Chapter 3: Enduring the Days

1

And so, I ended up greeting the morning within the stone walls of this manor.

It was now the sixth day of the white month.

If things had proceeded normally, today would have concluded my fourth round of contracts for the stalls. And I was supposed to head to The Westerly Wind after work to discuss business with Yumi’s father, but I had broken that promise too.

On top of all that, I was scheduled to take a two-day break starting tomorrow, and was going to sell both The Sledgehammer and The Great Southern Tree a large quantity of giba meat so they could cover the gap.

Since I was being held captive, I had no way of knowing how those business deals had turned out. Had the members of the Ruu clan carried out the deliveries in my place...? Or were they all too busy to worry about something like that at this point?

Nail had surely reported my abduction to the guards. However, I couldn’t imagine that alone would be enough to make them search within the walls of the castle town. And that went even more so for the manor of a noble as influential as Cyclaeus.

I didn’t figure there would be any evidence left in the post town linking the crime to that scheming noble, either. Even if they were thinking, “This is definitely Cyclaeus’s doing!” they had no way to prove it. Plus it actually wasn’t Cyclaeus himself behind things, but his daughter Lefreya, which only complicated matters further.

I had entrusted Diel with my one sliver of hope, but I figured that had very little chance of actually bearing fruit. Though we were close personally, Diel was still a child of a wealthy family, and her priorities were ordered accordingly.

Ultimately, I spent the night stuck somewhere between being asleep and awake, worrying all the while and failing to come up with any ways to escape the manor or persuade Lefreya before the sun rose.

◇

“Well then, let us head to the kitchen...”

My first task of the day when the morning bell for the third hour chimed out was preparing a snack for Lefreya.

I was also to cleanse myself before work, and so I was dragged to the bathhouse early in the morning. After firmly refusing Chiffon Chel’s assistance, I went ahead and washed up in the steam bath.

Then I changed into a brand new chef’s uniform and we headed to the kitchen, where Roy was once more the only one awaiting me.

“You’re supposed to use panam honey for the snack,” he said with a sulky look.

He seemed even more displeased than yesterday, and he wasn’t so much as looking me in the eye. He was probably holding a grudge against me over that whole incident with Chiffon Chel.

“Panam honey’s that sweet stuff, right? So she’s requesting a dish that brings that sweetness to the forefront, huh?”

“Lady Lefreya loves sweets more than other types of cooking. And so, she always wants one for her midday snack,” Roy responded, looking away. Apparently he had heard that his employer’s name had already been revealed.

Still, I was a bit dumbfounded at the fact that I’d be making sweets this time around.

Despite my various worries, I had prepared myself to meet her demands head on and hold nothing back in terms of my cooking. Though I really doubted her honesty, Lefreya had declared that if I made a dish that satisfied her she would not only give me a silver coin but also release me. And I had absolutely no intention of throwing away the only fleeting hope I had.

However, sweets-making was a whole different matter entirely. Whether or not I gave it my all, this was just entirely out of my field of expertise.

“Hmm, I don’t know anything about this worl—... Er, about sweets here in Genos. Would making up some sweet fuwano batter and adorning it with honey and fruit work?”

I didn’t get any response to that question.

It felt even more uncomfortable here in the kitchen than it had yesterday.

Having no other options, I decided to scrounge around the pantry while relying on my memory.

I had already investigated a variety of ingredients back in the post town in my attempts to develop new dishes. And in the process, I learned that there were not only vegetables available, but also fruits. As a result, I finally came across the sheel fruit, which had a taste similar to a lemon.

However, I didn’t see any use for sheel at this particular moment. So instead, I picked out some fruit I didn’t know the name of that was small and bright red like a strawberry, but grew in bunches like grapes.

“What is this fruit called?”

“An arow...”

Arow, huh?

Though not quite as much as sheel, it was still definitely sour. It felt something like a mix between a strawberry and blueberry on that front, and though it had a rather nice flavor to it, it was low on sugar.

They didn’t show up in the post town all that often, so as far as I remembered, the only place I occasionally saw them was at Granny Mishil’s little shop, where I always went to buy chatchi and gigo. From what I heard, it was a fruit only sold to folks who liked how it changed the taste of fruit wine when it was mixed in.

“With fuwano, you knead in water and then bake it, right?”

Roy just gave back a silent nod.

From what I was told, the lady of the house was to have her snack when the sun hit its peak, which gave me around three hours to prepare it. And during that time, I needed to bake fuwano for the first time ever.

As I suppressed the empty feeling in my chest, I went ahead and moved some fuwano flour into an appropriate bowl, then brought it back to the kitchen along with the necessary ingredients.

The fuwano was powdery, like cake flour, and as I added water bit by bit, it got nice and sticky. In fact, it was surprisingly even more viscous than powdered poitan. While it was still rather floury, I stopped adding water and molded it freely, at which point it had a mochi-like feel to it.

Yeah, this stuff really is a different ingredient than wheat flour.

For the time being, I went ahead and made up a nice flat shape that would be easy to heat through, then cooked it up as a sample.

And so I was able to successfully prepare some cooked fuwano, which I had only had a few times. It was denser and doughier than poitan, closer to naan. This was the same sort of stuff the kimyuus manju Tara and I once ate was made out of, wrapped around cooked meat and a variety of vegetables, with nenon being the main one.

However, something like that definitely wouldn’t be a sweet. Utilizing my memories from my distant home to their fullest, I added karon milk to fuwano flour, then mixed in sugar and kimyuus eggs as well.

And when it came time to cook it up, I used karon milk fat. Needless to say, I had decided to prepare them like hotcakes.

This was actually my first time tackling kimyuus eggs, too. Their shape was more or less the same as a hen’s egg, but they were a size smaller. I’d put them at about the same size as a Silkie fowl egg in terms of what I had eaten back in my old world.

When I went ahead and timidly cracked one open, a lemon-colored yolk and transparent egg white fell atop the plate. And once again, the shape was pretty much the same as with a hen’s egg.

I had heard a kimyuus was some sort of bizarre bird with wings growing out of its head, but fortunately for me, both its meat and eggs bore a striking resemblance to those of an ordinary chicken.

At any rate, I went ahead and tackled cooking them.

I quickly found some thick wooden skewers, so I used those in place of long chopsticks to beat the kimyuus egg.

I haven’t made hotcakes since Reina bugged me till I made them.

Was that back in our first year of middle school? My childhood friend Reina had asked me to show her how to prepare hotcakes, since she wanted to make them for Valentine’s Day.

I declined and said she just had to follow the instructions off the back of the package, but she angrily retorted, “I’m asking you because that wasn’t working out!” But in the end, we followed those same instructions and they turned out fine. Ultimately the problem wasn’t with them, but rather with Reina’s handling of the heat.

And once she had successfully cooked those hotcakes, Reina decorated them with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, then treated me and my old man to them.

After that, she really polished up her skills at making sweets, while my old man and I fell into the role of the ones eating them. Looking back on it, we always had the better cooking skills, so it must have made Reina really happy to hear the two of us praise how delicious they were.

Ack, this is no time to be reminiscing...

My thoughts were already racing about Ai Fa and everybody at the forest’s edge, so if I started thinking about my old man and Reina on top of that, I was likely to cause my poor heart to break down.

Clearing all the intrusive thoughts from my head, I mixed the fuwano with kimyuus eggs, karon milk, and Jagar-made sugar, then poured the result into the handled pot that looked like a frying pan and started cooking.

Since there wasn’t any baking powder to be had, it didn’t puff up quite as much as a hotcake. But thanks to the eggs it was still plenty soft, plus it had a yellowish color to it in the end, making it look pretty close to a pancake overall.

When I gave it a bite, I found it had a truly gentle flavor.

Sure enough, they were chewier than I’d like thanks to the lack of fluffiness, but it had been some time since I had any sugar or eggs, and they tasted absolutely wonderful when fried up with milk fat. The saltiness from the milk fat really helped the sweetness stand out, rather than hindering it in any way, fortunately.

At any rate, I went ahead and cooked up a number of samples, adjusting the ratios of the ingredients in each one. After about 30 minutes of experimenting, I had something I was satisfied with.

However, I was serving this to a spoiled noble girl who was used to gourmet cooking. And so, I felt more than a little uneasy at the thought of just pouring panam honey on top and calling it a day.

In the end, I decided to make jam out of the arow fruit I had procured. Though I had no experience with the process, I knew it was possible to get something close enough by boiling it down and mixing in sugar. As I started by washing off the fruit and then adding water to a small pot, I turned toward Roy for the first time in a while.

