eyes had gone sly as a fox's. Watching both ears shoot straight up in delight, I understood. This had been her goal from the start. No wonder I'd felt myself being gently led along. Was this the difference that age and experience made?
"A pub would be good. So would looking around the famous spots in the capital. We've done nothing but work."
"R-right?! Then why don't we just go out today?"
"Ah. Today might be tough."
"Hiiing... Why?"
It was a day off, so we could have gone—but there was something urgent. Before long the owner would be coming in, and I still had to finish the deal we'd left hanging yesterday. The timing would turn awkward. Better to pick another day entirely and enjoy it properly. If we were going to play, we ought to play right.
"I have to go trade for the beer recipe today, so I can't. How about one day during the Academy festival?"
"Huh? Really? You don't even have to work?"
"I'm not some lunatic obsessed with business. I can spare a day to enjoy myself."
"You kind of are a lunatic, though..."
"Sorry? What was that?"
"Mmm! Nothing at all. The festival's going to be fun. Let's do it then!"
I quietly resolved to feed Eilenna a proper full-course festival. Then I boiled a simple bean-sprout soup and settled both the hangover and breakfast at once.
What I truly craved was kimchi stew, but kimchi was something even the Mana Market couldn't manage. Cheese registered just fine—so why on earth wouldn't kimchi? Because you could eat it without really cooking it, and that made it too much of a freebie? By that logic, a cheese plate or a cheese fondue ought to have been blocked too.
What's the point of wondering now.
I'd already finished the meal, and the bean-sprout soup had been plenty good in its own right. Honestly, for a Korean, kimchi by itself could almost stand in as a main dish. Remembering that finished dishes could never be registered in the Mana Market, it was only natural.
Stomach comfortably full, I took a blank contract from Calius and left the mansion. Eilenna didn't come with me. After sharing the bean-sprout soup, she'd still been short on sleep and had gone back to bed.
I walked the familiar road, turned into the alley, and pushed open the door of the pub that had put me up until half a day ago. It creaked on its hinges. The moment I stepped inside, the tidy interior filled my view. Not a trace remained of the chaos from last night.
The owner, polishing glasses at the bar, greeted me without fuss.
"You're here. How's the hangover?"
"I'm fine. You cleaned up spotlessly."
"Well. Nothing else to do on a day off."
"Then... shall we pick up where we left off yesterday?"
I dropped onto the stool across from him and laid the blank contract on the bar. He set down the glass he'd been wiping and looked the paper over carefully. Not that there was much to see. It was only a form, still unwritten.
"Hmm... There's nothing written on it."
"We don't know what the terms will be yet, so we'll write them now. But before that."
"Hm?"
"Try the Curry Wurst recipe I adjusted for your shop. Watch me make it, too."
"Hmm. All right."
He agreed readily and opened the kitchen. After all the cooking and fussing I'd done there last night, the pub's kitchen already felt familiar. Instead of trading for ingredients through the Mana Market, I pulled from my bag the single-serving portions I'd measured out in advance. Small containers, each ingredient weighed exactly to the recipe. I explained them to him one by one.
"One serving is two sausages and one roasted potato as the main."
"Right. And?"
"Half an onion, one spoon of honey. You can substitute sugar for the honey, but that would be harder for you anyway, wouldn't it?"
"Hmm... Probably. Honey's much easier to get."
"If you want it sweeter to taste, don't add more honey. Mix in a little fruit jam or marmalade instead. About half a spoon?"
"Can't I just put in more honey?"
"Then the honey flavor takes over. Better to use fruit that pairs well with pork. It raises the quality of the dish. Apple, peach, fig—that sort of thing."
"Hoh. Got it. This is pretty interesting."
Honey was a precious sugar you could gather from nature, but use too much and its distinctive scent grew overpowering. Thick, and a little funky. If the word heirloom had a smell, this might be it. Fruit jam, or dried fruit soaked and used, worked better.
"Also one spoon of vinegar... and the rest of these are ketchup, curry powder, and a special marinade for killing the gaminess."
"First time I've heard of any of them. First time I've seen them, too. Hmm..."
"I'll explain slowly."
I set the more unusual ingredients aside and walked the puzzled owner through them, from how to make tomato ketchup to the blend of the curry powder. Ketchup he could make himself, so I wasn't worried. Curry powder would be harder to produce, but it wasn't a burden. Despite the name Curry Wurst, you didn't actually use all that much curry powder. You didn't even have to mix it into the sauce. Sprinkling it over the top at the end was perfectly fine.
Last of all, I skipped any detailed explanation of the World Tree sap. However much I diluted it, however many other spices I mixed in and called the result a marinade, World Tree sap was still World Tree sap. If word got out that I was selling the stuff here, some nuisance might come looking after hearing the rumor. Better to blur the truth than spell out exactly what it was.
"This marinade is, uh... sap drawn from a great tree up north, mixed with other spices. The day before, pour the whole lot over the sausages you'll use the next day and let them sit."
"Hooo... I see. The smell is subtle. Fresh, and that sharp spice kick too."
"We don't have pre-marinated sausages today, so I'm making them without any aging. Age them, and the gaminess disappears completely."
With the explanation finished, I made the renewed Curry Wurst with practiced hands. It hissed in the pan—a version with the portion cut down to suit bar food, and the sauce improved. The owner and I each took a bite.
"Heh heh. The sausage smell does come up a bit..."
"We were short on time, that's all. If you just age them the night before—"
"No? I actually like it."
