Noela drew close and sniffed the bottle. “Groo? Mysterious smell.”
“Is it all right?” I asked.
She nodded. “Okay.”
“What’s it smell like?” Elaine, curious, also sniffed the bottle’s contents. “I don’t mind its aroma. What is it? Some sort of egg mixture?”
“Correct! You’ve got a good nose on you, Elaine.”
“Gracious! Sir Reiji praised me!”
Elaine’s clear joy contrasted with Noela’s gravity as she informed me, “Noela recognized egg too, Master.”
She seemed grumpy about my praise for Elaine, so I stroked her head gently. “You can use this to make all kinds of foods more tasty.”
“All kinds?” Both Noela and Elaine piped up with that and seemed to imagine something.
I immediately figured out what Noela was thinking. “No, it won’t make potions tastier.”
“Groo?! How knew, Master?!” She was shocked that I guessed right, but she was easy to read.
“So…even meals I bungled would taste all right with this?” Elaine asked hesitantly.
“Hrm…” That depended how messed up the meal was. If a meal’s tastiness score was in the negatives, not even mayo could save it. “I’m not a hundred percent sure. But they’d definitely be more palatable with mayo. It doesn’t pair well with drinks or sweets though.”
“Amazing!” Elaine exclaimed. “Now I can finally fix it when I confuse salt and sugar!”
Just how many times has she made the same mistake?
Unfortunately for Elaine, her cooking definitely qualified as “disgusting.”
“Want to taste it?” I held the bottle out to the girls. They each put a little mayonnaise on their fingers and tried some.
“Groo… Salty.” Noela apparently hadn’t expected the flavor, but she didn’t seem to hate it.
“It… It has a hard-to-describe but rather smooth taste.” Elaine’s response was on the mark; her palate was, of course, much better-trained than Noela’s.
“Rather smooth taste, Master,” Noela echoed, copying Elaine’s reaction.
“You can put it on veggies before you eat them,” I told the girls. “Even uncooked veggies taste good with mayo.”
As I said that, however, the light and curiosity vanished from their eyes.
“No fall for trick, Master.” Noela shook her head with a grave expression.
“Likewise, Sir Reiji. If this were enough to make vegetables appetizing, the chefs at home wouldn’t struggle so much.”
Please. You’re the one making them struggle. “Veggies are seriously tasty, girls.”
They shot me silent, doubtful gazes.
Fine. I told them to wait a moment and headed to the kitchen. I asked Mina to cut some of the vegetables into veggie sticks. I carried those back to the drugstore, only to find the girls licking at the bottle of MayoMayo Max. All right, at least they like the flavor.
“I got Mina to cut these veggies into easy-to-eat shapes,” I announced, grabbing a cucumber spear and adding mayo to the tip. “Put some MayoMayo Max on them.”
“Wait, wait!” Noela interjected, shaking her head. “MayoMayo Max good solo!”
“It’s kind of a problem that you like it so much on its own…” I remarked.
“Why would you waste it on vegetables, Sir Reiji?” Elaine objected.
“I made it specifically to dress vegetables!” The two had taken one step forward and ten steps back.
I bit into the cucumber spear in front of them. Crunch. Crunch.
“Aah! Amazing!” Man, there’s nothing quite like this.
Noela and Elaine, however, wore doubtful expressions and stared silently.
Just how much do they hate vegetables? I held a carrot stick dipped in MayoMayo Max out to Noela. “Come on. It’s good.”
“Groo…” She furrowed her brow, unsure of what to do. Curiosity won in the end though, and she took a bite.
Crunch. Crunch. She kept chewing.
“Groo…? No…hate?” A mysterious expression crossed Noela’s face. Even she seemed unsure of what she was tasting.
“Noela’s gone over to the other side?!” Elaine cried.
What does she mean, “the other side”? Jeez. I grabbed a second carrot stick and added mayo. “C’mon, you’re next, Elaine. It’s tasty, I promise.”
“Y-you’re going to feed it to me?! It’s much too soon for us to engage in s-such activities, Sir Reiji!” Elaine fidgeted anxiously, blushing.
“Elaine no eat. Too bad!” Noela opened her mouth, ready to go instead.
Elaine pushed her away. “I never said I wouldn’t eat it!”
“If that’s too much for you, Elaine, want to hold the carrot stick yourself?”
“P-please, Sir Reiji, you hold it.” Elaine shifted anxiously, both hands covering her face. Finally, she steeled herself and took a bite. She cupped her cheeks happily. “I can’t believe it! Sir Reiji fed me!”
At this point, she seemingly couldn’t have cared less how the carrot stick even tasted. “So, you girls can eat veggies as long as you’ve got MayoMayo Max, right?” I asked for the record, expecting an affirmative answer.
Noela, however, wagged her finger at me. “Master.”
“Mm?”
“That different from want to eat.”
Now she’s gonna hit me with semantics? At any rate, Elaine and Noela now considered vegetables edible. All that was left was dealing with their bad habits. How could I get them to seek out veggies?
Two young women… Ah. “You know, mayo and veggies is quite a grown-up combination. Frankly, it’s a mature flavor only us adults can enjoy.” Although most adults also eat veggies without mayo just fine.
How would that claim affect the girls? I glanced at the pair, and they had already grabbed the rest of the veggie sticks, added MayoMayo Max, and were devouring them with smug expressions.
“Noela werewolf who understands mature flavor.”
“I’ve been to numerous evening banquets. I’m certainly familiar with the mature palate.”
I couldn’t help but grin inside. My statement had proven a great way to convince the girls to figuratively stand on tiptoe. From now on, they wouldn’t make excuses when it came to eating veggies.
“Lunch is ready, everyone!” Mina called. “Elaine, please join us.”
“No scared anymore,” Noela said with the face of a warrior.
“Me neither!” Elaine replied with an equally confident expression, brushing back her trademark drill curls.
The two had grown a lot in no time. I nodded proudly and followed after the pair, who just so happened to bring the MayoMayo Max with them. Mina cautiously set a bowl of salad on the table. Noela and Elaine dressed it with mayonnaise and ate it with no issues.
“Mature flavor. Very different,” said Noela.
“Indeed.”
The words “mature flavor” were a hit with the young ladies.
Mina seemed shocked. “Incredible… They hated vegetables so much, but now… We should sell this new treatment of yours, Mr. Reiji. I’m sure plenty of households struggle with the same problem!”
Mayo was a game changer. It wouldn’t have shocked me if the encyclopedia said as much.
With Mina’s full support, I turned MayoMayo Max into an official Kirio Drugs product. Noela wrote the product description. She included the phrase “mature flavor,” and the product attracted both kids and adults, making it one of the drugstore’s most popular “treatments.”