The Booze Is the Problem

From the morning briefing on, I didn't stop making chicken skewers. Not in the sense of having grilled them ahead—literally the work of threading thawed chicken onto skewers. I'd considered a par-grill for the sake of turnover and faster service, but in the end I didn't adopt it.

The irony of a par-cook is that cooking the meat in advance is itself what brings on the overcooking. Meat whose proteins have begun to denature and then stopped toughens in a hurry, and off-flavors bloom. An ideal sear, then, means rice straw, rice husks, or a fierce charcoal fire, crisping only the surface at high heat and laying on that funky, mouthwatering aroma peculiar to real smoke. The breed I'd prepared, though, was a bird with a heavy meaty aroma to begin with, so I couldn't fully claim the benefits of that smoke anyway. Better to prepare thoroughly and grill to order. I'd already kept the portions on each skewer small, to cut the cook time as far as I could. To a modern sensibility, even a ten-minute wait for a chicken skewer would be dull enough. By the sensibilities of this world, it was a perfectly unobjectionable cook time.

Noon, with the sun at its height. The festival had already begun, but foot traffic out to where my stall stood was still thin. Brunok and Eilenna, who had been quietly threading skewers beside me, were starting to grow anxious, and they turned to ask.

"Jinwoo. Are you sure this is all right? Even now, maybe we ought to make some use of the stall spot you usually work..."

"The elf lady's got a point. Never thought it'd be this dead."

"……. Shh."

An open kitchen: a broad counter, running water, and charcoal braziers set in a square. Open on every side, so the wind's direction came through unfiltered. I lifted an index finger at the two of them as they fretted. Eilenna and Brunok both gave me looks that didn't trust a word of it, but I didn't need them to.

Whoooosh—

"…The time has come."

"What? What are you on about all of a sudden."

"Mister Brunok, do you not feel the southeast wind?"

Brunok focused on the breeze at that. He only looked baffled.

"Hmm... Can't really tell."

"Ah... so that's how it is. I see... Then it cannot be helped..."

"Keep that up and you're actually catching a beer mug with your face."

Truth was, I couldn't tell a southeast wind either. The most you usually feel is a wind in your face or at your back—who sorts the wind into east, west, north, and south? I'm not a weather mage. Anyway, all that mattered was that a wind was blowing. I dropped the act, held a palm just over the charcoal brazier, and checked how hot it had gotten.

"Yow, hot!"

"Ack. Jinwoo, are you okay? Want me to make some ice?"

"Sorry, it's not that bad. Still, it's just about right for grilling skewers. Wind's up, too."

By now even Brunok was looking at me as if he expected I had a plan. Or perhaps he was thinking, let's see how far this clowning goes. Either way, I didn't care. From here on, Arcadia's own Battle of Red Cliffs was about to begin.

"Everyone, get ready. The crowds are about to hit."

Taktak, tak-tak-tak—

As I spoke, I laid the skewers across the brazier. It wasn't the showy sizzle of a pan fry, but the Maillard reaction, as performed by charcoal, drew out an atmosphere with a charm of its own. And that aroma traveled much, much farther than the sound. Riding the wind, it spread toward the academy's main street.

"Snff, smells good, I'll give you that... Fine. We're in the same boat anyway, so I suppose I've got to trust you."

"That's the right attitude. Everyone remembers their jobs, yes? Let's give it everything."

"I just wanna finish up and eat the leftover skewers, nya!"

Ruri, eyeing the idle stall, spoke as if leftovers were a given. That prediction of hers, however, was shattered completely.

"This festival ground is huge. There's an outer district and everything."

"Sniff... hah. What is that smell? I'm suddenly starving."

"Oh, I think it's over there?"

Ten minutes after the first batch went on the grill, people who had taken a wrong turn drifted in as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Huff, huff. Woof!"

"Aigoo, Mary! What do you think you're doing, running off like that... Huh?"

"Wh-where is this? I was definitely on the main street when I caught this delicious smell..."

