215-Chapter 15-1 Pomelo

It's getting warm enough for you.

'Yes. But there are still some days when it gets cold so I recommend this.

The snow has melted and the sun is getting warmer, and Lani has arrived after a long time. In addition, Leni-san followed her, but she went shopping with Amour and the others.

''Is this........tangerines?''

Grandpa held the citrus fruit that Lani had taken out, peeled it, smelled it, and threw a bunch into his mouth. Then.

Suu!　What the hell is this!

He spat it out in surprise, as it didn't seem to taste like what he'd imagined.

'Is this yuzu (...)?'

Yes. On a cold day, you can warm yourself up by floating in the bath. Not many people eat it as it is because it's too salty, but the peels and juice can be used in liquor, cooking or as a snack.

When he heard it was alcohol, Grandpa smelled the yuzu again and nodded his head in agreement. Then he looked at me as if expecting something.

'I'll buy it.'

Thank you. There are about a hundred kilograms at a thousand g's per kilogram. If you'll buy them all, I'll lose out on one kilogram, nine hundred g.?

So I decided to buy them all without hesitation.

'And I thought you'd want these things too...'

And Lani brought out three yuzu trees. Of course, we bought these too. The branches have been cut, but they're all about three meters long, so hopefully they could be harvested in two to three years.

'So, now that we're on the subject of being a southern intelligence agent, could you tell me more about the situation when your daughter was injured?

Lani-san's smiling face from earlier changed and she asked for information about Keos.

''Just so you know, that information has been gagged by the king, though?

'With that in mind, I'll ask again. Please tell me.

Wondering what to do, Lani said

'Even though the South is part of a kingdom, it's actually more like a separate country. Besides, even if she is no longer a legitimate son, the young lady is definitely one of the most important people in the South. If such a person was in danger and not a single piece of information was disclosed... the South may have to reconsider the idea of an autonomous region (...).

'When Maria gets mad at you, I'll take Lani along for the ride, too.　

After being threatened to this extent, as an adventurer, you can't help but talk.......so I told Lani what I knew. However, I had to make her agree to be my companion on the road. When I told him that this was the minimum requirement for talking, and that I couldn't compromise on that, Lani-san immediately nodded. Incidentally, Grandpa had fled the room while I was troubled, and he was probably trying to feign irrelevance.

''Can we just pretend that Grandpa's share of yuzu didn't happen?

I decided to say that about my grandfather and discussed the future with Lani. The biggest issue that came up was.

I'm sure Hana-sama will understand what's going on but maybe Lobo-sama will charge in here.

It was something like.

''That gentleman tends to run amok when it comes to your daughter, and most importantly, he's much easier to move around than he was before... if you let him go, I think he's almost a hundred percent likely to come around...'' ...I mean, Hana-sama was pissed off at me for trying to follow her on this peddle, and...

'What if Amur hates you and your relationship with the kingdom deteriorates? ........He gave up after receiving a sermon about it, but in addition to the name of going to check on the badly injured Amur, if it was known that the cause of this time was on the kingdom's side in no small measure, the Honorary Viscount Lobo would definitely come to the royal capital.

''In order to prevent that from happening, I'll have to ask not only Hana-sama, but also Sana-sama and Blanca-sama for their cooperation.

'Come to think of it, I think I've heard that Lani and the rest of your organization is headed by Viscount Emeritus Lobo or something like that from Amur...'

I asked him what he suddenly remembered, and he said that was already a long time ago, and that Hana-san was now in charge of the authority. For what it's worth, the subordinates said that it was problematic for anyone other than the head of the family to be in control of the department that handles information.

'Lobo-sama's job right now is to represent Hana-sama when something goes wrong, but his most important job is to be the chairman of the festival's executive committee.

The former head of the festival seems to have dropped out of favor, but he's surprisingly good at it, and he takes the initiative in proposing festival plans to Hana-san. However, he only makes suggestions, and often leaves the details to the other committee members.

"Do you just say it...

No, a friend of mine said it's very easy to do because they negotiate the most important things, like getting permits and the budget, and they basically let you do whatever you want with the rest of it.

I won't get into the hard part, but I won't talk about it either. Maybe he's a better boss than I thought.

Well, there wasn't much point in talking more about the Honorary Viscount Lobo, so I decided to listen to the other Southern stories. The one that came up the most was Yoshitsune's story, who was attracting a lot of attention for being the next Viscount of the South, and he was already talking about his fiancée.

''Not to mention the daughters and relatives of the most influential people in the South, there's talk from other nobles as well. Well, there are some who are looking for southern interests and some who are thinking of taking over, but this is the first time we've heard of an engagement from another nobleman, and whether you accept it or not, it's a popular topic of conversation now among Nanao.

