Chapter 240 (1/2)

Chapter 240 Award and Honor Ceremony

Roland was currently designing the pattern of the medal for tomorrow’s ceremony. It was reasonable to say that he should already have completed this not especially complicated work long ago, but since the beginning of the afternoon, he had felt somewhat ill at ease.

That’s right; it was because of Nightingale’s kiss.

Although there had been some indistinct signs before, since she had never acted on it, he had also never taken the initiative to speak about it either. But now, there was no longer any room for doubt, what would be the right way to respond to her feelings?

This question also let him understand that he didn’t dislike Nightingale at all. Instead, he even somewhat liked her. A beautiful and touching woman with a calm nature, and with whom he was together from morning to night, how could he ever hate her? The reason for Roland’s inability to respond positively towards her laid in the twenty years of ideology he had inherited, as well as the actual question he would have to face in the future… Anna’s opinion. Especially the later point, he couldn’t ignore Anna, and only act according to his own preferences.

Perhaps only time could bring him the answer he was looking for.

Suddenly, a knocking sound came over from the other side of the door.

“Come in; it isn’t locked,” Roland shouted while being surprised at the same time, who would stil come to his office at this hour?

Only to see that it was actually Anna who pushed the door open and entered the room, holding a tray with two dishes and an earthenware jar. Before she could even open her mouth to speak, Roland already smelled the alluring aroma.

“Food?”

“Yes,” Anna let out a small laugh and placed the tray on the table, then removed the top of the jar and uncovered a milky white soup, “This dish is called honey roasted mushrooms, this plate here was made by me and Nightingale made the other one. And in the jar is mushroom soup, it is seasoned with some commonly seen herbs.”

“It looks very delicious,” Roland licked his lips, “Come sit down so that we can eat together.”

Anna nodded and sat at the opposite side of the table.

“Why didn’t Nightingale come along?”

“She said… she didn’t know what kind of expression she should show when she sees you,” Anna replied. “I do not quite understand why she cares.”

“…” So that’s the reason, Roland softly sighed within his heart, although she had bold and confidently said that she didn’t felt the least bit of regret, even shamelessly boasted “This is not your fault, I just did what I wanted to”. However, in truth her ability to summon her courage and leave the cave to explore the outside world wasn’t any better than that of a squirrel. Really, in the end, was she daring or timid… “In that case, let’s eat first.”

When he picked up a piece of mushroom and put it into his mouth, the honey melted and within a flash spread its sweetness within his mouth, soon followed by the mushrooms own juice. In the absence of monosodium glutamate, it was still so rich and tasty that it made him completely speechless… a little salt further enhanced its freshness, and also, the mushroom’s own chewy texture, of exquisite tenderness, the taste became simply impeccable.

“These… aren’t ordinary mushrooms right?” after swallowing, Roland immediately asked about the aspect of the meal that let it stand out from the masses of other foods. In general, it was already good when the mushrooms could keep their fresh taste when barbecued, but how could they be this juicy? As if they were filled with soup.

“Well, they are a specialty of the Concealing Forest, the town’s people call them Bird Beak Mushrooms,” Anna smiled and recounted the mushroom’s history, “That’s why I wanted you to taste them.”

Afterward, Roland also tasted the slowly cooked mushroom soup, which was equivalently matchless, the flavor of the juices was even more rich, it was just like eating tangbao in general, furthermore, with every chew a crisp feeling was invoked. Tasting this for a long time he couldn’t help but think of the in later generation extremely commonly used, seasoning which was added in vast amounts to all kind of dishes – MSG. In the time before MSG had appeared, chefs could only enhance the flavor of food indirectly, for example by using whole chicken bones, mushrooms and soybeans to create a clear soup stock. Although the preceding generations of cooks preferred once more the authentic flavor to show off their own exquisite culinary talent. However, it was still right to say that even if it was a bad or novice chef, as long as they added MSG, they could increase the dull flavor of their food by more than a level.

Supposing that the Bird Beak Mushrooms was naturally so rich and juicy in flavor, they would be the perfect material for extract MSG. They were just growing on top of the trees, making them hard to pick and thus weren’t widespread? For Roland, something like this wasn’t a problem at all.

“This type of mushrooms, do you know how many of them are there?”