Several days passed.
Nothing much had happened since Lady Rosaria left the restaurant.
Aris was still wiping down the tables,
and I was still sitting at the counter, sipping herbal tea.
There were no customers today either.
It was a daily life in which nothing in particular had changed.
“Manager~ Should I water the flowerpots today too?”
“When I tell you to later.”
Aris stopped mopping and looked out the window.
It was a sunny day.
Just as I was thinking it was about time to water the herb pots on the rooftop,
the loud clatter of a carriage and heavy footsteps suddenly came from outside.
Jingle— jingle—
Then the restaurant door opened.
It would have been nice if it were a customer, but if my guess was right, it probably wasn’t.
Sure enough, it was a familiar face.
Lord Hairel.
This time, he hadn’t brought a swarm of guards.
Instead, two men who looked like heavily armed mercenaries stood at his side.
“Welcome~!”
Aris greeted him brightly,
but Lord Hairel didn’t even glance at her and walked straight up to the counter.
His expression was stiff.
Compared to the last time he came, his hostility was even more blatant.
“Klaus.”
He opened his mouth.
“Yes.”
“You know where my little sister is, don’t you?”
I looked at him for a moment, then answered calmly.
“I don’t.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Lord Hairel placed a hand on the counter and leaned forward.
“After the two of you had that suspicious conversation here, my sister disappeared. You’re the only one I can think of.”
“All I did was take Lady Rosaria’s food order.”
I shrugged.
“I was waiting for her to visit again, but she never came.”
Lord Hairel’s eyes narrowed.
“Are you mocking me right now?”
“No. I’m telling you the truth.”
Silence passed for a moment.
Lord Hairel glared at me in stillness,
then finally spoke in a low, firm voice.
“Remember this. If you lured Rosaria away, I won’t let you off even if Irit is backing you.”
After saying that, Lord Hairel ground his teeth and turned away.
Right now, he had nothing but suspicion.
Even Lord Hairel couldn’t push me any further without a shred of evidence.
Huffing with anger, Lord Hairel left the restaurant with the two mercenaries.
Bang! The door slammed shut with a loud sound.
“He could’ve closed the door a little more gently.”
It’s not like he’d compensate me if it broke—
At that moment, Aris, who had been watching the carriage recede through the window with a frightened face, asked me,
“Manager…… are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“That was scary.”
“What’s there to be scared of?”
In any case, Lord Hairel was all bark,
and he had neither the ability to find evidence nor the power to harm me.
I picked up my herbal tea again.
The tea had already gone cold.
* * *
A few more days passed after that.
As expected, Lord Hairel did not come again.
My quiet everyday life returned.
I had Aris pull weeds in the vegetable garden,
and I watered the herb pots on the rooftop.
It was a day with good sunlight, so the herbs were in fine condition.
In particular, the dragonblood herb I had planted recently was growing quite sturdily.
“Manager~! There are too many weeds~!”
“That’s why I told you to pull them.”
“By myself?!”
“Then should I, the manager, do it while I have an employee?”
From below came Aris’s groan, laced with resentment.
She wasn’t even actually having a hard time, so why did she whine like that?
I pretended not to hear and tilted the watering can.
After watering the pots, I looked down at Aris waging war against the weeds from the rooftop,
and before I knew it, a smile had formed on my face.
This sort of thing isn’t bad either.
My choice to retire was the right one.
That thought crossed my mind anew.
Back when I was an adventurer, I never had this kind of leisure.
Every day, I moved somewhere, fought, then moved again.
There were plenty of conflicts with people over commission-related issues,
and if I didn’t move quickly, other adventurer parties would get the jump on me.
Compared to that, my current daily life was peaceful to an almost excessive degree.
Taking both my previous life and this one together,
I wondered if, for the first time, I had finally found the life I had truly wanted.
* * *
That afternoon, the newspaper delivery arrived.
The Early Bird Newspaper, said to be the best news agency on the continent.
Because the restaurant was practically in the middle of nowhere, it was the very paper I paid extra to subscribe to.
The front page carried an article about the disappearance of the Doll Lady.
[Lady Rosaria of the Hildenburg ducal family disappears ahead of her wedding. What of relations with the Enstark family?]
[Did the lady hide herself of her own accord? A look into her intended marriage partner, Hans Enstark.]
[Hildenburg family does not rule out the possibility that Lady Rosaria was abducted.]
Beside the article was a portrait of Rosaria.
I skimmed the article once, then turned the page.