By the time I'd finished the second batch, animals keen of nose, and people, were finding their way over one by one. And by the fifth—

"What's this line for?"

"We don't know either. We just got in line because it smells fucking incredible."

"Aha. Then I should get in line too."

"Over here!! Three more beers!"

"Five chicken skewers! No—seven!!"

"H-hold on a second, nya! What is this? Why is everyone suddenly swarming in, nya...?"

A long line had formed in front of my stall, and that line swallowed, without mercy, everyone drawn by the aroma of chicken skewers—like a hell of flies, sweet on the breeze and then sticky as it closed. The tables filled to the last seat in an instant, and Ruri's hopes were smashed to absolute pieces.

"Bwahaha! Busy, busy! Hey, Jinwoo! You saw this coming?!"

"Slow. Even at noticing."

"You rude little bastard! I'll let it slide just this once! Haha!"

Brunok beamed as he hauled the beer. Nearly like a barmaid at Oktoberfest—six mugs in the left hand, six in the right, twelve in all, carried off in a white-knuckled grip. Where he differed from them was that he wore no dirndl cut to flaunt a chest and, more importantly, that he was a hulking man who looked like a dwarf.

Ugh. Fuck.

Tssssss—!

Imagining something completely pointless, I took internal damage. The sound of skewer fat hitting the charcoal woke me from that profound meditation. The sun that had stood at its zenith was slanting now into afternoon. At this pace, we'd be down to selling scraps and pulling the shutters before the night was out.

"Eilenna! Three skewers for table seven, two for table thirteen, up!"

"Y-yeah! Haaah..."

Pat-pat-pat— Eilenna's fresh yellow-green hair was soaked with sweat and clinging to her neck. For an elf who had sought a quiet life, a madhouse like this could not have been easy to adjust to. From the days she sold toast right up to now, she had helped me with everything she had, heart and hand.

I can't lay any more weight on her.

I was her lover now, and I still wasn't carrying my share—how was I supposed to make those shoulders any heavier? Even if the stock ran out early, I would simply have to let it be. I had turned my focus back to the grill when—

"Kyaaaaa!!!! Kariel!!!"

"What."

A voice rowdier still, punching straight through the racket of the stall. It was a young lady's clear voice to begin with, and strangely familiar, so it slipped right into the ear. I wasn't the only one. Most of the customers sprouted question marks over their heads and searched for the source.

"Y-youuu, always! Teasing me, tickling me out of nowhere! Am I a joke to you?!!"

"Ha, honestly. Put it that way and I've got plenty to say too. Ishilla. Do you have any idea how much I've been holding back?"

"The second there's an opening you swoop in, just like before. How am I supposed to trust you when you're like that...?"

"Aigoo. Here we go."

Broad daylight, of a kind not even darkness could have covered for shame. The shade of the lowered awning screened their heat, at least, but it could do nothing about the drunkenness. Kariel, past even the thought of hiding it, and Ishilla, who only ever ended up on the receiving end. That couple, loved by noble young ladies to a suspicious degree, was putting their extraordinary friendship on display with nothing held back. Empty beer mugs stacked into a tower on the table.

Having finished a menu selection that offered no selection at all, Ishilla sat on a backless chair and looked around. Customers laughed and chattered, pleasantly and noisily drunk—a man who had brought his dog, as befitted a festival; an ordinary couple; a merchant who looked as if he had money. All sorts.

So this is another way to enjoy a festival... How novel.

Ishilla had not understood Kang Jinwoo's strategy at first, but one look at the customers' faces and she was convinced at once. The festival of Arcadia Academy was held in the heat of summer, and because the event was as enormous as the grounds were vast, most shops took the form of street stalls and sold food meant to be eaten on the move. Which was to say that you could walk and walk under the blazing sun until you were dead on your feet, and still have nowhere decent to rest. The lawn, a bench glimpsed here and there, or, if it came to that, the edge of the road—you could sit, but honestly, none of it satisfied.

