The Girl's World (2)
At words that carried Blow's warmth, Melo's crying stopped short, and she looked at him.
It was a face she had not seen in a long time — his, smiling wholly for her. She edged a little closer and wrapped her arms around his waist.
"You... you really mean it?"
"Yeah. I was right. This place needs you."
She sniffled at that, then smiled. Seeing it, he tugged lightly at her cheek.
"Cry and then laugh, and you'll grow a wart."
Melo let out a short laugh and scrubbed the tears away with her hands. Blow stroked her hair once, then added in a careful voice,
"Everyone's going to be against it, so let's think. From here on — how we handle this."
At those words the resolve from before gathered again in Melo's eyes, and Blow drew her in and held her tight.
The next day, when Luce's party reached Dusk Block, every face among them was dark.
The roads were cracked in stretches. Trash lay wherever it had been thrown, and a stench climbed out of the alley drains that made her cover her nose. The eyes of the people they passed were uniformly hollow, as if something had taken hold of them. To think that her precious son was living here, and Melo, whom she cherished above all — Luce felt her heart wrung tight.
"I believe that is the place."
Alfred, the butler who had been leading the way, recognized the Nyx Inn and strode up to it. He looked over the oak barrel that still stood before the door.
Having made out the crooked writing, he met the eyes of Megan, who had come up beside him, cleared his throat, and rang the bell.
Ching.
A clear, cheerful ring rose, wholly unsuited to the gray scene. The inn door opened, and Blow came out with his staff behind him, red hair swept neatly back. He looked plainly more worn than he had on the day he set out. Luce's heart clenched at the sight, and for a moment she said nothing at all, only looked at her son.
"You've come."
"Yes. Have you been well?"
"As you can see."
"You are eating properly, aren't you? You look thinner."
While Luce spoke to Blow in that worried voice, Romang kept craning her neck, searching for Melo.
A little later Melo's face peeked through the open door. The moment Romang saw her, she rushed over and seized her by the shoulders.
"You! Do you have any idea how worried we were? Every soul in the barony of Blanya walked the countryside looking for you. Are you in your right mind, or aren't you?"
"I'm sorry."
"When you go back down, you will look each of them in the face and apologize!"
Melo nodded with difficulty. Blow, who had been watching, addressed Romang in a careful voice.
"Romang, shall we go inside and talk first?"
"Ah, Young Master. I wasn't myself. Forgive me."
"It's all right. Let's go in and talk."
Once they were inside, Alfred went over every corner of the inn with Hans as his guide. Luce looked around the little dining room, which could not begin to compare with the manor, and her worry only deepened. She had taken the center table, the only one laid with a linen cloth, but a peculiar stench drifted from the lavatory on the first floor, and both she and Megan had to cough more than once.
Even so, Hans and Jane must have tried. They've probably been sweeping and scrubbing for days.
The room was narrow, but neatly kept, and she was thinking that was at least a mercy when Blow spoke in a gentle voice.
"Mother, would you care for a cup of tea?"
"Let's. What do you have?"
"You said you were coming up, so I bought tea leaves especially."
"How considerate of you."
Blow caught Jane's eye. Before long, cups for him and for his mother were set on the table, and the soft fragrance of black tea rose. The scent lifted Luce's mood. With a faint smile, she asked,
"Well? Is the business worth the trouble?"
"It's going very well. We've nearly used up the potatoes we brought."
"You have?"
The answer was so unexpected that surprise settled over her face.
"So I mean to bring more potatoes up from Blanya."
"Oh! Truly?"
"Yes."
"Alfred will help you. How wonderful. I was worried it might not work out."
While Luce pressed a relieved hand to her chest, Blow judged that the air had eased, if only a little, and that now was the moment to come to the point.
"Romang, could you come over here for a moment?"
"...What is the matter...?"
Romang, who had been scolding Melo until then, sat down at the table looking dazed. Melo, wrung out until the tears had been shaken from her, sidled over to Jane and clutched her hand tight.
"I have something to say to Mother, and to Romang."
"Why are you lowering your voice again? It makes me uneasy."
"I want to take Melo on as one of the staff."
"What?"
Luce's eyes went wide. Romang's face hardened, like someone who had heard what she was never meant to hear.
