As we, the Princess and I, that is, were walking towards the carriage and away from her knights, I couldn't help but notice my legs shaking excessively.

For one thing, today I've walked a distance comparable to that I've accumulated in the past ten years combined. Not to mention right before that, I apparently died. So there's that.

Another thing was the terrifying look Renig was sending my way. Chilled to the bone I was walking away with dozens of eyes on me. My hope right now was that I've managed to keep my face unfazed, it would be too troublesome if he were to find out that I was actually intimidated by him. And it’s not like there’s nothing to be scared of, the man was twice my size and trained in a subtle art of cutting people’s heads off.

As I followed the princess she remained silent until there was some distance between the two of us and her knights.

“There’s something I would like to hear your opinion on,” she began while we were walking under the close gaze of King’s knights.

“I hope I can be of use to you...” I said, before realising. “Your Highness.”

“I have no doubt that you will be, in fact, very useful,” she wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, a certain glimmer appeared in her eye. “You see, Sir cuisiner, I have been looking for something. For a really long time I was looking, to no avail. Surely, at some point I had lost all hope. Would you care to guess what was it that I was looking for?”

“Waldo?”

“I was looking for you!”

“Me?” I asked dumbly, genuinely surprised.

“Well, at the very least I hope so. See, what I was looking for was what you represent.”

“Your Highness, do you mean food?”

“Of course. For a royalty, a good cuisiner isn’t just a big source of pride, it’s also a necessity. It’s only natural for a princess to have the best cuisiner, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I couldn't possibly know, but it must be as you say...” I say that, but by the looks of it, she isn’t being exactly forthcoming with me. Not like I can do anything about it if she doesn’t want to tell me. Not like I could help her even if she did…

“Wouldn’t it be shameful if some noble woman or a baroness had a better cuisiner than the princess herself? Surely, you must understand the predicament that I am in.”

The two knights posted at the entrance of the carriage saluted the princess and opened the door letting us in. After that, they discretely stepped further away, leaving the two of us alone.

The carriage itself, white and splendid on the outside, was even more breathtaking on the inside. It was very spacious, even with a big round table in the middle. Unlike the other carriages I’ve seen today, the seats here were soft and luxurious, their sides decorated with gold. Even though the weather outside was damp and cloudy, it wasn’t dark inside the carriage.

The light that was coming in through the window landed straight on a large painting on the front wall. The picture was of a man riding a horse and raising his sword above his head. Considering his extravagant attire, it wouldn’t be a longshot to assume the man was a member of a royal family. Maybe the King himself?

“Please, get yourself comfortable,” the princess sat down and invited me to join her at the opposite end of a table.

After spending some time in this world I already got used to dealing with other people, even the princess, if I may say so myself, so I wasn’t as nervous as I probably should have been. I am in a presence of a royalty, even if it is of a country that I have never heard of.

“I have already told you that I wanted to hear your opinion on something, Sir cuisiner,” she continued once I sat down. “See, what I have said before is only a part of the truth. It is important for a princess to have a capable cuisiner, but that is not what drove me on my pursuit for the greater pleasure that is food.”

As she continued speaking, she started taking out things from a bag and putting them on the table in front of us.

“The truth is, that I am fascinated by the art of food making. Surely you of all people must understand what I mean.”

“I believe I do, Your Highness.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie. The passion for food may not be burning inside of me, but I surely can understand the greatness behind it. Delicious food is one of the greatest and most affordable pleasures for a man. My tastes aren’t refined by any means, but I surely can appreciate an appetizing meal. I guess that qualifies.

“For so long I was looking for a suitable cuisiner who would understand my needs and whose skills could match them. That is why I was so surprised after tasting your potatoes. At first I thought it was because I hadn’t eaten anything for a long time, but the longer I snacked on them, the more I come to realise how exquisite the dish actually was. Surely, it must be fate, was what I thought. I believe I have found my cuisiner.”

“You do?”

“Of course. I really believe that you are the one for me,” she looked right at me and smiled widely. “But that is not why I brought you here.”