“By the way, how many will be—” I started, only to suddenly trip over my words. That was because Roy was staring at my hands with a startlingly serious look in his eyes.

However, he soon noticed my gaze and looked away.

“I need to know many will be eating the snack, right?”

“Just one...”

Apparently Lefreya was the only one who would be snacking this time. Diel and her father must have been away from the manor doing business.

Still... just what was that look in Roy’s eyes about?

Well, whatever. It’s in our best interest not to interfere with one another.

I plucked up the freshly washed arow and boiled it in a small amount of water, and soon a bittersweet fruit aroma overcame the smell of milk fat and filled the kitchen.

After I coarsely chopped it and stirred it with a wooden spatula, I then went ahead and added some sugar.

Jagar-made sugar was similar in appearance to light brown sugar, had larger grains than caster sugar, and a rather smooth flavor. It was a real rich sweetness, like it included all sorts of minerals.

At any rate, I added sugar bit by bit, then carefully stirred it. It seemed like it was going to burn midway through, so I also went ahead and added just a bit more arow fruit, too.

It had been rather sour to start with, and so it took quite a bit of sugar to sweeten it up. But that left it feeling somehow lacking, so I cut the flame and added some panam honey.

In the end, it came out rather thick, with a brilliant sheen, and delightfully flavorful. For an improvised jam recipe, it really had turned out well.

“Alright, this seems like it’ll work out. But I’d like to present it freshly baked instead, so I’d prefer to cook up the actual dish itself closer to when the sun hits its peak.”

“I see... Then head on back to your room. I’ll be using this kitchen in the meantime.”

“Oh, so you’re making food for the servants?”

In that case, I guess I had to yield the space to him.

“Ah, but before I go, how much of the leftover karon milk is fresh enough that it’ll last till tomorrow?”

“Karon milk? We replace it with fresh stuff every morning. So anything here should be good for another two or three days.”

“Oh, really? In that case, would it be alright to borrow a few bottles in advance to prepare for tomorrow?”

Roy shot me a suspicious glance.

“Do as you please. But what are you even going to use that much milk for, anyway...?”

“Well, I figured if I’m going to be asked to make sweets again tomorrow, I’d need to do something a little extra. And so I was planning on preparing something related to milk fat.”

Since I was granted permission, I went ahead and brought two bottles out of the pantry and emptied the contents into a pot. And since each one seemed to have over a liter packed inside, it made for quite a bit. At any rate, though, I placed a lid over the rippling white milk inside and bid it farewell.

“Now I’d just like to keep it in the pantry where it won’t be disturbed.”

“That’s the extent of your ‘preparations’...?”

“Yes. If you leave it be, the liquid and fat will separate, right? The fat’s the ingredient that I’m after.”

That separated fat was, in fact, cream. Your ordinary cow’s milk sold in stores back home was refined so that the fat wouldn’t separate like that, but with raw milk it should be plenty easy to make the stuff.

As an aside, by fiercely beating that freshly harvested cream in order to further separate out the fat, it would be possible to make butter. I figured that was how the milk fat produced in this kitchen was made.

I didn’t know how much practical use cream had in a place without refrigerators like Genos, but if I whipped it and mixed in sugar, it should certainly serve for adorning sweets. That was the thought running through my head as I reached down for the pot to go carry it, only for Roy to suddenly draw nearer.

“Who in the world are you, really...?” he asked, a strange glint in his brown eyes. And his oval-face with scattered pimples had a desperate look on it, somehow. “Why does a kid like you know all those different cooking techniques? Aren’t you just some brat playing at being a chef out in the post town?”

“Yes. However, I wasn’t actually born here in Genos. And in my home country I assisted my father, who was a chef.”

“But you’re still just a kid...! How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Seventeen... How can someone that young make a dish like that...?”

Those words actually took me a bit off guard.

“Um, did you perhaps eat my cooking?”

“Lady Lefreya and the guests all said that the dish you made was tastier than the one prepared by the sous-chef... You really think I could go without tasting it after something like that?” Roy made a move like he was about to grab me by the collar, but he pulled his hand back midway and instead lightly slammed his fist down atop the work station. “The head chef accompanied the master of the house to Genos Castle. But even the sous-chef is a first-rate cook who had once been in charge of the kitchen at Selva’s Spear. We’re all well aware of just how skilled he is. The idea that someone like you is a better chef is utterly ridiculous...!”

“I was born overseas. It’s possible my foreign cooking methods just seem novel because of how different they are.”

“Hmph! We’ve had plenty of first-rate chefs from Sym and Jagar summoned here! However, their cooking never got praised that highly. So why is it that you—”

“In that case, perhaps the cooking of my homeland just happens to suit the tastes of this land’s people?”

Or maybe it really was the fact that the cultural level had advanced further back in my own world, meaning cooking techniques had also evolved in turn.

I had no way of truly comparing, though, so all I could do was guess.

“Even I trained at The Maiden in White! And I’m still just 19, too! No one else has been invited to work here at this manor at such a young age up till now!”

“Right...”

“And yet I’m only ever permitted to make food for the servants. Because I’m still ultimately just a novice. That’s only logical, since I can’t measure up to the skills of any of the other chefs working here in this manor. And yet, you...” Roy suddenly cut off his rant and hung his head as his shoulders trembled ever so slightly. “Hurry up and clean up that pot... It’s an eyesore.”

“Right.”

Though I was a bit taken aback, I went ahead and earnestly obeyed.

And at the same moment, the door to the kitchen opened from the outside.

“Sir Asuta, Sir Roy, is something the matter...?”

“It’s nothing! Get out of here, you damn slave woman!”

The soldiers were also shooting sharp glares from behind Chiffon Chel. Were they worried we were having some sort of fight again?

“Do you not yet have need of my services to test for poison...? If Sir Asuta is finished with his work, then I can once more escort him back to the room...”

“No, I plan on finishing my dish just before the sun hits its peak. Would it be possible to remain in this kitchen until then?”

Those words earned me a glare from Roy.

“I won’t get in your way. But please, let me practice my cooking, too. I normally do that each day when I’m at home. It’d be alright if I used just a bit of ingredients, right?”

“Do as you please...” Roy ground out as he started two large pots of water boiling.

As I moved the pot of karon milk to the pantry and brought back various vegetables and herbs, I stole a glance at his work. I was honestly just a bit interested in Roy’s cooking skills, to be honest.

Of course, a chef in the castle town had nothing to do with me. In fact, once I overcame this plot, we would probably never meet again.

But if I was going to keep on cooking here in Genos, then I was certain observing other chefs would prove helpful to me in some way. It was a reconnaissance of sorts on the enemy, so that I could make food in the settlement at the forest’s edge and post town that wouldn’t lose out to stuff from the castle town in the least.

And so, as I experimented with how to cook each of the herbs and vegetables, I also observed Roy as he worked out of the corner of my eye.

He really wasn’t just all talk, as his skills at cutting meat and vegetables were splendid. He swiftly and finely sliced the chatchi, pula, and nenon, then added them one after another into the boiling pots. Just how many people was he cooking for, exactly? It was just supposed to be for a snack, but that was quite a lot of food.

Then he added in rock salt, that pseudo-bouillon stuff, and some herb I didn’t recognize. Though I didn’t know what the herb was, it was giving off the smell of wild watercress.

What really shocked me, though, was that he even added in milk fat. He added half a jar the size of the palm of my hand into each of the pots. That certainly was one heck of a cooking method, there.

And then came the meat. It was an unfamiliar ingredient to me again, a red block of meat with plenty of fat on it. In total, it looked to be around ten kilos worth.

“Sorry, but is that perhaps karon torso meat?”

“It’s karon back meat...”

Since karon had a similar taste to beef, would that make it sirloin? At any rate, Roy cut that meat hunk into slices one centimeter-or-so thick, then furthermore cut them into five centimeter wide squares.

He then fried those up in a pot along with karon fat, adding in an entirely different herb from before, stems and all. This one had a stinging, spicy smell to it. Once they were good and cooked, he removed just the herbs, then added the rest of the contents into the pots with the vegetables, fat, and meat juices included.

I figured that was the end, but he then left the pots boiling away and headed once more into the pantry. And when he returned, Roy was holding two totos eggs. Those massive eggs were each about the size of a football, and they looked to weigh around 1.5 kilos or so.

