IS IT TRUE THAT INGREDIENTS YOU GET YOURSELF ARE TASTIER THAN INGREDIENTS YOU BUY?
Hello, I am Halkara, president of Halkara Pharmaceuticals.
It’s gotten rather cold recently, hasn’t it? The province of Hrant, including the Wellbranch Marquessate, is not really an area that sees much snowfall, but we do get a healthy foot or so every once in a while.
And when you want to warm up on cold days like this, there’s nothing better than Halkara Pharmaceuticals’s Warming Herbal Bath—is what I would like to say, but there is something even more effective out there.
That is…hot pot.
That day when I got home, the whole family was going ahead and getting the hot pot ready.
“Oh, you’re home.”
My brother looked very hungry already. Just the other day, he successfully got hired for the fourth time this year, so we were celebrating with him at the seat of honor.
That just meant he’d been fired or quit himself that many times, but…it was our family rule not to ask too much about that. That was because of my mother’s gentle style of authority.
And pressuring him about his situation after all this time wouldn’t actually help… Though elves were long-lived, if someone didn’t have their act together by the age of a hundred twenty, then they probably never would.
“Halkara, go wash your hands. We’ll get started when you sit down.” My father was sitting in the hot pot administrative seat.
It was customary for Wellbranch elves to have someone act as the hot pot administrator when it came time for hot pot. This person was in charge of putting in the meat at the right time and saying when it was time to eat. It was a mealtime standard with a long-standing tradition.
“All right. I’ll go wash my hands.”
When I was finished, I immediately took my seat.
That was when I saw what kind of hot pot we were having today.
“Oh, mushrooms.”
There were all sorts of fungal delights sitting in front of me.
Mushroom hot pot was very popular with elves. With so many trees and forested areas in elven lands, there was no shortage. Elves have always been very careful about cutting trees down, but we don’t feel guilty about picking mushrooms.
Our values went like this:
Elves = Trees > Flowers, Ferns > Mushrooms
And so mushrooms have always had a secure place as an ingredient.
That concludes our minilecture.
“There were all sorts of mushrooms for sale at the neighborhood market. See, there’s iron mask mushrooms, azaleashrooms, and grinning man mushrooms, too. Aren’t they incredible?”
My mother seemed to be having a grand time. Also, the name grinning man mushroom came from when you cut it vertically through the middle; the cross section looked like a grinning old man. It didn’t cause laughing fits when you ate it or anything.
“Ooh! These are incredibly rare. I’m surprised you found them.”
“It’s the season for them now, so there were tons out for sale. The moment I saw them, I knew we just had to have hot pot~”
“Hey, let’s hurry up and eat. The pot’s boiling already!” My sister thumped her wooden fork against the table impatiently.
“Sure. Then first, I’ll go ahead and start with ones that need a thorough—”
“Dad, wait!” Just as my father was about to put in the mushroom, I stopped him.
“What is it, Halkara? I’m the hot pot administrator today. If you want to do it, then go for candidacy next time.”
This hot-pot-administrator system sure was a pain…
…but I still had to stop him.
“Mister Administrator, I request you carry out a poisonous mushroom check! Please allow me to confirm these are indeed edible!”
“Whoa, hey—poisonous mushrooms? Hey, honey, were these poisonous?”
“They’re not poisonous, but they do make you suddenly sleepy, so no driving carriages after eating them~”
That could indeed be called poisonous. That wasn’t an acceptable effect for food.
“And these ones might cause nausea, dizziness, or chills.”
“Those are definitely not safe! Please be careful when you go shopping! They have this risk because the mushrooms at the market haven’t gone through proper sellers!”
Mushrooms were wonderful because they were rich in nutrients and came in a variety of textures, but it was very difficult to tell on sight which ones were poisonous and which ones weren’t. But our elven predecessors often made the mistake of eating a lot of poisonous mushrooms, so we had more of a tolerance for it compared with humans.
I safely removed the poisonous mushrooms, and we finally started our mushroom hot pot.
Mushroom hot pot was reliably delicious. And despite the name, we put in meat and, later, flour dumplings as well, so the texture was perfect, too.
But—
“This hot pot feels like it’s lacking that special something.”