It is true that Nambu had never been an honorary baron or received an honorary baronet, but since he was officially made a viscount by Hana-san, his second generation and child, Yoshitsune, would be thought to be able to rip off the concession in a big way.

The rumor is that Tenma-san might be involved in Yoshitsune's marriage.　That's one thing.

Yes?

'No. Tenma-san's apprentice would have been adopted by the Otori family and become the royal fiancée. In connection with that, there is a rumor that instead of giving the young lady from the south as a bride, Mr. Temma's adopted son will be given to Lady Yoshitsune's wife. Incidentally, it's popular to speculate that Miss Temma's adopted children will be taken from the dukes of Sangha and Samoens, or from the relatives of the Haust Frontier Count family.

It's an interesting story, and it certainly sounds compelling, but when I said that I didn't intend to do that at the moment, Lani laughed and said, "I agree with you.

''However, if it comes to pass, Yoshitsune-sama.......or rather, the Southern Viscount Family can be associated with the 'Dragon Slayer' and the 'Great Nobles' and, albeit thinly veiled, the 'Royal Family'. With that in mind, it's far more tasty and interesting in terms of profits and prosperity for the Southern Viscount Family than forming a relationship with an influential person in the south or an unfamiliar aristocrat who is aiming for interests, and it's a story that I want to make happen.

I thought I heard a glimpse of real feelings from Lani's mouth, but I laughed and decided not to listen.

'Well then, let's make some things out of a large amount of yuzu, shall we? How is Lani-san doing with the inn?

Lani and Leni had come straight to the house when they arrived in the royal capital, and they hadn't taken any accommodation yet. So when I told them to stay at home this time, they refrained from doing so at first, but when I told them that Leni would likely stay the night by herself, she smiled bitterly at the sight of it and decided to stay.

''Well then, I'll go look around the royal capital a bit later. Oh, by the way, there's something I haven't heard about Keos yet, can you let me hear about it this evening?

''As expected, that one will be the secret information of the kingdom, so I can't tell you about it without my permission. Even if you say you're going to take not only Lani-san but also Leni-san along for the ride, it's not worth it.

The confidential information is when Cayos' arm was returned to its original shape. As it turns out, Cayos' arm most likely grew back around the date of his escape. It seems that the place where Cayos was last taken was where he started digging about six months ago, and the physical characteristics section of the document registered at that time said that he had one arm (...).

The reason I didn't tell Lani about it was because I decided that this was also inside information about the mine, so it was beyond what I was allowed to tell her.

When I refused, Lani, who apparently knew what was going on from the beginning, laughed lightly and did not persist any further.

As soon as I showed him to the guest room, Lani-san went off to unpack and stock up on goods. After seeing her off, I headed straight for the dining room.

''With all this stuff, we could do a lot of things... but it's going to take a lot of prep work.

We decided that we couldn't prepare and cook the food all at once, so we decided to do the prep work this time and spend a few days cooking. Since I didn't have Jeanne and Aura to assist me, I decided to ask Slarin to help me. Well, when I called Slarin into the dining room, he came with a seemingly useless extra, but as long as he didn't get in the way, I left him alone... Solomon snacked on some yuzu and was surprised by the sourness of the yuzu and made a big deal out of it.

Solomon's rampant cleanup took up a lot of extra time, but I got my mind back on track and decided to work with Slarin on the preparations.

Slarin's job is to clean up the yuzu. The slarin takes citron into the body and dissolves the dirt on the surface of the body to clean it, but since there is some resistance to using it as it is, it had to be rinsed off with water once.

The cleaned citron was separated from the peel and the contents, and the white part was removed as much as possible.

'Put this in a container, pour the high-degree liquor into it ... seal it up and you're done!

I didn't add sugar at this time because I only have regular sugar. If it needs sweetening, I'll add more sugar when I drink it and see how it goes.

As for the rest ... maybe I'll make some yuzu pepper.

I have a lot of green peppers that I harvested last year, so let's try to make sense of consuming them. Well, it's easy to make... but there are a lot of things you have to be careful and messy if you try to make it properly, so I'll see how everyone reacts to a trimmed-down version and then think about whether or not to make a real one.

'Shiroumaru, Solomon, stay away from it, it's dangerous.

I was careful, but I asked him not to let Slarin near it either, as his curiosity and appetite were enough to make him come to me.

'Cut the yuzu peel into small pieces and chop up the chillies to the same size... and mix them with salt and grind them up.

It would have been better to remove the seeds from the peppers, but it was too much trouble, so I cut off only the stems this time.

I put them in a container and let them rest in a cool place and they're done.

I put the hand-cut yuzu pepper in a cool, dark place with a piece of paper taped to it with the words 'yuzu pepper, very hot' on it so that someone wouldn't eat it by mistake.