After placing those on the work table, he then grabbed a strange cooking implement from the wall. It was like a metal pole with a bulbous, rounded end. The length was 20 centimeters, and it was three centimeters thick. And honestly, I had no clue what it was for.

Ultimately, he took the end of it and whacked it down on the top of one of the eggs. Though he definitely put some force behind the blow, it was still only enough to cause fractures to run through the shell.

And once those fractures reached a certain size, he moved to tapping with the tool. Shockingly, even once fragments of the shell started falling atop the table, the thin film inside hadn’t even broken.

Then once around a quarter of the top of the shell was cleared away, he cut an opening in that soft, wobbly film with a knife. With that, he was finally able to pour out the contents of the egg into a fresh pot.

The yolk was a brilliant color close to orange, while the egg white was transparent. After breaking that yolk with a wooden spatula, he poured it into the boiling pots without beating it. Instead, he saved the stirring till after it was in the pots.

Meat, vegetables, and totos eggs. A large amount of milk fat, and a watercress-like herb. He stirred the pot full of all those harmonious ingredients with a ladle, then took a taste with a small wooden spoon. Apparently it didn’t need any further seasoning, as Roy just silently lowered the stove’s flame.

I figured with that he had to finally be done, but then he brought in a large bag of fuwano flour. It seemed to be fairly full, so there had to be around ten kilos or so in there. As he staggered and carried it along, his footing seemed a little unsteady.

He roughly scooped some out using a metal bowl, added water, and kneaded it thoroughly. The shapes he was making were round, and about the size of ping pong balls. And he was doing this super quickly, too. In no time at all, there were an incredible number of fuwano balls on the large tray sitting atop the work table.

My rough estimate put it at around 200 of them, and he plopped them one after another into the pots so that the soup didn’t spill out. With that he was finally finished.

Roy added a lid on the pot and after enough time had passed, he gave it one more taste test before glancing over at the closed door. It was at that point that I finally spoke up.

“Is it finished? Um, would it be alright if I had a taste?”

Since he had also tasted my cream stew, that shouldn’t have been asking too much. Roy’s expression showed just a moment of hesitation, but it soon tightened up and he took a step back from the pot. And so, I took up a fresh wooden spoon and moved into the space he left.

It was certainly bubbling away nicely. But thanks to all the milk fat he had added, there was a fatty film stretched over top despite the fact that he had stirred it. And it had a really unique aroma to it, thanks to the mix of milk fat and herbs.

But when I gave it a bite, I found that the flavor really wasn’t half bad.

The stock oozed naturally out of the vegetables, and then there was the deliciousness from the pseudo-bouillon, and the intertwining of the milk fat and watercress-like herb, plus the taste of the grilled meat on top of that. And though what I had eaten was just a spoonful of soup, the bit of totos egg mixed in added a lumpy texture from the yolk and a smoothness from the egg white.

At any rate, it was definitely an incredibly complex taste. However, it also certainly wasn’t one I hated. It just didn’t resemble any dish I had ever had before, so I didn’t know what to compare it to.

If it were me, I would have gone with something simpler. The use of milk fat was a bit too much of a dynamic element, and I couldn’t help but worry about the nutritional value. However, I could also keenly tell this wasn’t just some haphazard concoction.

To create this flavor, he must have carefully selected the herbs and vegetables used, adjusted the amount of heat until just right, and tasted it again and again. I really could sense just how much effort went into it.

“It’s delicious. I really don’t think I could ever come up with such a combination of ingredients,” I threw out there, which caused Roy to break out in a rather complex expression in response.

Ultimately, though, he just clicked his tongue one last time before yelling out, “Hey!” at the door. “The dish for the servants is done! Let everyone on duty know!”

Chiffon Chel peaked inside upon hearing that and politely responded, “Understood...” Apparently that dish didn’t require testing for poison. “What about you, Sir Asuta...? There is not that much time left until the sun hits its peak...”

“Oh, really? I guess I’ll get mine together too, then.”

I went ahead and dropped the casually completed batter into the flat pan, then set about frying up my pancakes. Ultimately, I made two of the little fuwanocakes, each around a centimeter thick and 15 in diameter.

Once those were a nice golden brown, I stacked them atop a white clay plate. And then I added panam honey, arow jam, and karon milk fat as a butter substitute each to their own silver ramekin to go alongside the dish.

“Well then, allow me to test for poison...” Chiffon Chel stated.

Roy gave a nod in response, and cut a small portion out of the edge of the stacked fuwanocakes. Then, he moved that to a separate plate and added the three toppings with a wooden spoon. And somehow, he felt more respectful toward the dish and gentle with it than he had been yesterday.

Chiffon Chel carefully brought each bite to her mouth, letting out a satisfied “Ah...” after chewing. “It is truly delicious... The panam honey and fuwano pair so smoothly, and the flavor of the egg is simply wonderful...”

Now that I thought about it, by testing for poison day in and day out like this, the variety of dishes Chiffon Chel must have tasted had to be just as great as her masters.

Even if it was just one bite at a time, her palette must have naturally grown more and more refined. And so, receiving such compliments from her really might have been quite an honor.

“By the way, you have not eaten anything at all since last night, have you, Sir Asuta...? How about eating a snack once the sun hits its peak...?”

“Right, well I’m already plenty full from tasting the fuwano, so just pecking at something should be plenty for me. If it’s alright, could I actually stay here in this kitchen and continue to experiment with my cooking?”

“Hey, this space is reserved for me during this time, you know,” Roy interjected in a tone devoid of emotion.

He must have been planning on training his cooking skills, too.

“I’ll take care not to get in your way. It shouldn’t be hard for two people to prepare food at the same time in a kitchen this huge, right?”

Personally, I’d rather spend the whole day here in this kitchen rather than returning to that brick room with nothing to do. And I’d find it intolerable to not polish up my cooking skills and at least bring something back from this whole ordeal.

Roy looked seriously annoyed, but even so, he still answered, “Do as you please.”

2

It was now past noon.

The designated ingredients for dinner this time around were kimyuus meat and eggs.

Eggs definitely gave me more options to choose from than karon milk, at least. From numerous dishes I narrowed my candidates down to omelettes or oyakodon, and ultimately ended up choosing the former.

I could make most of a dish of oyakodon with no trouble at all under the circumstances, but it would just feel far too lacking without an ingredient to substitute in for rice. And honestly, I just didn’t feel like choosing a dish I would personally find dissatisfying.

And so, a kimyuus omelette it was.

With meat, aria, and milk fat around, this one wouldn’t be hard to make, either. As for the variety, I decided on making one with plenty of ground meat.

That alone didn’t sound all that interesting, though, so I focused on devising something special for the sauce. My plan for now was to try making it with two varieties, tarapa and white sauce, and see how that turned out.

For the white sauce, the process was the same as it had been yesterday. And so, I focused my time and effort on making the tarapa sauce.

If I went with a taste similar to ketchup, it wouldn’t harmonize properly with the white sauce. So for this time around, I tried aiming for something closer to a demi-glace or brown sauce.

First up, that meant frying fuwano flour and milk fat to make a roux. Unlike with the white sauce, this time around I heated up the fuwano thoroughly until it browned. And as that temporarily cooled, I set about creating the stock to help dilute the roux.

I started by finely dicing up my tomato substitute, the tarapa, and then grated the aria I was using in place of onion. As I simmered those alongside the fruit wine, I went ahead and adjusted the taste with salt, sugar, pico leaves, and pseudo-bouillon.

Though I wavered for a bit, I ultimately decided to try karon milk to replace the moisture that slipped away. The tarapa from the pantry here were a good bit sweeter than the ones sold in the post town, but I was still driven to suppress their sourness further. So, I used the tarapa as the main ingredient to make up a mellow stock, then used that to dilute the roux from before, which got it pretty close to the reddish brown appearance I expected of brown sauce, at least. And when I gave it a taste, the level of sourness was just right, meaning it really had turned out quite well. That owed a lot to the pseudo-bouillon, as just tossing it in was enough to greatly increase the depth and richness of the flavor.

If I rely on it too much, that could cause me some trouble when I go back to working in the post town...

That pseudo-bouillon was made by boiling down meat, bone, and vegetables. It really was an exceptional ingredient, but it would surely prove difficult to recreate in the post town. The cost of the base ingredients alone was nothing to scoff at, and when you added in the boiling time and the need to gather all that firewood, I just couldn’t see turning a profit while using it.

But if we were talking giba bones, I could get a hold of as many as I needed. And it may be possible to make something similar to it by borrowing some help from clans whose women have time on their hands...

