The Power of the Saint is All Around (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 4

Act 4:

Japanese Food

IT HAD BEEN A WEEK since we returned from Morgenhaven. I resumed my work at the institute the minute we got back. I made sure to ask a palace official if there was word of any new black swamps, but he’d heard nothing. In short, the Saint was on call but unneeded, and I was able to spend the days following our return in relative peace.

I’d already decided what I’d do the next time I had a free day: make Japanese food.

With that in mind, I dedicated myself to completing all the work that had piled up while I was away. I finally got through it all one afternoon when I had reached a good stopping point in my work.

“Today’s the day, huh?” Johan asked as he came into the kitchen at the institute. I was making my preparations, and as usual, he was immediately drawn in by the prospect of a new dish.

“That’s right!” I replied with a grin.

He peered curiously at my hands. “Is this the so-called rice you were looking for?”

“It is. Rice was a staple food back in Japan.” My precious white rice was enshrined in a basket. I had just finished measuring it out and was going to wash the grains. “It’ll be a little while before it’s ready,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Yeah, after I finish washing it, it needs to soak.” I explained the next steps I needed to take as I washed the rice. Once I made clear just how much time it would be before I actually started cooking in earnest, Johan sighed and said he’d come back later, then went back to work.

I felt a bit unsure as I watched him walk away. I didn’t know if I could actually promise a good rice dish. In Morgenhaven, I’d learned how to make it in the Zaideran style from Ceyran’s cook, but I wasn’t especially confident. It was just so different from how I had cooked rice back in Japan. I mean, I had always used a rice cooker; I had only made it in a pot once or twice in my life.

I’d hoped to only share my rice once I was sure I’d managed to cook it properly, but now Johan had caught me red-handed. I had no choice but to let him try whatever I made this time the moment it was ready.

I guess I’ll just have to try my hardest and pray for the best.

After the rice was done soaking, I poured it and the appropriate amount of water into a pot and placed that over a flame. While I had gotten better at controlling the level of flame in the oven over the past year, I still had a ways to go. With the help of the chefs, I somehow managed to keep it going at the right intensity.

“I can smell it now,” Johan said when he came back to the kitchen later.

“Yup. I think it should be done soon.” I didn’t have a clock, so I had to rely on sound and smell to know whether it was finished.

When I looked over my shoulder, I realized Johan wasn’t my only audience member. The chefs were watching me as well—as was Jude. It was kind of a weird tableau, all of them staring so intently at the pot like that. I held back laughter as I joined in.

I think it’s about time now. I increased the strength of the flame just a touch and heard a popping sound from the pot. That told me it was time to remove the pot from the flame. Now it just needed to steam.

“Is it done?” Johan asked.

“Not yet. It has to sit and cook in the steam first.”

“Oh…”

“Don’t look so disappointed. I’m going to start cooking another dish now.”

Johan’s face lit up at this. I chuckled at the sight of his shining eyes and started working. I was going to make miso soup. 

I started by chopping up the same kinds of vegetables that I would when making other soups. The good thing about miso soup was that you didn’t need too many ingredients. I was grateful for that, seeing as my access to ingredients was limited. I did have the ingredients to make a variety of Western-style soups if I wanted.

“You’re going to make soup?” Jude asked.

“Yeah, using miso.”

“You mean that stuff we drank in the storeroom?”

“Exactly. But the one we tried then was pretty rudimentary compared to what I’m going to make.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Where I come from, we dissolve the miso in soup stock made from fish, and we add other ingredients too.”

“Huh.” Jude sounded impressed.

The miso soup we’d had on the ship had basically been miso paste dissolved in hot water, so it had tasted a bit thin. I was making it myself now, so I wanted to try to get as close as possible to the miso I dreamed of. Thus, I had made soup stock using some small dried fish I had bought in Morgenhaven.

I’d asked one of the chefs to start the soup stock while I was working on the rice. I was unfamiliar with this kind of fish, but they managed to make a pretty good stock.

Before long, the miso soup was done, and it was finally time to check the rice. My heart raced as I lifted the lid. As I did, an inviting fragrance washed over me.

I used a rice paddle, which I had commissioned from an artisan with extra pay for a rush job, to fold the rice. The bottom was slightly crispy. I tasted it and found the grains a little soft, but this surely qualified as a success. This sweetness that I hadn’t tasted in so long…it filled me with emotions that I tried to keep down deep inside.

Outwardly, I grinned, which elicited a round of cheers from the chefs.

“Did it come out all right?” Johan asked.

“I feel like it’s a touch too soft.”