'The only other thing I can think of is ... jam, tea, ponzu and cake?　Well, it might serve as a substitute for other citrus, so let's try something else.

With that said, the first round of yuzu cooking was over. But that evening.........

'Kalaaahhhh!'

Two victims of the pepper paste were found.

Grandpa and Aura tasted the pepper with a spoon, despite the fact that they had put up a sign, of all things.

If they had smelled it or licked it on their fingertips, they wouldn't have suffered so much damage, but they were able to say: 'There's something unfamiliar', 'Temma was making something', 'She was buying a citrus called yuzu', 'It says "pepper" but it doesn't have any black grains', 'Then it shouldn't be inedible', 'Because it's yuzu'. They made a mistake in writing "sour" and "You can't taste it unless it's like this" and so on and so forth, and they blew themselves up. By the way, Aura was the one who found the pepper and Jichan happened to come to the place where Aura had found it and, out of curiosity, picked it up and ate it.

"Although it was pepper, we thought it would be safe if it was made from citrus fruits...

You wouldn't normally think that citrus fruits are spicy, would you?

He didn't seem too remorseful, so I prepared dinner with an extra hot meal in mind.

''Oh, aren't you an ogre... no, it's nothing...''

When I served the hot stew I'd prepared especially for Grandpa and Aura, I thought they said something unheard of, but when their eyes met mine, they began to eat maturely.

'This is an interesting condiment. Is it yuzu pepper?　And it's interesting that it's a pepper and it's called pepper.

'No, in some parts of the South, they call chili peppers pepper, so that's not necessarily wrong. Well, I've never heard of a condiment mixed with yuzu and chili pepper, so it's a rarity... but I guess what goes with it will determine how well it sells.

Leni and Lani tasted the yuzu pepper I had made and exchanged ideas. And.

'Temma, please sell the recipe for this. I'd love to sell it at Lady Sanna's!

''If we sell at Sana-sama's place, we can limit our sales channels in the South. Well, they'll eventually imitate us, but in the meantime, we'll establish the status of the 'Temma Seal'.

I guess establishing a position means branding.

'It's easy, I don't need to get paid for it...'

He said that if I did that, he said, there would be a lot of products with my name on them without permission, and that a financial contract was required. I asked him if it was okay for him to sell yuzu pepper but not the sweets from "Manchuria Pavilion", but that was before I became famous, and he said he couldn't do anything about it because of my long stay in Gunjo City and my relationship with "Manchuria Pavilion", and most importantly, Duke Sangha was behind me.

'No sweets, but I want to handle the condiments in the south.

So I was told to sign a contract with them. However, the contract was not to end with the sale of the recipe, but rather a royalty-like contract with a portion of the amount of money sold, which would be paid for by the food, drinks, and condiments of the South. I left it up to Lani to choose the things and get them all together when she came to my house to peddle.

The next morning.

'Then I will return to the South ahead of you.

Lani had to leave ahead of schedule in order to bring back the information about Keos and the yuzu pepper back to the south.

I saw Mr. Lani off at the gate of the mansion and relaxed in the house for a while.

'Speaking of which, Temma, didn't you say that you and your brother were going to visit the king to greet him?'

Leni came to visit me as if she suddenly remembered.

'Ah!'

Speaking of which, he had said that he was going to go to report to the king that he had given the information to Lani-san without permission and that he was going to be angry with her. He must have remembered that Lani-san had told Leni-san at the after-dinner drinking party last night that they were going to go to the king's place together... but I wish he had remembered a little earlier anyway.

''So Leni-san let's go and get pissed off together.

Why?

Leni seemed to think that me and Lani were going to the king's place as a job to make the southern and royal pipes thicker, and he didn't think I was going to apologize at all.

''Hey, I'm going to bring my brother back!

Leni said, and then tried to go after Lani, but

'No matter what you think. Even if they're returning home by the usual route, it would take them a couple of days to catch up and come back now, and if they're convinced, they'd have to chase them to the south.

Even if the information was leaked to the extent allowed, it's better to go to the king as soon as possible, so Lani-san has no choice but to give up. I can only say it's unfortunate for Leni-san, but as for me, it's no different whether it's Lani-san or Leni-san who apologizes with me, so considering the hassle involved, it's easier to take Leni-san with me as it is.

''Well when I get back to the south, I'll spread the bad news about your brother to everyone I know.

Leni-san had a cold smile on her face, which was unthinkable from her usual appearance. I was curious about what kind of rumor (made up or exaggerated, I think), but I was afraid that if I prodded her poorly, I might get caught, so I prayed that the brunt of the rumor wouldn't turn on me in the slightest, and I tried to distract her and get airborne.

'I see, so that's why they called me in.

