Chapter 21
The meal request form system took root faster than expected.
I don't know if “took root” is the right expression, but I was starting to realize I was adapting frighteningly well to nobles beating people with paper while asking me to cook their lives.
A marchioness wrote twelve pages about the loneliness of her childhood and the scent of summer at her southern villa, while a viscount asked me to let him feel the valor of his house's founding ancestor in his soup.
When the phrase “let me feel my ancestor in the soup” began slipping into conversation so naturally, I admitted this industry had strayed from any normal path.
Business was still good.
The kitchen had grown larger, several villagers had joined as general laborers, and Thomas was growing into an excellent kitchen hand who moved faster whenever he was cursed at.
Marie hardly trembled when carrying plates anymore, and Uncle Bernard had mastered delivering absurd course descriptions to guests with dignity.
The problem was that the guests were becoming increasingly formidable.
Their titles, their demands, and their purses.
And one morning, a count came in person.
The reservation for that evening had originally belonged to Count Armand Verk.
His request form was on the short side.
“He wants us to express the bitterness of a failed duel in his youth and the honor left behind afterward.”
“……?”
When I first saw it, I closed my eyes for a moment.
“Why do nobles insist on chewing on the wounds of their lives while they eat?”
“They chew on delicious things too much in their everyday lives, so maybe they want to chew on something like that once in a while.”
“Is that so?”
Even so, it wasn't a bad theme.
I thought we could go with bitterness, roasted aromas, acidity that didn't shy away, and a short sweetness at the end.
I had already roughly planned the course, and the ingredients were prepared as well.
But the count showed up in person that morning.
And his face was deathly pale.
“Miss Monbel.”
As soon as he entered the parlor, the count bowed his head to Elysia.
It wasn't a polite dip; he bowed deeply in earnest.
I immediately furrowed my brow at the sight.
A count was bowing that deeply to a baron's daughter?
This wasn't normal.
Elysia looked flustered, too.
“Count Verk, what brings you here?”
“I would like to give my reservation for this evening… to someone else.”
I opened my mouth at once.
“No.”
The count's gaze turned to me.
I spoke as politely but firmly as possible.
“Reservations at Maison Monbel cannot be transferred, nor may someone attend in another guest's place. We've already prepared the course according to your request form. If the guest changes, the entire direction of the meal changes, too.”
“I know that.”
“Then it's even more impossible.”
“But just this once, could you make an exception…”
“Once exceptions appear, the rules die.”
The count's face grew even paler.
An ordinary noble would have said, “How dare you stop me when you're only a chef?” at a moment like this.
But instead of getting angry, he looked at Elysia with an almost pleading expression.
“Miss Monbel, please.”
And he bowed his head again.
This time, even lower.
The parlor froze.
Marie stood by the door with her mouth hanging open, while Uncle Bernard's expression hardened.
Elysia now looked as though she realized this wasn't a simple whim, either.
“Count.”
Elysia asked cautiously.
“Just who is coming?”
The count's lips twitched.
He looked like a man who wanted to speak but couldn't.
‘Someone fucking important is coming.’
Not merely someone important, either.
If a count came in person to give away his reservation and even bowed his head to a baron's daughter, the person was at least a duke, or higher.
But if it were a duke, he would have said the name.
Shameless bastards like Duke Kalden were brazen even when stealing someone else's reservation.
The only people in the empire above a duke were the Grand Duke of the North and the emperor, but the Grand Duke of the North had already sent his servant to make a reservation roughly four months out.
Something about wanting to stop by for a meal while he was traveling south.
Then the answer narrowed considerably.
A chill suddenly crept up the back of my neck.
“Don't tell me…”
The count looked at me desperately.
His eyes conveyed a desperate plea not to ask anything more.
Elysia saw that expression and slowly closed her mouth, too.
After a brief silence, Uncle Bernard said in a low voice,
“Kyle, I think it would be best to change today's course.”
“You guessed, too?”
“Yes.”
“Damn it.”
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
In the course of doing business, all sorts of guests show up.
Difficult guests, late guests, wealthy guests, wealthy guests with rotten personalities, and guests who wanted me to put their three first loves into a dessert.
But guests of imperial stature were different.
They weren't guests. They were disasters.
Even when I'd been invited to cook at the Blue House in my previous life, I hadn't been this nervous.
“All right. We won't cancel Count Verk's reservation. We've already prepared the concept and everything, so we'll give him priority for the next reservation.”
“Phew……”
“However, we'll change the theme of today's meal. Let's set aside the bitterness of honor for now.”