To the two of them he explained, slowly and in detail, why she needed to be here. That despite her age she had worked harder than anyone. That when the customers suddenly multiplied, she had the sense to change the recipe. That she had been happy trying one new dish after another. All of it.
Luce listened for a long while, then even clapped as she looked at Melo.
"Melo, you really are remarkable!"
She stroked the hair of the girl nestled against Jane. Romang's face, however, showed no sign of softening.
Only then did Luce take in her expression. She cleared her throat, lifted her black tea, and spoke.
"As you know, the hiring and placement of the servants is, in fact, my charge."
"Yes. I know."
"But in a decision like this, I believe what matters most is the parents' wishes. So I mean to leave this matter entirely to Romang."
"I think that is right as well."
Blow nodded, slow and steady. Luce looked at Romang, who had sat until then without so much as the sound of a breath, and added one more thing.
"If I must say where I stand, I am against it."
"I thought you would feel that way."
"Children grow by the day. You did. Your older brother did. The others are no different."
"......"
"Those days have to gather before one takes on responsibility, and Melo is still a little short of them. Of course, what she has done since coming up deserves to be praised a hundred times over."
Even as he listened, Blow watched Romang's face. She only nodded now and then. Her expression did not change at all.
A heavy silence held for a time. Thinking it better that he speak first, Blow opened his mouth with difficulty.
"You mean to say..."
At last Romang's mouth opened, and every eye in the inn fixed upon it.
"If the Young Master fails, does all of that not become as if it never was?"
"That..."
"I heard that last time you traded Drenor for Jane. And that, in order to come up to Caipol, you sold off what luxuries remained."
"I did."
"Watching that succession of things from a step removed, I did see the Young Master differently for the first time. Humble though this gaze of mine may be."
"......"
"When you fail this time, Young Master, is there anything left for you to sell?"
This was a matter of Melo, her only child. Romang, whose face was usually all smiles, had gone completely rigid, unlike any other day. The sight was unfamiliar even to Luce. She swallowed dryly and waited for Blow to answer.
"...I'll write a promissory note."
"If one considers the Young Master as he has been until now, in the end it will be the Baron who keeps the promise in your stead. But this affair has already laid far too great a burden on him, and as a servant I do not believe I can lay any further burden upon him."
At that unyielding voice, Melo's shoulders sank.
"I began kitchen work at the Young Master's age. For years I was not even permitted to stand before the fire. I only prepared ingredients."
"Then wouldn't Melo be spared those years, rather than spend them?"
"No. That is not so."
Romang shook her head, firm.
"You said Melo would take the kitchen upon herself. It may look like a shortcut, but with no one to watch and learn from, stubbornness sets in, and with no one to set her right, that stubbornness becomes obstinacy."
"That's..."
"And if the Young Master fails, will a wound not be left on Melo, at so young an age, that is far too large? As her parent, that frightens me beyond measure."
With those words, for a long while not even a breath could be heard inside the inn.
So it held. When Luce had emptied her black tea, she spoke in a careful voice.
"Have you had lunch?"
"We were waiting, so we might eat together."
"It would be better to go out."
"No. Melo will serve you lunch."
Romang started and looked at Blow.
In truth, he had been waiting only for this moment. He had known well enough that no reason and no logic he offered would take with Romang.
"Melo will?"
"Yes. She always has, until now."
"......"
And so this was meant to shake her. They would set before them the dishes he and Melo had planned through the night, lay out his plans for the business once more, and try again to persuade them — an appeal to feeling rather than to reason. His last throw.
...To think something this important would be decided by a trick so thin.
From the moment he traded Drenor for Jane until now, there had not been a single instant in which Blow was uncertain. Not rushing to buy the potion shop, lodging at this Nyx Inn as it fell to pieces, coming to Dusk Block when everyone else avoided it — all of it had sprung from that caution. He disliked anything that was not certain. The chances given to him had been too few.
Which was why he hated even this moment enough to want out of it at once. Romang eating Melo's cooking might change nothing at all. It might only harden her further. But regretting that he had done nothing was worse still, so he would simply do the best that could be done now. Regret was enough when it belonged to a past that could not be changed.
"Mom."
