I put the gold coin I’d received from Kariel into a separate pouch.
It shone so brightly I felt uneasy putting it in the stall’s cash box.
It wasn’t something that needed to be aged, and a drink could be made quickly.
“Please wait just a moment. It’ll be out soon.”
“Hm? Sure. Isilla, shall we do it again tonight?”
“Mmm... I’m kind of tired. Just once?”
Leaving behind a conversation that smelled suspiciously of lilies, I stepped into the corner of the stall.
And then I opened up the thing I hadn’t used in a while. [Mana Market].
「Apple」
「Peach」
「Grape」
「Milk」
▼
There was no need to use any other fruit. Peach would be enough.
If there were another option, it’d be pineapple, but I hadn’t even seen one here yet.
I exchanged for peaches and milk through [Mana Market].
Swaaah—
A small amount of mana drained away along with the familiar sensation.
It would be a disaster if I suddenly collapsed like last time, so I was using it while regulating myself as much as possible.
Soon, soft peaches overflowing with a sweet scent,
and a bucket of milk were exchanged before my eyes.
I gathered them up as if they were ingredients I’d had from the start and came back out front.
I could use the sugar I already had, and now the other ingredient I needed was...
“Lady Eilenna.”
“Hm? What is it, Jinwoo?”
“Isilla.”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Please become a food processor and a refrigerator.”
Bread dough, mayonnaise, and the like—I could somehow handle those with my own strength.
But the work of grinding peaches together with milk until they lost all form... that was impossible with human strength.
So I needed spirit magic, the bio-technology of another world.
Among them, I needed to borrow the Wind Cutter of a wind spirit.
My [Basic Spirit Arts] weren’t as proficient as Eilenna’s, so I couldn’t handle spirits to that degree.
The reason I asked Isilla to be the refrigerator was the same.
The reason I didn’t ask Eilenna to do everything was because I felt bad.
And Isilla, you didn’t have anything to do right now anyway.
“Uh... you want me to grind all this together?”
“Yes. Would it be difficult?”
“No. It’s not difficult. It’ll be done quickly.”
Whirrrrr—!
As if she couldn’t even guess what I was trying to make, Eilenna gave me a dubious look.
Still, she did as asked and raised her mana, grinding the peaches, milk, and sugar evenly together.
The original recipe used peach purée, not fresh peaches.
Or at the very least, it was better to use something preserved like canned peaches.
‘But what am I supposed to do when I don’t have any?’
Everything depends on the state of your wallet.
And even if it was made with fresh peaches, only the drink’s texture would change; the taste would be similar.
I scooped up a little of the well-ground drink with a spoon and tasted it.
As expected of [Mana Market], which supplied only the finest ingredients.
I still had no idea what its true identity was, but when it came to the quality of the ingredients, well, well.
The products of this otherworldly market couldn’t compare.
With peaches this sweet, there was no need to add any more sugar.
But... the texture of the fresh peaches bothered me more than I expected.
If the original CoolX drink was smooth with nothing catching in your throat, going down gulp after gulp,
then my drink had a texture that made you chew slightly.
In that case, it’d be better to just change course altogether.
“Isilla, can you make some ice?”
“What? Ice? Ah, you’re making fun of me right now, aren’t you?!”
“No, seriously. Make just a little and put it in here. I’ll make you something tasty.”
“Hmmm... All right.”
Plop—
Large chunks of ice dove into the thick drink.
“Lady Eilenna. Please, one more time.”
“This recipe is bizarre again. All right.”
And after grinding it once more with bio-technology,
a drink slightly different from CoolX, something closer to fresh peach juice, was born.
Kang Jinwoo-style peach smoothie was complete.
Just then, the tteokbokki gave off an intense presence, announcing that it was finished cooking.
It’d be best to hand it over together and have them taste it right away.
The esophagus and stomach, heated up to the fullest by the heat and spiciness of the tteokbokki.
And then evolving that with a cold, smooth peach smoothie, ground up with ice and all?
To exaggerate a bit, this was truly...
‘A taste that’ll wipe everyone out. Deathly delicious.’
It was like turning on the air conditioner and covering yourself with a blanket.
An ultimate feeling that someone who hadn’t tried it could never understand.
I portioned the tteokbokki and peach smoothie into small cups and handed them out to everyone.
“Now, first eat ‘that’ while it’s hot, then drink the beverage right away.”
“Hm, you really whip things up the moment I ask. This is something I’ve never seen before again.”
“The sweet and gentle scent is so nice. So you can make drinks like this by grinding ice together with it...”
“Thanks, Jinwoo! It looks so delicious...”
Eilenna ate daintily, Kariel ate heartily, and Isilla ate normally.
The three women each ate the tteokbokki in their own way.
Then, the moment they drank the peach smoothie at the same time,
Isilla expressed her happiness with her whole body, wiggling on tiptoe as if it were too delicious.
Eilenna’s ears perked up—no, stood straight up—and her clear blue eyes widened into circles.
And Kariel stared down the peach smoothie with eyes that said, ‘This little thing is interesting, isn’t it?’
It seemed there was no problem with the taste or the pairing.
Well, spicy food with a fruit-based milk smoothie. How could that fail?
An addictive spiciness that burned deep into the root of the tongue, yet couldn’t be stopped.
Sometimes you ate it with broth, with boiled eggs, with fish cakes, but once you passed a certain point, there was definitely a stage where it became too much.
What you needed at a time like that was this smooth, cool fruit drink.
Personally, in terms of compatibility with Korean snack-bar food, wasn’t this the one battle where cola suffered its only defeat?
“Khh... This is truly exquisite. It tastes like sleeping under a soft blanket with a cooling artifact running on a tropical night.”
“Oh, right! That’s exactly what I felt too.”
