All the spectators were gathered.
I brought out the dough I’d left to proof earlier.
Thanks to the yeast that had gone in with it, the dough had puffed up soft and springy.
When I touched its bloated surface, I could feel the cool gases trapped inside pressing back with a soft *poof*.
After dusting the counter heavily with flour so the dough wouldn’t stick, I set it down.
And then,
*Squish—thud!*
I pressed my fist mercilessly into the center of the round dough.
The dough, unable to resist the force, spread out wide.
Only then did it take on a shape that brought to mind pizza ‘dough.’
I pressed down firmly all along the edges too, where the dough had bunched up from the force in the center.
Once that rough stretching was done,
as a finishing touch, I spread it out completely thin.
I grabbed the edge of the dough with both hands like I was gripping a steering wheel.
With the feeling of tossing the portion in my left hand over to my right,
I moved my hands quickly.
*Swoosh—*
*Swish-swish-swish—!*
Following my movements, centrifugal force helped the pizza dough spread out evenly.
It might look too thin now, but it would puff up a little as it baked.
Taking that into account, the dough was finished at just the right thickness.
My technique, to put it nicely, was far from masterful.
But these were elves for whom baking meant nothing more than hard Elskit and coarse wheat bread.
To them, my hand movements looked like the skill of a top-class artisan.
“Wow… Jinwoo, I didn’t know you could do that too.”
“It’s amazing, like a performance!”
“Hmph. Not bad handiwork.”
Even if their voices had all been identical, I could have guessed the speaker from their tone and words alone.
While Iseria, Beilla, and Seiran each threw in a comment, only Ellioren remained silent.
Mouth shut tight, standing stock-still, eyes fixed solely on my fingertips.
Ellioren’s gaze was so serious that I ended up getting fired up too.
*If you look at me like that, I have no choice but to make it.*
The most delicious pizza of my life.
I didn’t bother replying to their words.
Instead, I showed them through my actions.
The widely spread, snow-white dough held boundless potential.
I took a red step onto that canvas.
*Splurt—*
*Splosh—!*
Tomato sauce that struck the dough as intensely as its red color.
Small chunks of tomato and minced onions were visible here and there.
Because they’d been sautéed for ages as if reduced, those chunks were pure umami.
Flavor components condensed to the very brink of burning, with no more moisture left to evaporate.
The irregularly scattered umami bombs
would make the pizza even more delicious to eat.
The dough filled with tomato sauce was like a red sun.
Over that bewitching form, I clumsily scooped the core ingredient of this dish, obtained from the elf market.
Moist and chewy mozzarella cheese.
It was so springy that I could feel its texture without even tasting it.
“My lady, what Sir Jinwoo is putting on now is tofu, right? It looks delicious!”
“Hmm… I don’t think so. I saw some elf selling that at the market; I think it’s cheese?”
“Ah, cheese…”
Beilla had mistaken the cheese for tofu based solely on its white, lumpy appearance.
And who could blame her? If you actually replaced the tofu in tofu kimchi with mozzarella, it’d be identical.
Beilla seemed openly disappointed, perhaps not liking cheese very much.
Seiran and Iseria didn’t look much different.
Ellioren was still looking at me without a word.
Watching their reactions, I thought to myself,
*Crazy taste-illiterate elves…*
Elves who had built walls between themselves and cooking.
Still, there was one elf uncle at the market who made cheese.
Interested, I bought some cheese and asked him this and that.
The elf uncle said he’d looked after mountain goats and goats in the mountain range since long ago.
Then one day,
after carrying squeezed milk around all day,
he found that it had curdled.
From that, he became absorbed in cheese-making.
“Sir, please send payment to Lady Beilla of the Sildiel household…”
“No, just take it.”
“Huh?”
“That cheese would be happier going to someone who knows its worth.”
The elf uncle’s eyes looked somehow sad as he said that.
Had he spent too long opening his eyes alone among those crude palates?
It was the lonely gaze of someone who had taken the red pill alone, unable to be understood.
*I shall open these elves’ eyes,*
*so suffer no longer from now on.*
I spread the mozzarella cheese evenly by eye, then sprinkled plenty of fresh basil leaves.
The fragrance of basil mingling with the sweet, savory tomato sauce.
Now all that was left was to bake it.
I carefully lifted the still-floppy pizza
and placed it into the preheated oven.
*At this rate… seven minutes.*
There was no need to bake it long; just enough for the dough to crisp and the cheese to melt.
The prep was bothersome, but adding toppings and baking took fifteen minutes at most.
There was a reason it was called fast food.
*Sizzzzzle—…*
The mozzarella cheese bubbling and melting from the oven’s heat.
The dough baking underneath, and the tomato sauce heating to a boil.
The aromas that had been lukewarm before baking
began gathering together instantly under the heat.
Hmm, it was a smell that’d make you turn around on the street...
But I couldn’t hear any fuss from the elves.
I glanced toward the table.
*Ah, so they’re not staying quiet—they can’t speak.*
With faintly bloodshot green eyes flashing as if having reached their limit,
Iseria was sniffing the air at least three times a second.
“*Sniff, sniff!* *Sniff…* *Haaah!*”
“*Hurk, hurk…*”
“Beilla, stop making… *hnngh*… weird sounds…”
Beilla was panting, so intoxicated by the aroma that she couldn’t exhale properly.
Seiran, too, was pretending not to, but pumping air deep into her lungs.
*Is Ellioren still unresponsive?*
It’s a bit awkward to say, but… I heard Ellioren is almost 300 years old.
At that age, there might definitely be problems with his sense of taste or smell.