I decided to ask Cleif-san to come to the mansion to report to the king as soon as possible. There was also a way to go directly to the king's castle to meet him as usual, but

''It's true that if we headed directly to the royal castle with a woman, strange rumors might start. In that respect, if we just pretend that we're guiding a messenger from the Southern Autonomous Region, we can cover it up no matter how much noise it makes.

Mr. Cliffe, who said it in a deliberately implied way, went towards the carriage before I could rush in.

'For now, let's get in the carriage, shall we?

He got into the carriage with a nervous Leni and drove to the King's Castle with Mr. Cleife driving. But during that time, there was no conversation between Leni and me.

'Hmm, so that's the situation. Well, since the relationship with the South was brought up, it can't be helped that Temma gave him some information. Just to be sure, you didn't divulge any more information, did you?

'Yes, sir. Mr. Lani I'm a southern agent, but other than that, he understood that it was a secret of the kingdom. Well, they asked for other concessions but they were my own personal ones and there was no mutual loss, so we didn't get in trouble.

For a moment the faces of the king and Maria soured when they heard that concessions had been asked for, but when they talked about the concessions that had been asked for, they started laughing. Before they laughed, Leni's face was drawn up from nervousness and her tail was upside down.　

'Well, if Temma's good and there's no problem, then it's not for us to talk about...'

I'm curious to know what that yuzu pepper is called.

And so I was urged to bring some yuzu pepper. Well, that's how I felt about coming, so I brought it to him properly. I gave him a few warnings, but the king was curious and used his finger to taste it on the spot, and was surprised at how spicy it was. He also rubbed his eyes with the finger he used to taste and was writhing in agony.

'It's not as habitual as I thought it would be. If you think of it as a spicy seasoning, it can be used in many different dishes.

Despite the king's distress, Maria was calmly analyzing it. Mr. Cliffe also tasted it and said he wanted to use it in various dishes once the taste was a little more refined.

'Leni worries too much, you know. Her Majesty and Maria aren't the kind of people who are stern but a little blinkered, so you should be more relaxed and talk to them.

'I can't!　Normally, if you're behaving like Chris, you're either headed at best, or you're headed off at worst.

You think too much.

When Chris heard that Leni was coming, he decided to come over to the house to visit, as he had the next day off, and he got into the carriage for the return trip home.

'Well, if it wasn't polite, they're not the kind of people to be picky about people who are making an effort to be careful.

That's right. It's a good thing that you're not going to be able to get away with it. Even now, it is not uncommon for him to deal with His Majesty in a perfunctory manner. Well, I wouldn't do that to Maria, though.

'Mr. Chris, the only time I've ever treated the king roughly is when he has a problem with me. Therefore, I have never treated Missalia-sama to Caesar-sama, Isabella-sama, or Zain-sama in a messy way.

'Which, conversely, means that those of you who didn't name names have been treated in a messy way, haven't you?

I didn't argue with Leni's prodding, but one thing I can say is that I've handled it more often than I've 'handled it'.

'But you don't get messy then, do you, Maria, when sometimes you get out of control, do you?

I have my own clear answer to Chris' question. It's.

'Mr. Chris do you think you can equate someone who always (...) runs off and someone who sometimes (...) runs off?'

I can't.

This is what it means. Chris-san, who understood the meaning of that in a moment, also felt that it couldn't be helped.

''Temma-sama, the carriage of the Sanga duke's family is parked at the mansion.

A little before the mansion, Mr. Cliffe spotted the Duke of Sangha's carriage and reported to me.

'Which one is coming, I wonder?

What is it that either the Duke of Sangha or Albert is coming to see you?　With that in mind, I walked into the mansion.

I'm sorry, Mr. Temma!

He was called into the parlor and suddenly bowed to the Duke of Sangha, who was waiting there. And Albert, who was beside him, also bowed silently.

''Albert........did you do something again?''

I could only think of a reason for the Duke of Sangha to apologize to me other than Albert, who was beside him, so I said it with the intention of defusing the situation...

Not again, but that's generally true.

He said to me.

'Temma, you two have come here with a serious story to tell, so why don't you sit down and listen to what we have to say, instead of fooling around?

To be honest, I wasn't expecting Albert's reaction, and I was wondering how I should react, so it was a relief to have my grandfather step in between us.

'So, what is the reason why the Duke and Albert bowed together?

I asked him why, in the form of a re-division.

Well my daughter is coming....

'Primera ... or is that your sister above you?

I don't see the point of the two of them coming together to apologize if Primera is going to come. Besides, the moment I mentioned Primera's name, I remembered something. It was.

"of the sender of that letter that made Albert pale and pale.

I left an angry letter to Albert about playing matchmaker with Primera, and it was expected that he would eventually come to check on me in person, the older sisters.

'My second daughter is coming to King's Landing soon, and she wants to see you, Temma, then.