—my sister didn’t seem satisfied, swirling around her fork with her hand. She was dexterous with the thing, but she sometimes stabbed and hurt herself.
“You’ve eaten quite a lot of that ‘lacking’ hot pot. The rule is that if you have any complaints for the hot pot administrator, you’re supposed to lodge those before we get the pot ready.”
This administrator system sure was a pain…
“But, like, I’m an elf, too, right? So I’ve studied wild grasses and mushrooms at school and stuff. But we only have a few of them in this pot, though.”
Elves learned about plants in detail, so even my sister, who currently worked at a nail salon, knew a considerable amount.
“’Cause this is mushroom hot pot, but we don’t even have any archbishop mushrooms, chivalric stools, or kingshrooms in here.”
All the mushrooms my sister named were extremely expensive ones—a single stem could cost thousands and thousands of gold.
Kingshrooms, most notably, were called the kings of the mushroom world. Good thing, too; cabinet ministers of the mushroom world didn’t have the same ring to it.
“A customer who came into the nail salon before said she’d eaten a kingshroom. She said it was so delicious, she’s never looked at mushrooms the same way again.”
“What…?” my father said. “You can’t just get those anywhere…and it’s not like you can just pay someone to get your hands on it immediately… It rarely ever shows up in the shops…” He made some sound arguments.
Not only did it have an absurdly high cost, but just finding it was extremely difficult.
“You’re right~ I guess elves are the ones picking the mushrooms for sale in the mountains, so most of us will eat any rarities we find ourselves. I might’ve had a kingshroom once in my life already~”
“So you have had it before, Mom! Aww man, I want one! I wanna eat a kingshroom!” My sister started spinning her fork even faster. She was so selfish.
But I could kinda see her point.
I wasn’t here to brag, but I did start my own company, and I was making quite a bit of money. I wasn’t here to brag, but I did occasionally dine with clients in restaurants where it cost twenty thousand gold per person. I wasn’t here to brag. I wasn’t bragging.
But those were things one could obtain by paying money.
So long as you brought twenty thousand gold to a restaurant and weren’t dirty enough to be kicked out for violating the dress code, then you could eat.
But if you wanted to try the elusive types of mushrooms that my sister brought up, you had to find them yourself, or you were out of luck.
In that sense, one could say they were ultrarare mushrooms.
I had eaten plenty of different foods in many restaurants thus far—
—but rare ingredients did have a different appeal to them.
“All right! Leave it to me!” I stood up with grand purpose. “Next time I have off, let’s go to the mountains! Then let’s gather up all the rarest mushrooms to eat and have a mushroom hot pot fit for a king! Let’s eat so many kingshrooms that we get sick of them!”
It was times like these that I needed to show off as an older sister! How do you like that?! Are you swooning yet?!
“Whaaat? That’s such a pain. You can go on your own, Sis.”
That’s when I knew my parents had failed us.
“No, you are coming with me! Ingredients you collect with your own hands and your own blood, sweat, and tears are much more delicious!”
“Whaaat? Mushrooms that other people pay for are way tastier~”
Our opinions were truly opposed!
“No! Come with me! You are coming with me so long as you don’t have any other prior engagements!”
For some reason, I had to end up forcing her to tag along, but either way, we were going mushroom hunting.
The next day I had off, my sister and I went to a mountain that was well-known for mushrooms.
It was called Mount Shroom, after all. If there weren’t many mushrooms here, then I was going to file a lawsuit.
We carried backpacks filled with some food and towels, and we had also brought along a basket for collecting mushrooms.
Grass didn’t grow during the winter, so it was the perfect season to find mushrooms on the lower mountains that didn’t have snow.
“Well then! Let us collect all the rare mushrooms we can find! Let’s do this! We will have the best mushroom hot pot ever tonight!”
“…Yeah, okay. I wish I never said I wanted to eat any rare mushrooms.” My sister started out markedly unmotivated, but I was sure her mood would get better as we found more good mushrooms. “Just don’t get lost, okay, Sis?”
“It’s okay. I have a map, you know!” I patted the map. “I may have a reputation for carelessness, but I am not foolish enough to forget bringing a map to a mountain. We will be okay this time!”
