Raw flesh, bone, entrails, blood.
Grease residue and leftover food in the dishwater basin, and a dishrag puffed up and bursting from hot water.
In a class-based society where keeping one’s hands clean was the very mark of dignity, the kitchen was a space ill-suited for nobility—at the very least.
All the more so given that, in this world as it was, one had to rub shoulders with rats and insects.
I set foot in a place that was practically a noble’s taboo.
‘Ingredients… they’re here.’
I lined up the ingredients I had brought and those already here.
Seaweed, abalone, cream… and so on.
‘All the ingredients are here.’
First, I soaked the dried, shriveled black seaweed in water.
The lifeless seaweed drank in the moisture and unfurled, regaining its natural blue-green hue.
While the seaweed was rehydrating, I reached for the abalone.
‘No need to put in the entrails.’
I slid a spoon between the muscle and the shell.
I separated the meat and set aside the removed entrails.
The entrails were too bitter for a new mother whose senses were currently heightened.
And their color and flavor didn’t suit a risotto, either.
Next, I coated a pan with cooking oil and heated it.
When the aroma of garlic rose, I added the squeezed seaweed and soaked rice.
I poured in broth and stirred slowly until the heavy cream and cheese melted.
Without rest, until the rice released its starch and the broth grew thick and creamy.
Finally, I plated the dish and neatly topped it with slices of abalone seared golden in butter.
With that, the risotto was complete.
“Please have a taste, my lady.”
I spooned a small portion of risotto into a little bowl and held it out to Freya.
She carefully picked up her spoon and hesitated before the plate.
Though it was colored white with cheese and cream, the deep blue-green hue peeking through here and there was clearly unfamiliar to her.
The fact that it was made with sea grass, and its potion-like color.
There was more than one element that made one reluctant to eat it.
But Freya soon squeezed her eyes shut and took a spoonful into her mouth.
“…!”
“How is it?”
“…It’s delicious.”
“That’s a relief.”
I nodded and began plating the portion for Mother.
As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound—so I channeled a fine-dining chef and paid attention to the plating as well.
While I was pouring my heart into the garnish, Freya spoke up.
“Brother.”
“Hm?”
“…Can you make this again?”
It was an unexpected request.
“You liked it that much?”
“Yes! It’s different from what I usually eat.”
Freya looked down at her completely emptied bowl.
“Everything else is full of pepper and oil, so this is the first time I’ve had something so gentle.”
Ah, that makes sense.
The cuisine of the nobles within the walls was generally a mess of spices.
Pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and so on.
By sprinkling spices that were difficult to cultivate within the walls with reckless abandon, they displayed their power.
Thanks to that, noble food left your tongue numb no matter what you ate, and your stomach was invariably swimming in grease. Indigestion came as a complimentary service.
To a child accustomed to such a diet, the gentle umami of cream and cheese would be…
Probably a strange yet shocking experience.
“All right. I’ll make it for you from time to time.”
“…Really?”
“But there’s a problem.”
“Yes?”
As I wiped my kitchen knife on a rag, I pointed toward the kitchen entrance.
My eyes met with the Head Butler, who stood frozen in the doorway.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be allowed back into the kitchen.”
***
I sometimes think there are so many taboos in this world.
A man must not encroach upon a midwife’s domain.
A child must not encroach upon an adult’s domain.
A doctor must not encroach upon a healer’s domain.
This is forbidden, that is forbidden.
At this point, I feel like it would be faster to make a separate list of what is actually allowed.
And today.
I had broken yet another taboo.
The taboo of a young master daring to dirty his hands in the kitchen.
“Young Master. Where on earth did you learn something like this…”
“I picked it up while working on Tanners’ Street. There were no cooks there.”
I answered the Head Butler’s question while cooling the still-steaming risotto.
For reference, Tanners’ Street is a euphemism for the red-light district.
I couldn’t exactly say I worked in a brothel quarter with Freya standing right next to me, now could I?
“Even so, for you to perform such lowly work…”
The Head Butler muttered as he looked at the dish I had made.
Cooking is lowly work?
