by CHIROLU
“Y-yeah...”
It was rare for Latina to be so blunt and speak so firmly. Dale pulled back the hand he’d been reaching out and gave a single nod.
“***, ********” Latina ordered in a somewhat forceful tone, having faced the lady-in-waiting near the entrance to the room. Dale guessed that the woman was receiving the same instructions that he had been given, not to touch the containers.
“**”
“**********”
Latina’s gaze remained fixed on the woman, and her tone was clearly threatening. She was kind by nature, so it was rare to hear her address someone that way.
Dale thought for a moment, before giving a satisfied nod.
It’s because it’s food-related...
The conclusion he had come to seemed ridiculous.
Latina firmly sealed the containers, then devoted herself to observation. She frequently used magic to adjust their temperature, seemingly very meticulous about the process.
From Dale’s perspective, it was bizarre seeing those containers lined up in a corner of the elegant villa.
For the devil ladies-in-waiting, these actions were even more incomprehensible. For better or worse, Dale had grown used to Latina’s occasional astounding actions. The glances the ladies-in-waiting shared with him, though, showed they were at a total loss for how to deal with the matter.
Latina paid utterly no heed to their glances as she continued to happily check on the containers each day.
And as long as Latina was enjoying herself, then Dale had nothing to say about the matter.
“***, **********...”
“**...”
However, while he didn’t let it show on his face, Dale broke out in a bit of a sweat when he heard the words the ladies-in-waiting secretly exchanged.
”Is that a human custom?”
Seems like some strange misunderstandings have started to spread...
Dale was only able to pick up intermittent bits of devil language, but he knew the ladies-in-waiting had such doubts, so he understood the gist of what they were saying. However, he couldn’t speak well enough to refute the claim.
I... should learn the devil language, too...
In the hopes of defusing the awkwardness of the situation, Dale set a future goal for himself.
Latina’s “experiment” proceeded day by day, drawing no shortage of attention.
The containers changed from making the occasional squish sound to being bound airtight with cords wrapped around the lids.
Has it gone rotten...?
Dale couldn’t help but find it strange and unnerving. He couldn’t imagine this having anything to do with food.
Latina took one of the containers in hand while Dale watched. With a look of excitement, she carefully and gently opened the lid.
“Gah!”
“Wah!”
It had gone bad.
Latina hurriedly put the lid back on, then fluttered the hem of her clothing to try and chase the offensive odor from the room.
Well, that’s no surprise.
Dale had been prepared for that to a degree, so he paid it no mind and instead lent Latina a hand.
“Was the temperature too high...?” Latina thought out loud, tilting her head. “I kept the others at somewhat lower temperatures, so things should still be fine,” she muttered, her mood recovering as she moved to open the second container. After a short while, though, her shoulders drooped in disappointment.
“Mold...” she muttered. Apparently, it had grown moldy.
Even so, she didn’t grow discouraged as she reached for the next container. After opening the lid she carefully observed the contents, giving it a sniff to check the smell. She moved away for a second to think, and then sniffed once more.
“I did it!” Latina soon cried out joyfully.
“I did it, Dale! I did it!”
“R-right...”
“Yay!”
Dale had no idea whatsoever what had Latina so overjoyed. Latina checked the remaining containers, giving a little “hooray!” each time. And then Latina, in unusually high spirits, caught hold of a lady-in-waiting who had been drawing away from her.
“*******”
Latina had a look on her face that said she was giving an order by way of Chrysos’s authority. At times like this, she seemed to show a bit of natural-born leadership, Dale thought.
The lady-in-waiting repeatedly nodded her head, showing her intention to abide by the order. Latina’s forcefulness was causing the poor woman to visibly flinch, and Dale couldn’t help feeling a bit of sympathy for her.
Latina had the lady-in-waiting take the extra containers that she couldn’t hold so she could run at full speed to the kitchen.
After seeing her off, Dale gave a sigh. However, he found this an encouraging sign that Latina was back to her old self.
As she ran to the kitchen, Latina thought of her friend back in Kreuz and teared up.
“Thank you, Marcel... thank you...!”
She had thoroughly evened out the texture of her chosen flour in advance. She didn’t even have a sieve, so she had to first search for something that could serve as a substitute, but she had plenty of time.
“First, I have to mix this with the flour... then I have to make the leaven... but if it goes well...”
Latina was truly grateful that she had been able to receive thorough guidance from a professional in the field, even if it had just been for a short time. That careful direction had allowed her to make her own bread.
“I can eat bread...!”
This whole chain of bizarre events really was just linked to her appetite, as Dale had expected.
While it was only for a short period of time, Latina had once worked in the bakery that was her childhood friend’s home. Rather than payment, she had asked to learn how to make bread. That didn’t include just the more eye-catching processes of shaping and baking, but also how to create the bread dough, starting from the yeast, which was the foundation for bread. Her master Kenneth had made sure to impress upon her how absolutely crucial the initial preparations were to the process.