Melo, who had been held against Jane until then, stepped forward and faced her mother straight on. In a voice small and clear, she said,
"I... I want to try here just one more time. For the last time."
A move anyone could see through. Romang covered her face with her hands. A little later she nodded, as if there were nothing else for it, and Melo was permitted to step into a world that might well be her last.
After Melo went into the kitchen, only silence moved over the table.
"It isn't even a single serving... She has to make eight. Will Melo be all right?"
To the worried Luce, Blow answered in an easy voice.
"She'll be fine. On the first day we sold more than two hundred servings of potato."
"Two hundred servings?"
She had only supposed the business was going decently well. Hearing a real figure for the first time, Luce's eyes widened.
"Yes."
"I can hardly believe it. You sold them here?"
"More than half went out wrapped to take away."
"To take away, even?"
"Yes. That's why we even had to put Hervena on as extra help that day, and hire about two more hands."
"And Hervena is getting on well?"
"Her face looked perfectly fine. Perhaps because I wasn't there."
Luce smiled faintly at that and, for no particular reason, fiddled with her teacup as she spoke.
"I would like to see her face once."
"I've already sent word. She'll probably stop by... before you go back down."
"Yes. She must be terribly busy. But what a peculiar smell from the kitchen."
The starchy scent of potato brushed the tip of her nose, and with it another smell, bright and tart. Luce's eyes sparkled with interest.
"That will be tomato."
"Tomato? The one that grows around Parso?"
"Yes. Tomatoes brought from Cypress."
"Then it will be a dish I've never tasted. The world really is wide, isn't it. Don't you think, Romang?"
"Yes... I tasted one a very long time ago, but I don't recall ever cooking with it."
I've never seen Romang like this. Her heart must be in a tangle over Melo.
Seeing as much, Luce deftly turned the talk toward yet another smell, one she had never caught before.
"There seems to be a smell I'm noticing for the first time, too. How should I put it... it seems a little spicy, somehow?"
"I'll keep that a secret."
"Now I'm looking forward to it."
Just as Luce said so, the bustle of sounds from the kitchen ceased, and Hans came out carrying small plates.
"Mashed potato salad, with mayonnaise!"
"Mayonnaise and potato! A pairing that cannot possibly taste bad."
The moment a plate was set before each of them, they put the salad in their mouths without waiting to see who would be first. There was the soft give of the potato the instant they bit, the savory mayonnaise folded through it, and the vegetables that cleared the palate just as richness threatened to settle. It was a perfect first course — refreshing at the first mouthful, and already making them curious about what came next.
It landed. Better than practice.
Blow chewed the potato salad and studied Romang's face, but there was no change in her expression at all. It was his mother who spoke.
"Did Melo really make this?"
"Yes! Though the Young Master helped with peeling the potatoes!"
"Goodness, truly? Blow, I simply cannot picture you peeling potatoes."
Startled by Hans, who announced it as proudly as if he had done the work himself, Luce let her anticipation for the next dish show without reserve.
"If the salad is this good, I'm even more curious about the main."
"Yes. Jane should be bringing it out soon."
As she lifted the last spoonful of salad, a plate finally appeared in Jane's hands. On it, sending up curls of steam, were roasted potatoes and sausage. Luce tilted her head when she saw them.
"Plainer than I expected?"
Romang was no less puzzled.
Not even high grade. Mid-grade sausage...?
The shape told her at a glance which sausage was which, and her eyes met Blow's. Whether he was truly certain, or only straining to be, he smiled at her without a single waver.
"It's coming now."
With his words, Melo came out carrying a bowl, her face more serious than usual, and a tart fragrance filled the whole of the room. With a ladle she carefully poured red tomato sauce over each person's sausage. Thick-bodied and yet fluid, the red sauce sank into the meat, and someone who could not wait lifted a fork.
"Wait. Not yet."
The fork stopped at Blow's check. Melo left the tomato sauce with Jane, went back into the kitchen, and returned with a plate a little larger than her own palm. She took up powder on a spoon and began to dust it lightly over the sauce.
What she scattered held a warmth like earth heated by the sun, a bitterness and a sharp, nose-tingling bite all tangled into one rich and fierce fragrance.
It was curry powder.