Chapter 52: Sweet Red Bean Soup

Chapter 52:
Sweet Red Bean Soup

It was the first Friday in January.

The New Year’s holiday was still going in Japan, so local stores and business were closed for business.

Nekoya, of course, was no different. And so, alone in the restaurant, the master got to work.

“All right. Let’s do this.”

Standing in the kitchen, he whispered to himself. It was New Year’s, and yet here he was working. Why? Well, it was Friday.

Chicken curry and beef stew… Oh, and I should probably make some of the regular curry, too.

The master was thinking about one of his weekly regulars, as well as his new black-uniformed waitress, the one who preferred to get paid in curry. His thoughts turned back to the customer, who would doubtlessly show their face the next day.

Tomorrow was Saturday, after all, when the Restaurant to Another World would be open for business.

Nekoya paid no heed to Obon, the year-end festivals, New Year’s, or Golden Week. In fact, the other-worlders didn’t even have a word for New Year’s. And that meant the master had work to do.

Normally, while preparing for the weekdays with his staff, he’d always tack on a little bit of prep work for Saturdays. But on the Friday of a long break like this, the master would have to spend an entire day doing prep all on his own.

He didn’t mind, though.

A little work is the perfect cure for vacation blues.

At this time of year, the master helped out at a local shrine, pounded mochi, chilled at his older brother’s house, and did all kinds of other stuff. But generally speaking, he was on vacation.

So he was fully recharged. And this prep work would be perfect for getting his cooking back into shape—his skills had probably gotten a bit rusty over the break.

Let’s see…

With everything else taken care of, it was time for the master to start doing his special New Year’s prep.

At this time of year, the master liked to offer a special New Year’s menu at the Restaurant to Another World. It was about as Japanese as you could get, but there were customers who really enjoyed it.

It had all started as a little bit of extra New Year’s service that the old master used to fit in. There had always been one particular customer who just lapped it up.

Hell, ever since the current master was a kid, this customer had shown up once a year only for the special New Year’s meal. That’s how devoted they were.

The master knew full well that if he stopped doing this, it would be a huge letdown for this longtime customer. So here he was, continuing his grandfather’s tradition all these years later.

I wonder if that long-eared lady’s gonna show up again this year… the master thought as he started on the preparations.

***

On the Western Continent, deep in an old forest surrounded by mountains, there was a towering tree. In a hollow within, the female elf sage Selena was ending her meditation. Slowly she opened her eyes for the first time in a year.

I see the year has turned again.

The flow of magic had shifted imperceptibly under the influence of the sun, moon, and the stars. Selena could sense the passing of the old year.

The sage had absorbed spiritual energies into her body, turning them into magic that allowed her to stay young. This kept old age and death at bay for Selena for all eternity.

It was a technique that the gods of old—who’d thrown away the ancient world and fled to another in fear—had used as naturally as breathing. It helped them to escape the seven terrifying colored overlords of the old civilization.

And now Selena was the only elf in the world still capable of using this magic.

***

It was a vicious time. The elves, having thrown themselves into magic research, were locked in battle against five overlords (Million Colors and Black had since vanished to realms unknown) and their progeny in the south. It was then that they sought to depart that realm, to the deep oceans and the lofty skies. To elf-less worlds.

Elves were talented mages by nature and so they thought themselves to be the true rulers of the world. They were nothing like the lizards and monsters who hid themselves away in the planet’s dark reaches.

Selena was only one hundred years old at the time. Barely on the precipice of adulthood, and yet she had mastered this magic technique.

It would give elves an immunity to death without requiring them to vacate their bodies or lose their self-awareness and knowledge. This was a very different thing from becoming an undead.

***

At the time, Selena couldn’t believe the talented elven mages who spoke of abandoning their bodies in order to gain immortality and further their own knowledge. Through this, they would become purely spiritual beings known as liches.

While it was true that their bodies were comparatively weak, with spirits that vanished once those bodies were destroyed, elves were still fundamentally creatures of the physical world.

Yet these researchers thought nothing of abandoning their bodies for a purely spiritual existence.

The researchers scoffed at Selena’s fear of the concept and threw themselves into their research. In only a few hundred years, their vision was realized.

But in the process, their souls were devoured by death itself. They became monsters who spread death throughout the world aimlessly and without remorse.

In the end, Selena’s fears had come to pass.

The monstrous remnants of these geniuses were consumed by death. And while they still possessed all manner of knowledge, they no longer had any actual intellect to call their own. When Selena recalled how the remnants of her former friends were destroyed, stronger than her sadness at losing them forever was her feeling of peace, knowing that she had never become one of them.