And so, I went ahead and made a note of that in the back of my mind.

Would it be possible to purchase karon milk in the post town, too? If so, could we make our own milk fat and dried milk? How much did kimyuus and totos eggs cost, and were enough being produced to use in my business? And if they were, why hadn’t I seen them in any kitchens in the post town up till now? Also, what were the distribution channels and costs like for reten oil, mamaria vinegar, Jagar-produced sugar, honey, and the like?

I had only been here for 24 hours or so, but my mental memo pad was already full of so many crucial questions.

There’s no reason for nobles to be able to monopolize all that delicious food. I’ve really got to turn at least something from this whole disaster into a positive in the future, I thought to myself as I finally set about starting the omelette.

The process itself was exceedingly simple. After grinding down the kimyuus breast finely, I fried it up together with diced aria, nenon, and pula. And naturally, I went with salt, pico leaves, pseudo-bouillon, and fruit wine for the seasonings.

Once that was done, I poured the eggs into the flat-handled frying pan-looking tool. I mixed in just a bit of karon milk, and used milk fat in place of cooking oil.

Since it was apparently safe to even eat kimyuus eggs raw, I only half-cooked them so they came out nice and fluffy. Once the eggs were good and soft I added in my pre-prepared ingredients, then flipped the back half over on itself. Handling omelettes had been one of my specialties back at the Tsurumi Restaurant.

After moving the completed dish to a plate, I went to pour the tarapa and white sauce on the right and left sides, but then I remembered the poison testing.

If that happened after I added the sauce, it’d really make a mess of the presentation. And so, it seemed best to offer the sauces on the side in separate ramekins, like I had done with the fuwanocakes.

“I’m ready. Please, go ahead and check it for poison.”

Roy then cut off a chunk from the right of each of the three omelettes, then poured the two types of sauce over top.

And as Chiffon Chel took a bite, she once more let out a sigh of, “Aah... At this point, I no longer have words to describe it. All of your dishes are so mysterious, Sir Asuta... And delicious too, of course...”

Since I didn’t get to see that spoiled little lady or Diel eating it, Chiffon Chel’s impression was everything to me.

However, I had another thought at this point. Whether it was the omelette or the fuwanocakes, there was always a bit missing from somewhere thanks to the poison testing. Just how did that make Lefreya feel when she ate them? On top of that, when her father or guests weren’t around, she always had to eat alone.

Food made for just one person, that had to be tested for poison first... No matter how high quality the ingredients used or how renowned the chef that made it, could such a thing truly be tasty?

I guess being a noble isn’t all sunshine and roses...

At any rate, the pages once again solemnly carried off tonight’s dinner.

I used the opportunity to ask the soldiers on guard duty if I could have another meeting with Lefreya, but the response that arrived after the sun set was, “No.”

“Today’s cooking was not bad. If you continue to strive to the best of your ability, you will be returned home before five days are up with a reward, as promised. That is what I was told to convey.”

“But I’ve got my own life to worry about, too! I mean, couldn’t you at least let me properly arrange to take a few days off work in the post town and prepare to come here to cook, with full understanding from the people of the forest’s edge?” I argued, but unsurprisingly all I got back was another, “No.”

On top of that, the pages had removed the curtains I had torn up last night while I was in the kitchen, and they hadn’t been replaced, which meant I no longer had any means of contacting Diel.

So I’ve got no options left but to keep on cooking, huh...?

As I prepared to spend yet another lonely night in this place, I couldn’t help but wonder where exactly I’d made a misstep to end up in this predicament.

◇

The seventh day of the white month had dawned.

For the day’s snack, I was instructed to use minmi fruit.

This was an ingredient that was completely and utterly unfamiliar to me. The fruit was around the size of a tennis ball, and had little one centimeter long skin-colored hairs growing out of it wildly, giving it a rather unusual appearance.

From what I was told, it was apparently an incredibly rare ingredient that had to be imported from fairly far south in Jagar. As I wondered just what type of fruit it was, I timidly peeled back that eerie skin and revealed the juicy pink flesh inside.

There was a sweet aroma wafting gently through the air, and when I gave it a bite, I found it tasted pretty similar to a peach. It wasn’t sour in the least, and just had a mild sweetness to it. And it certainly was juicy like a peach too, with the nectar-like liquid gushing forth when I bit into it.

I figure tasty fruits are best just eaten as is... I thought to myself as I went ahead and tried out a variety of things with my small sample.

Just mashing it and adding sugar alone was enough for me to make a rather excellent sauce, but ultimately I decided to take the texture into account too. And so, I went ahead and boiled down some of the stuff I had mashed, then added sugar and just a touch of fruit wine with a high alcohol content, which finished it off.

Today, though, I also had the karon milk I had prepared yesterday.

Since it had been left alone overnight, the moisture and fat had separated splendidly. The fat had condensed to the surface, and even the color had turned a nice creamy white. And there was even more of it than I expected, too.

With cow’s milk, there was at most four percent fat in the stuff even when raw. In that case, I would only be able to get a maximum of 80 grams from two liters of milk, and this was easily at least twice that.

Water buffalo milk’s supposed to have twice as much fat as cow’s milk, right? Now that I think about it, karon dried milk is like mozzarella cheese, so is the milk similar to water buffalo milk?

Well, there was certainly no issue with getting more than I expected. At any rate, I carefully scooped out as much of the fat as I could and moved it to a separate container. It came out as a pure white, sticky substance.

That was enough to make ordinary cream, but if I wanted it to be truly delicious, I needed to make it into whipped cream. And so, I transferred it into a small earthenware container, then started shaking it up and down. I didn’t really have a choice there, since I couldn’t find anything like a whisk even here in this kitchen.

But whipped cream got its characteristic fluffiness by mixing air into it, so this method seemed like it would also prove effective.

I got the knowledge on how to do so from somewhere completely different: the fact that when brewing a delicious black tea, it was better to use tap water rather than mineral water from a bottle, since tap water had more air mixed into it. But when you wanted to use mineral water even so, it was best to firmly shake the bottle to mix in the air.

It was a pretty haphazard application of knowledge, certainly. But though it was frustrating to admit, I had to rely on every little bit of information or experience I could scrounge up when it came to making sweets.

Umm, I’m pretty sure Reina said you have to whip it for eight whole minutes when you can’t use an electric hand mixer...

How long would be proper with this method, though? If I whipped it too much the fat would separate further and I could end up with milk fat, but on the other hand, it would be nice if it was that easy to make the stuff.

And so, I went on and on thoroughly whipping that cream. Unsurprisingly, Roy looked astounded as he watched me with the same serious look in his eyes as yesterday.

According to my internal clock, I ended up going for around ten minutes, inserting a break in the middle. When I was about at the point where I’d cause myself some definite muscular pain if I kept going, I went ahead and poured out the freshly whipped contents into a metal bowl.

It had been sticky to start with, and now it trickled on out. I tried poking it with one of the wooden skewers I had been using in place of long chopsticks and found it was actually pretty dense, but not enough to be an issue. Ultimately, I’d describe it as being in a semi-liquid state.

At this point, I went ahead and added sugar, then whipped it with the wooden skewers.

Before that, though, I filled a bowl one size bigger with water and sat the bowl of cream in it. From what I could recall, even the heat from human skin was enough to melt cream back to a liquid state, so you had to keep it chilled. Even though the water was room temperature, it was at least enough to give me a bit of peace of mind, if nothing else.

Then, after around 30 to 40 minutes of stirring, it finally started to put up some firm resistance.

“Good grief. Is that enough, finally?” I went ahead and decided to go for a taste test with some fuwanocakes that I made, which were less sweet than yesterday’s. First up was the minmi sauce.

Honestly, hotcakes and peach sauce made for a rather eccentric combination, but at least to someone like me who didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, it seemed plenty tasty.

As for my improvised whipped cream, it frankly felt a bit lacking on its own.

But that mellow fluffy sensation would probably be quite novel here in this land, and since I had used flavorful karon milk as the base ingredient, it shouldn’t come across as especially lacking when served alongside panam honey.

And so, I added honey and milk fat alongside those options again today, to be combined however the recipient pleased. And from Chiffon Chel’s expression when she checked for poison, it had come out at least as well as yesterday.

Without getting a hold of sugar or karon milk, it won’t be possible to make proper sweets at the forest’s edge or in the post town. I sure would like to treat Rimee Ruu and Tara to some, though, I thought to myself as I watched the completed dish get carried off, and then I stood in front of the pot I had neglected all this time. It was what was left of the karon milk after the fat had been separated out.