Ellioren had maintained a consistently expressionless face from start to finish.
Now it seemed like he was sniffing slightly from time to time, but it felt more unconscious than anything.
Well, it can’t be helped.
As long as he eats it, there’s no problem.
Right on time, as the seven minutes passed, the pizza revealed its beautiful form.
If this tastes bad… I don’t know what to say.
That wouldn’t be a situation to get angry about anymore; it’d be one to feel pity.
I cut the pizza into four equal pieces for easy eating.
This was Italian pizza, so the dough wasn’t very big to begin with, making quarters appropriate.
*Crunch, crunch—*
With every path of the knife, the pizza dough produced a crazed crispness.
To that sound, Ellioren’s gaze wavered faintly.
“Thank you for waiting.”
*Clatter—*
Soon, I served the pizza at the table.
My cooking, which you wanted so badly you kidnapped me for it.
And simultaneously, something to enlighten the blind elves.
“This is Margherita pizza.”
Try it once.
The true delicacy of cooking, which you neglected because you thought it unnecessary.
***
Ellioren was apathetic.
Not in the sense that he hid his emotions or lacked consideration.
He was literally an apathetic elf.
Ellioren had lived roughly 300 years,
accumulating vast knowledge and all manner of experiences.
What that time taught him was to live faithfully in the present.
Therefore, Ellioren smiled when happy and shed tears when sad.
But paradoxically, after living 300 years… novelty gradually faded.
Happy things don’t end after one time, and sad things continue throughout life, or so they say.
But when that repeats endlessly, any intelligent being can’t help but tire of it.
Food was the same.
In his youth, Ellioren had traveled the human world, just like his daughter.
He had wandered many nations and tasted diverse foods.
But the more he ate, the more a doubt nagged at him.
*‘Hmm, is that all?’*
No matter how diverse the cuisine existed, just as they say there is nothing new under the sun.
Longevity piled up and dulled his gustatory stimulation.
To the point that he eventually came to think the elves’ cooking method was the best.
Elven cooking might look terrible and careless at a glance,
but Ellioren didn’t think so.
It had simply developed to suit the race’s characteristics.
Ingredients cultivated by the grace of the World Tree.
Not damaging the original taste of those ingredients as much as possible, and absorbing nutrients completely.
That was the etiquette-observing cooking method the elves had devised.
But then, what is this now?
“Pizza? Is it the same kind as the jeon he made before..? It feels different somehow..”
“Hieek. It’s different from jeon. It’s a fragrant quality of an entirely different level…”
Iseria and Beilla, who had tasted Gang Jinwoo’s food before, muttered.
If even they, who had experienced his cooking many times, didn’t know, then there was no way for him to know.
Even so, Ellioren… felt a strange familiarity.
From the moment Gang Jinwoo started cooking, Ellioren had watched him in silence.
Not to test him, nor because he suspected he might play tricks with the food.
Ingredients the elves commonly used, worn to the point of being sickening.
He simply couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of him cooking those ingredients in forms he’d never seen before, pouring his heart into it.
And the resulting creation, called ‘Margherita pizza,’ was it?
Ellioren carefully picked up the pizza by hand.
The dry warmth unique to baked wheat, transmitted through his fingertips.
The blessings of the World Tree, neatly nestled upon the light, crispy dough.
Since cheese is also a type of protein, it displayed a golden Maillard reaction.
The savory fragrance of the cheese pierced straight to his nasal membranes.
Enveloped in the cheese’s dominant aroma,
Ellioren took a bite.
*Crunch—!*
His upper teeth met with the cheese’s chewiness,
while his lower teeth distinctly felt the dough’s crispness.
*Chew, chew—*
Simple flavors mixing in his mouth the more he chewed.
But the synergistic effect of the simple ingredients exceeded Ellioren’s expectations.
“Huh, hgh.”
The tomato sauce and basil, which had been pressing and concentrating their aroma beneath the cheese.
Ellioren’s teeth broke the cheese’s seal.
*Whoaaaash—!*
*‘Suddenly, where is this freshness coming from?’*
The richness of the cheese and the heartiness of the bread had clearly been dominant.
It was a taste that should have grown somewhat heavy as he ate.
Yet the sweet-and-sour tomato sauce sprang out like an ambush.
The cool, refreshing fragrance of basil gave the pizza wings.
A taste soaring boldly high, fearless of the heavens.
Ellioren couldn’t come to his senses from that flavor.
“Huff, hgh!”
Ellioren ravenously bit into the pizza from the tip.
Before he knew it, only the edge, the crust, remained.
Hands fluttering with impatience to eat the next slice quickly,
he absentmindedly put the darkened crust into his mouth.
And in that moment,
*Crackle, crackle—!*
The shatteringly crispy crust broke apart intensely in his mouth.
It was a crispness on a level incomparable to when he ate the dough earlier.
The part made solely of bread.
So he had thought the taste would be lacking, but it wasn’t at all.
The heaviness of the carbohydrates, and the savory aroma of the flour singed black here and there from receiving intense heat.
Saliva stimulated by the sourness of the cheese and tomato sauce
came out to welcome the bread-only crust.
Chewing thoroughly like that, enjoying the true taste of the dough to the fullest,
*‘My tongue, my tongue is craving it. The saltiness of the cheese and the sourness of the tomato.’*
Ellioren could see himself craving tomato and cheese once more.
He forgot even his 300 years of life and instinctively shoved the food before him into his mouth.
The addictive spiral of pizza, repeating without stop.
The only thing that could break that chain,
“Huh?”
was the emptiness of the plate that had become bare at some point.