It was relatively easy to create yeast from fruit and water. As a result, her friend’s father, the bakery owner, had given Latina a chance to make some herself. Latina hadn’t been able to make bread since then, so she didn’t have much confidence. However her firsthand experience was of significant help, allowing her to follow the process from memory and create something suitable.
Above all else, she would manage to recreate that staple food. That was Latina’s dearest wish at the moment.
She combined the fruit yeast with the flour, and then waited for it to ferment further.
This could take a number of days depending on how things went, but she couldn’t risk ruining things by rushing the process.
“I hope it goes well...”
Since Latina excelled at delicate mana control, using magic to carefully maintain the temperature wasn’t difficult for her. Even so, she remained rather tense and was completely absorbed in the process.
She had dedicated herself completely to the process, feeling pressured to deal with the food situation. And also, there was just too little to do each and every day, which she found tiresome.
When she saw how the leaven had expanded after several days, Latina danced a dance of joy. As always, she still had no sense of rhythm.
She sensed that its ability to ferment seemed weaker than that of the yeast she had made in Kreuz. In Vassilios, it was impossible to so much as lay an eye on the sorts of fruits that you could easily get a hold of in Kreuz. It also wasn’t possible to get your hands on wheat flour in the country of devils. Having to substitute ingredients greatly lowered the success rate of cooking.
“Still, it properly expanded... It’s fermenting, so this should work out,” she muttered to herself while mixing the flour and leaven. In order to strengthen the weak fermentation she added honey, and then some salt as she recalled the recipe.
�
��Hmm, hmm♪ Hmmm♪” she hummed while mixing.
Latina found the sensation of the sticky ingredients settling together as she mixed enjoyable, so she had started to hum without even thinking about it.
She kneaded the mixed dough smoothly into a round shape in order to prevent the gas from the fermentation process from escaping. While carefully following the instructions she had once received, she placed a damp cloth atop the dough so that it wouldn’t dry out. The temperature was naturally high in Vassilios, and that applied to room temperatures as well, so Latina decided to keep an eye on it.
In the meantime, she pulled out a thick pot she had set her eyes on in order to polish it. From the faces they were making, the servants working in the kitchen didn’t know how to deal with Latina’s actions, but the girl carried on, acting as if she hadn’t even noticed.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to make an oven first...”
Latina talked to herself rather frequently, because the ladies-in-waiting and servants treated her like a princess, never talking to her in an informal manner. Her old friends Sylvia and Rose were busy, so she couldn’t hang out with them around the clock in order to stave off her boredom. The number of conversation partners Latina had at present was rather limited.
If an oven really were necessary, then it might not have been impossible to construct one if she asked Dale, since he also didn’t have any proper work at the moment. But unfortunately, Latina didn’t know the details of an oven’s design.
As a result, she took the dough that had grown splendidly — thanks to fermentation — and split it into several equal parts without any complex molding, instead simply rounding out each one. She then placed them in a pot, spaced equally.
“I put on the lid... and then I have to let it bake carefully...” Latina muttered to herself, her brows wrinkling as she did so.
The kitchens of Vassilios differed quite a bit from the Labandese ones Latina was familiar with. It didn’t just lack the magical devices which were common in Laband, but it also didn’t even have a proper stove.
As far as food preparation in Vassilios went, those with Fire affinity would heat things up to cook them, while those with Water affinity would fill jugs up to the brim, with labor being divided based on magical affinities. Which is to say, people weren’t primarily assigned here to the kitchen because of their cooking skill, but rather because they possessed Fire affinity.
The townsfolk of Vassilios didn’t cook in their own homes, with the custom being to instead eat foodstuffs that were produced in advance. That was also influenced by the environment of the land. There weren’t any nearby forests or woodlands, so they were lacking in the sort of firewood that the human race employed. The simplest, most stable source of fuel in Vassilios was mana.
Lacking Fire affinity, Latina was unable to start cooking with heat.
“Hmm...” Latina thought to herself. The other day when she made the pseudo-crepes, she had grabbed a servant, leaving them no room to argue. But this time, she wanted to simmer it carefully over a low heat. It would be a bit much to tie up a stranger for such a long period of time.
“In that case... yeah.”
However, Latina wouldn’t give up so easily today.
With her footsteps pitter-pattering, she left the kitchen, looking for that faithful pup. As a race, the mythical beasts known as soaring wolves possessed the three affinities of Holy, Wind, and Fire magic.
Back in the Dancing Ocelot, Latina had firmly held the stance that Vint wasn’t allowed to play in the kitchen, but she was no longer concerned with keeping up appearances.
“Vint, can you do it?” Latina asked the faithful pup in the kitchen.
“Hmm...” Vint replied, lacking his usual confidence.
“My child is not especially skilled at manipulating Fire magic,” Hagel interjected, offering a lifeboat to the unusually hesitant pup.
“Is that so?”
“If Wind magic, would be fine.”
“He has no such issues when it comes to Wind magic, but he has difficulty with fine control when it comes to Fire magic.”
