Hans, with his arms folded, stares intently at the cutting board.
He had been lost in thought, maintaining the same posture for quite some time. His mind was occupied by the sharpness and subtle bitterness of toriaezu nama.
Recently, Hans had happily reconciled with his father, Lorenz, and the Taisho of the Izakaya had given him a challenge.
He was to come up with a new dish to add to the menu.
While he wasn’t yet in a position to prepare dishes to be served at the restaurant, being able to think about the menu was a significant step forward. It showed how much the Taisho acknowledged him.
The theme was “a dish that goes well with Toriaezu Nama.”
There was no specific deadline, but he wanted to complete it as soon as possible. With that in mind, he had been spending his evenings after closing, arms folded in thought, at Izakaya Nobu.
“Have you come up with any good ideas?”
Leontaine swirled the ice in her glass of Taketsuru Pure Malt with her fingertip, creating a pleasant clinking sound. It was a new liquor that Nobu had recently started serving. Leontaine seemed to have taken a great liking to it, and it, along with Tantakatan, had become her go-to drinks for the evening.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing can’t be right. You’ve been standing there for days.”
“I want to create something completely new.”
“That’s a pretty ambitious goal.”
It wasn’t thoughtless of him to say that he wanted to create a completely new dish.
All the dishes at Izakaya Nobu were delicious and refined. To be added to the menu, something new was needed.
Simply imitating the Taisho’s cooking with a few modifications wouldn’t allow him to take advantage of the opportunity he’d been given, and above all, he wouldn’t be satisfied with himself.
“Why don’t you at least decide on the ingredients? You must have a few ideas for ingredients that would go well with Toriaezu Nama, right?”
“I’m thinking of using pork.”
Pork was a widely familiar ingredient in the old capital, but surprisingly, it was rarely used at Izakaya Nobu. It was used in tonkatsu, kushikatsu, and kakuni, but it didn’t have as many opportunities to shine as chicken.
Pigs that were allowed to roam freely in Branton Forest ate two-humped acorns and medicinal shii fruit during the fall and were brought to market around this time of year. He wanted to use that pork to create something.
“Pork, huh? Whether you boil it, grill it, or fry it, it seems like it would go well with Toriaezu Nama. I think it’s a good choice.”
“The problem is how to cook it.”
Leontaine’s immediate assertion that pork would go well with Toriaezu Nama whether boiled, grilled, or fried meant that no matter how he cooked it, it would only result in existing dishes.
Even if it was a dish not served at Izakaya Nobu, if it could be eaten at other restaurants in the old capital, there would be no point in Hans thinking about it.
So, what should he do?
He took the pork out of the refrigerator and placed it in front of him. Since it was pork that could never be eaten raw, it had to be cooked.
Besides boiling, grilling, and frying, what else was there? As he thought about this while looking at the pork from various angles, there was a knock on Nobu’s glass door.
He and Leontaine looked at each other.
The noren had already been put away, and the Taisho was upstairs watching a detective drama. If Shinobu had forgotten something and came to get it, she would come through the back door, and there was no way Eva would come at this hour.
Could it be a thief?
Leontaine was already standing guard with a broom in her hand. Her stance, facing the door at a half-angle, was a beautiful posture, truly befitting a veteran mercenary.
Hans nodded to Leontaine, lowered his stance, and reached for the glass sliding door.
He steadied his breathing and pulled it open in one swift motion.
“Who’s there!”
“Whoa!”
Leontaine’s shout, imbued with a spirit-shattering kiai, caused the visitor to fall on his backside.
Translator’s Note
Kiai is a shout used in martial arts to focus energy.
Hans recognized the face. Rather, he saw it every day.
“…Brother?”
Helplessly sprawled on the snowy Coachman’s Lodge street was Hans’s older brother, Hugo.
“Hans, aren’t you open at this hour?”
“No, we’re not. Didn’t you see the noren was down?”
“But it was still bright inside, and I was hungry, and I thought maybe…”
His brother looked up at him with pleading eyes. Hans put him inside for the time being and lit the stove. He put water in a saucepan to boil and threw in some cold rice.
Since Hugo had come after closing time, he wasn’t a customer. There would be no problem with Hans cooking something for him.
The wound on his finger had already healed.
“Next time, please come a little earlier.”
“Yeah, I’ll try. But I’ve been a little busy lately.”
The job he had taken on from Thomas at the cathedral was apparently proving unexpectedly difficult. Hugo and Hans’s father, Lorenz, was the best glass specialist in the old capital, but polishing glass to the exact thickness specified by the customer was no easy task. Now, Hugo and he were working together on this job. As he talked in his normal conversational tone, Leontaine grinned.
“What close brothers you are. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hans so relaxed.”
“Really?”
He wasn’t sure himself, but maybe he was building a wall somewhere.
From a young age, he had lived a life of travel.
He had made friends even in places where he didn’t speak the language, but his best friend was, without a doubt, his older brother, Hugo. That’s why, even at this age, he was close to his brother.
He cracked an egg and made egg porridge. For his brother, who had a weak stomach, something light like this would be better.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.”
Watching his brother slurping the porridge with relish, he remembered the time they traveled west. By that time, Hans’s mother was gone, and Lorenz and his two sons were traveling together.
He was sure it was a trip to visit Hugo’s uncle.
They rode horses for days across a vast grassland. They traveled with a caravan of traders going to buy pepper, but the only children were his brother and him.
He still remembered how strangely delicious the mutton they ate under the star-filled sky, surrounded by the horizon on all sides, was.
Perhaps because he was full from eating the porridge, Hugo’s expression softened. After giving a brief greeting to Leontaine, whom he was meeting for the first time, a natural conversation began.
“Hans, you’ve been coming home late lately. Are you having trouble with something?”
“Yeah, I’m having a hard time coming up with a new menu item.”
He even told him that he was thinking of using pork, and Hugo put down his wooden spoon and looked thoughtful. He didn’t move at all.
It was an old habit of his; whenever Hugo started thinking deeply, he always became like this.
“I guess he won’t be going home for a while…”
“Is that how it is?”
“Yeah, when he gets like this, it takes a long time.”
He was proud of his brother, who was good at everything, but this was the one thing that bothered him. When he focused on something, he became oblivious to everything around him. Even if you called out to him, he wouldn’t respond.
Giving up on going home, various ideas he wanted to try came to mind. How about changing the way the pork was cut? The smoked squid that Berthold brought had a completely different texture when it was shredded. It might also be interesting to try slicing the pork thinly.
Leontaine seemed willing to stay a little longer, making another glass of Taketsuru on the rocks.
A quiet time passed slowly.
Perhaps because it wasn’t snowing today, the sound of a dog howling somewhere in the distance could be heard clearly.
“…How about ground meat?”
Hugo returned to this world sooner than expected. He had been prepared to stay until morning, so he was a little grateful.
“Ground meat? Are you going to make sausages?”
“No, no. Don’t you remember, Hans? That, um, lamb wrapped and baked.”
“Oh, pelmeni!”