What I tasted after Mana’s deceptively normal-looking but lethal assassin cooking was none other than the meat-and-potato stew Yoshino had made.
“Hmm. This was made by Yoshino, right?”
“Y-Yes... I-I’m sorry... I kind of messed it up... even though Hieta helped me...”
Just as Yoshino said, some of the potatoes were a little burnt on the outside, and a few of the meat pieces had been cut too finely.
Still, this was pretty respectable.
Compared to those monstrosities over there, anyway.
“This doesn’t really count as messed up, honestly.”
『It’s a dish Yoshino put a lot of care into, so you have to taste it properly and eat it properly, Hieta-kun!』
“Right. I will.”
I nodded at Yoshinon’s words and scooped up a spoonful of the meat-and-potato stew, then put it in my mouth.
The meat had soaked up the broth well and had just the right amount of tenderness, showing off its presence, while the potatoes and other vegetables supported it without standing out, blending together nicely.
There was a slightly burnt taste from one of the potatoes in the middle, but that was barely even worth mentioning.
Overall, the sweetness and saltiness were balanced so well it was basically the textbook example of sweet-and-savory done right.
“Mmm...”
“H-Hieta...?”
When I didn’t say anything after eating it, Yoshino looked at me with a worried expression.
She really didn’t need to worry.
“Yoshino?”
“Y-Yes?”
“This is really good. If I exaggerate a little, I’d say you could open a restaurant with this.”
“T-That much...?”
She said that, but Yoshino’s face made it obvious she was thrilled.
“Why does this taste normal...?”
“Right...?”
While I was tasting Yoshino’s dish, Itsuka-kun and Rinne were eating Miku’s curry.
The two of them were wondering how something that could barely even be called curry could still taste like ordinary curry.
“That’s seriously rude!”
“No, but honestly, it doesn’t make sense.”
Itsuka-kun pushed back against Miku’s protest, and I was inclined to agree with him.
For something that looked like that to taste normal was basically alchemy.
“Am I imagining things, or does this remind me of some ogre from an isekai slime manga...?”
“What’s that?”
“Hm? Nothing, Commander. Just something.”
The Commander looked at me like I was impossible to understand, but I brushed it off.
It’s not like she’d understand even if I explained it.
“Then next, let’s try this stew or whatever it is.”
“Oh my, that’s actually a French dish called pot-au-feu that I made.”
“Oh? So the young lady can cook too?”
Saying that, I tried the unfamiliar dish called pot-au-feu.
“Mmm. Judging by the smell, did you add wine?”
“How sharp of you. As expected of Hieta, I could just eat you up.”
The way she licked her lips with her tongue sent a chill down my spine.
“Ah, haha. I’ll have to decline.”
“Oh dear, what a shame~”
Fortunately, it seemed to be a joke, and the young lady backed off quickly.
“Toast and fried eggs with salad... Hey, Kotori. This is what we had for breakfast.”
After eating Miku’s food, Itsuka-kun seemed to move on to the Commander’s dish.
The problem was that the Commander had made the exact same thing they’d eaten that morning.
“W-What do you mean... It’s perfectly good, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s easy to make, especially in the morning when you’re short on time. So we eat it often.”
“Oh, normal-tasting.”
I casually tried the Commander’s food too.
There was nothing special about it. It was just plain, ordinary taste itself.
“Bwahahaha! You lot aren’t even worth my time! Nothing can stand against the dish Yuzuru and I made... the, uh... Master Plan.”
“Confidence. If Kaguya and Yuzuru join forces, there’s nothing to fear.”
“Wow, Kaguya and Yuzuru made omelets?”
Just like Mayuri said, Kaguya and Yuzuru had made omelets.
They’d also prepared consomme soup and burdock salad as side dishes.
“This is kind of... promising?”
Mayuri looked shocked the moment she took a bite.
I wondered why, so I tried some too, and it was worth the reaction.
“It’s delicious!”
The two of us said the same thing at the same time.
The dish Kaguya and Yuzuru made was so good that I could understand why they were so confident.
I’d vaguely heard before that cooking was one of the competition categories, and it looked like that was paying off here.
“T-This is coal...?”
Something blackened so badly it could have been called coal.
That was the dish Tohka brought out.
“Mmm! Come on, Hieta, taste mine too!”
“Hold on—wait, wait, wait. Tohka. Do you actually think this counts as proper food?”
I was at a loss at Tohka’s confident expression.
What on earth had she made to be that smug?
“Look closely. It’s burned way too much.”
“You won’t die even if you eat it, anyway!”
“Could you stop using me as a test subject?”
At Tohka’s terrifying remark, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen knife.
“H-Hieta?”
