And half an hour later, Matthew, Fou, Artoria, Lily, and I climb out of the car to step foot on an old blacktop parking lot in which my Mercedes is now parked. Before us sprawls the lot full of cars - well, actually, there aren't that many cars, since it's barely about to be noon; usually this place does have high traffic and occupancy during the weekends, but once it starts getting later on in the day. And beyond the cars and the lot stands a modestly large horizontal building that houses two separate supermarkets: a Longs Drugs convenience store on the left and our destination on the right, a Korean market known as Lotteria Market.
"This's where I usually pick up stuff," I announce to the girls, leading them towards it across the parking lot. "As in, Korean and other Asian foods, that kinda stuff. As you'll notice..." I wave around to the few people also walking to and fro across the lot, "...most of the people who come here are Korean, or at least some type of Asian ethnicity."
Artoria nods. "What about Japanese, Master?" she asks curtly. She's still got her "casual" clothes on, that white blouse with the thick blue dress and tall boots.
"Japanese? Uh, yeah, Japanese people come here too sometimes, I guess. I've seen 'em," I shrug.
"What about food? As in, Japanese-style food?"
"This place has some too. Obviously not as much as a proper Japanese market, but we have some similarities."
I then glance down at Fou, who's trotting close to Matthew's feet.
"Are you sure we can bring him along?" I murmur over to her.
"Fou can hide his presence on his own; you won't have to worry about him," she explains, and I nod. Before we enter the supermarket, I take a turn just before the door off to the side, where a length of railing sections off a line of carts, of which I take one before entering, with the girls waiting for me, watching what I'm doing.
"Um, if you girls wanna just wander around and look at stuff, in case it gets boring sticking with me, you can go on ahead," I tell the girls as I direct my cart towards the produce section, which is, invariably, the largest section of the market and the first one you'd enter as soon as you head inside this place.
While Lily looks hesitant and shy, Artoria folds her arms instead. "If I were to possess more knowledge of this particular market, I would take up your offer, Master. But as this is our first time coming here, and in the case that we are to return to this place frequently in the future, I think that it would be for the best if you were to show us around first."
"Sure, good idea. So, needless to say, this's the produce section..."
As we casually walk around while I inspect and load my cart up with lettuce and cabbage heads, bags of apples, a box of Korean pears, green onions, cucumbers, onions, and green and red bell peppers, I can feel the gazes of everyone else present in the produce section with us. But I kind of already expected that - there's no way in hell that you're going to go unnoticed when you decide to bring along three very attractive young women, especially ones who clearly look like foreigners, into a Korean supermarket. But they're just stares of wonder and even amusement; I've learned to differentiate the kinds of stares I get, because there is in fact a difference between times when someone gives you a look of wonder and when someone gives you a look of pure hate.
So it comes as no surprise when I sense Lily inching closer to me as we're stopped by the watermelon stand of the produce section, while I'm in the middle of inspecting some of them, lifting up a couple and tapping my knuckles against them and listening closely to the kind of noises they report back.
"Somethin' wrong, Lily?" I ask her, my eyes still focused on choosing the best watermelon possible as my hands pick up another to test it with another tap of their knuckles.
"Er...well..." Lily is practically whispering. Again, understandable. "...I-I just get the feeling that we're...um...that everyone is looking at us..."
"Don't worry about it. It's just because you're foreigners inside an Asian supermarket," I explain casually while Artoria, having seen a food sample booth not too far away and gone to visit it, returns promptly to us with a tiny sample cup of udon noodles. "It's gonna happen. You'll notice that everyone in here except for you three are also Korean or Asian just like I am."
"I was also subjected to this treatment for some time, Lily," Artoria mentions after quietly slurping up her sample noodles. "You will get used to it. As August said, they are harmless."
It's still unnecessarily surreal to me that Lily and Artoria are the same person. It just bugs the hell out of me, though, that the "older" Artoria looks nothing older than the "younger". Maybe I ought to ask her about it some time, since I know that's gonna bug the hell out of me sooner or later.
Lily shyly nods, but she still keeps near me. The watermelon in my hands sounds good, so I place it inside the basket of the cart, pressing it up against the box of Korean pears so that it doesn't roll around.
"Senpai, what were you doing just now?" Matthew asks curiously while Fou, who's decided to jump on in the cart for a free ride, taps the watermelon next to him with his paw, since he's sitting on the box of pears itself after finding the grates of the cart a little uncomfortable to sit on directly.