“Yeah, I want to believe you, but we’ll have to leave the path when we go mushroom hunting…”
The mushrooms that grew right by the road would already be picked. That meant we would have to enter the mountain through a side path.
“That won’t be a problem. When we leave the path, I will be sure we only proceed straight ahead! Then we will certainly come across a marked path!”
One hour later…
“Hmm…? This is strange… The paths don’t meet up in the spots they’re supposed to… And where are we walking anyway? We should be coming across a real path soon; otherwise, something is off here…”
When we saw a spot that might have some mushrooms, we left the path and pressed forward into the wilderness.
The strategy had gone well up until a point.
While we didn’t find any rare mushrooms, we got quite a lot of mushrooms that weren’t for sale in the shops. Our basket was starting to feel a little heavier.
But…we weren’t finding any paths at all…
“I knew you’d get lost, Sis!”
I heard a complaint come from beside me. I wish she would let me concentrate on the map right now.
“How strange… Even if we are just a bit off our travel route, then I would simply make a small detour. I planned this very carefully, you know!”
“Ugh, just let me see the map. Gimme!”
My sister snatched the map from me. I had a feeling she was going to take control of the whole mission.
Three seconds after she took the map, she said:
“Hey, this is a map for a different mountain, isn’t it?”
That theory would mean the premise for everything we were doing was wrong!
“Of course not. Even I can read the words Mount Shroom.”
“Look, there’s a bit in the corner here that says Quick Advice. Read it.”
My sister gave the map back to me.
I didn’t think anything weird had been written there…
There are several places across the province of Hrant called Mount Shroom. This map is for Mount Shroom in Notter County.
Make sure you don’t end up in the wrong Mount Shroom.
“This map is for a different mountain!! I messed up!!!”
“There’s no point if you bring a map for the wrong place! What are we supposed to do, Sis?!”
“These place names are confusing, so let’s make a suggestion to the government that they change the names so that this confusion can be avoided.”
“That’s not the kind of solution I’m asking about. I mean, what are we going to do now that we’re lost without a map?”
My sister’s stare felt chilly. Perhaps because it was winter.
“…Hmmmm… Hmm.”
“After the Quick Advice section, it says, Smaller Mount Shrooms come with a great risk of getting lost, especially since mushroom picking means leaving the marked paths. Please go with an expert.”
Pat.
I put my hands on my sister’s shoulders.
“…You are the big sister now.”
“You can’t just flip-flop who’s older depending on the situation!”
“…Then you are the leader. I charge you with all the power.”
“What…? It’s not like I know the geography of this place well, either… I’m not even good at hiking… I’m a beginner…”
“This mistake has left my mind blank. It would be even worse if I led the way in this situation.”
“Sis, here’s a double-digit problem. What’s 55 plus 75?”
“5,575.”
“I guess I have to lead… Let’s turn back for now, then… That way, we can get back to where we started…”
And so with my sister in the lead, we started our trek back down the mountain.
One hour later…
Before us was a tall waterfall, one we didn’t see on our way up.
“We are seriously lost, Sis, and it’s getting worse…”
“It’s times like these that we should keep a positive attitude. Look, this waterfall is gorgeous, isn’t it? And we are lucky that we can fill up on water.”
We would break if we didn’t force ourselves to cheer up. Drinking clear water could calm us down; we wouldn’t get any good ideas if we panicked.
I went to the water’s edge, scooped some up with my hands, and drank it.
The tasteless, odorless liquid purified my body! I never thought water could be so sweet!
Perhaps water was the greatest ingestible thing in the world?! No animal or plant could live without it.
For a long time now, I had encountered many failures when it came to food, so maybe it was time I concentrated on water instead. I didn’t care about culinary oddities or delicacies anymore.
I suppose one could say I’d had an epiphany.
And thanks to that, an idea that might take us out from the mountain came to me.
“I know! It’s simple!”
“What? Did you make a breakthrough?!”
“There’s a waterfall, so if we follow the river downstream, we will eventually exit the mountain!”
“Sis, read this part under Quick Advice.”
My sister immediately showed me the map with a cold look.