The words nearly left my mouth, but I held my tongue.
‘It wouldn’t make a difference even if I said something.’
For chefs to be treated as artisans, something like an otherworldly French Revolution would have to happen.
It was only after such an event that chefs could hold their heads high before nobility.
But in a world where the Emperor could play rock-paper-scissors with a dragon, I doubted such a revolution would ever come.
So I simply took a different approach.
It wasn’t that cooking was not lowly, but that my heart while cooking was not lowly.
“Head Butler. This is medicinal food for Mother. Making medicine is not lowly work, is it?”
“That may be so, but…”
“If Mother can eat this and recover her strength, I would scrub the floors. Is that not the duty of a child?”
“…!”
The Head Butler’s pupils shook uncontrollably.
He bit his lip, unable to continue speaking, as if emotions were welling up from the very depths of his being.
Perhaps he was deeply moved.
‘Though the truth is, it was partly because I’m playing the role of a jack-of-all-trades, and partly because the food in this world is so terrible that I started cooking just to make something edible for myself.’
There was no need to reveal that truth.
Everyone has one or two exaggerated elements like that.
The Head Butler took the tray with trembling hands.
The moisture gathering in his eyes was surely not just my imagination.
“Please take it before it gets cold. Cream doesn’t taste as good when cool.”
“Y-Yes! I shall deliver it at once.”
The Head Butler quickly turned and left the kitchen.
His retreating figure was almost solemn.
Seeing him react like that made me feel as if I had prepared some final supper.
Freya, standing beside me, looked up at me with sparkling eyes.
“Brother… I think you’re truly amazing.”
I shrugged.
I sometimes think that receiving praise for something like this means the power of delusion is a bit too strong.
Still…
‘It’s better than being mocked.’
In the 21st century I came from, praise was more expensive than gold.
Even if you saved a dying person, it was treated merely as the natural duty of a technician who had to earn his keep.
If a doctor showed even the slightest interest in something other than papers or patients, what happened?
He’d be bombarded with rebukes like ‘Get some sleep while you can’ or ‘Someone’s full of himself.’
Not everyone was like that, you say?
But the malicious comments on the documentary I appeared in said otherwise.
They cursed at me for slacking off when I wasn’t even a professor yet.
They said all sorts of things to me, the precious prodigy of trauma surgery, that they would never have dared say to my face.
When I think back to that dry, barren world, this mindless praise seems a hundred, no, a thousand times better.
“Come on. Let’s go up. Freya, you want to eat by Mother’s side, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Then let’s pack your portion too. And mine as well.”
For reference, I had specifically left out the carrots from Freya’s bowl.
*
I headed toward the room carrying the tray.
Ah, not a tray—a serving tray.
My old habits from my previous life still hadn’t completely faded.
When I arrived before the door, Father was there.
He was pressing his face against the gap of the open door, watching Fried and Mother with honey-dripping eyes.
His hands, clasped behind his back, fidgeted incessantly, looking ready to dart inside at any moment and shower Fried with affection.
Unfortunately, even for Father, I couldn’t allow him to touch Fried whenever he pleased.
He was a premature baby whose immunity was already at rock bottom.
Any germs brought in from outside would be a fatal blow.
For at least the next hundred days, I had no choice but to restrict contact with the baby to the new mother and the doctor.
It may seem excessive, but in this era, this was the bare minimum required to keep a premature infant alive.
‘Maybe I should hang a cordon at the entrance until then.’
With that thought, I approached Father from behind.
“Have you come to see Fried?”
“Julian…!”
Father startled and turned around.
His eyes were red-rimmed.
Father looked at me with eyes brimming with emotion.
“I heard about what happened last night.”
“Ah, that? There was no problem at all. And there won’t be any going forward.”
After all, I’m here.
Who am I? The protagonist who will one day be called a saint.
Just then—
Crush!
Father hugged me with enough force to break my ribs.
I barely tossed the tray I was holding to the Head Butler behind me. Nice catch.
“Julian! Thank you. I’m truly grateful…”
Rough breaths reached my ears directly.
