Chapter 219: Time to Say Goodbye (3) After arriving at the Holy Land of the Heirem Order, Jinseo drove the food truck toward the Grand Cathedral.
As the sacred food truck slowly made its way along the main road leading to the center of the Holy Land, the clergy and pilgrims stopped where they stood, made the sign of the cross, and paid their respects.
"The Holy Land really is an incredible place. This is the first time I've ever been somewhere that makes me feel this solemn just by stepping inside."
"So this is the Holy Land of the Heirem Order… it naturally gives off a reverent feeling."
Jason and Aston, who were visiting the Holy Land for the first time, could not hide their admiration as they looked around at the buildings, which conveyed grandeur and solemnity rather than splendor.
"But this smell..."
"I heard there's a food truck branch in the Holy Land. Is that the smell of bunsik they're making there?"
The two fixed their gaze in the direction from which a sweet aroma was drifting and pricking at their noses.
"Jinseo! The foods they're selling at those stalls lined up over there are things I've never seen before. Did the Holy Land always sell food like that?"
Jason pointed toward the street stalls lined up in a row along the wall to the left of the Grand Cathedral.
"No. It's full-bbang, a type of bread made on the spot by pouring batter into a mold without going through fermentation. It's common street food in Korea, but on the Francia Continent, I haven't introduced it anywhere except the Holy Land yet."
"What? It's a new item we still haven't sold?"
"Really? Then we have to try it right away!"
The moment Jason and Aston heard it was a new food the food truck did not sell, they hurriedly jumped out of the food truck.
In the past, when Jinseo stayed in the Holy Land, the only kind of full-bbang he had taught them to make was gyeran-ppang. But now, all kinds of full-bbang baked in bread molds made with dwarven technology had become famous specialties of the Holy Land, selling out as fast as they were made.
Along with the original gyeran-ppang, there were bungeo-ppang, chrysanthemum bread, walnut cakes...
And even DelX Manju, the snack usually sold in subway stations and which somehow tasted especially good when eaten on the subway.
"Wow, I've never had bread with this kind of texture before."
"The aroma is really captivating. The cream inside is… custard cream?"
Jason and Aston bought full-bbang in every variety, sat across from each other at a table, and began eating mindlessly.
Leaving the two of them behind, Jinseo went alone into the Grand Cathedral.
The cathedral knights who recognized his face beamed as they opened the doors for him, and Pope Kaal X, who had been praying alone inside the Grand Cathedral, rushed over the moment he saw Jinseo.
"Brother Jinseo! I've been waiting for you!"
"Your Holiness, have you been well in the meantime?"
"Rather than words, see it with your own eyes!"
Kaal X briskly rolled up the sleeves of his vestments and proudly showed off biceps even firmer than before.
"Ah, I should show you this first. Please wait just a moment!"
Kaal X hurried back to where he had been praying, then returned to Jinseo carrying a golden bowl.
"What do you think?"
He opened the lid of the bowl he had brought and showed him the round, thin rice cakes layered inside.
"Taking your suggestion into account, Brother Jinseo, we improved the form of the sacred meal, and the response from the brothers and sisters has been very good."
"Ah… so this is how you made it. It looks almost exactly the same as what I saw when I received Holy Communion."
Kaal X had designated Jinseo's special tteokbokki as the sacred meal and began personally administering the rite of giving the sacred meal once a week to believers attending weekend Mass.
However, because of tteokbokki's nature, it was slippery, so it was all too easy to drop it or have the sauce run down, and there had been more than one or two awkward incidents while distributing the sacred meal.
Getting tteokbokki sauce on vestments during Mass was the least of it, and there were even cases where the cup holding the sacred meal got overturned.
Since it was not as though he could wear an apron over his vestments, there had even been a time when they had to suspend the rite of giving the sacred meal for a while.
After learning of Kaal X's difficulties through Veronica, Jinseo suggested trying the method used in Korean churches.
"Instead of tteokbokki sauce, we replaced it with a sprinkling of this spicy powder."
"I see. This way it's useful for distributing during Mass, and it's convenient since it doesn't dirty the vestments."
The sacred meal for Mass was completed by slicing thick garaetteok thinly like tteokguk rice cake slices, then sprinkling seasoning powder on top that tasted like tteokbokki.
Although it had grown somewhat distant from the original taste of tteokbokki, Jinseo gave it high marks for reproducing the tteokbokki flavor as closely as possible within the circumstances.
"Come to think of it, a strange rumor has been going around lately… is it true that you are leaving the Francia Continent and going somewhere far away, Brother Jinseo?"
"That is..."
"Judging by your expression alone, there's no need for me to hear the answer. What a great pity."
"That's why I came in person to give Your Holiness tteokbokki I made myself one last time. As a farewell too."
When Jinseo lifted the black plastic bag he had brought, Kaal X took out a sheet of white paper he had stored beneath the altar and spread it across the altar.
"Then the sacred meal we share now is the Last Supper I will have with you, Brother Jinseo. Let us eat together."
Kaal X opened the plastic bag on the altar, and the two silently shared the tteokbokki with toothpicks.
Normally, Kaal X would have eaten that amount by himself in a single minute, but because he wanted to savor this last meal with Jinseo for as long as possible, he ate the tteokbokki slowly, one piece at a time.
Unlike the others, Kaal X did not ask why Jinseo was saying goodbye to everyone.
Fedora was soon to become Pope, and that meant she and Jinseo would become people bound by a tender relationship that could never be fulfilled. Knowing that and still nominating her as the next Pope, Kaal X could not bring himself to ask carelessly.
Though he inwardly felt sorry toward Jinseo, Kaal X could not go against the principle that a capable clergyperson should rise to a high position, so he simply ate the tteokbokki in silence.