“From the look on your face, that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem.”

Johan’s smile was full of hope as I urged him and Jude to head out to the dining hall. The chefs and I quickly finished prepping the dishes, and then I joined them in the dining hall too. People were already murmuring as they tried the two new dishes. 

I took my seat and admired the rice and miso soup all over again. We didn’t have any rice bowls, so we’d just used flat dishes for the rice, and the miso soup was poured into soup bowls. However, I felt incredibly emotional. Finally, I could eat Japanese cuisine again.

My heart had fluttered when I tested the food, but now that I was really sitting down to eat my fill, that feeling grew even stronger.

“It’s so good,” I couldn’t help but say that as I chewed the rice, its natural sweetness overtaking my taste buds.

Johan, sitting across from me, laughed genially. “I’m glad it came out so well.”

“Yeah…”

Still churning with deep feeling, I reached for the miso soup. I took a sip, and the flavor of the fish stock filled my nose and mouth. The savory miso followed it up, and I let out a satisfied sigh. Ahhh, miso soup for the soul.

As I basked in the warmth of the soup, Jude seemed surprised. “Wait, this is miso soup?”

“Yup.”

“This is completely different from what we had in Morgenhaven!”

The soup stock really did make a difference, just like I’d thought it would. “You think so?”

“Yeah. The kind we tried there was more, hm, sour?”

“Well, that was just miso diluted with water, so it was more the taste of pure miso.”

“But you had a more complicated recipe.”

“Yeah, starting with a soup stock as a base. Plus, there are vegetables to complement the flavor.”

“That’s why the taste isn’t so strong?”

“More or less.”

“I’d like to see what the miso tastes like when it’s a more central flavor.”

“Should I try experimenting later?”

It was unusual for Jude to be so into talking about these subtle differences; he agreed with a smile. Of course, Johan wanted to participate in this taste testing too.

After chatting for a bit, a thought suddenly occurred to Johan. “Do rice and miso have some kind of effect too?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, do they increase our maximum HP or something?”

“Oh, you mean with my Cooking skill. I have no idea.”

At times, when someone who had the Cooking skill made food, the dishes they cooked could essentially buff those who ate the dishes. I had made the food today, so if there was an effect, it would probably be obvious in short order.

At Johan’s prompting, everyone at the table checked their stats simultaneously.

“At a glance, doesn’t seem like anything’s changed,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jude agreed.

“Too bad. I thought there might be one, after hearing you speak about that medicinal cooking,” Johan said with some disappointment. 

Honestly, I empathized with him. Miso was said to be good for your health. It seemed nearly unbelievable that it didn’t have any effect. Maybe it did something that wasn’t immediately obvious? Something like increasing physical attack power or natural HP recovery.

I brought that up and Johan agreed. We would have to keep checking.

I had bought as much rice and miso as I could from Ceyran, but I wasn’t sure it was enough to really experiment with. How were we supposed to conduct tests when we had so few ingredients to work with?

I ate the rest of my rice while trying to come up with an effective way to go about these new experiments.

***

“Hello!”

“Thanks for coming, Aira.”

A few days after I figured out how to cook rice, Aira arrived at the institute around noon. I was planning to make another meal featuring rice that day, so I had invited her over for lunch. She had immediately agreed when she heard about the star ingredient.

The first time I’d made rice, Aira had been able to eat it that same night. I had gone to the barracks of the Royal Magi Assembly to bring her onigiri rice balls and miso soup. At first, Aira had peered curiously at the basket I handed her, but once she removed the cloth covering, her eyes opened wide. She stared up at me with surprise, and I invited her to eat them with me. The two of us enjoyed the taste of rice and miso together in her room, where we talked about our faraway homeland as we ate. As we did, the food tasted saltier than it had earlier.

“What’s on the menu today?” Aira asked.

“I’m making sushi bowls.”

“Like chirashizushi?! You can make that here?”

“Well, it’ll taste a bit different, since the vinegar I’m using isn’t rice vinegar.”

“I don’t care. I can’t wait!” Aira smiled happily as we headed into the dining hall.

Just as I had told her, we were having sushi rice bowls with a variety of ingredients sprinkled on top. Since I had used wine vinegar instead of rice vinegar, it didn’t have the precise flavor I had been expecting. Not that it tasted bad or anything—quite the contrary.

For the ingredients sprinkled on top, I used burdock root and some dried whitefish I had bought in Morgenhaven. I didn’t forget to add thin strips of omelet too.

