A few days later.
“Manager~! Manager~! A carriage is coming~!!”
Aris shouted, pointing out the window.
“They really came back?”
Just as Irit had said, the Hildenburg family had truly returned to the restaurant.
After suffering so much last time because of the rough road,
they had still brought a carriage again. The stubbornness of nobles really was something else.
“I’ll get ready to welcome the guests~!”
Aris stood right beside the restaurant door, waiting for the guests to come in.
A moment later, along with the sound of a carriage stopping outside the restaurant, I heard the footsteps of quite a lot of people.
Whether they had prepared several spare carriage wheels today,
or had simply been lucky, it seemed they had arrived safely without the carriage breaking down on the way.
Jingle— jingle—
The cheerful sound of the bell rang the moment the shop door opened.
A moment later, a familiar face I had already met appeared.
“Welcome~!”
“……Hmph.”
Aris greeted him energetically, but Lord Hairel merely gave a faint snort and entered.
Then the guards began pouring into the restaurant.
It was only fortunate that this wasn’t an ordinary restaurant and there were no other customers.
If this had been a normal restaurant, it would have been more than enough people to drive out every guest inside.
Lord Hairel was still arrogant and overbearing,
and he was the sort of fellow who had no concept whatsoever that his actions might inconvenience others.
Seeing as he still refused to bend his pride even after learning that I was friends with the hero Irit,
I had the feeling I would never be able to get along with him.
“Have you come as customers to place an order? Or have you come to cause a disturbance while leading soldiers?”
“Hmph, what do you take me for? I am a customer.”
“Then how about having the soldiers filling up the shop step back a little? They could wait outside.”
“She is someone who requires this much protection.”
When Lord Hairel gestured toward the open shop door,
a woman soon entered the shop accompanied by soldiers.
“Oh……”
It was a woman I had never seen before,
but I could tell who she was at first glance.
No, I had no choice but to be able to tell.
The peerless beauty I had heard of in rumors.
She was Lady Rosaria, said to be so beautiful she looked like a finely crafted doll, earning her the title of the Doll Princess.
She wore a dazzlingly white noble-style dress,
and walked lightly into the shop with slow, graceful steps.
I had already seen her portrait before,
but she was such a beauty that one could say the portrait had failed to capture even half of her true charm.
Skin as white as her clothes, and large eyes shining with green irises.
Pink lips ripened like cherries, and a straight, slightly rounded nose that gave her a cute impression.
If you stared at her blankly,
she was the kind of woman who made you feel as if the world around you had turned hazy, as though a dream itself were walking toward you.
So there was a reason her family treated her like a treasure.
How happy would the person who married a lady like that feel……?
Even I, who had almost no interest in anything besides cooking and magic,
found my gaze stolen as if I had been enchanted.
“Manager… doesn’t she seem kind of similar to me?”
At that moment, Aris came up beside me and whispered into my ear.
“What’s similar? It feels like there’s a difference between you two as vast as heaven and earth.”
“No, she has no vitality at all.”
Ah, so that was what she meant.
It was true that Lady Rosaria had no color in her face whatsoever.
Should I say she looked gaunt? If anything, it seemed like her beauty would stand out even more if she gained a little weight.
Even now, gaunt as she was, she was undeniably beautiful,
but she looked as if she might collapse at any moment, which made me a little worried.
“Rosaria, at some point, began eating only a single bite of every dish. No matter what delicacies our dedicated chef made, no matter what famous and skilled chefs we brought from the royal capital, none of them could bring back Rosaria’s appetite.”
Lord Hairel explained to me.
“If you truly are a skilled chef, as the hero Irit said, then you should be able to make a dish that will bring back Rosaria’s appetite. If you succeed, I will allow you to take anything you wish from our family’s treasury. As payment for a meal, it is a reward far beyond what you deserve.”
Lord Hairel’s attitude as he said that still looked arrogant.
It was as if his expression were looking down on me, saying, “Can you really do it?”
“An item from your family treasury…… As payment for a meal, that would certainly be sufficient.”
“Indeed. Now then, let us see you serve the dish.”
Lord Hairel glared at me with his arms crossed.
He still did not understand our shop’s rules.
“I’m sorry to say this, but you must first make a reservation along with your order today. Since I prepare dishes tailored to each guest, I need time to get ready.”
“You mean you cannot serve the food immediately?”
“Are you saying I should know what dish the guest wants and serve it immediately? If the guest wanted dragon-tail steak, would I be able to serve it right away? Would I not need time to obtain a dragon’s tail? My shop is one that prepares ‘anything’ the guest desires.”
I wanted to add, If you have a head on your shoulders, please try thinking with it, but I held back.
From the lesson of his last visit, I had learned that provoking Lord Hairel unnecessarily would only lead to troublesome matters.
I turned my gaze back toward the Doll Princess.
For some reason, she seemed completely uninterested in anything happening around her.
Even though Lord Hairel was speaking about the food she would eat, her gaze was turned somewhere else entirely.
“By the way, the guest who will be eating is this lady here, is she not?”
“Hm? Well… that is so.”
“Then I will take the order directly from the lady.”
“Anything is fine. So long as it is a dish that can revive my sister’s appetite and allow her to eat properly.”
“The person who will be eating the food is the lady. There is no point in Lord Hairel ordering on her behalf.”