The world had grown painfully aware of its danger, and so the ritual was forever rendered taboo. But even now, the remaining liches wandered the planet, spreading death in their wake.

What a lonely thing eternity is.

Though she had turned her back on the lich ritual, Selena eventually found her way to another form of immortality. It took her approximately 500 years to devise her theory and another 300 to raise a forest with the magical energies necessary for the technique.

All in all, it took Selena 800 years to complete everything. This was a massive chunk of an elf’s lifespan, said to be 1,000 years. Yet the strength of her magical prowess was incredible. As long as Selena stayed within the forest’s bounds, she could live forever without food or even water.

That said, it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. If Selena ever were to leave the forest, she wouldn’t last ten years. She was incapable of returning to the nearby capital, which meant that she would spend eternity in these woods. In exchange, she gained both the time she so desperately wanted to perform her research and a deep loneliness the likes of which her fellow elves had long since forgotten. This was the unfortunate bargain Selena had entered into.

3,000 years had now passed since she’d first perfected the technique and gained eternal life. Besides the monstrous remnants of her former friends, there was likely no one left in the elf capital who remembered her.

I suppose that’s fine, Selena thought to herself. After all, things have gotten rather fun recently.

Selena had dedicated her life to meditation and the pursuit of knowledge. Yet in the last thirty years something changed. A door to another world had appeared in the forest. It was a magic remnant of an old friend.

It really is wonderful.

On the other side of the door was a place that offered food in exchange for coin. It was lovingly called the Restaurant to Another World by its human and monster patrons alike. There, they served a special dish once a year, on the first day of Satur of the new year.

It was a dish made of rice, a food popular all across the Western Continent, pounded into a substance called mochi. It was because of this dish that Selena made her yearly visit to the restaurant.

Thus, a few days later when the first Day of Satur of the new year arrived, Selena smiled to herself and spoke aloud.

“It’s time.”

She had detected the presence of the door within the forest. Selena rose from her position and made haste. The door was by a small pond that the beasts of the forest used as their watering hole.

Because most of the forest creatures were currently in winter hibernation, the pond was still. And there it stood on its shore, the magic door decorated with an illustration of a cat. Selena gently placed her slender fingers on the handle and turned…

The soothing ringing noise filled the silence of the forest, signifying the activation of magic. Savoring the warm sound, Selena stepped through the door.

***

Compared to the cold darkness of the forest, the inside of the restaurant was bright and warm. It was full of customers celebrating the new year.

Selena had heard stories through the grapevine about how humans had greatly increased their numbers after the awful sickness that nearly wiped them out. And then there were the children of both humans and elves, the half-bloods.

There was the demon race who had gained inhuman powers and bodies through their prayers to the old overlord of chaos. There were the monsters with their culture that was so different from the elves’. And then who could forget the descendants of the southern continent’s overlords, the elves’ former arch-enemies?

This crowd of diverse beings paid no mind to Selena as she entered the restaurant, continuing to eat and make merry.

On occasion, the black-clad waitress would enter Selena’s line of sight, causing her to experience something very close to fear. But that feeling soon disappeared as she sought her objective.

I see this place is as busy as ever… Oooh.

Elves saw little change in their surroundings over the span of ten to twenty years, but this place was almost constantly evolving. However, Selena still managed to spot someone she knew eating quietly in the corner of the restaurant. She went over to greet him.

“Long time no… Oh, well, it hasn’t been so long. Hello, Christian.”

“Well, well, if it isn’t Lady Selena! It’s been a year, hasn’t it?”

Christian responded politely to the legendary elf’s casual greeting. Selena was almost ten times older than he was.

Some thousands of years ago, Selena had vanished from society, leaving the elves to wonder what had happened. Had she died? Or become a lich? Nobody really knew. Judging by her appearance now, it was quite clear that she was doing rather well.

Christian had first run into her right here at the restaurant, which meant he’d never seen her outside of it. As to where Selena actually lived, he hadn’t the slightest clue.

“Mm. I see things remain unchanged for you… Or not.”

Selena spoke in old tongue. She noticed something different within her friend.

“Now, then. I don’t recall there being mochi here with that sort of seasoning.”

She directed her gaze at the mochi Christian was eating, topped with natto sauce.

As far as she could remember, the last time she saw him he had been eating mochi seasoned with sugared “soy sauce” and wrapped in black sea grass.

“Ah, this? I got a tip from a new friend.”

Christian explained what he had learned from his friend’s daughter some half a year ago.

“Natto goes wonderfully with wheat noodles, but I also discovered that it pairs with rice as well. So I figured, wouldn’t it taste great with mochi? It’s made of rice, too, after all.”