“Mmmgh..!! My head is aching, but it’s so sweet that I keep drinking..! The other elves would like this too!”
A cooling artifact and a blanket.
Whether in another world or on Earth, people lived the same way after all.
Still, if that was a luxury only the wealthy Princess Kariel could enjoy, this drink was different.
At the very least, you could experience that paradise more cheaply than a cooling artifact or the microfiber blankets used in the imperial palace.
While Kariel and Isilla were absorbed in the peach smoothie,
I wrapped up the finished tteokbokki securely and handed it to them.
“Be careful carrying it. If the sauce gets on your clothes, it won’t come out easily.”
“Thanks. Can you put the drink in here?”
“Huh, a tumbler?”
Did princesses of another world carry tumblers around?
I’d been troubled because I didn’t have a suitable way to package the drink, so it was convenient.
“Tumbler... I don’t know what that is. This is an artifact specially made for me. When I use fire magic, I heat up a lot, so if I don’t have cold water, it’s hard to endure.”
“Ah, that kind of trouble. Isilla, are you fine?”
“Yes. Even when I use a lot of ice magic, I don’t get terribly cold or shivery like someone else!”
Isilla said it as if she wanted the red-haired woman beside her to hear.
At that, Kariel kept fondling the cup of still-cold peach smoothie.
Swoop—
Then she launched a surprise attack, slipping her chilled hand down Isilla’s back.
“H-Hiyaaak?!!”
“Hahaha! Still, it seems cold is hard for you to endure, Isilla?”
“Y-you...!”
It was the kind of prank close friends would pull on each other.
While appreciating Isilla’s generous reaction, I filled the artifact canteen to the brim with peach smoothie.
“Here is your peach smoothie.”
“Mm, thanks. Then I suppose we should get going.”
“Kariel, you... be ready once we get back to the dorm!”
“Oh my, how scary. As if you don’t always end up flat on your back before me.”
And so, just as when they arrived, the two bickered all the way back to the dormitory.
The weather was slowly getting hotter, so should I try selling peach smoothies as a menu item too?
Judging from the reaction just now, it didn’t seem likely to fail, and it was perfect for selling as a single drink item.
Ice was difficult to obtain without magic, so perhaps I should maintain a low temperature with spirit arts instead.
You know the machines that were always set up in front of snack shops or trampolines. The bouncy places.
The ones that spun the drink round and round inside so it didn’t freeze solid, keeping it in a slushie state.
If I just maintained a low temperature like that and stirred the drink periodically myself, wouldn’t that work?
But no matter how I did it, Eilenna would have to suffer more than me.
Before opening, she’d have to grind a huge amount with Wind Cutter, then keep it cool with spirit arts.
Now that I was buying ingredients from the market, my reliance on [Mana Market] had gone down, but that didn’t mean there was no mana consumption.
If I handled fire and cold with [Basic Spirit Arts] and also exchanged for ingredients through [Mana Market] from time to time, there was a chance I might collapse again.
“Hehe.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“No, just. It feels new.”
As I was absorbed in thinking about expanding the menu, Eilenna smiled loosely beside me.
New? What was new?
Even though she saw food she’d never seen before every time, was it amazing that something new like the peach smoothie had appeared?
“I was helping you build the hardtack factory, Jinwoo, and then we suddenly decided to come to the capital, but every single day has been new. I, who used to live buried away in Nuardel, even met an imperial princess.”
Mm... from Eilenna’s perspective as an elf, it was understandable that she’d feel that way.
But an imperial princess was new to me too. Even for humans, she was someone ordinary people could hardly meet.
I held back my reply because it seemed Eilenna hadn’t finished speaking.
“Everything is new, and with your food added on top of that, Jinwoo, every day feels happy. It is a bit busy, though.”
“Lady Eilenna...”
Eilenna looked genuinely happy, and I felt a lump rise in my throat too.
Right. We should only be busy enough to savor daily life. What good was it to be so busy we couldn’t catch our breath?
I pushed aside the menu expansion plan I’d been considering.
When the employee working with me said something that moving,
I couldn’t exactly respond, ‘Mm, yes, yes. Let’s make things a little newer,’ and throw more work at her.
Thinking about it, there wasn’t much reason to stay at the academy longer either.
Around next month’s hardtack delivery date, we should head back up to Silbaerin or something.
If we hurried, we could leave as soon as tomorrow... but there was no need to rush that much either.
For now, I would focus on the daily life in the capital that had been wholly given to me, on running the shop, and on the people here.
After making that resolution, I enjoyed my post-work daily life with Eilenna, and a few days later.
Click, click, click—
As usual, I was closing up the shop after finishing the afternoon business when I heard a large number of footsteps.
Startled by the sudden sound, I turned around.
“E-excuse me.”
“Yes?”
There were young ladies wearing dresses—sky blue here, dark reddish berry there, and orange over there.
In other words...
A group of students who suited the term “noble young ladies” more than anyone else had come to the stall.
Until now, whenever students came, they’d all been wearing uniforms. This was the first time kids had shown up fully decked out in casual clothes like this.
Just as I was about to ask their purpose in confusion, the sky-blue young lady at the very front beat me to it.
“Is this the place that sells ‘that thing’ that, when used, makes you drenched all over with sweat and makes your whole body not just warm, but hot...?”
“Fuck no.”
“Hieek...”
It seemed another strange rumor had spread somewhere.
The way she said it, that sounded like an aphrodisiac.
Our shop was a wholesome and exemplary establishment that sold only food that had passed hygiene and quality inspection.
Though the inspection standards were my own subjective judgment.
In any case, it seemed there had been some misunderstanding.
Even as I felt dizzy from my blood pressure rapidly rising, I steadied myself.
My stall, where I was the owner.
If I didn’t clear up the misunderstanding... who would?