“Can make go boom.”
“That would be bad...” Latina said with a troubled look on her face.
“Shall I undertake the task?” Hagel nonchalantly offered. The tails of both father and son wagged along all the while.
“Thank you.”
Seeing Latina’s smile they expected that they’d get plenty of petting, causing the wagging to grow even more pronounced. No matter how you looked at Hagel, he looked like a dog waiting to be praised. He displayed none of the dignity one would expect of a being with the rare power required to stand up to legendary dragons.
And so, though it was highly unusual, a mythical beast ended up baking Latina’s carefully prepared bread.
Opening the lid, Latina saw the well-cooked bread and gave a sigh of relief. Just a moment later, the warm steam and fragrant aroma reached her. She was feeling impatient, but she moved her face back just a little.
Because she hadn’t used wheat, the aroma was different than she had expected. But even so, it seemed to have gone even better than planned.
“Well, for now I need to do a taste test...”
She pulled out the piping hot bread, taking care not to get burned. It was a little too hard to pull apart by hand, so she cut off a single slice with a knife and then brought it to her mouth.
“Hmm...”
She chewed.
It was an even more doughy and heavy bread than she had expected. She also couldn’t smell the scent of yeast about it, which felt a little strange.
Next up, she smeared the butter she received from Sylvia on it, going a little on the heavy side. It melted in an instant atop the hot bread, and then was absorbed.
Biting into it again, she found that the light sweetness of the bread had been improved by the flavor and saltiness of the butter. Considering she had improvised the recipe with what was on hand, she gave her own work passing marks.
“It’s... bread...!”
The tears started to flow. She keenly felt the importance of staple foods.
“But the flour I used was different... so it may be that if it cools off, it’ll grow hard and become inedible.”
Once she had that thought, Latina was no longer able to simply sit still. Holding the freshly baked bread, she ran off to Dale. At the same time, she dispatched the faithful pup to her friend, to call for her.
That chain of actions from Latina couldn’t have been called anything but eccentric from the point of view of the servants.
This is a digression, but afterwards, a trend of humming a strange melody became common amongst the devil servants, who referred to it as “human culture.” The source of it was obvious. But when Dale heard the tune, his first thought was, So there’s no issue with Latina... devils just have a strange sense of rhythm...? It was an incredibly rude misunderstanding, and he had already completely forgotten about the devil musician they had once met in a port town.
The bread filling the pot disappeared even quicker than expected.
They all became lost in feeling that nostalgic sensation, as the everyday occurrence of chewing upon that staple food had stopped being a given.
“This is amazing, Latina... you really made it...”
“Bread is so delicious...”
“It really has been a while, hasn’t it, eating something like this...?”
“How about making sandwiches?”
“There isn’t anything... to put in them...”
“I get the feeling that it would’ve been easier for me to just hunt something so we could have something decent to eat...”
With just butter and honey, it made for more than a proper enough meal. It was no exaggeration to say that it made her remember her everyday meals.
Because she was in such a daze, Latina didn’t realize at the moment the big mistake that she had made. Once her belly was full, though, her attention at last turned to that matter.
The leaven was similarly all gone.
In order to make bread again, she would need to repeat the same process from the start. Even if it had gone well once, there was no guarantee that it would go the same way when she restarted.
Sure enough, that was enough to get even Latina visibly down. Even at best, it would be several days before she could eat bread again.
“...let’s return to Kreuz...”
That was the instant that Latina first seriously voiced her desire to go home.
†
Kenneth looked at Latina with an awkward expression, having heard that story.
She was once more engrossed in spreading jam atop the bread. Seeing her so fixated on the jam brought to mind more heartrending pity than mere sympathy at the fact that a sweet tooth like Latina had been forcefully cut off from sweetness. The reason that Latina had gained such a sweet tooth in the first place was because Kenneth had tried to keep coming up with creative and original desserts every day, seeing how much they had delighted the young girl.
Kenneth was soft on the girl in terms of everything but work, so he temporarily turned his back to the two of them, whipped up a dish in a hurry, and then placed it before Latina.
“Wooooow!” Latina cried out even more joyfully than he had expected.
Such omelets, made with fresh eggs, milk, and plenty of butter to make them nice and fluffy, were a favorite of hers.
“It’s good... eggs are just so tasty...”
“I’m glad.”
Dale had a look of great satisfaction on his face while watching Latina happily stuff her cheeks with the omelet. It was a truly heartwarming, tranquil sight.
But in reality, these two were the sister of a foreign country’s ruler (though that may not have been widely known yet) and a world-renowned hero.
The food on the table those two joyfully ate was incredibly ordinary. There weren’t any rare delicacies from the mountains or the sea, as it was just food from a bar on the outskirts of town.
Kenneth was so moved by seeing food he had created bring such joy to others that he felt tears come to his eyes.
As a bit of consideration from Kenneth, from that day on, there was sure to be a favorite of Latina and Dale’s laid out on the dinner table in the Ocelot.