If you are a beginner, be sure NOT to follow rivers downstream to proceed down the mountain, as it will frequently take you to steep waterfalls and slopes. Without the proper precautions, this will put you on a path toward impassable cliffs. However, if you find yourself unable to climb up the steep slopes you went down to get there, you won’t even be able to turn back. You will be stuck.
That was me!
“An amateur’s ideas don’t bring the best results, do they?! I’m sorry! We will start from scratch! But we can’t even start from scratch!” I fell to my knees in disappointment. “Or perhaps, this is the end… I have no regrets in life…”
“No, c’mon! You’re not hurt or anything, and the sun’s still out—you’re giving up way too early! Seriously, let’s think of how we can get out of here!”
“But it’s so cold at night in the winter. We’re done for…”
“There isn’t even any snow here. We can do this!” my sister urged me, and we started walking.
Standing still wouldn’t make anything better— Hmm?
“If we stay put, our family will realize we haven’t come home and then send a search party for us, wouldn’t they?”
“…Sis, they think we’ve gone up a different Mount Shroom.”
Well, I suppose we have no choice to walk with our own two feet!
Another hour later…
“Gasp, I found it!”
As I walked through the forest, I found something.
“What? Did we make it back to the path, Sis?!”
I pointed to a spot at the base of a tree.
“The ever-elusive mushroom, a kingshroom! We finally, finally found it! Our hardships have been rewarded!”
“…We’re in a crisis right now, Sis. I can’t honestly be excited about this…”
My sister wore a little frown, but she did harvest the mushroom properly. We were not going to be knocked down for nothing—despite how lost we had been so far, we still got what we came for.
But right at that moment, a terrible tragedy befell my body.
Oh yes. I was hungry.
“Grrrrrrrrwwwwllll~”
“Your stomach is insanely loud, Sis.”
“Oh, we haven’t had lunch yet. And I’m hungrier than usual because we’ve been walking around the mountain.”
“Oh, you’re right. We haven’t had anything to eat.”
We sat right there on the spot, unshouldered our backpacks, and took out our lunch.
We’d brought several slices of bread with different kinds of jam generously slathered on one side. Then we put another piece of bread on top to make a jam sandwich.
The choice was deliberate—sweet things were effective in recovering the energy spent climbing the mountain.
“We might be eating a little late now, but let’s have our sandwich and get a fresh start.”
“Yeah. If we can get home like this, then we’ll be heroes for getting the kingshroom.”
My sister also smiled for the first time in a little while.
And so I first took a bite of my strawberry-jam sandwich.
“Oh~ How wonderful! I feel the sweetness spreading throughout my mouth and healing me!”
My sister nodded as well. “You’re right. I never thought a jam sandwich would taste so good!”
As a meal, there was nothing special about it.
I doubted there was anyone who would look at a jam sandwich and feel it was unique.
But to us in this moment, it would be apt to say there was nothing tastier.
I could tell my body was overjoyed to have something so sweet.
“Next is the apple-jam sandwich. This one is so refreshing and mellow!”
“Oh yeah. We’re in the middle of a mountain, but it feels like we’re in a café in town.”
And suddenly, I wanted to keep trying.
A roused spirit wasn’t such a remarkable thing, but I was motivated to keep going and reach my goal.
“Next is the blueberry jam. Oh yes! What a wonderful acidity it has!”
“Sis, you’ve got jam on your mouth!” My sister laughed at me.
Enough energy had returned to us that we could afford to laugh.
“Oh gosh~ I could eat all of them at this rate.”
“But, Sis, we don’t know when we’ll make it down, so shouldn’t we save a little for later…?”
My little sister was relatively more of a pessimist than I was.
“I understand what you’re trying to say. But if it is going to provide energy for us anyway, then isn’t it the same to eat it all right now? And we will have less to carry if we finish everything. And that means we’ll be spending less energy!”
“Now that you mention it, that sounds right to me, too… But you just want to eat it all, don’t you?”
Oh, my sister was so smart. She understood me so well.
“Oh well, I’m sure it’ll work out~ Let’s not be so stingy and polish it off right now~”
“Sometimes being worried is a good thing, you know! That’s not going to fix our situation!”
Then, at that moment, I felt someone watching me.
I whirled around, and a boar was approaching.
