Characters: Kamijyou (Mr. Crusader), Flayce (Little Physician)
Summary: Kamijyou, meet food. Food, meet Kamijyou.
Cook of the Guild
Sweet and sour with a hint of minty aftertaste, yum. Kamijyou leans back against his rattan recliner with a satisfied sigh. Nothing beats the taste of homemade Peach Juice.
A cool breeze glides along Cristal Stream through Calderock village to mingle with the distanced bustling of villagers, vendors and adventurers alike to form a soothing melody. It is reminiscent of a folk song he had once heard, long ago.
Mm, yes, he is resolved to wallow in his bliss for as long as physically possible. This is his well-earned break from enduring Fortnight Hell with Merchant May and her inhumane expectations.
Thanks to the slave— employee contract he has signed with the scheming merchant, he had no choice but to comply with her demands— request to make non-stop back-and-forth deliveries to 7 different towns and cities over the past 14 days.
But that wasn't the worst of it. Deliveries to Saint Haven, Lotus Marsh, even Anu Arendel, he could handle. But deliveries to and fro the City of Death?
How did May even manage to negotiate with those murderous Dark Elves anyway?
Wait. It's better to not know. Kamijyou shudders.
Tipping his mug to his lips he takes another long pull of Peach Juice. And come up short.
Oh well, he heaves a resigned sigh and pushes himself up from his seat. Time to get more juice. Leaving the balcony and his favourite rattan chair, he pads back into the apartment.
The living area is surprisingly unoccupied, a rare occurrence ever since Kamijyou and Deidrik had decided to volunteer their apartment as the guild house for their guild (Deidrik's guild officially, but who's counting).
Replacing someone's fallen pillow back onto the couch, Kamijyou continues his way toward the kitchen, keeping an eye out for Flayce, their resident cook.
"Flayce, do you have any more of that Peach—" Kamijyou pauses. His next words lodge themselves in his throat, near his adam's apple, and he briefly contemplates releasing them or swallowing them back in.
As expected of a cook, Flayce is surrounded by mouth-watering smells of lunch cooking, complete with a sputtering rice cooker to her right, an oven baking tarts on her left, and a pot sitting on a stove in front of her.
Not expected of a cook, the Physician is holding a visibly wilted Slime over the pot and appears, for all intents and purposes, to be putting the Slime into the pot.
A second later, she does.
The previously jammed words die an untimely death in Kamijyou's oesophagus. So does the Slime in the boiling pot. Kamijyou can almost hear its silent scream.
"Ah Kamijyou, did you need more Peach Juice?" Flayce asks when she turns to him with an innocent smile. All the while a white lily hand calmly stirs the melted Slime in the pot in gentle, even circles.
He must have nodded to her at some point, because she turns the stove fire off, wipes her hands on her lacy white apron skirt and heads for their 'refrigerator' at the corner of the kitchen. The floating Ice Hand— Ice Palm, Kamijyou corrects himself— unclenches itself at her silent command and she retrieves the jug of Peach Juice and a large rectangular container from the centre of its upturned palm.
Apparently uncaring of Kamijyou's temporary motor dysfunction, she refills the mug in his motionless hand and returns to the stove. From the rectangular container, she grabs a large handful of red fruits—Strawberries, Kamijyou's mind automatically fills in—and drops them into the pot.
Then, with quick practised motion, she lifts the pot off of the stove, sets it on a metal tub, and starts to pour a blue chemical mixture from a large round flask, complete with condensation and all, into the metal tub.
"The Icing Mass chills the jelly faster than Ice Palm, so I'm giving my Strawberry Jelly an icy water bath." Flayce explains cheerfully, having interpreted Kamijyou's look at the familiar looking grenade flask as that of a confused variant.
"I… see." He manages to force a halting response from his throat.
Jelly. He just witnessed a Slime sacrificed to the (un)worthy cause of Strawberry Jelly.
Oh holy mother of Altea.
A drink. Yes, a drink is exactly what he needs to calm down, or chill out, or whatever that is going to stop him from drawing a fervent cross against his chest and getting into a full blown sermon over the unfortunate death of a Slime right this moment.
Oh what a startling coincidence! There's a mug of Peach Juice in his hand!
Kamijyou throws back the Peach Juice as he would an alcoholic beverage and waits for the ice cool juice to soothe his stuttering heartbeat and slow his racing mind. Miraculously, his previously impending migraine is gone too.
Setting the mug down on the kitchen counter, he realises that Flayce is standing before him with a basket cradled between her slender arms.
"Kamijyou, this is Pookybear, Leona and Ogun's lunch. Will you bring this to them for me?" The Physician says, flipping the checked cloth on the basket aside to reveal the contents of the basket.
Bundles of rice balls, a dozen peach tarts and two canisters labelled Apple Juice and Cocktail. Weird food combination aside, there's basically nothing wrong with the ingredients, so Kamijyou decides against making any comments about the food.
"Sure." He agrees easily. He has nothing up for the day anyway, besides wallowing in peace and dropping by Shylock's Trading House to look out for new flails.
"Alright! The boys are over at Lower Ridge Forest. You'll be able to find them easily enough." Flayce grins, dropping the basket into his hands with an audible cheer and twists back to poke at the rapidly cooling jelly.
"They're not at Shylock's place?" Kamijyou blinks. Those three are Trading maniacs. If they are not out on missions, Kamijyou was sure to find them skulking around the trading house. Unless prices went up and down like a Majesty's Switch Gravity, then they'd be working out their frustrations in the Coliseum, or at the nearest Blacksmith.
"Yep, they've been working on a pet project for the past 2 days." Flayce says distractedly, her dainty hands hidden from view as she fiddles with the jelly in the pot.
When she eventually turns around, a square blob of transparent jelly with red strawberry bits in it is sitting on a round white plate and staring at Kamijyou.
Oh wait, jellies don't have eyes right? Right?
"The jelly's done just in time! Will you bring it to them—"
"No!" Kamijyou blurts without thought. At Flayce's widening eyes, he flops for an explanation. "Uh, that is. I think that rice balls and peach tarts are enough for the boys, right? So I'll just er… head over to the forest right now. See you! Bye!"
The apartment door slams loudly as he flees— leaves. He's probably never left the apartment quite as fast before.
Oh Altea.
Jelly. Jelly with eyes.
End
Author's Note:
Many thanks for your reviews and favourites! I had much fun writing this drabble series, and screwing around with DN skills :3
Feel free to drop me any ideas you may have! Any and all ideas are always welcome, but leave your name so I can credit you properly :)
P.s. In case anyone was wondering, I referenced the Konnyaku jelly making process.
Many thanks to shizuyue :3