I had actually harvested the burdock from Johan’s herb garden. As far as he was concerned, it was a type of medicinal herb from abroad that he was cultivating for his own research. I’d realized he was growing it about a year ago. I had been so surprised when I saw it in his harvest. However, he was even more surprised when I told him that we’d eaten the roots as a vegetable in Japan.

Now that I’ve found rice and miso, maybe I can ask him to grow more burdock so we can use it in cooking?

Aira and I sat down at one of the tables in the dining hall, and one of the chefs brought out the chirashizushi with a smile on her face. The chefs, with their overwhelming curiosity about food, were in a great mood today. After all, they had just had a chance to learn about a new meal that used rice.

Aira’s eyes sparkled as they placed the chirashizushi and miso soup before her. She gave a hurried thanks and dug in. “I haven’t eaten this since I was little…”

“Really?”

“Yeah, my mom bought it for me for Girls’ Day when I was young, but I think she stopped around the time I was in first or second grade.”

“Oh, yeah. My grandma made it for us for Girls’ Day. She rarely made it otherwise.” Tears began to well in my eyes as I thought about my grandma.

No, no. Stop. Calm down. I quietly took a deep breath to soothe myself. I didn’t want anyone to notice I’d grown verklempt. To better hide my feelings, I picked up my soup bowl.

Whenever my grandma made chirashizushi, she had served it with a clear soup with other ingredients, but today we were having it with miso soup. I could probably make a clear soup using just salt and broth, but it would feel lacking without any soy sauce to add to it. If only I had that, I could really recreate her recipe…

Well, if miso existed in this world, there was a good chance that soy sauce did too. I would have to ask Oscar to find out whether they had any in Zaidera.

“That was delicious,” Aira said with an enormous grin after she cleaned her plate.

“I’m glad.”

I had been a bit worried about the flavor, given the wine vinegar, but she seemed to like it just fine.

Aira had to get back to work, so I gave her some pound cake to enjoy later before she left. Apparently, pound cake was very popular in the Royal Magi Assembly. Aira thought people might fight over it, so I handed her several loaves. She felt guilty, but it was fine—we always made a big batch.

The next day, we had an unexpected visitor at the institute.

“What in the world are you doing here?” I demanded.

“Why, I’d simply like to ask you something.” 

Grand Magus Yuri Drewes had turned up right at the beginning of the workday. Behind him stood a disconcerted-looking Aira.

I’ll be honest—I recoiled at the sudden appearance of Yuri’s lovely smile at that early hour. What the heck could he want from me?!

It would have been weird to stand around talking in the foyer, so I led them both to the parlor.

“I’ve come to learn more about the food Aira ate yesterday,” Yuri told me as soon as he sat down on the sofa.

“You mean the chirashizushi and miso soup?”

“That’s right! I would like to try that rice dish as well. Can you make it again?”

The force of that smile of his was overwhelming. I looked to Aira for an explanation, but she just shook her head as if to say she had no idea what was going on either. But she did clue me in as to what had happened.

The day before, after she returned to the barracks, she had gone to train in the yard. Yuri had happened to pass by and spotted her practicing. He had watched her for a bit before descending to interrogate her about what she had or hadn’t altered in her routine that day. In the end, Aira had told him about having lunch at the institute’s dining hall.

Well, now it all made sense. If Yuri was asking to try what Aira had eaten, then he had noticed some new effect that had caught his interest. Judging from his present behavior, in all likelihood, the effect had something to do with magic. I had been planning to conduct experiments to figure out the effects of meals made with rice and miso anyway, so perhaps he could help me out a bit.

“I don’t mind making it at all,” I said. “But I do have a request.”

“What would that be?”

“I hate to ask, but would you please let me get Johan’s permission first?”

“Very well, I shall accompany you.” Yuri stood up immediately. Goodness, he really wanted to eat that chirashizushi, huh?

I assumed we would get permission pretty much right away, so I forced Yuri to stay behind in the parlor. He didn’t argue, and he seemed to be trying his best, so I was fairly sure he’d actually wait there until I got back.

I nevertheless made my way to Johan’s office as quickly as I could and knocked on the door. He invited me in as he usually did, none the wiser to the situation, so I lunged through.

Johan stared in open surprise. “What’s all the rush?”

Okay, I was in a tizzy—I had a good reason! “Sorry for the interruption, but I need your permission for something.”

He looked concerned as I explained that Yuri wanted to eat a dish I had made the day before and that I was thinking about asking him to participate in our new food-based studies.

“Lord Drewes wants in?”

“That’s right. I’m guessing this means the effect has something to do with magic…so I think it would be best if, this time, we asked for his cooperation.”

