Chapter 47
"It seems you don't remember what you did to the cocktail you mixed for me?"
"Well. I'm not sure. It was so long ago."
At the sight of Tony calmly scratching his head and answering, the Detective's broad forehead turned as red as a ripe persimmon as he shouted.
"I still remember it vividly! I can never forget that terrible taste! It was the worst Kahlúa Milk of my life."
Kahlúa… that would probably be a coffee liqueur.
Since it starts with K, it should be somewhere in the middle of the alphabetical order.
It was a recipe I hadn't memorized yet.
Still, thanks to the time I'd spent studying, I could somewhat deduce it just by hearing the name.
It was obviously made by mixing coffee liqueur and milk.
I sneakily checked the manual, and it was exactly as I expected.
Kahlúa Milk, 1 ounce of coffee liqueur to 3-4 ounces of milk. Simple as that.
Just like with the Fallen Angel last time, Detective Ajje seemed to prefer cocktails with a smooth texture containing milk or cream like this.
"Ah, that. I told you it was a mistake. I even apologized. I was out of my mind that day."
Tony spoke slyly to the agitated Self-Proclaimed Holmes.
Anyway, a recipe like this was so easy that there shouldn't be any room for mistakes.
Especially if the one mixing the drinks was a skilled bartender like Tony.
I wondered what on earth he had done to make him so furious.
When I asked about it, the Troublemaker Detective trembled as if just recalling it made him angry and spoke.
"What did he do? I'll explain. That Crazy bartender put Fish Sauce in the Kahlúa Milk instead of Kahlúa!"
"Pfft."
A laugh burst out of me unexpectedly.
Fish Sauce meant liquid fish seasoning. Kkanari Aekjeot, Myeolchi Aekjeot, that sort of thing.
If he put fish sauce in a cocktail that was supposed to be mixed with coffee liqueur… it didn't seem like a taste I'd want to imagine.
It wasn't some real variety entertainment show.
Anyway, I thought I knew why the Detective and Tony didn't get along. They had their own reasons for it.
As I continued to wear a smile on my face, he shrieked from beside me.
"Is this funny? You think this is funny! If you had tasted it, you would never be able to laugh like you are now!"
"Yes, I get it, so please calm down. But if it was Fish Sauce, couldn't you tell by the smell?"
"Right! Normally, I would have been able to tell by the smell!"
The Troublemaker Detective, not calmed down in the slightest, shouted with a face full of grievance and anger.
"But that evil Scum of a demon mixed the fish sauce and coffee liqueur in a one-to-one ratio, and even sprinkled Coffee-flavored Powder on top to disrupt my sense of smell!
No matter how sensitive my five senses are as a Detective, I couldn't avoid such a meticulously designed trap."
That really seemed more like the realm of a trap than a cocktail.
For one thing, it was definitely not a drink that could be born from a simple mistake.
When I looked at Tony with a gaze telling him to explain himself, he shrugged and said.
"First of all, it wasn't a one-to-one ratio. If I had to be precise, it was about one-to-two. I didn't put a lot, just a really tiny bit."
"Don't lie! A one-to-two ratio could never produce that kind of taste!"
"It wasn't that bad. You're exaggerating too much."
"You son of a—"
Sensing the atmosphere overheating, I held back the Troublemaker Detective, who was starting to jump around wildly again, and spoke.
"Setting aside the ratio issue, isn't it hard to see it as a mistake in the first place? How could you confuse Fish Sauce and coffee liqueur?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying! Unless he's the biggest idiot in the world, or he walks around with his brain completely removed."
"But it's the truth."
Tony rummaged under the table for a moment and pulled out two glass bottles filled with pitch-black liquid.
They had labels for coffee liqueur and Fish Sauce attached to them, respectively.
It was definitely hard to tell them apart by color alone. If you took off the labels, it seemed impossible to recognize them just by visual elements.
No wonder it was used so much in game of chance shows.
"Look, they look exactly the same on the outside. I was busy, so I just grabbed it and poured it without paying attention to the label, and what do you know, it was Fish Sauce.
I smelled it belatedly, realized I made a mistake, and poured the rest with coffee liqueur to try and fix it before serving it."
"…Shouldn't you have thrown it away and made a new cocktail the moment you smelled it and noticed?"
At my reasonable objection, Tony pondered for a moment before winking and saying.
"Well, back then I hadn't been working as a bartender for very long, so I lacked coping skills… and you never know.
There might be a discovery of a new recipe within a mistake. The Customer might have liked a cocktail with a hint of the sea added to it, so I just gave it to him as it was."
