“I think you’ll be left speechless.” With Mina slumping her shoulders, Zen suddenly felt uneasy. Last year, when she’d attended Stoga’s birthday party with Cummel, they’d also used this inn to travel to and from the event.
Sure enough, she was right.
They were seated in a dining hall with a refined atmosphere. It didn’t compare to the restaurants of the imperial capital, sure, but the table and service were brimming with a high-class feel.
And then, after partaking in lots of delicious salt-grilled local chicken and local grape wines, he let his guard down, thinking that his worries had been unfounded. However, that was when it was brought in.
“This is our restaurant’s specialty. It uses this town’s local delicacy.” A smiling young waiter served them a hot pot dish. The main ingredients were loach fishes that’d been caught in the swamps of the surrounding area. The loaches, each about the size of a pinkie finger, were brought out in a large pot of grape wine, swimming together until the fire boiled them alive right there at the table.
The three of them were all undoubtedly at a loss for words.
Truly, the act of eating animals meant taking life. But was it too much to not want them to show such a cruel cooking method?
“There were a decent number of people who found this interesting when we came here last year, but...” Mina mumbled.
“I see. It seems this is great entertainment for some people,” Zen murmured. In that case, was it narrow-minded to criticize this cooking method?
As the group of loaches violently writhed around inside the boiling pot before his eyes, Zen felt ashamed at his ignorance. Now, whether that gave him an appetite was a different story!
With disappointment written on their faces, they partook in the wine-boiled loaches.
It’s so fishy and smells of mud... I really can’t think this is tasty... Zen thought glumly. Freshwater fish was eaten in both the imperial capital and Todd Village, but Zen, who should’ve become used to the taste of freshwater fish, was at a loss. It made him consider being honest and asking the waiters to just serve him an eel or something.
It was possible that there wasn’t anything wrong with loaches as an ingredient in itself, and that it was only his horrible first impression that had affected his perception of them.
“W-Well, father, I’m sure this will become a fond memory to look back on...” Elysia murmured.
“Ha ha ha... You’re so mature, Elysia...” Immediately finding the positives was one of her good points. Or maybe she had just been raised differently. After all, in the inner palace, if the imperial family wasn’t careful and let out their complaints, the court ladies taking care of them would be given a good scolding by their superiors. In the worst-case scenario, they’d be fired.
And naturally, when it rains, it pours.
A drunken patron in his forties just happened to pass by Zen’s table. It seemed he’d just returned from the bathroom.
He paused with a look that said, Oh, what do we have here? Elysia’s and Mina’s good looks had caught his eye.
With a vulgar grin, he rudely barged in, and with a somewhat pretentious, overfamiliar way of speaking, he asked, “You on a trip, ladies? Welcome to South Talum! I’ll treat you to a drink to welcome you, so why don’t you join us?” He pointed to a table in the very back.
Zen hadn’t particularly been paying them any mind, but the group sitting there was a bunch of hard drinkers making a huge ruckus. They were significantly ruining the mood of the fancy restaurant.
“No thank you.”
“We’re fine.”
“Come now, don’t be like that. It’ll be a good time,” the man insisted.
Elysia and Mina had curtly turned him down, but he annoyingly persisted. It was the arrogance of someone who refused to read the room and realize he was causing trouble. He was speaking in a way that made it clear he thought himself sophisticated despite doing vulgar things. These were both attributes of a specific kind of person Zen was very familiar with.
The man once again pointed to his table and said, “That man over there is Sir Palk, who manages the town hall.”
We really are in the same line of business... Zen resisted the urge to click his tongue. Everyone at that table in the back causing a ruckus were probably this town’s government officials, including this man. There was a lamentable number of people in the government who were of this personality type. They misunderstood themselves as the rulers of Catalan, a country without a nobility class and whose government was run by bureaucrats.
In the end, we’re all at the emperor’s beck and call, though. In this era, they still didn’t have the general concept of public servants, but this mindset of Zen’s was exactly what was desired in a government official. However, these countryside officials were ignorant, their mindset completely on the opposite end.
“Sir Palk is an elite among the elites. He’s a central bureaucrat who was temporarily transferred here to build up his career. Man, but maybe this kind of talk is difficult for you girls to understand. Ha ha ha!” The man bragged as if it were his own accomplishment and talked down to the girls without knowing Elysia’s true identity.
He kept talking. “There’s no harm in becoming acquainted with Sir Palk for just a moment of your trip, is there? The opposite is true, if anything. You wanna leave South Talum in a good mood, don’t you?”
Man, he’s just threatening them in the end. What a rotten personality.
Now put in an unhappy mood, Zen had just about had it. He mulled over what he should do. However, someone hurried over from the other side of the restaurant to deal with the man.
A waitress who was younger and more formal-looking even among the other waitresses came out to rein in the countryside government official. “Dear customer... I’ll keep you company for a drink, so please stop calling out to the other customers.”
“Ha ha ha! Why didn’t you say so? Ha ha ha!” With the official in good spirits, he returned to the back table as he rubbed the waitress’s backside.
Even as she endured that unpleasant experience, the waitress looked back at Zen’s table for an instant and bowed her head as if saying, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. The professionalism was admirable.
As she was made to sit by that Palk fellow, the countryside officials had her pour them drinks.
In this world, it wasn’t uncommon for there to be establishments where women had to entertain customers, but this restaurant shouldn’t fall into that category. Those government officials were throwing their weight around as if they owned the place.
With a great sigh, Zen called out to the eldest waiter who was working. “Excuse me, there’s something I’d like to ask.”
“Of course,” he replied. “What is it?”
“Do those guys over there come here often?”
“Indeed. They’re regulars.”
Zen had guessed correctly that they would probably frequent the best restaurant (aside from the loaches) in the best inn in town.
“But they’re behind on their payments, I imagine.”
The waiter of course didn’t say anything, but his face betrayed the affirmative. This was also exactly what Zen had guessed.
Central bureaucrat or not, if Palk was on a temporary transfer, he’d be receiving a salary befitting of a town hall official in a remote region. Needless to say, that went for the countryside officials that were his followers too. There was no way they had the financial ability to visit a high-class restaurant like this.
For the most part, they were probably threatening this establishment while abusing their authority, saying stuff like “We can take away your business license if you go against us.”
“And they aren’t just eating without paying. They demand bribes from you periodically too, don’t they?”