“You have a point.”

“Besides, we don’t have much rice or miso left, so, you know, it might save us a lot of time if he helps.”

“You’re right that he has an exceptionally discerning eye for anything that has to do with magic… Very well, let him in on it.”

You might have guessed, but I had my own reasons for asking Yuri to participate. We had a limited supply of the key ingredients, and those were hard to acquire. Selfishly, I wanted to maximize our experimental capability in order to preserve as many leftovers as possible to treat Aira and myself to more Japanese cooking.

However, the researcher in me also thought it was important to find out the effects of these two ingredients. Therefore, I wanted to be highly strategic with our studies, and thus, it made perfect sense to fold an arcane expert like Yuri into our work. Now all I needed to do was ask Yuri to pick some qualified mages for the experiments themselves.

Armed with Johan’s permission, I headed back to the parlor.

The moment I stepped back into the room, Yuri beamed like the morning sun. “Well? What did he say?”

Just how badly does he want to do this? I tensed up a touch under that brilliant grin, and it widened all the more when I revealed that we had permission to go forward. 

I glanced next to Yuri to find Aira looking utterly relieved. Our eyes met, and we shared a smile of exhausted amusement.

After that, I formally asked Yuri for his help in investigating the effects of rice and miso, which he readily agreed to.

A thought suddenly occurred to me at that moment, and I suggested that maybe we should tell Lord Smarty-Glasses about this. Aira said she would do so for me. Thanks, Aira!

Hopefully, as we’d done the legwork to get approval and were doing this all aboveboard, Lord Smarty-Glasses wouldn’t try to stop us. Or, he probably wouldn’t… Probably.

***

Three days after Yuri’s visit to the institute, we began our study on chirashizushi and miso soup.

I was surprised to hear back from him so quickly—he got back to me the same day we got permission, actually. When he said that we would conduct our survey three days later, well, the speed at which he got everything ready made me realize just how greatly he was looking forward to this.

I wonder how much trouble this caused for Lord Smarty-Glasses…

All it took was one look at his deeply furrowed brow to know the answer. 

“Thanks for coming today,” I said tentatively, trying to take Lord Smarty-Glasses’s mood into consideration.

“And thank you for having us! I simply can’t wait,” Yuri replied quite cheerfully, a dazzling smile on his face.

In addition to those two, three other mages had joined us. Yuri was their leader, after all. Although usually in name only…

Lord Smarty-Glasses sighed deeply before mumbling his own, “Thank you for having us.”

As I led the mages to the dining hall, I learned that they were the top five mages in the Assembly.

The top five? Doesn’t that mean these are all extremely busy people?

“Um, what about your schedules? Surely you have other obligations?” I asked in surprise.

“Oh, no need to worry about that,” Yuri answered casually.

Lord Smarty-Glasses sighed, and the other three mages chuckled awkwardly. Yeah, my guess was that they had all taken great pains to reorganize their schedules.

Given how dear our ingredients were, I had asked Yuri to find people skilled enough to be able to detect the effects of the food. He had indeed gone and done just that. But I was starting to feel pretty guilty for all of the trouble I had caused.

“The food is a bit sweet, a bit sour. Once you’re done eating, please check for any changes in your stats.”

“Understood.”

“Got it.”

I guided everyone into the dining hall, and just as we were getting seated, the servants brought out the food.

I was only serving them chirashizushi to start. If they had both rice and miso soup at the same time, we wouldn’t be able to tell which food caused which effect, if we discovered there was one at all.

The mages looked curiously at their dishes, so I gave them a simple explanation of the contents. I warned them that the sour notes came from the vinegar. I didn’t want them to innocently take a bite and assume it had spoiled. This seemed to help. They all commented on what an unusual flavor the rice had, but none of them shrank away.

“This tastes so different from anything I’ve had before. But I don’t dislike it.”

“Yeah, and I’ve never even seen these white grains. What do you call this food again?”

“The white grains are rice. They’re from another country.”

“Are they now?”

The three mages seemed to like the food well enough. I couldn’t tell what Lord Smarty-Glasses thought, due to his usual total deadpan. He ate in silence, but I assumed he didn’t dislike it, as his brow remained unfurrowed.

Yuri, on the other hand…

“All the food you prepare is so consistently delicious, and this dish is no exception. I bet I could eat this every day,” he said, smiling radiantly.

“R-really? Thank you.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the stores to meet his request. But there was no point in mentioning that now. I kept quiet about my ingredient woes and instead asked what I wanted to know: “So, is there any change in your stats?”

