Ch.207Side Story: Cooking? – 4

“Serena, could you explain what this is?”

“As you can see, it’s meat soup. Isn’t this a dish you’ve eaten many times, my lord?”

“Uh, no. I mean, yes, it is something I’ve eaten often, but…”

My words caught in my throat. I wasn’t trying to deny that this dish was meat soup. What I wanted to ask was something completely different.

How on earth could someone serve soup cut into neat squares like tofu?

And it wasn’t even solidified, hardened soup—it was freshly boiled soup still bubbling with white steam rising from it.

I was already confused enough thanks to Christine’s spaghetti-flavored carrots, but looking at this, my brain seemed to refuse the very act of thinking.

Since Serena looked so proud of herself for bringing this soup, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything else.

In the end, I chose to convey my thoughts indirectly, carefully selecting my words.

“Was it really necessary to cut the soup like this?”

“I cut it into bite-sized pieces for your convenience, my lord.”

“You didn’t use Wind Shear to cut it, did you?”

“…?”

Serena looked puzzled. Ironically, that was the expression I wanted to make.

“I would never use Wind Shear on food prepared for you, my lord. It’s common sense to use a kitchen knife when cooking.”

Common sense?

Hearing Serena talk about common sense made my head spin. What she said wasn’t entirely wrong, but the problem was the action committed by the person saying those words.

Wind Shear was indeed inappropriate for cooking. Having cut all sorts of things with it, even if the blade was made of wind, using it for cooking would feel unsanitary.

It was certainly common sense that there’s no reason to use a sword over a meter long for cooking. Unless you were in a desperate situation like the middle of a battlefield.

However, cutting soup into pieces with a knife to make it “easier to eat” wasn’t exactly what one would call common sense either.

“Please try it, my lord.”

Serena handed me the spoon that I had initially dropped in shock upon seeing the neatly cut soup. Taking it, I examined the soup in the pot.

Meat soup cut into perfect squares without the slightest deviation, still steaming hot. No matter how long I stared at it, I couldn’t get used to the sight.

I dipped the spoon in and scooped up one of the neatly cut soup pieces. Even lifted on the spoon, the square-cut soup maintained its pristine shape.

It reminded me of the finely diced human corpses that Serena occasionally created. It looked exactly like wooden blocks made for children’s toys.

The difference being that humans are solid except for their blood, while soup is liquid. Was she using her power to cut concepts just to slice soup? It was utterly absurd.

“Um… Abel. That is soup, right?”

The others seemed equally baffled by this meat soup. Christine was looking at Serena with disdain, and Charlotte’s face was scrunched up as if she’d seen something she shouldn’t have.

Only Olivia’s reaction was similar to mine.

“I guess so?”

“But why does it look like that?”

“I don’t know either, so don’t ask.”

I had felt it from the moment I scooped one up, but this really did feel like a wooden block.

If it at least wobbled elastically like pudding, I might have been able to accept that it was liquid that had been cut, but it wasn’t even that.

Even when I shook the spoon around, the cube-shaped soup firmly maintained its form. If I dropped it on the table, I suspected it would roll away rather than splash like a liquid.

“…”

As the pressure from Serena’s gaze was intensifying, I put the piece of soup on my spoon into my mouth.

The square piece of soup didn’t lose its shape even in my mouth, and I had no choice but to roll it around to melt it. I was extremely curious about what she had done to the food.

My tongue tasted meat soup.

“…It’s meat soup.”

That was my only impression. Yes, nothing more, nothing less—it was exactly meat soup. The very taste I often had when traveling around the kingdom with young Serena during our adventurer days.

And it was also the dish I had made for her when we first met in the forest.

“That’s right, my lord. Because it is meat soup.”

Serena responded proudly. She seemed very pleased with herself for having made proper meat soup for me. The corners of her mouth were slightly turned up.

“Hey, Serena.”

“Yes. What is it, my lord?”

“This actually makes it harder to eat. Could you just return it to its original state?”

“Original state, you say?”

“Yeah. Since this is soup, there’s no need to cut it into bite-sized pieces. It doesn’t take much effort to eat anyway.”

“Original state… original state…”

Serena kept muttering those words. Come to think of it, Serena only knew how to cut things, not how to put them back together.

I realized my mistake and was about to tell her not to worry about it, but Serena, with a look of realization, asked me to wait a moment and disappeared into the kitchen at lightning speed.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Olivia quietly moved closer to me.

Christine and Charlotte showed no particular reaction. Charlotte, who was next in line, seemed to be thinking about what dish to present, while Christine simply didn’t care.

Olivia stirred a piece of soup with her spoon and said incredulously:

“It seems she applied her concept-cutting ability. She cut the concept of soup, denying the very fact that liquid flows. That’s why it ended up like this.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve experienced this technique before? I nearly had my body cut in half by it, so of course I know.”

Olivia laughed saying it was a joke, but I couldn’t laugh along.

“…I don’t even know what to say. The cooking I had in mind was far from this high-dimensional stuff.”

I really would have been satisfied with ordinary home cooking, but I never imagined it would be done this way.

“The religious one over there brought a miracle disguised as cooking, right? What’s wrong with using concept-cutting swordsmanship?”

Fair point. Things had already gone off the rails during Christine’s turn. She had used miracles to create carrots that tasted like spaghetti and pancakes.

“Come to think of it, isn’t this the most unfair competition for me? I cooked properly and got screwed over by that woman, while these people are doing this.”

Olivia grumbled beside me. She had a right to feel wronged.

Unlike Christine, who used miracles to turn carrots into spaghetti and pancake flavors, and Serena, who cut the concept of soup to serve it in neat squares, she had brought a traditional chicken dish.

And then Charlotte had tampered with her dish, causing my jaw to melt, and they each took a piece of the food, claiming it was sprinkled with my blood.

As I was trying to comfort Olivia, telling her I’d take everything into consideration, Serena emerged from the kitchen with a clean kitchen knife in her right hand.

“What’s the knife for?”

“Please wait a moment, my lord. I’ll fix this right away.”

Serena approached me, picked up the pot with one hand, infused mana into her body to enhance herself, and swung her right hand at a speed invisible to the eye.

A blur remained, and a gust of wind rose. After about a second, Serena placed the pot back in front of me. Inside was soup, now sloshing around as it should.

“It’s done.”

But I still felt uneasy. As far as I knew, Serena could only cut concepts, not put them back together.

“It looks that way. What did you do?”

“I did as you said, my lord.”

“You turned it back into liquid?”

“No. That’s not it.”

“…?”

I scooped up some meat soup with the spoon. Liquid with the characteristic texture of soup sloshed on the spoon. No matter how I looked at it—

‘Ah.’

I thought I understood what Serena had done. Glancing sideways at Olivia, she nodded.

“I cut the soup into extremely fine pieces. That way, you can scoop it with a spoon.”

I knew it.

She hadn’t restored it to its original form; she had just chopped it into such microscopically small pieces that it appeared liquid to the naked eye. That way, it would be indistinguishable and could be scooped with a spoon.

I put the meat soup in my mouth again. It tasted normal. But in reality, it was composed of particles too small to be seen.

As I was suppressing my bewilderment while eating the soup, Charlotte, who had been thinking with her eyes closed, stood up with her characteristic contemptuous smile.

“Now it’s my turn, my dear. Don’t worry and wait. I’ll make you a much more splendid dish than these crude pieces of food waste.”

Judging by the way she spoke, I couldn’t help but worry.

A lot.