He squeezed my shoulder to compose himself, then turned his gaze to the Head Butler behind me.
“Send the carpenter I called this morning back. There will be no need for a coffin.”
He must have thought Fried wouldn’t survive the night.
In this bleak world, that was common sense, but it still stung a little. To think he didn’t trust me when the angel of the red-light district was watching over him.
…Can’t I get a title for this or something?
“And the wood prepared for the coffin… Yes. It would be better used as firewood to warm this room so our Fried and Linie don’t get cold.”
The Head Butler sniffled and nodded.
Goodness. Why is everyone like this?
The reactions are too burdensome.
But it wasn’t my first time experiencing something like this, so I took it in stride.
There were more than one or two people in the red-light district who had reacted this way.
Unlike the 21st century where survival was taken for granted, in this punk-genre world where death was the norm, perhaps such reactions were only natural.
“Julian. But what is this?”
A few minutes later.
Father, barely recovered from his emotional moment, belatedly discovered the food.
“Is this… cod? …No, it isn’t. It’s risotto. Did you ask the chef to make this?”
“I made it myself.”
“You?”
The Patriarch’s eyebrows furrowed.
Why does everyone react the same way?
It’s not like I cooked a person.
The Patriarch’s gaze hovered over the risotto for a long moment.
Deep blue-green seaweed cloaked in cream. Abalone glistening with butter.
It was surely an unfamiliar combination. He was probably thinking, why on earth put sea grass in a dish?
A brief silence passed, and then the Patriarch opened his mouth.
“…There are three bowls.”
The Patriarch murmured.
I nodded.
“Fried’s condition has stabilized, so I thought it would be nice for the family to eat together.”
“So you included Freya’s portion as well?”
“Yes. Mother, the Patriarch, and Freya. I thought it would be good for the three of you to have your meal.”
I handed the bowls to the Head Butler and approached Mother.
“Please leave Fried with me and go have your meal, Mother.”
Mother tried to rise from her bed but paused.
“Julian, what about you?”
“I’ll be fine. I have to watch Fried.”
“…”
Mother’s eyes shook in a strange way.
Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but in the end, she only nodded.
“All right, I understand. I’m counting on you, Julian.”
The Head Butler and the Head Maid brought a small table beside the bed.
It was a dining table prepared for the new mother who could not go down to the dining hall.
The Patriarch sat beside Mother Linie, and Freya took her place beside him.
I stepped back and went to the cradle.
Fried was still sleeping soundly.
I could see his tiny chest rising and falling steadily.
‘Sleep well, little one.’
Leaning against the rail of the cradle, I watched the Nihilite family have their meal.
Mother’s expression changed after taking a spoonful.
“…It’s delicious.”
Freya agreed with bright eyes.
“I had some earlier too, and it was really tasty. My tongue doesn’t go numb because there’s no pepper.”
“Indeed. This is the first time I’ve had something so gentle. This is truly nice.”
The Patriarch, too, lifted his spoon—toward the bowl especially laden with entrails.
One bite.
His expression stiffened for a moment before relaxing.
“It’s an unusual taste. Where did you learn this? This is…”
The Patriarch trailed off.
From context, he had probably swallowed the words “a taste no noble would know.”
He must have been worried it could be taken as an insult, implying I was unbefitting of a noble.
But I didn’t particularly mind.
“On Tanners’ Street. There were no cooks there, so I had to learn myself.”
“…”
The Patriarch stopped his spoon and looked at me.
And then—
“Head Maid.”
“Yes, Patriarch.”
“Bring one more bowl.”
“?”
The Patriarch gestured toward the table with his chin.
“A seat is empty.”
“Ah, I’ll be fine. I have to watch Fried—”
I tried to refuse the Patriarch’s offer.
But the Patriarch cut me off without letting me finish.
“Fried is asleep. Do you think he’ll sleep better if you starve? Or are you performing a fasting prayer?”
“That is not the case, but…”
“Then that’s settled. Bring it, Head Maid.”
“Understood, Patriarch.”
The Head Maid turned around.
I stared blankly at her retreating figure.