In that light, Kang Jinwoo's shop was a structure of truly striking eye, having slipped with exquisite precision into that very inconvenience. A broad awning, and tables where a person could sit, rest, and enjoy the food. Furniture simple to the point of crudeness, and yet to those worn out by the festival's heat, it was the envy of any sofa. Kariel seemed to be of the same mind; a small smile escaped her.

"The idea's good. But the food still has to taste good, doesn't it. And that's grilled skewers."

"Yeah... that's what I'm unsure about. Even if the Master is confident in his skill, skewers are a little..."

The shop's menu held exactly two things. Chicken skewers, and beer. Anyone who had traveled knew the horror of meat skewers grilled over a campfire—tough beyond belief, thick with gaminess, and sometimes not even cooked through. Kariel and Ishilla, of precious station, had brushed up against that sort of food during a week of combat field training. An experience, of course, that they would have declined a second time.

"It's so good. That's why I'm sad..."

"What. Did something happen?"

"If these meat skewers taste this good, then what on earth were the meat skewers my companion made of, back when we were stranded in the forest...? I thought all meat skewers tasted that bad. Today my whole world collapsed..."

"Stop talking like it's a ghost story. You're scaring me..."

The person at the table beside Ishilla seemed to have had a rather special experience with meat skewers as well. In any case, everyone in the shop was chewing down chicken skewers with looks of pure rapture.

Gulp—

Despite those awful memories, Ishilla's and Kariel's slender throats bobbed as they swallowed. They were smacking their lips to no purpose when, with perfect timing, a waitress approached.

"Sorry for the wait, nya! Four chicken skewers and two beers!"

"Huh, the beer's color... it's gold?"

"This skewer smells different too, Ishilla. You can't even compare it to that garbage we ate during field training...?"

Each of them had been startled by a different thing. Not a sticky, pitch-black ale loaded with bitterness, but a liquid they were seeing for the very first time—and yet a pleasantly bitter hop aroma insisted, beyond any doubt, that this was beer.

Fsshhhh—

"Eek, it's cold."

Wooden mug or not, the beer was so cold that Ishilla, gripping the handle, startled and let go. It seemed to have been kept thoroughly chilled in a refrigerator worked by a spirit of cold.

"Snff... haah... snff, haah..."

"K-Kariel? What are you doing?"

"Ishilla. You try it too. I can't stop..."

While Ishilla startled at the beer's chill, Kariel was having her sense of smell beaten without resistance by the skewer's aroma.

Not even the imperial chefs have ever shown me a dish like this. The inside of my nose stings, and still it isn't enough...

Kariel seized the handle and brought the skewer right up against her nose. At the sight of her throwing every bearing of an imperial princess into the street, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ishilla was more than a little flustered. On the other hand, she grew curious.

Just how good does it smell?

She had already granted that the Master's skill had been poured into this food without reserve. Otherwise there was no explaining the crowd. Even so, she could not quite discard a small doubt in one corner of her chest...

"H-haah...!"

But the moment she held a skewer to her nose as Kariel had, that doubt vanished into the air on a heated breath.

"Kariel, shall we just eat?"

"Hoo... hehe. Fine. Daring to prepare meat skewers for an imperial princess—I shall judge this with the utmost severity."

Kang Jinwoo hadn't prepared them for her; she had simply walked in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on her own two feet. Ishilla didn't bother seizing on the contradiction. More than that, she wanted to tear into this meat as quickly as she could, past the point where resistance was even possible.

Chomp—!

Ishilla and Kariel bit into the skewers at the same time.

Drip—

"Hup! Hk!"

"Hyaah?!"

And then, from the pieces they had bitten into, an unbelievable flood of juice burst forth. The charcoal's high heat had lent the meat a faintly reddish gold, so they had expected nothing but crispness. It was nothing of the kind.