"Oh, I was just seeing which watermelons were good to take," I shrug. "I learned it from my dad. He said that if you tap it and the sound it makes sounds deep, that means it's ripe and it's good to eat."
"Huh. But...since this is a supermarket, shouldn't they have something like quality control to make sure that everything here is ripe? What if someone buys a watermelon and gets sick from eating it because it wasn't ripe enough?"
"Well, I'd imagine they harvest the watermelons batch by batch or however, during a period where it's expected that the watermelons become ripe. So typically all the watermelons should be safe to eat since they've matured enough, but the watermelons themselves have varying degrees of ripeness since, y'know, all the watermelons grow at different rates. So it's always good to check."
After picking out the watermelon, my usual pathing takes me out of the produce section into the seafood and meats section, which is along the far side of the market from the entrances and exits. Lily and Matthew both eagerly step forward to take a look at the live crabs and crayfish sitting or swimming lazily inside their tanks and the piles of fresh shrimp and mackerel and other types of fish sitting in open trays in front of the tanks. Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I spy Artoria stealthily snag another sample cup of udon noodles. She's that person, huh...
"Would any of you like seafood?" I ask the girls, joining Lily and Matthew in front of the tanks. "Seafood isn't my specialty, but I do know a few recipes, I guess."
"Yes, seafood sounds lovely," Artoria hops in swiftly, joining us in front of the tanks. Her voice sounds suspiciously slightly muffled by chewing noises.
"You took a second one...?" I ask her softly, for good reason, as the sample udon noodle booth is literally right behind us.
"The noodles are good, August. Would you like to try some?"
"...I can just make them for you if you like them so much. Then everyone can enjoy them."
"A great idea. Would you like me to fetch some?"
"Uh...sure..."
So Artoria pivots around, grabs I think three packages of udon noodles, pivots again, and places them in front of the watermelon inside the cart. Yep, count 'em: one, two, and three.
"Fou..." Fou murmurs with concern, giving his new cart-mates a somewhat apprehensive look. Perhaps he thinks that the more stuff we put in, the more likely we're just going to trap him inside underneath a mountain of stuff.
"You know, I kinda got the sense that you really like eating, but...I guess your love for food is on a plane of existence that defies my understanding..." I mutter to Artoria, who, without even breaking a smile, looks so damn smug about her newly acquired loot.
"Nonsense. It is natural for anyone who requires food as sustenance to show at least some degree of enthusiasm for it," Artoria declares rather grandly, for a topic that sounds strange when talked grandly about.
"Um, but...Lady Artoria, Servants don't necessarily need food for sustenance..." Matthew mentions, and when we glance over at her to see what her reaction's like, Artoria is already busy munching on a third sample cup of udon noodles.
"...I get the feeling that before I myself become a casualty in this singularity, my wallet will," I slowly grumble while shaking my head.
"I-I can arrange for Chaldea to send you additional funds if it gets really bad..." Matthew tries to reassure me as I sigh deeply, preparing myself mentally to see a huge list of food purchases at the end of the month on my credit card bill. In the meantime, I bag a few of the mackerel laid out on the open trays before us and then set them on top of the counter nearby, tapping the bell to call for assistance, at which a worker, an older man whom I recognize has been working in his market in the seafood section for at least the past eight years (my father mentioned that this guy was working here even he himself first started shopping here at Lotteria) comes out to greet me.
"Yes, what would you like?" he says rather loudly to me in Korean, not because he's being rude but because he wants to make sure that I, as his customer, knows what he's saying, since there are frequently times when he has to deal with old Korean ladies who can't hear very well and need people to talk loudly to them.
"Gutted and boneless, please," I call back to him, and he nods his confirmation, practically swipes the bag that I've placed on the counter right off, and dumps the fish out onto a cutting board behind him to get to work. Exactly one minute later, he's setting the bag of gutted mackerel with all the bones removed onto the weight scale to calculate the price, after which he slaps a sticker with a bar code for the cashier up front to scan for payment.
"There you go. Tell your father that I'll give him one of those for free next time," the old man nods strongly to me.
"I will, thank you," I reply back, still in Korean, and he ducks underneath the heavy flaps that lead into the back room behind the counter.
"Um, Mas - I mean, A-August, who was he...?" Lily asks me curiously as I place the bag of gutted fish in the baby seat of the cart, the place where shopping mothers would place their toddlers. "He seemed to know you...or so I feel..."