“Now then, what should I do with this...?” I asked myself aloud, and then Roy, who had been focusing on his own work, turned my way.

“Hey, if you’re going to get rid of that, then have the soldiers call for someone. Karon milk stinks horribly when it spoils, so it has to be disposed of properly.”

“No, but it should last till tomorrow or the day after without going bad, right? So I was wondering if I could use it in some sort of dish.”

“What could you even make with milk that’s had the fat wrung out of it?”

“Even without the fat, it should still be full of plenty of nutrients. It feels like too much of a waste to just get rid of it.”

Milk with the fat removed would be classified as skim milk. And in its powdered form, that would be powdered skim milk. Though that stuff didn’t have all that great of a reputation in Japan, skim milk itself was something used mainly as an ingredient in sweets, as far as I knew.

However, I couldn’t imagine there was a way to turn raw milk into a solid here in this world. Even copying the method they used for that pseudo-bouillon, you would need to add in salt to help preserve it, so it seemed like it would prove quite tricky.

Well, we’re talking about raw milk here. It’s definitely possible it isn’t handled in the post town just because the stuff stores so poorly.

All these concerns were predicated on the hope that I’d someday be able to get a hold of karon milk in the post town to begin with, though. And so, I was running some simulations in my head as to how I’d apply it if I was able to purchase it for my personal use.

Since there obviously weren’t any refrigerators to be had in Genos, raw milk would apparently only last for two or three days. In that case, the main use for it would be as an ingredient in milk fat and dried milk. But as I saw just now, you could only get 200 grams or so of fat at best out of two liters of the stuff.

Even though that was certainly more than I had first expected, it still left you with more than 90% of the stuff left as skim milk. And I figured that it still had a high amount of nutritional value to it, so I couldn’t just go chucking it like nobles did.

I wonder if they’ve found a good way of using it in that Dabagg town where they sell karon...?

That might just have been another item for me to research. But for now, all I could do was try to use my own intuition to figure out how to use up this skim milk.

Alright, I guess first off is the usual method of trying it as an ingredient in soup. And I’m pretty sure Reina used skim milk to make custard cream, right? Guess I should prepare to give that a try tomorrow.

I really hadn’t ever imagined the day would come where I’d be relying on my childhood friend like this.

As that painful feeling welled up in my chest, I offered thanks to my friend who I would never meet again, then set about focusing on my work.

◇

The request for the night’s dinner ended up being a dish using kimyuus meat and dried milk. Considering she had asked for kimyuus three nights in a row now, Lefreya must have really liked it.

Kimyuus meat and dried milk... So, pretty much chicken and cheese, eh...?

Since I actually had an oven on hand, I had been considering trying out an imitation pizza of sorts. But since there wasn’t any such equipment at the forest’s edge or in the post town, it seemed like even if I took the time to figure out how to make one in this world, I wouldn’t be able to use that knowledge after all this.

If that’s how things were going to be, I decided to take a somewhat wild swerve and make a piccata-like dish instead. It was a form of Italian cooking in which you covered meat in flour and egg and then cooked it.

Of course, I had never had a proper Italian style piccata, so I would be taking my old man’s imitation and doing my best to copy that. And I had actually already made my own original piccata in the past for a late night snack or whatever, just not as a product to be sold.

Since I had used chicken fingers back home, I ended up selecting kimyuus breast meat here. After peeling the skin, I cut it into long, one centimeter-thick cuts like salmon fillets, then tenderized it with a wooden pole. I would be using two slices per person, which meant six in total.

After seasoning it with pico leaves, I then dropped in plenty of dried milk between the cuts of meat, as finely sliced as I could manage. Since the variety wasn’t specified, I chose the richly flavored, yet firmer and easier to cut gyama dried milk.

When that was done, I beat an egg. Then I used a grater to finely shred some karon dried milk over it to a consistency close to powdered cheese, and mixed them together.

That was how the recipe I learned from my father went, but what was real piccata like? From what I had heard, I was pretty sure you were actually supposed to use veal with the dish.

At any rate, I sprinkled the fuwano flour atop the meat from before, mixed in the dried milk and egg combo, and cooked it all up in a flat pan. Milk fat would be too heavy a flavor here, so I went with reten oil instead. Since it had a similar taste to olive oil, I figured it would go well with my self-taught piccata, which was inspired by Italian cooking.

That was enough to finish off the main dish itself.

As for the sauce I drizzled over the top, I chose the orthodox tarapa sauce I used with the giba burgers. Even back home, I ate my piccata with a tomato sauce that used a heaping helping of diced onions, so I figured a tarapa sauce using plenty of diced aria and the garlic-like myamuu should pair quite well with a kimyuus piccata.

I gave my sample a try and found that the fried and egg and fuwano flour mix gave it a nice crispy texture, while the dried milk added an exquisite bit of gooeyness.

If I could serve this dish in the post town, it would definitely earn itself quite the reputation. And as long as I could at least secure oil and eggs, it would be entirely possible to recreate there.

Gyama dried milk could only be obtained through peddlers from Sym, but that issue could be overcome if I could figure out how to make my own with karon milk. If I couldn’t get a hold of reten oil, though, I’d have no other option but to use giba lard.

Ah, and I needed to consider the compatibility with giba meat, too.

Would the meat itself have too strong of a flavor for the dish?

I wouldn’t know for certain till I gave it a try, but I got the feeling that it could turn out to be a real impressive dish in its own way. Not pork piccata, but giba piccata... It could do well as a snack in the post town, served wrapped up in baked poitan.

Still, frying like that in the stalls might be tricky. Maintaining the flames could be troublesome, and I feel like the flavor would decline if I made them and let them sit... I thought to myself as I set about making the actual dish for dinner. And as I devoted my brainpower to such matters, I could feel my concerns about the future start to slip away.

However, I once again didn’t receive any special praise from Lefreya that day.

◇

It was now the following day, the eighth of the white month.

And I ended up receiving a complaint from the spoiled little lady of the house first thing in the morning.

Apparently, she had said, “I will not tolerate being fed the same sort of dish three days in a row.” In other words, “Prepare some other sweet than fuwanocakes.”

“I’m telling you, that’s really not my specialty...” I muttered, but it seemed unlikely those words would ever reach that little tyrant’s ears. And since I really had no choice here, I decided to take a crack at making cookies.

The only applicable memories I had were of watching from the side as Reina made some. And so, this was even more a case of me purely imitating her work than it had been with the hotcakes.

First up came further softening the milk fat by stirring it until it entered a semi-solid state, then I kneaded in sugar and fuwano flour. I had to add the fuwano bit by bit, stirring carefully so that it didn’t lump up.

Next was spreading out the freshly made dough atop a floured tray, then pounding it flat with a thick mixing rod, as if I was making soba. Naturally, there weren’t any cookie cutters or the like around, so I used a small-mouthed wine glass to cut out round shapes, then tried cutting those into squares and stars and like afterwards with a knife. Then I balled up the excess dough and flattened it out again atop the tray, and once I had pushed that to its limit I just rounded up the last little bit.

It was then time to use the oven that I had neglected yesterday. It had a simple construction to it where you only had to light the fuel storage in the bottom, but I kept the flames low for now so they wouldn’t burn. The one to teach me how to use it was Roy. And as for the fuel in question, it was that charcoal, which I was finally getting a chance to use.

In the meantime, I went ahead and tried making custard cream with the remaining skim milk.

First, that meant mixing together kimyuus yolk and sugar, then adding a little fuwano flour. Once it was sufficiently combined, I started pouring in the skim milk bit by bit.

Up until this point, the preparation actually felt pretty similar to how I made the cookies, just with different proportions. When it came to western-style sweets, the key ingredients really were flour, milk, sugar, eggs, and butter.

Once that batter was sufficiently soft from mixing in skim milk, I heated it up in a pot. Then, after enough of the moisture evaporated and it was nice and thick, it was ready.

It wouldn’t be all that easy to reproduce, but since the karon milk and its milk fat were so rich in flavor, it certainly tasted good. Since I was well out of my field of expertise, this was about the best I could manage here.

And while all that was going on, the cookies finished baking. Once they had cooled a bit I gave one a try and found it had a nice crispness to it, and honestly it could be even easier to make these again in the future than the hotcakes.

While I was at it, I also went ahead and baked the extra batter I had prepared in case I screwed up. And while they were cooking, I made up some more of that arow jam like I had done the day before yesterday. The cookies were already plenty tasty on their own, so I figured that jam and the custard cream should be more than enough as far as toppings went.