“Good question. Stats… Nothing as far as I can tell.”

Yuri was the first to check, but none of the other mages saw any changes in their stats either.

Hmm, in this case, maybe it was the miso soup that had the effect that caught Yuri’s attention? 

Just as I was thinking that, Yuri abruptly stood from his chair and headed outside.

“Huh? Where are you going?”

“I’d like to try something.”

“Why outside?”

“Oh, it would be difficult to clean up if I did it in here.” With that, he promptly left.

Everyone was dumbfounded, but we rapidly recovered ourselves and hurried after him. We found Yuri just outside in the institute gardens, already starting to cast some sort of spell. It went off before Lord Smarty-Glasses had a chance to stop him.

A sphere of water launched into the sky and burst in midair, raining droplets of water down everywhere. It was the same Water Magic spell Jude used when watering the herb garden.

“Uh…”

“It’s just as I suspected.” Yuri turned to us with a gleeful expression. “My magical attack power has increased.”

“Huh?”

He needed to conduct further tests to verify the change, and he announced that he was heading back to the Royal Magi Assembly’s practice grounds.

To be more precise, Yuri started trying to verify it right there in front of the institute, but Lord Smarty-Glasses dragged him away.

Thank you for stopping him. I’m glad no harm came to our gardens.

I asked the servants to clean up the dining hall, and then we all headed over to the Royal Magi Assembly. When we arrived at the practice grounds, Yuri was already in full spectacle mode. As he cast spell after spell, I realized that he had been holding himself back at the institute.

In order to test the effects of the food, the other mages started casting spells as well.

“Ice Arrow.” This was my first time seeing Lord Smarty-Glasses use magic. He shot arrows of ice that flawlessly hit the center of a target that was placed quite far away—and he did so over and over.

I wasn’t the only one impressed. Others gave shouts of admiration as well. 

I looked around and found that a ton of mages had gathered. I asked a nearby mage what they were all doing here, and he said that they hardly ever saw all five of the Assembly’s top mages at the practice grounds at the same time, let alone all casting magic. Everyone in the barracks had come to watch.

After a while, Lord Smarty-Glasses stopped casting his ice arrows and came over to me. Out of nowhere, he said, “My accuracy seems to have increased as well.”

“Really?”

“Normally, I hit a bit off the mark.”

I looked back at the target. Every last one of his arrows had hit dead center. The impact marks weren’t that big either, so it was plainly obvious that they had all done so.

Lord Smarty-Glasses went on to say that although he had confidence in his control over the arrows, they didn’t normally converge so perfectly.

“What about your magical attack power? Grand Magus Yuri said his went up.”

“That has also undoubtedly increased.”

Magical attack power influenced the intensity of your magic and size of your spells. This was why Yuri’s sphere of water outside the institute had covered such a wide area. Normally, the area of effect would’ve been a touch smaller.

Lord Smarty-Glasses also explained that he had been able to use less magic power to achieve the standard effect, which was how he had confirmed that his attack power had increased. 

Based on the analysis Yuri and Lord Smarty-Glasses performed, it was pretty much settled that chirashizushi increased both magical attack power and accuracy.

The other three mages followed up with similar conclusions. I asked them to check if there were any other effects, just in case, but it seemed to be just those two.

Within a few hours, the effects of the food had worn off, so we decided to call it a day.

“Thank you for helping me today,” I said.

“Don’t mention it. It is I who ought to thank you for introducing me to such a wonderful new kind of food,” Yuri responded cheerfully.

Most food affected physical attacks and HP. The only magic-related effect we had found thus far had impacted MP. However, in this study, we had confirmed that other magic-related effects did in fact exist. I could tell that Yuri, notorious for his magic obsession, was very much intrigued by this finding.

“It’s difficult to acquire the ingredients you used in the dish you made today, yes?” Yuri asked.

“That’s right.”

“And here I would eat it every day if I could…”

“That would be a challenge right now. I was thinking of having the ingredients regularly imported, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see, rice is a staple food in the country I come from, so I’d also like to be able to eat it at least once a day myself.”

“In other words, once you start importing it, you will be able to eat it every day at the institute’s dining hall?”

“Probably?”

“Is that so? Then please let me know the moment that happens. And allow me to join you!”

I didn’t think he’d actually go that far! I wouldn’t be surprised if he really did start coming every day. But whatever. I’ll make sure the Royal Magi Assembly gets charged for his meals. Either way, I told Yuri that I would, and as I did so, he smiled even more brilliantly than before.