"An old friend of my dad's, you could say," I shrug again, taking another glance at the heavy black flaps that lead into the back room. "Well, not really a friend friend...just someone we happen to know. He's been working in this market for a really long time, as far as I can remember, and my dad was a big fan of seafood, so we stopped by this place a lot."
"Oh, okay...I see..."
We move on to the meats section, which is part of the seafood section. I pick out a handful of packages of chilled marinated short ribs, commonly known as "galbi" (Korean cuisine has become so popular within mainstream American food culture here on the West Coast that more and more non-Asian people know what it is), frozen bulgogi, which is sliced marinated beef or pork, and, even though I'd never buy this for myself, a package of chilled sliced cow tongue, which I order from the guy behind the meats counter, who, like the old man from before, puts the beef tongue in a thin plastic case, slaps a sticker on it for the cashier, and hands it to me.
"What are these, August?" Artoria asks immediately once I set the beef tongue down with the other meats.
"Let's see, this is called 'galbi', or in English, short ribs. This is called 'bulgogi', marinated beef or pork, but in this case it's beef, and this is beef tongue," I show her the newest little plastic case I've gotten my hands on. "It's considered to be a good delicacy; normally I'd never buy this, but since, well..." I glance around at the girls, "...I've suddenly found myself with three more mouths to feed..."
"Fou!"
I glance down inside the cart to find Fou sitting up on his box of pears, looking straight back up at me.
"...four, m'bad. Try not to get addicted to these, Artoria."
"Addicted? I don't know what you are referring to," Artoria smiles plainly at me. That smile is full of lies and cannot be protected.
Moving on, we circle around the supermarket - basically the route I take, which is the route my father and I used to always take when we went shopping together here in the past, is to circle around the edges of the market for all the basic foodstuffs we'd need, and then venture into the center aisles of the market for anything extra. I do start finding myself picking up a lot of things that I'd normally never really pick up for myself, like the beef tongue, or only sometimes pick up on special occasions or if I just so happen to have the itch to do so, like bundles of fishcake sticks, 1-liter bottles and six-packs of various Korean beverages like 2%, Chilsung Cider, Milkis, and Demi-Cider. This is also the part where Lily and Matthew also start browsing the contents for themselves, as the bright, colorful labels on the drinks, juices, sausages, and Lunchables attract them - oh, I forgot to mention that this is the section where the supermarket also sells American products, stuff you'd see normally in an American market like Von's or Ralph's, I suppose, just so that the market's American customers can have something to fall back on in case they don't find anything they'd want.
"M-Master - I-I mean!" I hear Lily getting all flustered as she hurries over to me from the side. I look up at her, currently busy with choosing a good, big jar of kimchi to replace the one back home that's got a nearly depleted supply, and I see that she's holding a pack of Lunchables, Ham and American with a Butterfingers mini-bar and a Berry Capri-Sun juice pouch inside. Hey, that's my favorite one. "A-August, m-may I...?"
"Sure, put it in the cart somewhere," I smile lightly at her, and looking the most excited I've ever seen a girl like Lily get over something like a pack of Lunchables, Lily sets it down next to Fou, who mumbles again with concern, now that the cart is slowly but surely filling up with more and more stuff. Matthew, hearing him moan, hurries over to his rescue and picks him up out of the cart to hold onto him, and Artoria, now that Fou is removed, busies herself with organizing the contents of the cart, evenly placing them in such a way that there's suddenly more space freed up to put in even more stuff.
"I'm just gonna warn you all now, we're gonna have a lotta bags to put into the car," I chuckle, setting down a new jar of kimchi inside the cart, in the little corner of space that I've reserved for it, since the jar of kimchi is very heavy and will likely crush anything beneath it if it's not sturdy enough. As I get behind the cart to push it forward, noting how heavy it is and difficult it is for me to push compared to when we first entered the market, I point over a short distance ahead of us at a large goblet-like bin filled to the brim with a huge, thick plastic bag that, itself, is filled with nothing but freshly heated Korean corn. "Any of you want some corn? And no, Artoria, those aren't samples, if you eat them we have to pay for 'em."
Artoria, who was just about to hurry over and grab one, freezes in her tracks.
"Matthew, can you remind me next time that when we go on a shopping trip like this, we need to leave Artoria behind?" I sigh to my underclassman as the four of us near the corn bin.
