“I barely know what any of the dishes you just named are…” Liscia murmured.
“I’ll make them for you sometime soon. I mean, even if there are leftovers, I’m sure Aisha will make them disappear for us.”
But, still… at last, we had perfected this sauce for flour-based dishes.
It had been a long process. There had already been a sauce similar to Worcestershire sauce in this world, but it hadn’t been the sort of thick sauce that would work well with yakisoba. I had thought I could create one somehow, and I’d been working on it through a process of trial and error, but with no real knowledge of sauces, it had proven to be beyond me. That was why I had ended up creating those spaghetti buns before yakisoba buns. I had half given up on the development, but it looked like Poncho had continued it for me.
“I’m impressed you were able to recreate it,” I told him. “You’d never tasted it yourself before, right?”
“I had Your Majesty’s words, ‘It’s thicker than ordinary Worcestershire sauce, sweet, and I think it felt a little sour,’ the knowledge that there was a noodle dish, ‘yakisoba,’ which you would pour the sauce over and mix, and the memory of the pasta dish you call Spaghetti Neapolitan, which gave me the hint I needed.”
“The spaghetti did?” I asked.
“Yes, it did, yes. That spaghetti uses the tomato sauce called ketchup that I developed with you, right, sire? I knew that ketchup went well with noodle dishes, so I thought something similar to ketchup might have been used with this noodle dish called yakisoba, yes.”
“Ahh!” I cried.
I saw now! This sweet and tangy flavor came from fruits and vegetables! In other words, this sauce for flour-based dished was made by adding tomato sauce and other ingredients to a thick Worcestershire sauce, then? Poncho had an incredible sense of taste to be able to figure that out on his own.
“Then, in order to give the Worcestershire and tomato sauce mixture a greater depth of flavor, I tried adding the soy sauce and mirin produced here at the Kikkoro Distillery. Um… How do you think I did?” he asked hesitantly.
I put my hands on Poncho’s shoulders. “Poncho… you did well.”
“Sire! You are too kind, yes!”
“Now, can this sauce be mass produced?” I asked.
“It seems the Kikkoro Distillery will take on the job for us.”
That was wonderful. Now I could write another page in the culinary history of the kingdom. When Poncho and I started excitedly talking about the topic of sauces, the other members of the group… particularly the women, Liscia, Hilde, and Carla… looked on, rolling their eyes.
“Souma’s not a big eater, but sometime, he can be pretty picky about the strangest details,” Liscia said. “I wonder why that is?”
“That’s just what men are like, Princess,” said Hilde. “They pour needless passion into things women don’t understand, and they think nothing of the trouble they go to doing it. They’re such bizarre creatures.”
“You speak like you have personal experience with this,” said Carla. “Do you know someone like that, Madam Hilde?”
“Don’t ask about things you shouldn’t, dragonewt girl,” Hilde snapped. “I’ll stitch your mouth shut, you know?”
“Y-Yes, ma’am! I won’t ask you anything, yes!” Carla hurriedly saluted, seemingly having been infected with some of Poncho’s speaking style as she did.
And, well, I was excited by the unexpected result, but it was about time to accomplish my real objective here. I parted with Poncho and then, in the director’s office of the Kikkoro Distillery, I met with the elder of the mystic wolves who was also the director of this place.
We sat across from him in the same arrangement as when we’d visited Ginger. The elder’s white hair, white eyebrows, and white beard were all long and thick, reminding me of a Maltese. Except that inside all that hair, there was an old man.
The elder bowed his head deeply while still remaining seated. “We, the mystic wolves, are endlessly grateful to Your Majesty for your protection, the construction of this Kikkoro Distillery, and all of your other support. I thank you on behalf of my people.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Little Tomoe’s done a lot for us, too. Besides, it was fortunate that people like you who knew how to grow rice and produce soy sauce, miso, mirin, sake, and more came along. I get to eat tasty food, and I can feed it to other people, too.”
“You are very kind to say that,” said the elder. “Now, sire, what manner of business have you come here on today?”
“Yeah… I was thinking it was about time we resolved the issue outside.”
“By ‘outside,’ you mean… the refugee camp?”
I silently nodded.
When I’d been summoned to this world, this country had been facing a large number of problems. The food crisis, corrupt nobles acting against the state, neighboring countries plotting to invade, how to deal with the Demon Lord, its relationship with the Empire— the list had gone on.
However, I felt like the vast majority of those problems had been resolved now. We had gotten through the food crisis somehow, and the domestic situation was looking good. Our foreign enemies had been swept away, and when it came to the Demon Lord, we had formed a secret alliance with the Empire to handle that matter together. I had worked through all those problems one by one, and the last one left was this refugee camp issue.
Outside the castle walls that surrounded Parnam, there was a village of refugees that had drifted here from the north after the appearance of the Demon Lord’s Domain.
I called it a village, but it was really just a group of tents and hovels concentrated in one place. Of the many races that made up the refugees, I had been able to lift up the mystic wolves in the name of putting their special talents to use, but they only made up a small percentage of the overall refugee population. Even now, many refugees still lived in that refugee camp.
Technically, even when things had gotten chaotic, basic food relief had been provided to them the whole time, but they couldn’t stay like this much longer. There were issues of hygiene, and if I supported them for too long, it was bound to create friction with the people of this country.
If possible, I wanted the rest of them to choose to live as people of this country, just like the mystic wolves had, but… it seemed that would be difficult. Their wish was to return to their homelands. If they accepted citizenship in this country, that would be the same as giving up on returning to their homeland.
To these people who wished for the threat of the Demon Lord’s Domain to someday be swept away, allowing them to return to their homelands, it was simply not something they could accept. I had sent my vassals to the refugee camp a number of times to negotiate, but they had always been rebuffed.
“We want to return to our homeland,” they said. Or, “Let us remain here until that time comes.”
I understood how they felt when they said these things, so I couldn’t be too firm with them. However, there was no time left now.
“The chill of winter will only grow more harsh from here,” I said. “If they stay in crude tents and hovels, the weakest among them, the children and the elderly, will be the first to freeze to death. Before that happens, I want to go there personally and press them to make a decision.”
“Sire…” said the elder.
“In order to do that, I’d like you to send a messenger to the refugee camp for me first. Have the messenger tell them I’m coming. It’s unlikely that chaos will break out that way.”
“I understand.” The elder rose from his seat and then knelt on the floor, bowing his head deeply to me. “We mystic wolves have already been saved by Your Majesty’s hand. If it is possible… we ask of you to save the rest of our fellows, as well.”