And so, my task had come to a close.

Since I had managed to bake them all without incident, I ended up with quite a large quantity.

“Well, they shouldn’t spoil all that quickly, so please feel free to take the extras for after dinner snacks or whatever,” I offered as a message, but unsurprisingly there was no response back from Lefreya.

◇

The request that came that evening was, “Make whatever, as long as it uses kimyuus meat.”

Now that I thought about it, her afternoon order hadn’t included any ingredients, either.

I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Diel since that first night to ask whether or not those comparisons with that famous sous-chef or whatever were continuing, so I had no clue how that little game was going.

Still, “whatever” was hard to deal with. My options were just far too vast with so many ingredients on offer.

After struggling with the issue, I ultimately decided to go with a dish I was currently experimenting with: kimyuus meatballs. I was in the process of going through some trial and error with the dish so that it could be sold at The Kimyuus’s Tail.

I used kimyuus breast for the meat, and went with a simple initial seasoning of just the salt it had been pickled in to start with. After mincing it with a meat cutting knife, I went ahead and actually made them into little, flat rod shapes rather than ovals.

The issue, though, was how I would season them now.

It was at this point that I decided to try bringing in another new ingredient, the kiki fruit.

I had seen them in the past in the post town, but I had never even tasted one before now. It was a purple fruit a little smaller than a human fist, and was wrinkly like a dried persimmon. From what I knew, it was sold as portable rations for travelers, the same as dried aria.

Earlier in the day I gave one a taste and found it had a rather unique flavor, combining a light sweetness with a powerful amount of sour, reminding me a bit of a dried pickled plum.

From what I was told, this dried kiki was produced using a method that originally came from Jagar. After pickling the kiki fruit in salt and fruit wine, it was then dried out over the course of several days. And to my surprise, apparently quite a few travelers tossed it into their poitan stew before eating it.

Furthermore, it seemed heavy drinkers enjoyed it when made into a marinade. It was incredibly salty, so the normal method was to cut it with fruit wine, water, or fruit juice. It must have made for quite a unique taste, there.

At any rate, dried kiki saw frequent use in the post town too thanks to that.

Meanwhile, in kitchens in the castle town, it was employed as something of an eccentric seasoning.

As for me, well, I certainly was glad to have encountered the ingredient. After all, I had been right in the midst of searching for something to help spice up the kimyuus meatballs.

Though the skin of the kiki fruit was all parched out, the inside was still moist with juices. Just mashing it into something like a shredded dried plum dip was plenty to accompany the meatballs. In fact, I’d really like to add it as a new dish at The Kimyuus’s Tail.

It was too simple for a place like this, though, so I went ahead and prepared a separate seasoning for each of the four meatballs I’d be making for each person.

For one, I fried it up with milk fat and tau oil, or what we called “butter soy sauce style” back in my old world.

With another, I used the now familiar white sauce.

And then for the last one, I went with a rather elaborate method for the sake of variety. Well, at least I could describe it that way, but it was a pretty standard method back in my old home country. That is, I would be mixing the highly alcoholic fruit wine, tau oil, pico leaves, sugar, and panam honey as a secret ingredient to make salty-sweet meatball teriyaki.

That wouldn’t be all, though. No, I also went ahead and tried garnishing that meatball teriyaki with my own homemade tartar sauce. In order to make it, mayonnaise would be indispensable. However, with egg, vinegar, salt, and oil, mayonnaise was actually relatively simple to whip up.

First you mix together the yolk and salt, then you add the vinegar followed by the oil, at which point you just have to keep whipping it. That was all there was to the process.

The key point was that you had to focus on mixing in air until you added the vinegar. Since I didn’t have a whisk at hand, that one point was a bit troublesome, but it wasn’t that big of a deal since I was already getting used to the inconvenience.

However, there was a bit of a discrepancy here in terms of ingredients. The reten oil was just like olive oil, while the mamaria vinegar was somewhat similar to white or balsamic vinegar in terms of flavor. And mamaria vinegar was so dark brown it was near black, so when it blended with the yolk it became a dark orange mayonnaise.

Still, despite the unusual color, it really didn’t turn out half bad. Though I had my concerns about the raisin-like flavor of the mamaria vinegar, it had a proper mayonnaise taste in the end. Thankfully the sourness from the mamaria wasn’t all that strong, so it was a rather mild flavor overall.

All that was left was to finely dice up a hard-boiled egg and some raw aria and then mix them together, then adjust the flavor with salt and pico leaves in order to complete my tartar sauce. When I spread that over the meatball teriyaki and gave it a try, I found that the tartar sauce drew out the rich sweet and salty flavor, making for a lavish taste that reminded me of junk food.

“This will certainly make the poison tasting difficult...” was what Chiffon Chel had to say when presented with the meal I prepared — four different varieties of meatball each for three people. She had to make a truly valiant effort to suppress her grin.

Honestly, it would have been fine to make them all up teriyaki style with tartar sauce. But after all my testing with the time allotted to me, I didn’t entirely feel that version was head and shoulders above the rest. That of course applied to the butter soy sauce and white sauce ones, but I felt that even the dried kiki dip meatballs were plenty tasty too. In fact, I could see that one really standing out after tasting the rich flavor of the teriyaki meatballs.

Since I couldn’t come up with a plan to slip away, all I could do was keep on cooking in the hopes of eventually breaking down Lefreya’s stubbornness. Such thoughts drove me forwards, to make every dish the absolute best that I possibly could.

But in the end, I ultimately didn’t hear so much as a single peep from Lefreya on that day, and my requests to talk to her were unsurprisingly turned down.

3

So today ended without anything happening again, huh...? I thought to myself as I stared out into the darkness through the big open window after finishing my work and returning to the room.

Before I even knew what was happening, I was heading into my fourth night here in this place.

Was Diel unable to slip out of the castle town after all? I was just stuck here passing the time in this new everyday routine thrust upon me, with nothing changing for either better or worse.

But the morning of the day after tomorrow, Cyclaeus would be returning. And so, regardless of what anyone had to say, this abnormal everyday schedule would be brought to an end. Yes, even at the most, there was only a little over a day left till this whole stupid farce was blown to smithereens.

Even so, that still felt so far away. Though I was able to suppress it somehow while holed up in the kitchen, the pain and sadness I felt seemed like it would crush my very heart.

Ai Fa... What must you be thinking...?

Whenever that name or face came to mind, my heart started beating irregularly.

It felt as if half of my body had been torn away from me. I was realizing with terribly painful clarity just how much I had come to rely on her.

Why was I even standing here? Were those really my feet there on the ground? Why am I even alive...? Such thoughts would normally never come to mind for me, but now my head was full to bursting with them. I felt as helpless as if I was adrift in space, and I was full of such despair that it was like my head had sunk deep into an inky blackness.

I wanted to see Ai Fa.

To hear her voice.

To feel the warmth from her fingers.

Even I couldn’t help but see how stupid I was being to let myself get so completely caught up in such pointless, obstructive thoughts.

How had everyone else spent these last few days, too? I of course wondered about the Ruu clan, who I had the closest ties to, but also the Rutim, Lea, Sudra, Fou... so many that I couldn’t even count them all.

And there were the folks from the post town, too. They all felt like distant memories to me now. It was as if I was drifting off into the sky while still alive, but was awash in my memories from life.

By immersing myself in cooking during the day, I was able to escape from such concerns. But when I was pulled back to this room, I was instantly swallowed up again by that empty, meaningless feeling. No matter how much I strove with my cooking research, that food would ultimately only end up making it to Lefreya’s mouth. Even though Diel and her father got to eat the dinners too, that certainly wasn’t enough to clear away that awful emptiness.

The one I wanted to serve my cooking to was Ai Fa. And the people of the forest’s edge, and the townsfolk from the post town too. At some point I’d be able to unveil the skills and knowledge I gained here to everyone... That thought kept me going, giving my all as I cooked away. But at night, my decompressing emotions felt like they would crush my soul completely.

“Sir Asuta... It will not be good for you if you do not get some rest soon...” Chiffon Chel said as she gently nuzzled close.

Though she must have been touching my arm or shoulder, my senses were so dulled that I didn’t feel a thing.

“Sorry, but I don’t feel like sleeping yet.”

“I see... But simply lying on your side should help you recover quite a bit of strength, so I beg you please move to the bed...”

“Right...”