As she was saying that, she removed the napkins from the contents of the bag, that she previously lined up on the table. What was in front of me wasn’t really surprising, considering the circumstances.

“What I would like for you to do, is simply tell me what you think of this.”

After marching who knows how many miles I found myself not really caring about the things that surrounded me. I had some water to calm my parched throat and for a time being that was enough. However, now that I was comfortably sitting in a warm and cozy carriage, I finally realised how hungry I actually was.

Thankfully, there was a table covered in food in front of me.

“You want me to tell you what I think of this food, Your Highness?”

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“Yes, I want you to taste it and tell me what you think of it!” she repeated a bit irritated, but the smile on her face remained unchanged. The excitement on her face was almost visible.

I took another look at all the food on the table. It wasn’t necessarily ‘pretty’, just like you would expect food from a bag to be, but it had that certain look of quality fitting a royal princess. Even though it wasn’t presented well, the food looked nothing short of delicious. And just like the princess, I had to consider if it wasn’t just because I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.

Even I could tell that the meats were of premium quality, juicy and well made, the smell of which could make a person faint of ecstasy. It wouldn’t be a longshot to assume that all the products used were of prime quality. Needless to say, the food that was luring me in right now with its enchanting smells was prepared for the princess herself.

“Go on, try it,” the princess urged me.

I lift my head to see princess look at me with a warm smile on her face. Feeling a bit relieved, I extend my hand and take a piece of smoked ham.

Its aroma was out of this world…

The scent of the smoke wasn’t too intense, but just enough to make you almost feel the taste before ever even put the ham in your mouth. The meat itself, however, looked a bit differently that I had expected. For one, the color of it wasn’t bright red like I’m used to, but rather light brown. Even so, it looked appetizing enough, so I did not mind.

Thinking about it for a moment, this is a very unique experience. As someone who had lived his whole life in a metropolis in a twenty-first century, I had never tasted ‘real’ meat. So much so, that even the color threw me off at first. No dyes, no preservatives. I’m about to do something I had never done before…

And that is tasting real, natural, homemade quality ham.

“And? What do you think, Sir cuisiner?” the princess inquired after I properly ate the piece of ham.

A salty goodness, melting in your mouth. Soft, juicy meat, overwhelming your taste buds as you chew on it. A delightful aftertaste, leaving you wanting more.

Was what I expected. But what I got instead might as well have been a complete opposite of that.

The meat was hard, resilient and rubbery, chewing on it felt almost like a chore. The smoke, that previously smelled so delicious, made the meat taste bitter and the amount of salt on it almost made you shrivel. But more than that, it was tasteless. The meat itself had no taste whatsoever.

Maybe it’s just me? Maybe I got so used to preservatives and taste-enhancers that I can’t savor the real thing anymore?

That doesn’t seem possible. More likely, the ham just wasn’t very good. No, that’s not possible either. It was made personally for the princess, it has to be the best ham in the nation.

But then why wouldn’t it taste good?

“It’s… Quite well made.”

“You don’t have to hold yourself back. Go on, speak your mind, I will not take it personally,” she encouraged me.

“Well, quite frankly, Your Highness, it’s not very good.”

The smile on her face vanished the moment those words left my mouth. Now she was staring me down with and intense look in her eye. Another shiver went down my spine.

“Yes, I agree. This is why I took the measures that I did to find a suitable cuisiner. Someone, that could make it taste as pleasurable as it possibly can. Do you understand now, Sir cuisiner?”

“Yes, I believe I do.”

“Then, do you think that we had reached the peak of what food can really be?”

“Your Highness… Yes, I believe so.”

“Ahh...” the look on her face immediately switched to that of shock, and then to that of disappointment. “You really do? You actually think that’s the pinnacle of cookery that we can achieve?”

“If it’s not too much… Then let me ask you something in return, Your Highness. Since when do you believe humans had started smoking meat?”

“I do not know for sure,” caught off guard by an unexpected question, princess hesitated for a moment. “But I would guess for at least several hundred years.”