"Eh."
"What you made yesterday was delicious, but honestly it felt pretty high-end. This is just right. Of course it tastes good, and that funky pork smell makes me want a beer all on its own."
As if he meant every word, he kept picking up pieces of Curry Wurst. Otherworld medieval tastes really were something else... and yet I understood him. No need to look far. Korean pork-rice soup, Japanese tonkotsu ramen—dishes that chased the distinctive funk of pork with obsessive devotion weren't hard to find. In that sense, love it or hate it, this really wasn't bad.
The owner finished a whole plate in a flash and spoke.
"If it tastes like this, I'm happy to deal. Let's write it up quick."
"I like how straightforward you are. Let's."
We filled in the contract, checking every important term with care. What deserved special attention was the scope of the rights being transferred, the confidentiality clause, and the royalty.
"The rights aren't a full transfer, of course. A license to use should satisfy you?"
"Of course. I don't have that kind of money."
"Confidentiality. That's obvious too... but this. What's a royalty?"
"That's what I pay you for using your recipe. A kind of regular fee."
"We're exchanging recipes, and you're going to pay me a fee on top of that? Then what do I pay you?"
"You don't need to give me anything special. It's fine."
Unless you were talking about grimoires or sword manuals, the very idea of copyright was thin in this world. In a world like that, royalties didn't exist either. But I had lived in a world where they did. The recipe I'd set on the scale had come from that world, and anyone with a conscience would pay even if they didn't want to.
I wasn't belittling the labor that went into food, but objectively, the trial and error of brewing was far more demanding. A single glass could take a month without blinking, and a distilled spirit like whiskey needed at least three years of aging before it tasted like anything. His was beer, but brewing was still brewing. This was a recipe he had earned by grinding away time and money, literally. Treating it accordingly was simple respect for someone in the same trade.
"Even so. You said you'd supply that marinade and the curry powder too. And you're paying a royalty on top of that?"
"Ah, of course the ingredients I supply are included in the royalty. I have to eat too, don't I?"
"Ah. You crafty bastard."
At the same time, we were in the same business. The books always had to be kept strict.
It wasn't even late afternoon yet. The sunlight still burned a bright, clear yellow. Thanks to the owner signing without a fuss, we'd finished the contract earlier than expected. There hadn't been so much as a squabble over the royalty amount, either. If anything, I'd had to force it on an owner who didn't want to take it.
The compromise we landed on was five percent of the net profit from beer sales. He couldn't brew it right away in any case, and I still had some time before I returned to Silbaerin, so the first three months would be free. Considering that a steep royalty could run as high as fifteen percent, it wasn't bad. I'd gotten the rate down because I was supplying the curry powder and the marinade, and from my side it was an excellent deal. Both were spices, so the exchange value was high.
And once the owner got the knack of making Curry Wurst, he might not even need the ingredients I supplied. Everything that went into it could be found in this world. If we just revised the sausage-making process enough to cut the smell, my role was essentially finished.
When that day comes, I'll have to pay a higher royalty.
I'd promised that the supplied ingredients were included in the royalty. A promise was a promise. Either way, the deal had gone through without a hitch, and my chest swelled at the thought of starting the brew the moment I got back to my restaurant.
I could make it in oak casks that had never aged a thing. Or I could ask Eilenna for a few barrels that had already aged wine. Like sherry whiskey rested in sherry casks—a beer that had taken in the scent of the wine oak whole, properly barrel-aged.
I returned to the mansion in high spirits, and found several carriages unloading cargo out front. Curious, I looked closer... and that was—
Ah. My hardtack.
Merchants really never rested. While everyone else was off, they'd diligently made the trade run to Silbaerin and back. I roughly calculated the next run in my head. They usually went once a month, so if nothing came up, I could leave the capital on the very next one.
People were carrying the heavy sacks of hardtack down one by one. Among them, one man caught my eye—shoulders unusually broad, forearms corded with muscle. He gave off the smell of an ace. Up in the cargo bed, he was handing sacks down so the others below could take them easily. In short, he was doing the hardest job. Those sacks had to be heavy, and he lifted them like sheets of paper.
I was in a good mood, and I'd have to pass them to enter the mansion anyway. They all knew who I was. If I rolled up my sleeves and lent a hand, I'd grow closer to the capable staff of our guild—and maybe tilt the next deal a little more in my favor while I was at it. Setting practical gain aside, I simply felt like helping.
I rolled up both sleeves and walked up beneath the cargo wagon. At last I could see the man whose face had been neatly hidden by the wagon's roof.
"Huh? Sir Arthur? What are you doing hauling sacks out here?"
"Oh, Sir Jinwoo. It's been a while. Hup—!"
A man whose skin was suspiciously pale, for all the muscle overflowing his frame. None other than Arthur, Sword Expert of the Silbaerin Knights. He saw me and hopped lightly down from the wagon, then gathered a backpack that looked like his personal luggage and spoke.
"Once the festival ends, the Academy goes on break, doesn't it? I've come to escort Lady Ishilla on her way to the main house."
"Aha. So that was it. But why were you carrying hardtack...?"
"I'd been sitting so long I got stiff... I'll be imposing on Guildmaster Calius's mansion as well. Shall we go in together?"
Back in Silbaerin I'd seen Arthur so often I was sick of the sight of him. Meeting him again in the capital felt new all the same. It was like running into a friend somewhere I'd never expected. Trading a few words of recent news, I went into the mansion with Arthur.