In a world of magic and leveling, cooking the meat of prehistoric pachyderms enticed Hajime far more than any other thing Swordland had to offer. Had he insisted on the Brazen Couple to use their food storage, they’d probably need to send him to a psych ward. In fact, there was no better reason behind his insistence than it was a fun idea, and the word fun was like a son to him.
Hajime was delighted to have Haruto show him the way to their meat cellar below their home, accessible only with another designated [Door Mail]. As foretold, he didn’t catch a whiff of anything that smelled like salted pork or beef hanging in hooks. Instead, the scent of live wood permeated the air amidst stacks of chests arranged in four-by-four columns on each wall.
“Well, this is it,” said Haruto, walking past him. “It may not seem much, but you can store centuries worth of supplies in these things. Here’s where we put our crops.” He grabbed an exotic vegetable from one of the chests, which appeared to be a cross between a potato and a carrot.
Hajime whistled at their wondrous design of scarlet and silver before turning to his friend. “Now, that’s a surprise. I didn’t know y’all found a love for agriculture.”
“Oh, no, we don’t farm anything here, at least not traditionally. You see, [Lesser Goblins] tend to spawn where we live and drop veggies and other tasty stuff. In other words, we’re ‘farming’ them by exploiting the spots where they pop up.”
“I see…” he replied, caressing his chin as soon as his mind pondered on the many possibilities of this customary game mechanic. “Does that mean y’all got mammoths swimming along the coast now and then?”
Haruto shook his head, eyes closed as he shut the chest gently. “We acquired their meat somewhere too far from here, but don’t worry. General Theo loves sending us treaders across the land for missions. Think of it as an adventurous exercise. Why else would we have such a title?”
“Oh, I’m very familiar with a leader like him. Believe me.”
“Really? I thought you hated authority.”
“Yeah, I still do. But this one dude in my life has given me a bit of interest, if you know what I mean. I never showed it to him, though.”
Haruto gasped before nodding in realization. “Oh, right, I forgot you swing both ways. That aside, let me know if you need help with the spices. We have an open kitchen on the balcony. Happy cooking!”
The [Door Mail] closed on the other side without vanishing into pixels, a convenient feature if Hajime had more to say in its design. Without any more shenanigans, he rubbed his hands together in preparation for his excitement to serve the juiciest mammoth dinner any human alive could ever taste. Unfortunately, there was a problem, and a very inconvenient one, unlike the door.
In all his years in Shibuya, his muscle memory could only master the ingredients for one specific dish: filet mignon. Barring having no access to wagyu beef this time, he instinctively pulled out two barrels of salt and pepper and even otherworldly ingredients by smell alone. No matter what, his soul remained tied to this mouth-watering French delicacy.
Hajime stashed the ingredients back where they belonged. But every time he rearranged his thoughts, hoping he wouldn’t yank them out again, the inevitable occurred. The fourth attempt didn’t help much, either. Grinding his teeth, he gave his head a good repeated smack on a chest with a diamond padlock. “Damn it, brain! Why can’t you cook anything else!?”
He continued his sitcom-worthy endeavor until he heard the sound of broken glass between his forehead. Perhaps the skull really was mightier than the diamond, or at least for a man of his strength. He even broke through what was presumably a game feature in the form of the «Eternal Item», the words glitching into nothingness on the floor. Whatever enchantment that padlock had, it sure wasn’t eternal now.
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No responsible, law-abiding citizen would ever snoop around people’s cherished belongings, but Hajime and his grubby hands acted independently from common sense. Too bad the only thing he could snatch from the unlocked chest were various tax papers and receipts. The most egregious were several transactions from a store that sold handcrafted, phallic “art pieces” glued to leather belts, all named Husband’s Third Lover.
Sheesh, Light Novel Boy. Even I ain’t that crazy with my prostate. He shuffled past many more documents until his eyes caught a parchment envelope with an opened seal at the bottom. It didn’t seem to be another «Door Mail», so he carefully peeked at its contents, ushering in more parchment that could be of goblin skin for all he cared. He just needed to know what sacred texts lay within.
Disappointingly, he didn’t find some ancient spell that could perhaps stop him from thinking about cooking filet mignon. It was a letter in the most mundane nature, written in Hildian, the name of their language he realized just yesterday. It didn’t appear to be an old dialect when he took a picture of it with his virtual phone for translation, starting with the following:
Dear Abner,
Please come to the tree house. I baked a pie for you.
Yours truly, F.W.
“Well, that’s a neat reference.” Hajime closed the chest and returned to the ingredients section for another try. He hoped that if he couldn’t serve them anything besides his favorite food, he could at least try different types of steak.
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Once in a blue moon, the Brazen Couple killed time together instead of training their bodies to death. They preferred the usual for tonight, which was a good read of whatever novel they had bought through the years. As luck would have it, Haruto had bargained quite a steal from a fellow reborn hero who owned a copy of Cressida Cowell’s How To Train Your Dragon. If only the firedrakes in their world were as friendly as the ones in this book.
Twenty minutes passed, but suddenly, Hajime’s voice beckoned them to the dining table as their exquisite mammoth dinner was finally ready. They raced each other to the second-floor balcony like playful siblings fighting over who could grab a taste of that scrumptious tenderloin first. After Tokiwa relished her victory with no sweat, they immediately began raising an eyebrow at what their “chef” had served them.
Hajime stood behind the table on his back as though he were a show host getting ready to yell the title card. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the greatest meal of your short lives! Mammoth brisket, mammoth T-bone, and the most spectacular, mammoth sirloin! If there’s a heaven in this world, this here would be much better!” He panted in place, rendered breathless by his literal head-spinning presentation.
To the untrained eye, their “chef” had whipped them up a cornucopia of distinct dishes of the same idea. Sadly, that was far from the case. The garnish of purple leaves resembling parsley was a remarkable touch, and even the potato carrots had a spot for the centerpiece, but alas, they weren’t different dishes. The Brazen Couple had merely witnessed seven instances of his ever-so-familiar filet mignon.
Yet, despite what would be a grave embarrassment for anyone with two brain cells, they laughed. They laughed in the joy of missing their old friend after what seemed like ten thousand years of searching and waiting. Tokiwa, in particular, would love to thank every existing pantheon that their precious Hajime hadn’t changed even an inch in his character.
Tokiwa gently laid her hand on Hajime’s shoulder, smiling more than ever. “We’ll take it from here… a new dinner, if you will. My Haruto knew this would happen from the start.”
“What? Oh, hell, nah!” Hajime objected. “Don’t act like I don’t remember y’all having the worst cooking in class. Three orphanages nearly died because of your ‘Udon Charity,’ and don’t get me started with what happened to the principal’s wife.”
“Then, why else would the snacks we gave you taste delicious otherwise, hmm?” said Tokiwa, arms crossed with a face of never-ending condescension.
“I dunno. Maybe I developed a resistance to your cooking. At that point, it’s better to eat the same meal than something that could kill a thousand mammoths, not counting your loot.”
Tokiwa sighed, not in defeat but because he was keen on making her recall every detail of their past mishaps. She moved to the balcony’s kitchen, complete with a skillet as long as a ping pong table. “Look, I know you won’t believe us, but you don’t have to,” she said, donning an apron showing a cartoon clock and a toque that sagged to the left. “You don’t even need to watch us. All we need is your trust, and we’ll start fast.”
Surprisingly, Hajime sighed in defeat instead, unable to protest the confidence beaming from the finesse of wearing their uniforms alone. “All right, I’ll bite… literally.”