Side Story 41. Preliminary Round Of The Competition (1)

The contestants hurriedly lined up before the judges.
Lines had been drawn on the ground, so they could naturally line themselves up along them.
No one had ordered them to, yet they all moved to their places with crisp discipline.
As though they thought even looking that way would earn them points.

Perhaps because most of them had moved so briskly.
The place where Cheongho ended up standing was so far in the back that he could barely even see the judges.
Their voices were hard to hear from there too, but thanks to Cheongho’s hearing, there was nothing to worry about.
Since Baek Sang-ye’s preliminary round was on a different day, he didn’t even have anyone to chat with.

“Whew, there sure are a lot.”

Someone’s muttering reached Cheongho’s ears.
A man of about the same height as Cheongho was standing there.
He turned to Cheongho and grinned.

“You’re short too, so I guess you can’t see the front either.”
“…I’m still going to grow more.”
“You do look about that age. Hahaha.”

He laughed without minding Cheongho’s way of speaking.
With the large mole beside his nose and his triangular face, he looked exactly like a rat.
But unlike his looks, his personality didn’t seem that bad.

“My name’s Yang Gyeong. And you, young hero?”
“Cheongho.”
“You’re still young, but I guess you’re confident in your cooking? How many years have you been cooking?”

Ordinarily, the answer should have been, just the past few days.
But Cheongho decided to count the time he had spent traveling with Yi-gang and watching him cook as experience too.

“About eleven years?”
“Huh? How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“…Fine then. If you don’t want to answer seriously, don’t.”

Cheongho didn’t look like he was only twelve, and eleven years of experience was impossible to believe.
The man who had introduced himself as Yang Gyeong merely laughed.

A faint sneer passed over the corner of his mouth.

A judge announced the theme.

“The theme is creative noodle dish!”
“Creative noodle cuisine!”

The other judges beside him echoed the words of the judge dressed in red.

“The time limit is half an hour!”
“Half an hour!”

Then the judge rang the gong with a clang.
At once, everyone standing in place hurried toward the braziers.
Perhaps to gain as much cooking time as possible.
When Cheongho started walking slowly, Yang Gyeong said a word to him.

“You’d better move fast. If you end up with a broken brazier, it’ll be a pain.”

Having said that, Yang Gyeong darted off.
Inwardly, he was looking down on Cheongho.
Maybe Cheongho could cook a little, but it was obvious he had never entered a cooking competition before.
In a cooking competition this large, luck mattered too.
No matter how grand the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild was, their preparations couldn’t be perfect.
When it came to cooking, the fire of the brazier was the most important thing.
Yang Gyeong hurried to the braziers in the very back.
That was also why he had deliberately stood at the very back among the contestants.
A lot of time must have passed just from lighting all five hundred braziers one by one.
He had confirmed that the braziers set up last had the best fire.

Yang Gyeong ran hard and reached the very back.
Then he saw the blazing flames and grinned.

“Huhu, huh!”

Yang Gyeong jumped in shock.
Because Cheongho, who had definitely stayed behind and been lagging, was now standing right beside him.

“Thanks.”

Cheongho said lightly.
Only a moment later did Yang Gyeong realize it was Cheongho thanking him for the advice.

“Tch!”

That didn’t matter. Yang Gyeong quickly focused on his cooking.

Meanwhile, Cheongho…
Cheongho just stood there blankly.

“…Creative noodle cuisine.”

For the past few days, Cheongho and Baek Sang-ye had trained hard at Mancheon Inn.
And by Yuk Man-cheon’s judgment, Cheongho had quite a bit of talent.
No, he had said it was far beyond merely “quite a bit.”
Perfect handwork and animal-like instincts.
Yuk Man-cheon had even said, “He really doesn’t seem human at all.”
Cheongho had been very displeased by that evaluation, but it was praise all the same.

But even Cheongho had a weakness.

‘I barely even know ordinary noodle dishes.’

His knowledge was far too lacking.
Cheongho’s knowledge of food came solely from his journey with Yi-gang.
Yi-gang might have enjoyed fine food and cooking, but even his standards differed from those of ordinary people of the Central Plains.
And Yuk Man-cheon had evaluated Cheongho, who learned from him, like this.

“Why does this kid not know what he should know, yet know what he shouldn’t?”