…And so when he tried making the order, he discovered that in the other world, eating mochi like this was fairly standard. The master brought it right out for him: mochi topped with a soy sauce that was slightly richer than usual, and natto.

The unique flavor and stickiness of the natto fused perfectly with the soft, chewy mochi, leaving Christian extremely satisfied.

“Hm, well that certainly explains it…”

Selena was compelled by this natto mochi, but she had to stay focused on her primary objective.

She called for the young lady wearing an otherworldly uniform, who was carrying plates to the various diners. She must be one of the workers.

“Young lady, excuse me, but may I make my order?”

“Of course! Hold on one second,” the waitress called out, scurrying over. “Sorry for the wait! What would you like?”

“Mm. I’d like a bowl of sweet red bean soup to start with.”

This was the special dish she’d come all the way here for, only served on the first Day of Satur of the year. Something she could only get at the Restaurant to Another World.

“No problem! We’ll get that right out for you!”

The young waitress replied energetically, leaving to fetch Selena’s food. The girl hadn’t been here last time, so she must be new. And judging by the horns on her head, Selena determined she was of the demon race.

“Now then, Christian. Tell me. Has anything interesting happened as of late?”

“Let’s see… I’ve been doing some research. I was inspired by a visit from a friend’s daughter.”

Christian skipped the small talk, getting right to his most recent research discoveries.

The year he first met the great sage Selena, he’d learned that she quite enjoyed this manner of conversation.

“Oh, and what would that be?”

“I’m sure you recall that over the past few years I’ve been doing research on fermentation. It’s a technique humans use to rot certain kinds of food. I had a theory that depending on the state of the food, there would be differences in how they rot. So I’ve been doing all kinds of tests.”

Christian continued.

“Looking back on it, I accidentally stumbled upon the recipe for miso when I boiled elf beans in sea water. And then I came across natto by boiling elf beans in freshwater.”

Selena listened intently to Christian’s explanation. It reminded her of a time thousands of years ago, long before the awful ritual turned her friends into horrific liches. A time when she and her close friend, both of them in the bodies they were born to, used to discuss their findings excitedly.

There’s nothing like conversing with others… Not that I dislike letting my mind sink into the oceans of my own memory.

The other waitress, carrying food to and fro throughout the restaurant, quietly agreed with Selena’s thoughts.

***

And so after they’d spent a few minutes conversing about a variety of topics and theories, the demon girl came to the table with Selena’s order.

“Sorry for the wait! Here’s your sweet red bean soup!”

Before the elf was a deep, round bowl of red soup, with white mochi floating on top.

“Mm. It’s time to eat.”

Before she actually picked up the spoon, Selana took a moment to savor the steam wafting off of the soup. The sweet scent filled her lungs, making her stomach rumble—preparing itself to welcome the soup for the first time in a year.

Selena lowered the spoon, bringing the first taste of soup to her mouth.

“Oh…”

The wise elf couldn’t help but exclaim at the sweet flavor filling her mouth.

It was the gentle sweetness of the beans, so different from the fruits of the forest or honey harvested from a beehive. This soup was also unique among other sweet flavors in the restaurant, containing no milk or eggs (always a plus for elves). This was the flavor that Selena had looked forward to, which she could savor only once every year.

Selena grabbed the nearby chopsticks and started on the mochi. She gently brought the tips of the sticks together, cutting the mochi into two sizable pieces. The elf brought one piece directly to her mouth; grabbing a whole piece of mochi with chopsticks was extraordinarily difficult.

Mm… Mmm.

As she chewed into the soft mochi, the sweet red bean soup spilled out of its insides, filling her mouth with warm liquid.

The sweet soup fused with the flavor of the white mochi, causing Selena’s expression to change.

Chewing into the mochi gave birth to another kind of sweetness, amplifying the dish’s flavor once again.

This really does taste delightful.

Selena’s verdict was the same as it had been when she’d first tried the soup. She was thoroughly satisfied by the meal she could only access once a year.

“Phew…”

And so after emptying an entire bowl of sweet red bean soup, Selena turned her attention to the salted kelp that came with it to cleanse her palate. She then took a sip of the brown rice tea.

After taking a moment to collect herself, Selena called out to the waitress.

“Now then… Young lady, might I have a word?”

“Yes! How can I help you?”

“I’d like to make an additional order. One seaside mochi, one mochi with roasted soybean flour, and one of those natto mochi like my friend here is eating.”

Thanks to the forest’s magic energy, Selena’s body was in perfect shape.

Considering she only ate this once a year, she could afford to indulge.

“Tonight, I feast. I’m gonna eat until my stomach bursts!”

And so Selena’s new year started off on a high note, once again.