She’s probably doing fine.
As long as Irit had taken charge of that side, there was no need to worry.
As I continued flipping through the newspaper,
a newly created section caught my eye.
[New Section in the Early Bird Newspaper! Today’s Gourmet!]
The subtitle read as follows.
[We introduce fine restaurants personally visited and verified by Moshul, the greatest gourmet in the royal capital. We are accepting applications for restaurant features.]
Next to the section introduction was a profile of the gourmet Moshul.
Forty years of experience as a gourmet.
Former owner of Cantabile, once one of the finest restaurants in the royal capital, now closed.
Menu consultant for numerous famous restaurants.
His nickname was “the Tongue of God,” and it was said that he could identify the ingredients and cooking methods of dishes he tasted with astonishing accuracy.
If he visited a place even once and acknowledged it as delicious,
its fame would spread across the entire continent, turning it into an immensely popular restaurant.
Since I had lived in this world with an interest in cooking,
I had at least heard his name before.
However, I had never worked at a famous restaurant,
and since I had spent most of my time as an adventurer while cooking whenever I found the chance, I had never had occasion to meet him.
“Today’s Gourmet…… huh.”
It was an interesting section.
This was why I couldn’t cancel my subscription to the Early Bird Newspaper.
After reading through Moshul’s introduction,
I looked below and found a message from the editorial department written in tiny print.
[It has been one year since we planned this section, yet we have not even been able to begin. This is because there has been no restaurant that satisfied Mr. Moshul. The famous establishments our editorial department found could not meet Mr. Moshul’s standards. Accordingly, we have decided to open applications to the public. To all restaurant owners across the continent, if you are confident you can satisfy Mr. Moshul, please send us a letter. You may be the one to enjoy the honor of becoming the first restaurant featured in Today’s Gourmet!]
A message from the editorial department, written in tiny print to avoid using too much space on the page.
For some reason, I could feel the desperation of the editorial department.
It seemed that even though a year had passed since they planned the section, they still hadn’t managed to introduce a single restaurant.
The concept of the section itself was to introduce new restaurants guaranteed by the gourmet Moshul,
but since no one had met his standards, they appeared to be in trouble.
This Moshul person is rather unusual too.
No matter how famous he is for being a picky gourmet,
he could just introduce a place as long as its food was reasonably good.
Maybe he was being especially strict because it was a section bearing his name in a newspaper distributed across the entire continent.
At that rate, I thought it was only a matter of time before the section was discontinued without a single restaurant ever being featured.
For some reason, it interested me.
No doubt, once they saw the section, renowned restaurants from all over the continent would send in letters.
All to claim the title of the first restaurant featured in Today’s Gourmet, acknowledged by the gourmet Moshul.
Once a restaurant was featured, it seemed certain that customers from every region would flock to it and make it a fortune.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine how many applicants there would be.
But I didn’t particularly need to advertise my shop.
In fact, it would be troublesome if the advertising worked too well and people came swarming in.
Because then this peaceful daily life of mine would be shattered.
Even so, for a long while, I couldn’t take my eyes off the Today’s Gourmet section.
I hated the thought of having too many customers,
but apart from that, there was my pride as a chef that wanted to challenge Moshul, whom no one had managed to satisfy.
“Aris.”
“Yees~?”
“Bring me some paper and a pen.”
“Yes!”
I folded the newspaper aside
and spread out the paper Aris brought me.
I wrote a brief introduction of the restaurant.
Gourmet Restaurant Slow.
Its location was a full day by carriage from the royal capital.
The roads were rough, and monsters appeared, so please note that even coming here was not easy.
There was no fixed menu.
After making a reservation, a return visit according to the scheduled date was required.
No ordinary customers accepted.
Instead, whatever dish the guest desired would be made,
and I was confident I could satisfy any guest without fail.
That was all.
There was no need to write at length.
I placed it in an envelope and wrote the address of the Early Bird Newspaper.
I’ll send it the next time I go to the market to look at ingredients.
“What did you write?”
Aris asked me with eyes full of curiosity.
“A letter to the newspaper.”
“Wow~! Are we going to appear in the newspaper?!”
“I’m just doing it once for fun.”
There would easily be several thousand applicants,
so a restaurant that felt not merely peculiar but downright bizarre would never be chosen.
If, by some chance, it was chosen and Moshul came to visit……
That would be interesting in its own way.
I put the letter to be sent to the newspaper into the envelope,
then opened the next page of the newspaper and began to read.
* * *