It wouldn’t impact the deep darkness welling up inside me whether I was standing by the window or lying in the bed. And so I figured it was the better choice to go ahead and at least put Chiffon Chel at ease.

“My master shall be returning the morning of the day after tomorrow... And so I shall only be able to spend time like this with you for a little over a day more at most...”

“Yeah.”

“I really cannot help but find that regrettable in the end. However... It is also quite heartrending to see you so pained, Sir Asuta...”

Chiffon Chel was wearing the same gentle smile as usual, but her mysterious purple eyes made it look to me like she was agonizing over how to properly convey her feelings.

She was someone who had been a slave for years now. Perhaps a portion of her heart had been worn down more than most in the process, but she most definitely still cared about others.

It was possible that I could have broken down even further had she not been here by my side.

Nothing could fill the huge gaping hole left open in my heart, though, despite her best efforts.

“Sorry... I’ll rest for a bit, then.”

“Of course...”

Chiffon Chel gently removed her hand from my arm, then went ahead and closed the window. After that she led me over to my bed, and then disappeared behind the folding screen.

“I wish you sweet dreams, Sir Asuta...”

“Yeah, you too,” I replied as I listlessly collapsed atop the bed.

Before long, Chiffon Chel extinguished the lantern, at which point my vision really did go completely black.

My exhausted body felt like mud, yet I didn’t feel even the slightest urge to sleep creeping in. Was my heart outright rejecting the idea? I mean, even if I slept, I was sure to just be assailed by nightmares.

Nightmares, huh...? This whole situation already is a nightmare.

If there were at least some firm proof I really would be back home two days from now, maybe I wouldn’t feel so cornered. But I was up against Cyclaeus here. No matter how positive I tried to be, that man’s reputation was just so deplorable that I couldn’t feel even the slightest bit of hope at the thought of having to rely on him.

Of course, if I really wasn’t released before he returned and ended up face to face with Cyclaeus, I would do everything in my power to try to make sure things ended peacefully. But when he learned of his daughter’s carelessness, if he figured it would be quickest to just get rid of me permanently... Well, I could end up disappearing from this world entirely, never again seeing Ai Fa or anybody else. That possibility was likely the source of the terror and despair I was feeling.

If it was just a few days apart from Ai Fa then, well, I figured I could handle that much. But if it was to be our final farewell... I couldn’t just die and leave things like this.

The last time I saw Ai Fa, with that joyful smile on her face... the sight of it was burned into the back of my eyelids.

I certainly hope that we can at least spend those days peacefully.

Ai Fa had seemed really happy at the thought that when our days off overlapped, we’d be able to relax together back home for the first time in quite a while. That was going to be on the eighth of the white month... In other words, today.

Keep on striving at your work, but make sure not to let your guard down.

I really didn’t think I ever let my guard down. And yet I was still kidnapped by thugs and left unable to return to the Fa house. Just how angry and sad must Ai Fa be...? I must have inflicted even more suffering and despair on her than what I was feeling myself.

Ai Fa...

I tossed and turned in the bed, unable to fall asleep.

And as I did, a strange, feeble, metallic creeeeak sound crept into my ear.

Had the wind blown the window open?

No, the windows here opened out. They weren’t built crudely enough that the wind would do anything to them. However, the door to the halfway hadn’t opened to allow anyone to come in.

So had Chiffon Chel opened the window, then?

But when I listened carefully, I could hear her rhythmically breathing away in her sleep.

Then what in the world was that? I thought, preparing to sit up in bed.

But then, a shadowy figure suddenly appeared from behind the partitioning screen by the window. It was even darker than the night itself, like a bundle of condensed shadows.

“Wha...”

“Don’t raise your voice,” a quiet, whispered voice chimed back.

It was that of a young boy, and I felt like I had heard it somewhere before.

Thanks to the faint bit of moonlight streaming in through the windows, I could see the slight yellow glow of his beastly eyes.

“You’re...”

“Keep quiet. It’ll be a pain if that woman sleeping there notices,” the mysterious boy whispered. He had the eyes of a wounded predator, and his still youthful voice had a husky rasp. “Can you not see me? This should be plenty of moonlight, though.”

With that, he firmly grabbed hold of my wrist.

I felt vaguely like I was in the midst of some sort of lucid dream as that strong grasp pulled me along to the other side of the partitioning screen. And since the window was wide open when we got there, there was plenty of moonlight streaming into the room.

Under that pale bluish light, there was burning crimson hair blowing gently in the wind.

“Jeeda... What are you doing in a place like this...?”

“Try asking yourself that,” the red haired boy Jeeda replied in a monotone voice, pushing away my wrist. “You look like you’re doing surprisingly well. Is it nice and comfortable here in this noble’s manor, Asuta of the Fa clan?”

I figured that was actually the first time Jeeda had called me by name.

His face still had the look of youth about it, he was about half a head shorter than me, and he had on a fur cloak spotted with fine specks that marked him as a hunter of Masara. This was the orphaned child of the honorable thief Goram Redbeard, Jeeda. He had an unusual appearance about him that I just couldn’t get used to, and as I looked at it now I felt myself growing more and more flustered.

“H-How in the world did you manage to sneak all the way here? I mean, it’s protected by guards and dogs and... Wait, how did you even know I was here in the first place...?”

“I already told you not to raise your voice. After all, there must be soldiers or the like keeping watch outside this room, right?” His delicate-looking face gave a displeased pout, but then his yellow eyes shot me a glare. “You had that window open until just a little while ago, didn’t you? That was how I learned that you were here in this room. Then all I needed to do was fire off a clawed arrow with fibaha vines attached to it into the roof, then use that to climb up.”

“That’s not what I meant. Nobody should know that I’m confined here in this manor to start with.”

“The people of the forest’s edge have been wailing that a noble named Cyclaeus is undoubtedly behind this... I didn’t talk to any of them directly, though. The one who mentioned the location of this manor was a man named Mikel of Turan.” I was even more taken aback to hear that unexpected name come up now. “I happened to see the people of the forest’s edge hound him when he came to the forest’s edge yesterday. I followed him when he was returning to Turan, and then asked him where this manor was. Apparently he was originally from the castle town, too...”

“Y-Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard... But the castle town is protected by stone walls, isn’t it? And you’re not supposed to be able to make it in without a pass.”

“It’s possible with the proper tools. Are you asking me to tell you my methods...?”

That didn’t matter to me at all.

“Then... Why did you come all the way here, exactly?”

Jeeda frowned when he heard that question. I was secretly grateful to see the boy make such childish expressions, actually.

“I... I just wanted to see your face, now that you’ve fallen right into the enemy’s hands after acting all high and mighty. And also...” His yellow eyes gleamed. “The owner of this manor, that Cyclaeus noble... he’s the one you all say is behind everything, isn’t he? That’s what I learned from listening to the people of the forest’s edge and Mikel of Turan. And so, I wanted to check how seriously this manor was being guarded.”

“It’s watched over by guards and dogs, right...?”

“Yeah. But it’s nothing all that impressive. That Cyclaeus man sure is lax on that front, considering all the stuff he’s done.” There was a dangerous feeling simmering in the air about the boy’s small body. There was a wild, animalistic bloodlust about him that felt no less intense than that of the people of the forest’s edge. “Well, I can sense a lot more presences inside the manor, though. And just finding his location in a building this stupidly huge would be quite an undertaking. So it wouldn’t be all that simple to take his head.”

“J-Jeeda, are you really thinking of going after—”

“He’s still out, right? I overheard the people of the forest’s edge saying so. No, today’s just a preliminary inspection...” Jeeda’s gaze then fell a bit, only for him to look back up at me. “If there’s a way to bring his crimes to light, that would be the best method for avenging my late father... I’ll wait to bring my own strength to bear till after I see whether or not you all succeed with your plan.”

“I see. In that case—”

“But if the laws of this country grant him a sentence lighter than death, then I swear I will personally send his head flying, without fail.”

It wasn’t as if he was raising his voice or shooting an angry look, but there was still a clear tension in the air about him. However, that dangerous sensation lingering about might well have been nothing but a mere fragment of the bloodlust Jeeda was desperately suppressing.

I was facing off with that small bundle of rage in the darkness like this, just the two of us. It was just so unreal that I still felt a bit out of it, but even so, I asked, “So you came here for reconnaissance and to check on how I was doing...?”