Artoria grimaces but says nothing as I take a nearby bag from a roll of plastic bags standing near the corn bin and start filling it with whole corn - in fact, I take another bag, so that we have two bags of six corns each. The scent of the cooked corn is pungently sweet and heavenly - even from a distance, passersby can smell their tantalizing auras, and by now both Lily and Artoria are taking large whiffs. This time, I can't blame them - every time I come here by myself, it takes a great deal of patience and self-control out of me not to give in and start dumping my cart/basket with bags on bags of this corn. I like to think that this is an ingenious plan to get people to spend more money, by deploying this tactically placed bin of godlike corn near the end of the journey of shoppers who typically want nothing more than to purchase their groceries and go home and make a meal, and thus get them when their defenses are weakened. How diabolical - but hey, it works.
While the two Artoria's are now starting to warm their hands over the heated corn like it's a hearth (which I don't understand because it's already April), I head over to the nearby heated section; the place near which the corn resides is like a section for in-house products, foods that the market itself makes - usually a variety of traditional Korean foods and ingredients, but there's also this heated section, very similar to the heated booths in American supermarkets that typically hold stuff like roast chicken, rotisserie chicken, etc., that holds packages of cooked chicken drumsticks, japchae (Korean thin noodles akin to Chinese chow mein and Japanese yakisoba), and Korean veggie pancakes (there's a name for them but unfortunately I forgot, and their labels don't label them in Korean, either, only English, and that's literally what the market calls them). My favorite that I always pick up every time I pay a visit here is the sweet and sour chicken - their fried chicken is okay, and I definitely don't mind eating it, but their sweet and sour chicken is so much better that I find it hard to justify taking the fried chicken over it unless the sweet & sours are all sold out already - which sometimes they are, understandably so. And besides, if I wanted fried chicken, I'd just go to other places like Kentucky Fried Chicken or other places that specialize in that. Not many places specialize in making this particular kind of sweet and sour chicken, however.
Because I've got three extra mouths to feed - four, if you count the majestic Fou - I clear shop. I dump a total of seven packages of the sweet and sour chicken onto the cart, each of them carrying six to seven drumsticks and costing more per weight.
"Um...Senpai...?" Matthew asks hesitantly as Artoria immediately picks up one of the packages of sweet and sour chicken, immediately sensing that this will be a very tasty meat to have for dinner.
"Yeah?" I ask back as I start pushing the cart again, this time over in the direction of the cashier aisles, but before that, I make sure to stop at the entrance of the snacks aisle too.
"Th-This is a lot of food...are you sure that this isn't too much?"
I take a moment to review my cart. Matthew's got a point - there's a mountain of shit sitting in it. Thank God Fou isn't hitching a ride in this cart anymore, we'd have to dig his ass out if he were.
"Yes. Yes, it's definitely too much food," I nod curtly.
"Then...why - "
I point at the Artoria's. Mainly, Artoria.
"...I think I'm going to go ahead and request financial assistance from Chaldea, Senpai."
"Up to you, I'm not expecting anything."
"But they did send us that extra quartz that allowed us to summon Lady Artoria."
"It's a setup. They rigged FATE to summon Artoria so that they can bankrupt me by weaponizing her bottomless stomach. See? She's raiding the snack aisle right now."
Sure enough, Artoria is pulling down bag after bag of Korean snacks while Lily looks on, torn between joining her older self and keeping with her sense of reservation.
"I-If you want me to, I can go and stop her - "
"Nah. Let her do her thing."
"A-Are you sure...?!"
"Yep. By the way, I totally forgot to get some rice, so I'll be right back - just make sure nothing falls out of the cart when Artoria starts stackin' up the snacks."
"That's what you're worried about - !?"
I don't reply because I'm already busy hurrying off to fetch a bag of rice from one of the first two aisles next to the produce section, and when I do return lugging a bag of rice over my right shoulder, I find the cart indeed overflowing with snacks. Artoria seems quite pleased as she reviews her loot, standing over the cart.
"Well, I guess there's no space for this guy," I nod down at the cart while patting the side of the bag of rice on my shoulder, already feeling the tears of my wallet wetting my pocket.
"I-I'm so sorry, Master!" Lily tries to bow in apology, perhaps for her older self's extreme affinity for anything that even remotely describes the meaning of "food".
"It's fine. Let's buy this and get outta here."
Needless to say, it takes us a whole five minutes just to get all the shit in the cart scanned into the cashier and another three for the poor guy bagging our groceries to put them inside the cart. I already foresee the need to have some of us just carry some of the bags since there's so much crap, and when that point comes, I tell our bagger to give us the bags instead, and I hand them off to the girls to carry as I pay for it all - a whopping two hundred and ninety-six doll-hairs, a personal slang of mine to say "dollars".