There were many dishes like shredded pork with Beijing sauce or kung pao chicken that he did not know, but every so often, things from the western regions or dishes from far eastern Joseon would suddenly come out of him.
Cheongho closed his eyes and thought.

‘Plain noodles won’t do.’

Fortunately, he had rolled out noodles so often he was sick of it.
But no matter what tricks he played with plain noodles, they would still only be fancy plain noodles.

With his eyes closed, Cheongho searched through the things sleeping inside him.
Soon his eyes snapped open.

‘Maybe…’

Something came to mind.
There was just one problem.

‘Would they even count that as a noodle dish?’

He didn’t know.
Cheongho retraced his memories of Yi-gang.

Swish, swish.

It was back when he had two tails.
At that time, Cheongho still could not properly speak.
He could say Yi-gang’s name, but didn’t especially want to, so he merely swished his tails.
Cheongho was staring at a pot bubbling away.
Flickering flames stirred a beast’s curiosity.
Back then, when he was little different from a kitten, Cheongho too was entranced by the wavering fire.
The place where he was sitting was in front of the hearth in a private house.
Yi-gang, who had been on his way to Kunlun, had briefly lodged there.

Bright red flames.
A savory smell.
And something spicy…

“Hey!”

Yi-gang, who hardly ever raised his voice, barked at him.
Yi-gang quickly scooped up the startled Cheongho.

“Well now… haha!”

Yi-gang burst out laughing when he saw Cheongho’s face.

“Your whiskers are all burnt.”

He had been watching the fire too closely, so his whiskers had been singed.
Cheongho rubbed at his face with a forepaw.
A bit of black soot came away.

“It must be nice being a yokai.”

Yi-gang said that and set Cheongho back down.
Whether his face got singed a little or not, that shining bluish fur would soon grow back.
After all, Cheongho was the great yokai Heavenly Thunder White-Tailed Fox.

“And you can even eat human food.”

Yi-gang had once worried over whether it was alright to feed Cheongho the dishes he made.
By his common sense, it was natural to think an animal might get sick from eating human food.
But when he personally asked experts on yokai and confirmed it, they had looked at him strangely instead.
Apparently, a great yokai would be fine even if it ate iron, much less human food.

Smiling, Yi-gang ladled the dish he had been making in the pot into bowls.
In the middle of it, he even swallowed his saliva.
Yi-gang hardly ever showed a reaction like that, so it was unusual.

“It’s been a really long time since I had this. Want some too?”

Cheongho nodded.
Yi-gang sometimes made and ate unusual dishes like that.
Yi-gang put a portion for Cheongho into a small bowl.
Handing it over, he said,

“It might be a little spicy.”

And it was a dish even Cheongho had truly never seen before.
Bright red, glossy…
Truly…

“Chili peppers? We have them.”
“And beef. A fatty cut.”
“Will this do?”
“And…”

Cheongho requested the ingredients he needed from one of the attendants managing the ingredient store set up at one side of the competition grounds.
Starting from this round, the competition organizers were providing a certain amount of ingredients.

And true to the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild’s reputation, they had prepared nearly every ingredient.
That included costly spices and precious sugar.
Cheongho even took a little honey before returning.

At the next station over, Yang Gyeong was busily cutting noodles.
Cheongho didn’t have time to waste anymore either.
He began kneading once more the dough he had already prepared.
He kneaded it together with fragrant sesame oil and salted water.
The dough was quite stiff, so it wasn’t an easy task, but Cheongho handled it with ease.

Yang Gyeong kept glancing sideways at it.

‘What is he making now.’

Most of the contestants had requested dried noodles that had already been prepared.
Given the time limit, making noodles from scratch with either rice flour or wheat flour was not easy.
What Yang Gyeong had chosen instead was knife-shaved noodles.
You shaved strips off a properly rested dough directly into the pot as it boiled.
He prided himself on it as a supremely creative dish.

Sneaking peeks at Cheongho, Yang Gyeong nearly cut his own hand.

‘Is he messing around!’

What Cheongho was doing was that absurd.
Unless you were doing something like knife-shaved noodles, the standard way was to roll the dough thin, fold it over, and slice it into noodles.
But Cheongho was merely rolling the dough with his hands.

‘If he does that, it can’t become noodles.’