"As expected, the sacred meal you make yourself, Brother Jinseo, is especially spicy."
"Thank you for enjoying it."
"And now I will never be able to eat your sacred meal again, Brother Jinseo."
Kaal X wiped the sweat from his forehead with a wet tissue, then gulped down CoolX.
"Brother Jinseo, thank you very much. And I am sorry."
"There is absolutely no reason for Your Holiness to apologize."
"…Is that so. Then I will offer one last prayer for you. May His protection be with you..."
After finishing what he had to do in the Holy Land, Jinseo drove the food truck and quickly worked through the rest of his schedule.
Because he had built ties with so many people, there were many places he had to stop by just to say goodbye, and while doing so, he also traveled around the places he had not yet managed to visit together with his two helpers.
Since this was, in effect, his final journey across the Francia Continent, he drove the food truck with the desire to make memories with the two people who had helped him the most.
After traveling all across the Francia Continent like that, before returning to Falstead Castle, Jinseo arrived at the Doren Magic Tower, where the twin brothers served as co-headmasters.
"Mr. Jinseo! I heard you're closing down the food truck business. Is it true?"
"Are you really never coming back? Could it be with the Cardinal…?"
The mages who heard the news that Jinseo was leaving the Francia Continent swarmed him with a barrage of questions, and Jinseo had no choice but to keep repeating that he had to leave. Then he climbed the stairs leading to the headmaster's office.
Knock, knock.
"Come in."
After hearing the reply from beyond the door, Jinseo opened it and entered the headmaster's office.
The room that had originally been for Painfolt alone now instead held his twin younger brother, Rainfolt, seated inside.
"It seems you still haven't finished the translation work yet."
"I took it too lightly. In Korea, it would have been enough to type documents on a laptop, but using a laptop here is difficult, so I've had to translate by writing everything out by hand like this. I lived in Korea for so long that even my way of thinking has hardened into Korean habits rather than this side's, so I never expected I'd struggle like this."
Rainfolt got up from his seat, rubbed his stiff shoulder, and rotated his right arm in a wide circle.
Having translated dozens of cookbooks filled not only with bunsik but with all kinds of Korean and foreign dishes, he looked at the books on the shelves whose translations were still unfinished and frowned.
"All the mages of the Magic Tower are saddened that you are leaving. And they are also saddened by the fact that they will no longer be able to eat ice cream."
"That's why, before I leave, I plan to fill the food truck's subspace with as much food as possible, including ice cream. But even that probably won't take them very long to finish."
"As for ice cream, if they properly know the recipe, it is not particularly difficult to make with the technology here even without relying on magic. In fact, when I had the chefs at the bunsik carts try making vanilla ice cream, the very foundation of ice cream, they made it quite well."
"Is that so? That's a relief..."
"But you introduced far more than one or two kinds of ice cream to the Francia Continent, didn't you? So it will take quite a bit of time to recreate them all. That said, even if they make ice cream this way, it will not have the mana recovery ability of the ice cream sold from the food truck."
"Will that still be all right?"
"It should be no problem. In the first place, they ate ice cream because it was tasty. The mana recovery and concentration-boosting effects were simply an added bonus, not the main point of the food itself. Now that we're talking about it, I should take one out and eat it."
After finishing his coffee, Rainfolt opened a subspace in the air and took out BoX Bar, one of the ice creams people tended to either love or hate.
"Huh? You eat BoX Bar?"
"Why? Are you planning to scold me too, like my brother did, for not knowing how to appreciate ice cream?"
Rainfolt gave a small laugh as he remembered the disbelieving look on Painfolt's face when he had criticized him for chewing BoX Bar instead of savoring it.
Even twin brothers could not allow even an inch of compromise when it came to each other's taste in food.
"Anyway, my point is that ice cream is perfectly sufficient as it is, even without something like mana recovery. If you follow that logic, then why would anyone eat food that has no special effect and is simply delicious? Food only needs to be tasty, as long as it doesn't damage your health too badly."
Jinseo nodded in agreement at Rainfolt's words, which cut straight to the heart of cooking.
"And regarding Fedora..."
Rainfolt let out a long sigh and brought his left hand to his forehead.
"I'm not really in a position to say much, so I won't drag this out. In any case, once you chose Regression, parting with her was inevitable. I do feel sorry for her, left behind alone, but she also chose the path of becoming Pope, so from that standpoint, it's the same for both of you. No matter what, let's end the depressing talk there and..."
After finishing his words, Rainfolt opened a desk drawer and took out a single sheet of A4 paper.
"This is..."
"As a regressor, shouldn't you make sure to take full advantage of the benefits you can prepare for? Memorize it thoroughly."
The document Rainfolt handed to Jinseo was densely filled on both sides with records of things like stocks that had steadily risen throughout the decades he had spent in Korea, along with lottery winning numbers composed of easy-to-memorize combinations.
"It looks like, running all over the place making your farewells, you haven't had any time to prepare something like this, have you? Since you're regressing anyway, shouldn't you secure the gains you can get from it? Regression must be done with a plan! Think of it as advice from your senior in regression, and engrave it into your head."
"That's… true."
"That answer is far too limp. This won't do. Until the day before you regress, memorize it perfectly. Think of it as homework. I'll test you regularly to make sure."
"Hahaha… yes."
"Of course, the future won't proceed exactly the same as what's written here. Regression itself is something you carry out to change the predetermined future. Even so, if you follow what's written here, you should still be able to gain a fair amount. If I'd had my way, I would have liked to write out a whole book's worth, but memorizing all that would be impossible, so I condensed it to about this much."
"Honestly, my grades back in school weren't very good. So I think this amount is just about perfect for me."
"You don't look that dull, so what was your CSAT score?"
"That's a secret."
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