"I-I hope this isn't too much, Master..." Lily groans quietly as we exit the market, crossing the road that separates the market building from the lot and heading back to the Mercedes to load all the groceries in.
"It wasn't as much as I thought it'd be. Besides, I can afford this - it's not so bad," I reassure her as we reach the car, and I open up the trunk so that we can start throwing everything in.
"Master, is it alright if I partake in some of the snacks inside the car?" Artoria asks with the most intense look someone could ever have asking to eat snacks inside of a car.
"Uhhh...y-yeah, sure, just don't make a mess," I shrug for the third time so far. I don't know why I would deny a request like that, Artoria's endless appetite aside.
We climb inside the car again once everything's loaded and after I put our cart back, which I'm sure is very relieved that we've relieved it of its monumental burden. You've done well, O Cart, for you have held with your body the sustenance of not just one, but two legendary Kings of Britain. I bet conceptually, that'd probably qualify it to become a Catalyst. But now's not the time for that.
As I back the car out of our parking space to exit the lot, I spy Artoria sharing her bag of pizza-flavored chips with Lily, who eagerly takes some and starts munching on them with the greatest of small joys.
"So...where to next, Senpai?" Matthew asks, sitting shotgun with Fou on her lap.
"Now onto my little chore that I said I needed to do," I nod, piloting the car out of the lot and back onto the streets. "Tunin' the runes I have up in a couple different places. It shouldn't take too long, but I guess that depends on the kind of traffic we'll get..."
Now that I think about it, now that it's about half past one on a Saturday afternoon, traffic should be getting quite heavy...but it's just Nelson traffic. At least it's not Los Angeles traffic...
"By the way, Artoria, don't eat too many snacks, we are going to eat after I'm done with my stuff, remember?" I mention to Artoria.
"Of course, Master. I have not forgotten," Artoria replies...in between crunches of pizza chips.
"...sounds 'bout right."
We drive in relative silence for a few moments, with the crunching of pizza chips filling the car despite the fact that I've got all the windows down in the car now. As we sit waiting for a left turn signal to turn green - or blue, whichever you prefer - I notice Matthew turning to me slowly.
"...Senpai, is it alright if I ask you something, um...a little bit...sensitive...?" she asks, almost as if in a whisper.
"Sure, what's up?"
"It's...um...it's...about your father."
"Mhm. What about him?"
"Was he...your only family?"
"Yep."
A long and tense silence follows after that. I take note of the fact that the pizza chip munching and crunching has also stopped, only resuming after I get the car moving for the green left turn signal.
"I inherited my freight forwarding business from him. As a matter of fact, before he died, he made sure to train me to the point where I could take over the business in his place if something were to happen to him or if he decided to retire. He was at that age to retire anyways, so..."
"I-I see. And...um...you...you said that, um, he was also a mage too, since he was the one who taught you...?" Matthew asks very slowly.
"Yep."
"Okay." Matthew pauses again, but she resumes when we hit another red light. "And, um...how long ago did he pass away?"
"Three years ago, just about."
"I see. I'm...sorry."
"It's fine. It's been a while, so I'm over it," I wave my hand a little.
"Um, do you miss him, Master...?" Lily peeps from behind, since she's sitting directly behind me.
"Yes and no."
"Why no...?" Matthew asks, frowning suddenly in concern.
"No, because he and I butted heads a lot," I chuckle a little. "We'd fight over the most useless things ever. He was super stubborn, a stubborn ol' man; if something wasn't done his way about certain things, he'd flip his shit. Mostly this happened during my training to take over his business - he taught me how to run it in the ways he knew how, and whenever I'd come up with different ways to do things, he'd go ballistic. His sense of humor was also really...I don't know, weird. I didn't get it much, so what he thought was a joke I'd take as an offense, and vice versa. So we fought a lot over shit like that."
Our first destination's coming up with this next intersection, which we approach, and I prepare to take a right by switching lanes pre-emptively. At this point, I do start wondering a little bit why Matthew is asking me these things, but for now, I decide to stay quiet about that - who knows, Matthew could, for all I know, but Chaldea's spy to monitor my condition and decide if I'm cut out to be this area's Resident Guardian or gauge the power of Resident Guardians in the area through me or something far-fetched like that.
"Do you have any other family, then?" Matthew continues to ask.
"Nope. None that I know of, other than the friends of my dad's that I know, sorta," I shrug again.
"Then...you're an only child?"
"Yeah." I pause, then say, "something like that."