He looked at me with a face mixing relief and fear.
“Thank you.”
“You don't need to thank me. From this point on, we're fucked, too.”
“Kyle.”
Uncle Bernard called me in a low voice.
The count pretended not to hear that.
A very noble form of consideration.
After the count left, the kitchen was thrown into chaos again.
A considerable portion of the course we'd already prepared had become unusable.
We couldn't serve the bitterness of a duel to a guest of imperial stature.
If we made a mistake, it could even be interpreted as offering bitterness to the imperial family.
I lacked political sense, but I knew very well that I had only one neck.
“We're changing the theme.”
I called the kitchen staff together.
“We can't go too strong with today's meal. It can't be too flashy, either, or too shabby. Whoever the guest is, we have to pretend we don't know. A wealthy guest has come, and we're serving that person a good meal.”
Marie asked quietly.
“Who is it?”
“It's better not to know.”
“That's the scariest thing you could say.”
“I feel the same.”
Elysia sat in a chair, her face pale.
“Kyle.”
“Yes.”
“What if it really is Her Majesty?”
“Who is Her Majesty?”
“You guessed it, too.”
“My lady, today, we know nothing.”
“Can we really do that?”
“We have to. If we can't, our heads will roll.”
Elysia shut her mouth.
Normally, she would have treated talk of dying as a joke, but not this time.
When her head could really be cut off, this young lady became surprisingly docile, too.
Evening came.
An oddly quiet carriage arrived in front of the main gate.
It wasn't flashy; if anything, it was excessively ordinary.
That made it more suspicious.
It looked like a carriage dressed up as something a wealthy commoner would normally ride, but the horses were far too fine, the carriage wheels were maintained too well, and the coachman had a soldierly posture for a commoner coachman.
I watched the scene through a crack in the kitchen door and muttered inwardly.
‘If that's a fucking commoner, then I'm Gordon Ramsay.’
The carriage door opened, and a woman stepped out.
She wore dark brown traveling clothes, had tied her hair back plainly, and wore almost no jewelry.
A thin veil hung over her face.
At a glance, she could have been the daughter of a wealthy merchant or the mistress of a major provincial trading house.
The problem was the way she walked.
People could change their clothes, but they couldn't easily change the way they walked.
She was dressed like someone trying to avoid other people's eyes, but she walked like someone accustomed to people stepping aside for her.
And the two attendants who got out after her were pretending to be commoner servants, but their eyes were far too vicious.
Those weren't servants. They were knights at the absolute minimum.
Uncle Bernard greeted her at the entrance.
“Welcome. The name on the reservation is…”
The woman spoke gently.
“I'm Adèle.”
I closed my eyes inside the kitchen.
‘Couldn't she have come up with a more believable alias, for fuck's sake?’
The Emperor, Adeline Luminar.
Kyle's memories included the fact that the empire's empress was named Adeline.
And in this world, the chances that an ordinary wealthy commoner would happen to call herself Adèle, push aside a count's reservation, bring attendants with soldierly bearing, and walk in with steps like that were practically nonexistent.
Not practically. None.
‘Fuck.’
I cursed only inwardly.
Outwardly, I said nothing.
As the woman entered the parlor, she said,
“I'm just a commoner with a little money. I came here today because I wanted to have a quiet meal.”
Elysia's smile stiffened slightly, while Uncle Bernard bowed perfectly.
Marie grabbed my arm from behind the kitchen door.
“Kyle.”
She whispered very softly.
“She's not a commoner, is she?”
“No.”
“Then who is she?”
I answered while preparing the first plate.
“The person we're absolutely supposed to pretend we don't know about today.”
“How high-ranking is she?”
I adjusted the position of the herbs on the plate.
My fingertips trembled slightly.
In my previous life, even Michelin inspectors, television cameras, investors, and food company executives had rarely made my hands tremble.
But this was different.
Today's guest had brought not the price of a meal, but the price of my life.
I slowly exhaled and said,
“The highest.”
“Where?”
“This entire place you're standing in.”
Marie's face went white.
“We do it the same way anyway.”
“The same way?”
“She arrived at the reserved time, sat down as a guest, and is going to pay to eat, right?”
“That is true, but…”
“Then she's a guest.”
I looked at the first plate.
Today's course had been redesigned.
We mustn't treat the emperor like an emperor.
She said she was a commoner, so we had to treat her as a commoner guest.
Of course, a commoner who was obviously the emperor.
I muttered inwardly.
‘Fuck, is this the Emperor's Course?’
I didn't say it aloud.