Eddie had been quite busy for the first time in a while.
He had to take care of a cute cat—though it was getting quite big now, and he needed to think about and create a new menu item.
Fortunately, the cat seemed to have found some stability, and he had decided on the new menu. All that remained was preparing to sell the new dish.
Even though Gerold was capable of almost anything, Eddie couldn’t expect him to magically create a dish he’d never seen before without instruction. So today’s task was for Eddie to make it himself first as a demonstration.
“Hmm.”
The carefully selected ingredients were laid out before Eddie’s eyes.
Currently, his inn’s reputation in the capital was probably something like “the strange inn that sells unique appetizers.” Or perhaps “the inn that gives out incredibly delicious milk for free,” or even “the stingy owner’s place that gives only ONE free milk, absolutely!”
In truth, Eddie’s cooking skills weren’t that impressive. He could cook at the level of a typical man living alone.
Occasionally, when he felt like cooking, he would search for recipes on “NerTube” that could be made with whatever ingredients he had at home.
-“You can skip it if you don’t have it~”
Believing that advice, he would omit numerous ingredients and make dishes his own way. While his bachelor cooking was edible enough for himself, it wasn’t quite at a sellable standard.
But what if he sold such dishes in a foreign land? What if dishes that were very common and unremarkable to him were special here?
Of course, there would be demand for that.
No, there had to be demand, because he was about to supply it.
With these thoughts, Eddie stepped out of the kitchen for a brief respite and spotted a large figure awkwardly standing in the middle of the staircase, looking down at the first floor.
“…!”
Ketron immediately stepped up one stair as soon as his eyes met Eddie’s. As if that would hide him.
…Did he really think he could hide? That huge frame?
Tilting his head momentarily, Eddie decided it didn’t matter and called out with a smile.
“Ket, perfect timing. I was about to make a new dish but I’m short on hands. Would you mind helping?”
In reality, the dish didn’t require extra help. But if Ketron was trying to break out of his own cage and come outside, Eddie was more than willing to help break that cage.
Ketron didn’t respond. But the fact that he had already left his room suggested he had developed the will to come out on his own. Eddie offered again.
“We can eat together when we’re done. What do you say?”
A suffocating silence briefly fell between them. Ketron’s face remained as stoic as ever, but there was a subtle change, like a single petal gently falling onto a calm lake.
Then he nodded.
* * *
Eddie had selected two dishes for the meal.
One was udon, and the other was soy sauce egg rice.
These might seem too common, but in Eddie’s view, these two menu items were master strokes.
Dishes that provided an appropriate amount of carbohydrates, were easy on the stomach, and had a price point and composition suitable for a breakfast menu.
Above all, even an amateur innkeeper like himself could make them delicious without much difficulty.
“Hmm, it would have been better with some fried tofu.”
Unfortunately, the udon in Eddie’s store was a simple version with just the broth, noodles, and a bit of fish cake. With a light sprinkling of shichimi togarashi on top.
Well, any deficiencies could be addressed later when the opportunity arose. You can’t expect to fill your stomach with the first spoonful, after all.
Ketron was looking around as if the kitchen itself was an unfamiliar place to him.
Having spent his childhood in back alleys, his early adulthood as a mercenary living outdoors, and then adventuring across the continent after obtaining the holy sword, it was no wonder that an ordinary kitchen wouldn’t be familiar to him.
“Ket, could you boil this?”
So Eddie assigned him relatively simple tasks, like boiling the udon noodles.
Since there were no alarm clocks to tell time in this place, Eddie gave Ketron an abstract mission.
“Just turn off the heat when the noodles are cooked enough.”
The problem was that for someone who had barely cooked in his life—and whose extent of cooking was tearing up jerky and stirring it into thin soup—properly cooking noodles was an extremely difficult order.
However, since Eddie assigned the task so naturally, as if it wasn’t difficult at all and as if there was no way Ketron couldn’t handle something so simple, Ketron reluctantly accepted the udon noodles, unable to admit he couldn’t do it.