“You…… are needlessly fussy.”
Lord Hairel frowned, as if his mood had soured.
But unlike last time, he could not recklessly draw his sword to threaten me or hurl abuse.
The atmosphere of the conversation felt like walking a tightrope,
but it seemed to be barely holding together because I was an acquaintance of the hero.
“That’s enough, Brother. I’m really fine.”
At that moment, the Doll Princess, who had kept her mouth shut all this time, opened her lips.
Her voice was as delicate and soft as her slender, beautiful appearance.
It was enough to make one doubt whether Lord Hairel and Lady Rosaria were truly born of the same bloodline.
“Fine? Your wedding is just around the corner, yet you cannot eat anything properly and are damaging your health. That is the problem. If there is something you wish to eat, say it freely.”
“There is nothing I want to eat.”
“They say this place will make anything the guest wants, so why not try naming anything at all that comes to mind?”
“……”
Lord Hairel asked Lady Rosaria again and again, in a gentle voice entirely different from the one he used when speaking to me.
But Lady Rosaria only quietly shook her head,
and seemed to have no intention whatsoever of ordering food.
“Lord Hairel, how about entrusting this to me for a bit?”
After quietly watching their exchange, I had a feeling I understood something, so I cut in.
“What do you mean?”
“I will speak with the lady separately and try taking her order.”
“You will……?”
“Wouldn’t persuading her to want to try eating something also be part of reviving her appetite?”
I swept my eyes over the soldiers filling the restaurant,
then made a suggestion to Lord Hairel.
“I would appreciate it if you allowed me to speak with the guest alone for a moment. So that the guest may comfortably tell me what she wants to eat.”
“Nonsense. As if I know what sort of tricks you might try……”
“Have you forgotten? I am Irit’s old friend. If you are truly worried, you can simply watch from outside through the window, can’t you?”
To Lord Hairel, who did not seem ready to back down easily, I added,
“In an atmosphere like this, even I wouldn’t be able to think of anything I wanted to eat. Or is Lord Hairel not truly sincere about having the lady regain her appetite?”
The fact that they had come back here even after being humiliated by me before
meant that the issue with the lady’s appetite was that serious.
They must have already invited all manner of renowned chefs and tried everything they could.
Then they had learned of the existence of Gourmet Restaurant Slow, with its unusual way of operating,
and though half in doubt, had come here as if grasping at straws.
On top of that, there was also the guarantee of skill from Irit, who was famous as a hero,
so from the family’s perspective, they were in a position where they had no choice but to ask me to cook for them somehow.
“Brother, please do as he says. There were no results anywhere else anyway…… and this is a restaurant we came all the way to find.”
At the sudden words spoken by the Doll Princess Rosaria,
Lord Hairel’s face turned pale.
He glared at me as if he would tear me to pieces, then finally turned around with his cloak billowing.
“Hmph. Try doing whatever you can. But if you fail to restore my sister’s appetite, I will spread word throughout the continent that this is an unfriendly restaurant run by an incompetent chef.”
What a childish excuse for a threat.
Instead of answering, I gave a light shrug.
A moment later, Lord Hairel took the soldiers and left the shop, and as the restaurant door closed, the shop bell rang again.
Jingle— jingle—
In an instant, peace returned to the restaurant.
Lord Hairel was watching through the window,
but with this, at least the conversation held inside the restaurant would not leak outside.
“Please, have a seat first.”
When I pulled out a chair for her, Lady Rosaria sat down without answering.
Seen up close, her skin truly looked like that of a doll made by the greatest craftsman in the world.
“……It’s true that there is nothing I want to eat.”
“But you still sent Lord Hairel outside in order to hear me out, didn’t you?”
“That’s……”
“Why don’t we take our time and talk over a cup of tea first?”
I went to the kitchen, filled a kettle with water, floated some hillskus leaves in it, and lit the fire.
Hillskus was an herb with a calming effect that I grew on the rooftop.
They had said she had practically stopped eating and drinking, so I did not know whether she would drink it,
but I thought that if she even brought a single sip to her lips, it would be better than nothing.
“Aris, bring her the tea.”
“Okaaay—”
Aris, the soggy-seaweed ghost, served the fully brewed hillskus tea in a pretty teacup with a saucer.
Even after the tea arrived in front of her, Lady Rosaria showed no sign of touching the cup.
“You are feeling an immense amount of pressure, aren’t you?”
“……!”
I began speaking one-sidedly to Lady Rosaria.
Her expression did not change from its blank look,
but I did not miss the slight flinch she gave for an instant.
“The Hildenburg family…… I heard it is quite a great ducal house. It was in the newspaper as well. That the marriage partner of the Doll Princess had finally been decided. The time when you began refusing food and drink does not seem to be very far off from when that article was published. Am I correct? If I am assuming too much, I apologize.”
People do not refuse meals for no reason at all.
There are two main reasons why a person would come to refuse food by their own will.
One is when they have fallen seriously ill, to the point that they truly cannot swallow food.
The other is when they are under great psychological pressure and cannot endure the stress.
Lord Hairel’s arrogant and overbearing personality, and the family’s lofty reputation.
The recently decided marriage talks with another famous house.
Considering every circumstance, the reason the lady had come to reject food was not a matter of taste.
This was a matter of the mind.
* * *