Chapter 6:
The All-Purpose Condiment
AS I HARVESTED INGREDIENTS I needed from the herb meadow, an elderly farmer nearby called out to me.
“Hey, Mr. Pharmacist! We’ve got a bumper crop of these. Mind takin’ some?” He handed me a basket full of tons of colorful vegetables.
“Oh, wow. You sure? Thanks a bunch!” I knew these would delight Mina.
“Of course! Your products have been real lifesavers for me and mine.” With that, the old farmer departed.
That kind of thing was fairly common. Kalta wasn’t gigantic, so Kirio Drugs was the only pharmacy. The same was true of other specialty stores and specialists. Thus, townsfolk thanked me constantly for the drugstore’s product lineup. It honestly made the whole thing worth it to me.
When I finished harvesting the herbs I needed, I headed back to the store with the old farmer’s basket. Elaine had apparently dropped by to hang out while I was gone. She was chatting with Noela, who stood by the counter, watching the store solo.
“Mina will get mad if you don’t work hard, Noela,” Elaine warned.
“Don’t worry. Mina no watch. Master no here,” Noela replied. I swear, the little fluffball phoned it in whenever I took my eyes off her.
“I’ll tell them,” Elaine said.
“No betray.”
“I’m back,” I called, glancing at Noela. She stood up straight quickly.
“Welcome back, Sir Reiji!” exclaimed Elaine. “Noela said you went to the meadow. Oh, what’re those?” she asked, noticing I had more than just herbs with me.
“A bunch of veggies. A farmer had a lot of extras, so he gave us these.”
“Wow,” Elaine said, as if she’d never heard of that sort of thing before. I figured it was far removed from her experiences as a wealthy young aristocrat. “You didn’t need to pay?”
“Nope. Since they were more than they could use.”
Likewise curious, Noela trotted over and peeked into the basket. “Vegetables…” Pulling an awkward face, she returned to her seat and shook her head, underwhelmed by the discovery. Her hatred of tomatoes was no secret, and although she’d gotten past that, it turned out that she found all vegetables unappetizing.
I usually shrugged that off, chalking it up to her species. According to Mina, however, Noela left her vegetables untouched at meals lately. It wasn’t as if Mina wasn’t good at preparing them; on the contrary, they were delicious. But an immature werewolf like Noela didn’t understand their appeal.
“Elaine, do you eat vegetables?”
She quickly looked away. “O-of course…”
When it came to fibs, was anyone in the world as easy to read as Elaine? That little princess. She probably got away with just about anything, including refusing vegetables, if she whined enough about it. This is why aristocrats are so hard to deal with. “Hear that, Noela? Elaine eats vegetables.”
Noela immediately pointed at the other girl. “Drills lying.”
Elaine hunched her shoulders in surprise. “Eek!”
“Noela. Elaine. You’ve both got to eat your veggies,” I said.
“I know, but they don’t taste good!” As soon as she knew she was found out, Elaine became sincere.
Noela, on the other hand, declared, “Eat. No problem.”
She thinks she can fool me, of all people? “Mina told me you won’t eat them. She looked so sad too. Especially since she went out of her way to make them for you.”
“Groo…” Noela’s ears drooped, apparently feeling a little guilty. “Veggies bad for body, Master!”
“There’s no way that’s true.”
“Wolf no eat veggies!”
She couldn’t resist using that excuse anytime she had the chance. “You’re a werewolf.”
“Garoo…” Realizing she hadn’t swayed me, Noela fell silent.
“Jeez,” I muttered. Leaving the storefront, I headed out back and found Mina cleaning. I told her about the vegetables I received.
“Ooh, they look delicious!” Mina exclaimed. “Shall I cook them today?”
“That’d be great. Noela won’t eat them, though, will she?”
“Good point. I’ve tried preparing veggies all kinds of ways, but she always comes up with a reason to push them to the side of her plate. Is my cooking that awful?”
This was bugging Mina more than I’d expected. “No way. Your meals are the best.”
“Tee hee hee! Thanks so much, Mr. Reiji.”
If Mina felt insecure and stopped cooking, it’d be a real issue. I had to do something about Noela’s aversion to veggies—and Elaine’s too, while I was at it.
Noela respected Garon deeply. Maybe he could tell her avoiding vegetables was lame or something? The problem was, the adventurer didn’t live around here, and I had no idea when he’d actually be coming by.
It also wasn’t impossible that Noela’s aversion did have something to do with her species. As a werewolf, she was more sensitive to flavor than a human. Maybe she tasted the bitterness of, say, peppers way more strongly than I did.
“Hmm.” As a kid, there were plenty of vegetables I couldn’t stand—green pepper, eggplant, spinach. I started eating them all regularly as I grew up, but I had a hard time believing Noela would consume them even as she got older.
“There’s got to be a way,” I muttered. Hey—couldn’t she eat that? Back on Earth, I used tons of it on veggies. Plus, it pairs well with other foods. It’s all-purpose!
“Have you come up with an idea, Mr. Reiji?”
“Yup. And it might actually work.”
I headed to the lab and buckled down on a new product that’d give Noela a shot at overcoming her hatred of veggies. It wasn’t exactly a treatment, but the point was simply to get her to eat vegetables. Besides, this new product wouldn’t just benefit her. I’d be delighted to have some on the dinner table in general, and it’d help Mina as well.
Time to hurry. I gathered the ingredients right away and followed my medicine-making skill’s directions.
MayoMayo Max: Light-yellow condiment.
The new product I created was literally just mayonnaise.
“Wow. This is definitely mayo,” I whispered to myself, staring at the bottle. “Shoot. It didn’t occur to me that Noela might find mayo itself too sour…”
This was my only real shot. As someone from Earth, I had no compunctions about the flavor of mayonnaise, but would people here in Kalta accept it?
I spread some on my finger and sampled it. It had a slightly sour, pungent, eggy flavor. “Yup, this is definitely just high-quality mayo,” I muttered. “Hopefully Noela will eat vegetables dressed with this.”
First, we had to see if she even liked the MayoMayo Max or not. I took the bottle back to the store and Noela quickly noticed it. Elaine also gazed at it curiously.
“This is a brand new, uh, treatment,” I told them. As an Earthling familiar with mayonnaise, I knew it wasn’t medicine, but…whatever. In a sense, it would serve a medicinal purpose by helping Noela ingest veggies successfully.