Hmm, so in the end, it sounded like he just gave it to him to screw with the Troublemaker Detective.
I wasn't the only one who heard it that way, as the Detective flared up in anger.
"As if I would like something like that! And why is there Fish Sauce in a bar in the first place? This isn't some street vendor selling cheap pad thai, so what reason is there to use such a smelly ingredient to make cocktails!"
"Uh-uh, a smelly ingredient? You're saying something that could get you in big trouble. Fish Sauce is such a popular ingredient in Eastern cultures. Right, Nakamura?"
"Yes… well. It is on the popular side."
Even in Korea, which had now become New Mecha Korea, it was often used when making kimchi, soups, or stews, and China's oyster sauce was a type of Fish Sauce, and Japan also frequently used fish soy sauce….
Popularity aside, there probably weren't many people who liked drinking it raw in a beverage without any processing.
"Popular or not, who puts that in a cocktail to drink! Tell me honestly. You prepared the Fish Sauce on purpose to play a trick on me."
"You rate yourself too highly. I don't hold enough of a grudge against you to go that far. And cocktails with Fish Sauce actually exist."
"Don't lie to me!"
The Troublemaker Detective shouted as if he couldn't believe it at all, but soon he was forced to face the dark and cruel truth.
"I should have made a bet on this. What a shame."
Because Tony kindly set up the Holographic Menu and showed it right in front of the Self-Proclaimed Holmes's eyes.
Liquor/Cocktail/Detailed Classification/Ingredient/Fish Sauce
-The Fisherman's Folly
-Five O'Clock in Phuket
-Hunterground
-Papaya Salad Daiquiri
-Starbound
-Vietnamese Bloody Mary
·
·
·
"That's… impossible."
If anyone saw him, they'd think he just heard news that the World was ending.
The Troublemaker Detective grabbed my sleeve and asked with an agonized expression. His limbs and pupils were trembling like an aspen tree.
"Watson… did you know too? That cocktails made with that cursed Fish Sauce actually exist?"
"I had no idea either."
How would I know that? It's only been five days since I started my Cocktail Study.
I was surprised too.
I knew that the number of cocktails registered in the shop's manual was enormous, and that the variety was truly diverse, but I didn't expect it to be to this extent.
Since there were so many cocktails made with all sorts of unusual ingredients, I figured there might be one or two made with Fish Sauce, but I didn't know there would be that many.
Then again, in a world where there's a cocktail made by putting a human toe in it, a Fish Sauce Cocktail isn't really anything to be surprised about.
"It can't be. How could this…."
Did the Detective look pitiful screaming after taking the red pill that revealed the truth?
Tony stayed silent for a moment before opening his mouth.
"So, you came to drink a cocktail. And Nakamura, you're buying the drinks?"
"Yes. So I'd appreciate it if you had something cheap if possible."
My net account was currently bone dry like a desert.
Come to think of it, I just moved past it earlier because it was an urgent situation, but I hadn't even gotten back the thirty thousand City Dollars stolen by the Robber.
Because the bastard got hit by a lead pellet and ran away right away like a shot.
The Memory Stick he dropped was fortunately recovered, but the money was gone just like that.
As if it wasn't enough that I had vainly donated a month's salary to the damn local community, I was now in a position where I had to pay for a Customer's drinks.
A sigh naturally escaped at my miserable financial state.
It felt like the person who should be drowning in grief right now was me, not that Detective Yangban.
It was a good thing that Man Hunter's expensive hand and the Memory Drive reeking of money that popped out of it remained like an insurance policy; if I didn't even have that, I might have really bawled my eyes out.
"Sey isn't here right now. Do you want me to call Sey if you want? This guy won't drink the alcohol I give him and unconditionally only drinks Sey's."
"You should know the reason why I don't drink it… no, there's no need to call Sey."
The Troublemaker Detective spoke with a face that seemed to have aged several years in an instant, his voice completely drained of energy.
"Because today, I intended to drink a cocktail made by someone else, not Sey, in the first place."
"If you're not drinking Mr. Sey's, and you're not drinking Tony's, who are you going to ask to mix your drink? I wonder if the President would do it if you asked?"
At the question I raised, the Troublemaker Detective slowly turned his head with a creak, as if asking why I was asking something so obvious.
His black pupils shone brightly through the blinking lights of his round monocle cyberware.
He was looking this way, or to be exact, at me.
For a moment, thinking *no way*, my expression stiffened.
"It's not what I'm thinking right now, is it?"
"I believe it is."
"Hey, don't joke around."
"Watson, I want to try drinking a cocktail made by you."
Ah, fuck, seriously.
Why is he doing this to me.