Seeing the knife I brought back, Tohka panicked, but I had no other intentions.
I was just going to cut off the burnt outer layer and throw it away.
“I was worried because the outside was pitch black, but the inside is cooked properly.”
Maybe she’d just blasted the meat with high heat, because even though the outside was completely burnt, the inside was cooked through.
“As expected, it just tastes like meat.”
It didn’t seem to be seasoned with anything special.
“Ugh, S-Sachi... what is that...?”
“It’s seafood scallion pancake!”
Mayuri was slowly backing away from the Fire Keeper’s dish.
“H-Hey, don’t bring that over here, Sachi.”
The same went for everyone else.
Whenever the Fire Keeper carried her dish toward people, everyone else kept retreating.
And the reason was obvious: the appearance of the thing she’d made.
“It moved! It moved!”
The food the Fire Keeper insisted was seafood scallion pancake looked horrifying enough to make me wonder how she’d even made it.
Some tentacle-like thing that might have been squid or octopus was writhing around, and—
“P-Please kill me...”
“It spoke! It spoke! I definitely heard a voice!”
It had reached the level where it seemed like it was talking.
What is that, a seafood pancake that crawled up from the demon world?
“You’re all so mean. I worked really hard on it...”
As everyone avoided her, the Fire Keeper muttered miserably.
“Everyone’s so mean... right, Hai-chan?”
“You even gave it a name!?”
So because it was seafood scallion pancake, she called it Hai-chan?
“Ahem. I’ll try it.”
“Hieta?”
“Hiki! That’s way too reckless!”
“Hieta! That’s suicide! Come back!”
When I stepped up and said I’d eat it, everyone rushed to stop me.
They were making way too big a deal out of one dish.
“Ah, a noble one!”
“If no one else wants to eat it, may I have all of it?”
“Of course!”
The Fire Keeper proudly held out the seafood scallion pancake.
Judging by the way her mouth was curling up, she really did seem confident in it.
“Then, let’s see...”
I stabbed the center of the seafood scallion pancake—or whatever it was—with a fork and shoved the whole thing into my mouth at once.
“H-He ate it!”
“Spit it out! Hieta! Spit it out!”
Munch, munch—
“Ugh, th-thi’g’s got a lot of re’istance...?”
Every time I tried to chew, wriggling tentacles pushed against my teeth.
Ignoring its resistance, I chewed as hard as I could, crushed it into tiny pieces, and swallowed.
Gulp!
“He swallowed it!”
“Hieta! Are you okay!?”
“W-What does it taste like!? What does it taste like!?”
“Hmm...”
As I said before, the taste was just a perfectly ordinary seafood scallion pancake.
“It tastes like a normal seafood pancake.”
“T-That can’t be!?”
“Hieta! Is your sense of taste broken or something?”
“Look at this! Even the noble one said my Hai-chan is delicious!”
The Fire Keeper glared at the others, complaining about how unfair they were being.
“No, I didn’t say it was delicious—”
“What was that?”
“Yep. It’s delicious.”
Man, that was scary.
I tried to object to the Fire Keeper’s words, but one look at that murderous glare and I gave up immediately.
“Hm? What’s this?”
While the Fire Keeper was busy insisting that her dish—Hai-chan—wasn’t wrong, something else caught my eye.
“A white... jelly? Pudding?”
A white dessert that I couldn’t tell was jelly or pudding.
Inside it, I could see various fruits.
“Should I try it?”
I tossed aside any hesitation, scooped some up right away, and brought it to my mouth.
“Hmm. It’s pretty sweet and sour, and from the flavor, it seems like there’s pineapple and fig in it...”
It also seemed to have yogurt mixed in.
The texture was a little sticky, but soft too.
“Who made this?”
“Hm? Isn’t that bavarois?”
“Bavarois?”
Thanks to Rinne’s words, I learned the name of the dessert.
So it was called bavarois.
“Oh, I think Arus made that.”
“Arus made this?”
I was surprised by the Commander’s words.
So Arus was good at cooking too.
I had no idea.
“Hmm, I’d like to learn how to make it. Arus? Are you there?”
I looked around and called out, but I couldn’t see Arus anywhere.
“Doesn’t seem like she’s here... maybe she went out?”
“At this hour?”
Going out this late at night?
“That’s worrying.”
“What are you worried about? This is her world, isn’t it?”
“Even so, if I’m worried, I’m worried.”
“Then go check. We’ll handle the cleanup.”
I thanked the Commander for the suggestion, went out to the entryway, and put on my shoes.
“This is good.”
“Why are you smiling like that!?”
“Ghk!”
I thought I heard Itsuka-kun make a pained noise, but that was probably just my imagination.
And so I opened the front door and stepped outside.
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