The very idea of noodles was something you slurped up with chopsticks.
If you made them the way Cheongho was, like some child’s game, there was no way they would come out thin.
Sure enough, the dough strands he made were as thick as fingers.
After staring at it in thought, Cheongho simply chopped those strands into thick pieces about a finger long.

“Ha!”

In the end, Yang Gyeong snorted.
How could that possibly count as noodles?

“Aren’t you preparing any broth? Or are you going to toss it in oil?”
“…?”

Cheongho glanced at Yang Gyeong, then turned away without even answering.
Yang Gyeong grew irritated at Cheongho’s lack of response.
Naturally. The brat he had inwardly looked down on now seemed to be ignoring him.
In the end, Yang Gyeong decided to stop paying attention to him.

“Pompous little bastard!”

He couldn’t help but spit out at least that much.
Cheongho didn’t so much as listen to Yang Gyeong’s words.

He was already fully focused.
Because he had to recreate in his mind the recipe Yi-gang had muttered and the cooking process he had shown.
He was making about two servings.
Yi-gang had actually made the dough even thicker.
Since Yi-gang had said it was better to parboil them once first, Cheongho lightly blanched those ‘rice cakes’ in water.

Next came the broth.
Broadly speaking, noodle dishes in the Central Plains fell into two categories.
One had broth, and the other was mixed with oil and seasoning.
The dish Yi-gang had taught him belonged to neither.
If anything, it was closer to something braised or stir-fried.

Cheongho had already made the stock.
When he fished the dried kelp and anchovies out of the pot he had set on earlier, only a brown-colored stock remained.
Into this he sliced scallions, then added one spoonful of honey, one spoonful of sugar, two spoonfuls of dark soy sauce, and a little salt.

And then the most important thing.
Fermented chili bean paste, brilliantly red chili flakes, and pepper.
The stock now turned a vivid red, like something risen from hell itself.
Into that he put the blanched cakes and boiled them vigorously.

“Cough.”

The spicy vapor tickled Cheongho’s throat and nose.
It made him wonder if he had made it too spicy after all.
While the broth reduced, Cheongho began frying beef in another iron wok.
It was a thinly sliced fatty cut Yi-gang had called chadolbagi.
And on top of that dish, now thickly reduced, he laid the crisply fried meat.

Done.

Cheongho absently wiped his forehead.
Sweat had formed there. He had been that absorbed in it.
His chest thumped lightly.
This was clearly “fun.”
Finding enjoyment in something wholly unrelated to survival.
Was that something beasts could feel too, or had Cheongho simply come a little closer to being human?
He did not know, but for some reason his chest swelled warmly.

“Time!”

“Time is up!”

The gong rang twice.

“If anyone touches their dish even a little from this point on, they’re disqualified! There, there, grab number 402!”

A few contestants were disqualified after scrambling because they had failed to finish their dishes.
Once they were dragged away, everyone else quietly waited for their turn.
There were five hundred participants. It seemed impossible to judge all that food, but the method was simple.
Twenty-five judges would each be responsible for tasting twenty dishes.

“Damn it…”

Yang Gyeong, beside him, spat out a curse.

“Why did it have to be him?”

The judge assigned to Cheongho and Yang Gyeong’s side…
He was none other than the judge in red who had been reading out the test themes.
Compared to the other judges, he looked higher in rank, and above all, his face was as fierce as could be.
At a glance, he looked strict, and he began the judging.

“Ptooey!”

The first person’s dish was rejected the instant it entered the judge’s mouth.
The owner of the dish could not say a word and left with slumped shoulders.

“This isn’t even worth tasting. Isn’t it just ordinary beef noodles?”
“I-I used especially fine beef…”
“Failed.”

In the time it took to blink a few times, two people had already failed.
Then at last he reached Cheongho.

“…What sort of dish is this?”

He did not reject it on the spot, but his expression was by no means favorable.

“……”
“Does it not even have a name?”

His tone was almost pressing.
It felt like if Cheongho did not answer, he would reject him on the spot.
Cheongho opened his mouth uncertainly.

“Uh…”

In truth, Yi-gang’s pronunciation when saying the dish’s name had been a little difficult.

“Deokbokgi.”

Deokbokgi. He thought that had been the name.
The judge fell silent.