Oh, it must have been attracted to the smell of the jam sandwiches…
“Let’s get out of here! I doubt boars will go so far as to attack elves, though…”
“Sis, they’re coming from the other direction, too…”
Several boars were coming from behind my sister! And there were several cockatrices behind them!
We were surrounded!!
Our nice little lunch had ended in peril!
“What should we do, Leader…?”
“Stop trying to push responsibility on your little sister!”
“I hate to brag, but I have no ideas.”
“Good thing you’re not bragging!”
“I will shove all the remaining jam sandwiches in my mouth!”
“Yeah, if they’re after the jam sandwiches, then they might come back.”
“Eating one in front of them will be like taunting them—what a thrill!”
“Now is not the time to be getting a kick out of a superiority complex!”
As I sat there without an answer, the boars slowly drew nearer.
I doubted boars ate elves, but we would be in truly deep trouble if we ended up lost and injured in this empty mountain. And we would be dead if we were petrified from a cockatrice bite.
“H-here, we should threaten the boars first! Intimidate them!”
“But, Sis, I don’t know how to intimidate a boar!”
I had no choice. I was the older sister, so I must risk my life…
I stood to protect my little sister, then turned to the boars and yelled:
“You will all die right now! You will die! Get out of here, or you will die! And the cockatrices will die, too! Fly away!”
“What on earth are you talking about?!”
“I am threatening them! My strategy is to frighten them with prophecies of doom and destruction!”
“They don’t understand words! Just scream at them or something!”
The boars and cockatrices were getting closer.
I was out of ideas… Not that I really had ideas to begin with…
“I have no regrets in life…”
“Don’t give up! Keep fighting!”
But then—
—something flew right past me.
In the next moment, an arrow plunged right into the head of the boar in front of me—
—and with a dull thud, it fell to the ground.
It was probably dead.
More arrows embedded themselves in the other boars, and they slowly fell, one after the other.
The other creatures must have sensed the danger, so they scurried off.
“…The prophecy of the boars’ death has been realized… I didn’t know I had such hidden power…”
“That’s because you don’t!”
A male elf, equipped with a bow and some arrows, poked his head out from among the trees.
“Y’all decided to have a picnic on the mountain without anything to protect yourself against the critters? That’s dangerous.”
“Are you a hunter…?”
“I am. I hunt in this area. You’re mushroom pickers, I see. Well, good luck. I better take care of those boars before they get too gamey.”
My sister and I exchanged glances.
We were sisters, so that was all we needed to understand each other.
We knew right away that we had to say something.
““Excuse us, please tell us the way out!””
The elf hunter guided us safely off the mountain.
“My, what an adventure~”
“It wouldn’t have been an adventure if you hadn’t brought the wrong map, Sis…,” my sister complained, but our mission was successful.
“Oh, all’s well that ends well. We got the kingshroom and other rare mushrooms!”
“I guess…I can’t not acknowledge that…”
The family unanimously agreed we would have mushroom hot pot that night.
I was curious about the kingshroom. What sort of flavor would it have in the end?
Other mushrooms that I’d known about but had never tasted filled our basket.
“Then I will be the hot pot administrator this time.” I respectfully lowered the kingshroom into the pot. I was drooling before I even got to eat it.
“All right! It’s cooked. Everyone, please eat! Enjoy the taste of the king of the mushroom world!”
My sister and I popped a bit of the kingshroom into our mouths at the same time.
As for our opinions—
“…It is delicious, yes, but not enough to bring me to tears.”
“If anything, those strawberry-jam and apple-jam sandwiches were way tastier.”
It didn’t taste bad, but the flavor was a little…lacking. After all the trouble we went through, this was it?
“A rarer ingredient means it’s become a higher-quality ingredient, and then someone decided the rarity means it must taste good~ I suppose it’s a problem of perception~”
My mother made a good point. She was right. There was no rule anywhere that said rarer foods meant tastier foods…
The next day, I had a spaghetti lunch at a restaurant. One serving was eight hundred gold.
A thought came to me as I gobbled down the food.
How divine was it that one could have such reliable goodness for just eight hundred gold…?
As a company president, I was reminded of the importance of supply chains—and I matured a little in my job that day.
The End
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