“Yeah, that’s right. If you were the sort of guy to try to curry favor with your sworn enemy, then I was prepared to skin your face or something, but still...” the boy replied, his beastly gaze piercing through me. “Apparently, you’re just lamenting your own carelessness. You really are a pathetic man. The people of the forest’s edge would probably be exasperated if they heard about this.”

“I can’t exactly refute that, yeah. Hey Jeeda... How’s everyone from the forest’s edge doing?” I shot back, finally getting out the question I most wanted to ask.

Jeeda closed his eyes for a moment and the resentment dripping off of him calmed just a bit, then he replied, “They’re a mess, of course. They’re all running around like crazy looking for you. The whole post town’s in a wild frenzy as a result, too.”

“I... I see...”

“At first, it seemed like they might even cross blades with the guards. Now, though, they’re just running all about town. The guards in charge of the castle gates won’t pay them any heed, so they’re frantically searching around to identify the scoundrels who kidnapped you.”

I just kept on listening, not saying a word.

“A big crowd of townsfolk came after the guards too, but they just kept insisting they needed to wait till the militia captain returned on the tenth of the white month. And those guards looked every bit as out of sorts as the townsfolk, to be honest.”

If Cyclaeus’s younger brother, the head of the militia, was also stuck in the castle for the time being, then that seemed only natural. I mean, there was a very high likelihood that this was all done at Lefreya’s discretion alone.

And even if news of that commotion made it into the castle, the report would be, “A person of the forest’s edge doing business in the post town was captured by ruffians.” Since they didn’t give the orders themselves, Cyclaeus and his brother would just laugh it off. After all, it wouldn’t be bad at all for them if us people of the forest’s edge and some scoundrels from town went and got in a scuffle all on our own.

“So, um... Do you know how my clan head, Ai Fa, is holding up...?”

“That woman, huh?” Jeeda flatly shot back. “She’s apparently been heading into town every day too. But she’s a troublesome one, since she notices me no matter how much I try to hide my presence. I try to stay away from her as much as possible, so I don’t really know.”

“I see...”

Ai Fa, the other people of the forest’s edge, and the townsfolk were all desperately searching for me. Just hearing that was enough to cause a crushing sensation to weigh down on my chest.

“You don’t look to be especially injured... but you seem quite defeated, even so,” Jeeda quietly stated. “I owe you all a bit of a debt. I suppose I could deliver a single message for you, at least.”

With that, I went to draw in close to Jeeda. However, he swiftly pulled back in order to maintain the same distance between us.

“Jeeda, I know it doesn’t make any sense to ask this of you, but... Could you take me back to the post town with you, possibly?”

“Hmph. Can you eliminate your presence like a hunter? If not, you won’t make it ten steps before those dogs maul you to death,” Jeeda replied, swiftly shooting down my request.

“I see...” I said with a slump of my shoulders, only for Jeeda to glance around impatiently.

“The people of the forest’s edge would have little difficulty slipping past the guards like I did. And since they have ties to Mikel of Turan, it would certainly be possible to find out where this manor is located. And yet they’ve left you here... They must not think saving you is worth breaking the law.”

“That’s—” I started to argue, only for Jeeda to place his palm over my mouth.

“I told you not to raise your voice.”

“That’s only natural. Before they go breaking the law or anything like that, they’d need proof that Cyclaeus abducted me. And since they can’t afford to show any weakness to the man, that’s even more reason they can’t just break the law without any evidence.”

“But...”

“Besides, it actually wasn’t Cyclaeus himself who had me abducted.”

It was at this point that I finally went ahead and gave Jeeda all the details.

The boy looked clearly displeased, but he listened silently without interjecting until I was done.

“So it’s not Cyclaeus behind this, but his daughter, eh...? Like father, like daughter I guess.”

“I mean, I don’t think that’s always the case...”

“Besides, none of this changes the fact that you’re imprisoned here in this manor. So I still can’t help but see it as the people of the forest’s edge valuing the law over your life,” Jeeda said with a frown, looking seriously upset with that fact.

That childish action really reminded me of Ai Fa, which took me aback. Now that I thought about it, his wild cat-like eyes might also have been a bit similar to hers when she was angry, too.

“A comrade’s life is more important than anything else. Are the people of the forest’s edge really so pathetic that they would sacrifice one of their own for the sake of the law?”

“That’s absolutely not the case. But the people of the forest’s edge believe it’s proper to follow the law and customs. Maybe even more so than the townsfolk.”

“Hmph. So you’re saying unlike the son of a thief, their souls are unsullied?”

“No, that’s not how I see things, but—”

“Whatever. I have my own way of doing things, and so do the people of the forest’s edge. And thanks to my methods, I was able to meet you. The people of the forest’s edge, however, were not,” Jeeda said in a quiet yet confrontational tone, suddenly moving in closer. “With that in mind, let me ask... is there anything you want me to tell your comrades?”

His words and expression made it seem as if he was asking, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

But knowing nothing of what he was thinking inside, I replied, “There is,” with a nod. “I’d like you to tell everyone what I told you before. And you should let a man named Zasshuma know too.”

“Zasshuma...?”

“A townsman who’s lending the people of the forest’s edge aid. He’s the only one who should be able to get into the castle town. And so let him know that he needs to inform Melfried of this as soon as possible. Ah, Melfried is a noble who’s also trying to expose Cyclaeus’s old crimes, and is the son of Genos’s lord.”

“Got it. If Cyclaeus takes the initiative, you could be placed in danger, right? I’ll let them know.” As he said that, his mysterious yellow eyes flickered. “By the way, is that easterner named Sanjura here in this manor?”

“Huh?”

“Isn’t that man, who injured my shoulder, one of those who kidnapped you? That’s what’s written on the wanted posters.”

“Th-They put up wanted posters in the post town?”

“Yeah. I only got the personal description part, though. But yes, there are wanted posters out there saying the ones who abducted you were that Sanjura guy and an unidentified western man.”

So Nail informed the guards after all, huh?

And the contents of what he said were spread throughout the post town as he gave them, rather than being suppressed by any pressure from above.

In other words, Cyclaeus must not have been told the details yet. If he had so much as seen the wanted poster, he would have known it was talking about men under him. And that was another light of hope for me.

“That other westerner is probably the officer assigned to guarding Cyclaeus’s daughter. His build and voice were identical, after all. His name is Mussel. You should let Zasshuma know that too.”

With that, at the very least Melfried would learn everything once he could act freely. As for what came next, it would be a question of how strong a hand he could play as an arbiter of the law. And that was one thing I wouldn’t find out until the time came.

“I’ll let them know for sure. And this settles my debt with all of you, too...” Jeeda said, turning away.

However, I called out to him from behind, “Hold on. Can you let them know I’m doing fine, too? And... Could you tell not just Ai Fa, but as many people of the forest’s edge as possible?”

“I have trouble handling that woman so I was intending to tell someone else to start with. Still, why go to that much extra trouble?”

“Eh...? Well, um... If you just told Ai Fa, she might try to come alone like you did to rescue me...”

“So she’d break the law without even telling anyone else?” Jeeda questioned, his eyes narrowing a bit as his eyebrows raised in a peculiar manner. It was a real complex expression, like he was both astounded and impressed at the same time. “I didn’t expect you to go bragging about your woman right at the end like that...”

“S-She’s not exactly my woman or anything...”

“Still, that’s what a real comrade’s like. I figure that’s what it means to really be family,” Jeeda said, lifting his right foot up onto the frame of the window. “Well then, I’m off. We may never meet again... But for the sake of your comrades desperately running around everywhere, give it everything you’ve got to at least survive through tomorrow.”

“Right, and thanks. I really am grateful to you, Jeeda.”

With that, Jeeda disappeared beyond the window, offering no response to my words.

Though I hurriedly rushed over to look, his fur cloak disappeared into the darkness in no time flat. He must have long since collected the tools he used to infiltrate the place, as it seemed he just needed to leap down on his way back. That was some seriously astounding physical prowess, there.

After closing the window, I gave a sigh.

This time, it seemed I would definitely get my message to Ai Fa and everyone else that I was doing alright. That alone was enough to clear away a lot of the dark clouds billowing up inside of me.

Now all that leaves is getting out of here intact.

In place of my unease, anguish, and despair, I was being filled with some new, unfamiliar strength.

As I writhed in the dark, Jeeda had come and granted me the light of hope.

Ai Fa, hold on just a little longer.

After clenching my fist one last time, I returned to my bed.

I was worried I wouldn’t be able to sleep after that surge of emotions, but I had no memories after that point and must have swiftly drifted off. And that night, I wasn’t plagued by any nightmares.