“…”
Awkwardly holding the thick, plump noodles that were thicker than regular ones, Ketron clumsily placed them into the pot. After pouring in water and fumbling around for a moment, he finally lit the fire to boil the noodles.
In the meantime, Eddie was setting up small side dishes and cooking rice. Fortunately, his store had uncooked rice, so it was possible to cook the rice from scratch.
Of course, if he were to actually sell the dishes, he would mostly use instant rice for convenience, but since this was also preparing their own meal, he wanted to cook the rice himself if possible.
Hmm, for a side dish in place of kimchi, would pickled radish or pickled wild chives be better? Plus a salad. And one dessert. Would that be enough? It still seemed too simple—perhaps adding a couple pieces of seasoned grilled beef patties would be good.
As Eddie was preparing the full spread and pondering these questions, he suddenly looked over to see what Ketron was doing. Ketron was staring into the pot with an extremely serious expression.
The udon noodles had become not just plump but so bloated they seemed to be dissolving in the water.
“…Ket?”
When he turned to look at Eddie’s call, his face showed no recognition of what he’d done wrong.
“Are you trying to cook the noodles more?”
As if he’d been waiting for that question, Ketron removed the pot from the heat. When he poured out the water, the noodles, so overcooked they seemed to have dissolved, flowed away with the cloudy water.
The remaining noodles were so overcooked that they had broken into pieces, looking more like dough flakes than noodles.
“…”
“…”
At this point, even Ketron seemed to realize something had gone wrong, as he glanced at Eddie’s expression.
After a brief silence, Eddie soon broke into a bright smile.
“I guess Ket likes his noodles well-done.”
“Uh, well…”
Ketron couldn’t properly respond. A preference for how cooked noodles should be? There was no way he had such a preference. Ketron was the type who would eat anything as long as it was edible.
He felt slightly deflated. He realized he had failed at a task that appeared simple at first glance.
The man who had rolled through countless battlefields might succeed at the insane mission of defeating the Demon King, but he was a man who failed at properly cooking udon noodles.
Eddie saw the invisible ears on top of Ketron’s head drooping. He hastily spoke up.
“I prefer them a bit firm. Could you make another batch, cooking them a little less?”
As he said this, Eddie opened another package from the pile of udon noodles he had brought and handed it to him. Ketron filled another pot with water and began boiling the noodles again.
“You’re good at measuring water, huh?”
Eddie praised him as he watched. In truth, whether there was too much or too little water didn’t really matter for cooking noodles.
This time, when Ketron was about to remove the pot while the noodles were barely cooked, Eddie, who had been watching closely, quickly intervened.
“I, uh, prefer them a bit more cooked. That’s my taste.”
So Ketron waited a bit longer. Anxious, uneasy glances were directed at Eddie from time to time. Is this right? Is this enough? That was the general message in his looks.
Eddie intervened at the appropriate moment.
“That should be good enough.”
At those words, Ketron quickly removed the pot and drained the water into the sink. Seeing the plump, properly cooked noodles glistening, Eddie lavished praise on him.
“You’ve cooked them perfectly. Exactly how I like them. Thank you, Ket.”
Meanwhile, Eddie had finished cooking the rice and completed the full spread. With a smiling face, he mixed the udon sauce with hot water. He transferred the noodles Ketron had cooked one by one and sprinkled some shichimi togarashi on top, completing a respectable-looking udon.
“Shall we eat then?”
The two moved the food to the table and set up the meal. While Eddie disappeared to call Gerold, Ketron quietly observed the spread Eddie had prepared.
Two black sauce bottles with indecipherable pictures and letters, two raw eggs, two fried eggs, an unidentifiable salad, an equally unidentifiable yellow thing, a meat dish that looked like meat but in a shape Ketron had never seen before, and a large pile of rice.
And the two bowls of udon they had made together. One had perfectly cooked, chewy noodles, while the other had split noodles floating in the broth, but they were udon nonetheless.
It was quite an elaborate meal for three people. Even at a glance, it looked like enough for six.
…Does he eat more than he looks like he would?
Tilting his head in confusion, Ketron quietly took his seat in front of the food.