Given the time he had left to undertake his obligations, Hans stepped out of the butcher room, returning within ten minutes, a sweet, sharp smell wafting around him.
"84 minutes to go," the boy said, looking away from the clock and picking up his apron.
Fastening the garment, he picked up the two butcher knives on the table and then looked at the work he had left, his gaze raised up.
Three rows, two rows having beef hanging from the ceiling and the last pork.
Letting out a heavy breath, he moved a basket beneath one of the carcasses, its texture already drained of blood, and then he struck the blades in his hand against each other.
"You can do this, Hans."
With those words, the redhead lifted the blades and began striking.
Following each other, the blades swung, almost every strike seeing a piece of meat fall off the hanging carcass into the basket below.
Sometimes he struck vertically, separating much of the meat into two hanging portions, this giving him a better view of its inner makeup.
There was white, deep red, and green on the carcass; let's not forget the bones. The white was allowed to occasionally mix with the deep red, but the green was to be treated like dirt.
Not that it couldn't be eaten, but the flavor this portion of meat gave was one which needed to be specially treated.
The white most times was spongy and made up of fats; this section had to be kept hanging on the surface of the meat, giving the chef making use of the piece the option to either use it to produce oil for cooking, induce flavor, or discard it.
Hans didn't think any butcher worth their salt ever used such a method as he was doing to cut up meat.
It was not only careless but also reckless; with his quick movements he risked not just making a wrong cut on the meat, but also cutting his arm, especially given the fatigue that had begun to settle in his upper limbs.
The dull ache was a sign that he should stop, but oh well…
Several minutes later, when Hans moved to exit the butcher room, other than his handiwork, he noticed that much of the negative in the room had dissipated.
The dark red miasma that had saturated every inch of the room, its tendrils floating through the air, coiling around him and whispering cries of pain and agony, haunting his mind, had faded away.
Now, if he paid special attention and listened, moans of relief were what reached his ears.
A rare smile came to Hans's face as he exited.
...
As someone from a family that owned a small restaurant, a bloodline boasting several chefs, roasting was no new game to Hans.
He made his first roast when he was eleven, his mother's caring eyes having supervised his work, a list of corrections raining when he was done.
That was over six years ago; now Hans's knowledge had vastly grown. He had much more experience, but even as he stood in the kitchen preparing the fire, he found the task he was about to engage in daunting.
Constantly revising his game plan, his eyes sweeping around the lonely room, making sure all he needed was present, he poked the rod in his hand into the lit-up pit, making sure all the charcoal had a spark to them.
Hans didn't rush this process; heat was a very vital component of his incoming exercise. He made sure all the charcoal had a red glow to their body, a steady, intense temperature rising from within the pit, and then he moved to get the meat.
A spit already driven through the heavy volume of meat, several deep cuts filled with spiced oil rubbed into it, Hans hung the pork over the fire, the two sides of the spit resting on already placed forked pikes.
As the minutes passed, the heat from below heated up the meat, burning up the fats that hung on its exterior and causing oil to drop into the flame.
Hans wasn't idle during this period. He sat to the side, cutting up black leaves with reddish veins and putting them along with what looked like red seeds in a mortar, pounding them.
He kept a close eye on the fire, and by the time a side of the meat had developed its crisp surface, he added cold vinegar to the herb.
Quickly readying the solution, he turned the rod, changing the side of the pork being subjugated to the most intense heat, and to the already crisp side, he applied his solution with a brush.
Considering how much time had already passed, Hans's actions prolonged his work, but for the outcome he desired, this was a necessity.
Beetle leaf on its own produced a sharp, stinging flavor, but with pod seeds, this taste was mellowed, a sweet smell produced.
Normally, this should have been added during marination, but the properties of these two herbs conflicted with the other spices, this conflict only coming asunder when they met under heavy heat.
With the acidic properties of the vinegar, the cold solution broke through the crisp outer covering, seeping in through the cracks that formed due to the sudden, rapid cooling.
As the minutes went by, a thin sheen of sweat formed on Hans's forehead, his body's loss of water worsened by his decision to stay by the fire, watching over it every single second.
After he completed the first full rotation, every section of the meat partially cooked, his last solution dripping off every corner,
he moved the spit and picked up three short pieces of wood that had been partially soaked in a red liquid.
The liquid by itself wasn't inherently red, rather it was water transformed by the addition of the blood treated with a heavy dose of garlic and burnt black spices.
The dry end of the wood was stuck in the fire, its other end pointed up.
This addition didn't seem to make sense till moments later, when a dense red smoke poured out of the hole drilled through its frame.
The red smoke poured onto the body of the meat, occasionally blanketing several sections.
The temperature of the room had gone up by several degrees, but on the face of the lone boy who occupied the facility, a genuine smile spread across his face.
He still had a ton of work ahead of him, but what greater joy was there in this world than cooking?