Chew, chew—

Crisp on the outside, awash in juice, and the flesh itself springy to the bite. Ordinarily, the quality of a meat dish is decided by how tender it is. By that measure, these chicken skewers fell short of the standard. ...Surely no one was fool enough to think so. That was what Kariel thought.

He didn't fit himself to the world's standard. To this standard... the world came.

A faint resistance against the teeth, no matter how long she chewed. But the abundant juice, and a meaty aroma that made her feel she had become a barbarian, transformed that resistance into a sensation from another dimension entirely.

Overwhelm. Mercilessness. And predation.

In an instant, Ishilla's and Kariel's world shifted from human civilization to the wild. The skewers savaged their five senses so violently that even a surreal illusion of that kind felt true.

Th-this won't do. I have to get a hold of myself.

When it is hard to come to their senses, people, as a rule, reach for something to drink. Ishilla and Kariel were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no different; without a thought, they put their hands to the beer mugs.

Tssing...

Cold past refreshing, all the way to aching. All the better. It would take at least this much to wake them from the delirium.

Gulp, gulp—

But the instant the beer touched her tongue, Ishilla understood how arrogant that judgment had been. The one who had made this food was none other than Kang Jinwoo, the Cooking Master. The demon who had capped baeksuk, that outrageous clear chicken soup, with a bowl of chicken porridge, and created the spicy-sweet combination of tteokbokki and milk peach. Would a man like that truly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sell beer, and beer alone, as the chicken skewer's partner for no particular reason?

Gulp, gulp, gulp—

Ale, lemon-lime soda, sparkling wine—a thrill that none of them could match. A cold fierce enough to split the skull made the carbonation's assault one degree more vicious. The nutty savor of barley, the bitterness of hops, and the faint sweetness of fermentation hammered her tongue like a storm. All Ishilla could do was drive the liquid down her throat even faster.

Gulpgulpgulpgulpgulp—

That, and only that.

"K-khaaaaaah!!!!"

"Pwah!!! Hek, hnn... My head's ringing..."

Ishilla and Kariel finished a mug of beer in one unbroken shot. Chicken fat and meaty aroma clung, stubborn, to the taste buds of their tongues. Not unpleasant—but if the meal was to stay delicious, those flavors had to give up their seats. The ones that refused to lift their backsides, this golden beer beat to death, every last one. Spicy tteokbokki, and soft, sweet milk peach. A one-two punch fierce enough to threaten even that pairing.

"Hic."

"I-Ishilla?"

"Uuuh... hic! Whyyy...?"

"I think you're a little drunk."

"Ehh? Me? No I'm not!"

Ishilla's face flushed red all at once. A mug was a mug only in name; pour that volume into a stew bowl and it would fill without any trouble. The strength you could catch on the aroma was hardly low, either, and she had dumped the whole of it down in one go. It would have been stranger if the drunkenness hadn't hit in an instant.

"Excuse me, excuuuse me?"

"Yes! You called, nya?"

"Two beers and chicken skewers... two, please!"

"Ishilla, you should rest a moment before you drink any more..."

"Nnngh. I'm fiiine."

"Got it, nya! I'll bring them right over, nya!"

Ishilla, her mind thrown into disorder by the very beer she had drunk to clear it. Kariel tried to stop her, but Ishilla's resistance was terribly fierce.

Well... it's the last festival. It should be fine.

And that was Kariel's fatal misjudgment.

Clack, tok—

A tower that stacked higher with every mug she emptied the moment it arrived. Around the time the mugs reached a second tier, Kariel sensed something wrong and tried to stop her... but it was already too late.

"Ishilla. You're in danger right now. Ahh, I'm getting tipsy too... Let's stop, all right?"

"Kyaaa..."

"Hm, what did you say?"

Fweeeee—!!

Four years of life at Arcadia Academy. To see them out in fitting style, Ishilla opened the engagement with a spectacular initiation. Later, this incident would be passed down for ages in the Academy's Magic department as a departmental ghost story.