“And since when do they eat pork?”

“Even longer than that, I would presume...”

“Then what makes you think that after hundreds of years of perfecting the recipe, it can still be improved?..” I found myself completely carried away. My heart was beating intensely, rushing blood through my veins as if something had woken inside of me. “Your Highness...” I remembered to add, finally.

She pondered for a short while, looking as if she hadn’t noticed my loss of control. While I was hoping to learn something more about this world from her answers, it proved to be less than helpful. The fact that they’ve been smoking meats for ‘hundreds of years’ isn’t really that useful.

“To tell you the truth, I really do not know… I just have this feeling. That it can be better,” she finally said looking hesitant.

Looking at her right now, I really couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Rather, feel sympathetic. I would really like to help her, the only problem is I can’t. For one thing I don’t have a slightest idea of how to smoke meat, more than that, I can’t even figure out why that ham I just ate wasn’t tasty.

The taste in my mouth felt like I ate a coal straight from a campfire. That can’t possibly be right. But even though I ate ham many, many times, and some of them were really phenomenal and the rest were at least ‘good’, I still had no idea what went wrong with this one. Too much smoke? Not enough seasoning? Surely the chefs would have figured out something this simple, there must be a deeper problem.

Or at least deep enough for my jokingly small knowledge of meat smoking to be of no use.

“I’m afraid things that have been around for hundreds of years don’t just change overnight. The only thing to do here is to wait and hope.”

“But that is not true, is it?”

“How come, Your Highness?”

“Wasn’t it you, who invented a whole new way to cook potatoes?”

I did say something like that, haven’t I?

“And how long were the potatoes around, Your Highness?”

“Potatoes? Not as long as pork, of course, but for at least a hundred years, so your argument should still stand, no?”

A hundred years, she says… History was one of my strongest subjects back in high school, but even so all these years later some details escape me. Even so, potatoes came to Europe somewhere around the 15th or 16th century. If they were around for at least a hundred years, the current year is somewhere in the 1600s. Assuming that this world’s history coincides with my own, that is.

“That is true and that is why I suggest you stay patient and wait. New recipes, improvements and new ways to cook will emerge sooner or later...”

“You should not be saying that!”

“...”

“You are a cuisiner, are you not? Don’t you have any respect for your profession, or for yourself for that matter?” she asked angrily.

“Of course, that wasn’t right of me. My apologies, Your High --”

“Please, stop!” she interrupted me abruptly. “I don’t want to hear any more of your fake formalities! That is all I hear all the time… For once, I want to hear the truth. I do not want you to apologize to me or to agree with me just because I’m a princess! I want… No, I need you be truthful with me.”

Before my last girlfriend broke up with me, she said something that stuck with me. Something, that sounded a lot like the outburst I was hearing right now. Of course, the context was very different, but the base idea was the same. Am I really too obsessed with making others happy?

Of course that wasn’t it. I wasn’t always agreeing with my girlfriend because I wanted to make her happy. It was just too much of a bother. Arguing, expressing your opinion, defending your choices out loud. All too much work. It’s much easier to silently agree and move on with your life.

And right now, even though I was being submissive for very different reasons, the conclusion that the two women came to was almost the same.

“Then what is it that you want me to tell you, Your Highness?”

“For now, I don’t want you to say anything,” she looked serious, even angered. There was no trace of a friendly smile befitting a royalty. “I just want to know that the man who will be preparing my food hasn’t given up before he even started.”

Given up, huh? Another flashback to my life before coming here…

“And what if I have?..”

“Then, I guess, you will get to find out soon enough,” she said as coldly as I will ever hear her speak. A chill ran down my spine off her gaze. “I will be expecting you to prepare my dinner tonight.”

It seems once again I find myself in way over my head. Turns out, she wasn’t joking at all. She really does expect me cook for her… Not just that, she expects me to essentially blow her away with my superior cooking skills…

What. Shitty. Luck.

Here’s hoping they have insta-ramen in this world!

Oh. Didn’t someone say something about her ordering one of her previous chefs executed?