Third Arc: Thirty-First Chapter

Murmur, murmur...

The people around me were being noisy about something. Had something happened? Right now I was outside the kitchen, peeling taro.

A tuber is a tuber anywhere, it seems. What I had been peeling all this while was something like taro, no, it was taro. In Altria I had only ever seen potatoes, so I had assumed there was no taro, but here it was. It was a relief that this world's vegetables and other ingredients were mostly the same as my past life's. The thought of what if the staple food had been insects or something sent a shiver down me, late as it was to worry. But if you had eaten that from birth, would you get used to it, I wondered?

Thinking such pointless thoughts, I finished the last taro left in the colander and set it on the mountain of already-peeled ones. I had peeled more than fifty of them, roughly. Whew. My hands were fairly tired, but it was nothing to me, with my part-time experience at a deli in my past life to draw on. Taro, do you yield?

"...Hm?"

Without my noticing, the kitchen's cooks had gathered around me. They were staring at me with astonished eyes, but had something odd happened?

"To finish peeling those slimy taros this fast...! And what is this, this beautiful shape?!"

"What lovely hexagons. Did she really peel them all by herself? Didn't she cheat somehow?"

"No, I was watching! She peeled every last one herself!"

Pointing at the mountain of taro, the cooks pressed on, all talking at once.

...Slimy taro? Surely that wasn't the official name? The head chef who had set me to peeling had said, "Peel these slimy taros!" too, though.

"Cose... Cordelia, that's amazing. Just as I would expect."

Anje murmured this, looking at the taro I had peeled. Cordelia, by the way, is the fake name I am using to infiltrate. With the business at Lady Remie's wedding, my name might be known, so just in case I decided to go by a false one. Anje probably isn't known, so she is using her own.

When I looked over at Anje, the mountain of potatoes in front of her was still a mountain. With the skins on. It had shrunk from when the chef first handed it over, of course, but she wasn't even half done. And she wasn't very good at it.

"It's nothing special. I just peeled a lot of them long ago. I'll help."

I started peeling the potatoes Anje had been working on. Far easier than the slimy taro, by a long way. When I finished the potatoes, the cooks around me had their mouths open in stunned expressions.

"What quick work..."

"Maybe I'll quit being a cook..."

There was even someone with his hands on the ground, dejected. Then, pushing through the crowd, the head chef came toward me.

"You lot, what are you doing! Back to your stations!"

"Sorry!"

When the cooks scattered like spider hatchlings, the head chef stared hard at the mountain of taro, then picked one up.

"Hmph. You're not bad at all. When I saw those pretty hands of yours, I took 'wandering cook' for a transparent lie, but..."

The truth was, my auntie disguise had been seen through by the head chef early on. Because my hands were too pretty for an auntie cook. Well, I tend to forget it myself, but I am an earl's! a noble's! daughter (I emphasized it since I forget), so my hands are pretty, like someone who has never done wet work. Mainly thanks to Sissi's efforts.

Maybe that was why, when we asked to be hired on in the kitchen, the head chef set us a test. If you want to be hired, peel these taros!

"So this means you'll hire me, right?"

In front of the neatly peeled mountain of taro, I crossed my arms and threw out my chest. Hmph! Don't underestimate a housewife!

"Tch. Nothing for it. I'm a 'famous' head chef, after all. I'll hire you two."

"A quick decision, that helps. ...We had better hurry..."

"Hurry?"

To the head chef, tilting his head warily, I gave a single nod and announced gravely,

"The taro will discolor."

"Water! Bring water, someone!"

The head chef bellowed at the apprentices watching from a distance. There had been no container big enough to hold all the peeled taro, so we'd had no choice but to pile it up on the colander.

---

That night. In a room inside the mansion, a middle-aged man with white hair and the head chef sat facing each other. The room was not large but was neatly kept, and on the desk in front of the white-haired man, papers were stacked with precision. The head chef, standing before the desk where the man sat, wore a tense expression. Having received the chef's report, the middle-aged man set both elbows on the table, let out a light sigh, and nodded.

"Hmm. So these people really were cooks, then?"

"Y-yes. I'm, I'm sure of it. Otherwise there's no way they could peel slimy taros that fast."

"Is that so. Very well. Thank you for your work."

Bowing to the middle-aged man, the head chef hurried out of the room as if flustered. His step said he wanted out of the room as fast as possible, but that was the usual thing. The white-haired man was the head of the servants, entrusted with everything in Madam Lyonetta's mansion, the butler, called Dunhill. Even a head chef could, by Dunhill's judgment, be docked pay or, at worst, dismissed.

The head chef had been summoned by Dunhill for hiring new cooks that day. But hiring a mere two cooks was something that should, by rights, have been within the chef's authority alone. Even so, summoned urgently by Dunhill, the head chef had come to the head servant's room in a hurry, tilting his head in puzzlement.

After the head chef left the room, Dunhill rose from his seat and brewed his own tea. Commoner though he was, the tea drunk by Dunhill, butler to the household of the king's former concubine, was of course the finest leaf. Narrowing his eyes at its fragrant amber color, Dunhill tilted the cup and let out a relieved breath.

"...So they really were cooks."

It was an important time for Lady Lyonetta right now. He had considered the danger, however slight, but it was as well that it came to nothing. Dunhill drank down his tea, loosened his neatly knotted tie a little, and closed his eyes.