Traditional Beginnings

“Okay…ready?!”

“YES CHEF!”

“You can’t let those fires go cold no matter what. Keep the firewood stoked and stocked.”

“YES, CHEF!”

“Are all the first plates ready to go?”

“YES, CHEF!”

“This is going to be the fight of our lives – no…of the whole world! It all depends on this meal. We can’t let it go wrong!”

“YES CHEF!”

The last call out came as a thunderous roar throughout the castle kitchen, like an army’s battle cry made on the battlefield before charging head on into the enemy. Their general, their head chef, spoke confidently with a fire in her eyes. Though her hands shook, she stood proudly among her team of cooks, chefs and others who had decided to lend their hand to this meal of all meals. Looking around her, the young head chef was moved by what she saw.

All races, all creeds, all levels of skills and talents, working toward a common goal, even if this was not where they had originally seen themselves to be. Whatever differences they had were set aside, putting their everything into their assigned tasks.

The road to this point had been long and hard, but if Yuzuki Fujikawa had to do it all over again, she would change nothing. Whether they fail or succeed, she would be satisfied knowing they did their absolute best.

“Come what may, it’s all or nothing,” she told herself.

Two years ago…

Yuzuki Fujikawa stared in disbelief at everything around her.

One moment she had been despondently walking home after being chewed out by her supervisor, milling through the crowded streets of Shibuya to get back to her empty apartment, the next she was sitting on the floor in what had to be some kind of fever dream.

Around her were knights, the kind in full armor you only saw in medieval or fantasy settings, barring shields and weapons, standing rather menacingly. Next to her were a group of teens, clearly as confused as she was. From the look of them, they were probably hanging out together after school, as they all wore school uniforms. They stood out more than she did, despite this, having fresh, youthful, attractive faces.

Ah, I miss those days of looking like I had at least eight hours of sleep, Yuzuki thought to herself, knowing her own face probably had the worst bags imaginable from her poor sleep schedule and skin care routine. Who had time when you were scrambling hard with unreasonable work hours?

Compared to them, Yuzuki was just your run-of-the-mill worker in her late twenties; nothing interesting to look at, honestly.

“Greetings, heroes from another world.”

Yuzuki snapped to attention, hearing someone speak. In front of her was a throne upon a dais and on that throne, sat an old man wearing a crown – clearly the ruler of this place, if Yuzuki had to take a guess. He spoke grandly to them, capturing the attention of the kids next to her who seemed all too excited about being essentially kidnapped from home, while Yuzuki took a moment to do the usual checklist any real adult would do in this situation.

Pinch. Okay, that hurt.

Pat, pat. The floor under her felt like old stone, all right.

…SLAP! Ow, all right, that was definitely painful.

I’m really here. This is real…

Rather than be thrilled at being thrown into a whole other world of magic and adventure, Yuzuki stood up abruptly, yelling into the room, “I HAVE WORK TOMORROW I CAN’T BE HERE!!! SEND ME BACK RIGHT NOW!”

This sudden cry had interrupted the king’s grand speech about heroes and demons and evil spirits and how the heroes were meant to be saviours to protect the kingdom. He looked at Yuzuki’s audacity with his jaw dropped; there were similar reactions from all around her from the people present in the room.

And this is how Yuzuki found herself unceremoniously having the book thrown at her for lese-majesty.

Despite being part of the group called to arms in order to save this land, Yuzuki was the only one being punished for daring to interrupt the king mid speech. Considering there had been four other people, they probably thought it’d be fine if they didn’t have all of them working together. She was led away roughly by some guards, while the others were being taken to be measured for magic or something.

Yuzuki was bitter.

Before all of this, she had been just trying to make it as a cook at a restaurant, but got constantly yelled at by the owner for never meeting his unreasonable demands. Originally, the restaurant had been run by the current owner’s grandfather, with Yuzuki’s own grandfather working in the kitchen since the very first day it opened. Enamored by the stories her grandfather used to tell about making good food for good people, she tried to follow in his footsteps, even applying to work at the same restaurant he had.

Sadly, both men died barely a month into Yuzuki’s 25th birthday and after she started there. And that meant the restaurant changed hands, being given to the current owner who saw his grandfather’s legacy purely as a means to an end.

Her new boss didn’t care for the quality of the food, nor for the people who had to eat and pay for it. Despite having an amazing reputation that spanned decades, it plummeted after being mishandled, to the point not only did customers leave, but so did the staff, leaving behind only the most green of part timers to handle the bulk of the work. At some point, Yuzuki had been left all alone in the kitchen with one other cook.

She could have left, she should have left. However, the restaurant had meant so much to Yuzuki, that she fought tooth and nail every day, pulling twelve hour shifts in order to make sure the place kept going. It was her most beloved place before everything went downhill and it was so frustrating that she was here and not home, where she ought to be.

The restaurant had been under threat of closing. Her boss was going to sell it off, since he was losing money keeping it open. While Yuzuki wasn’t rich, she did save a lot from previous part time jobs during her school days as well as her barely used salary from the last few years. She had been offered a rather competitive salary before the change of hands, but with how she worked, almost none of it was spent at all, just sitting in her bank account, accumulating. It was enough for a down payment. She was going to take out a loan and pay the rest, she had plans.

There was not much she could do now, but accept her fate. Despite her very reasonable demand to be sent back, she was ignored and even seen as some kind of pariah. As sad, frustrated and angry as she felt, she had to pull herself together for what came ahead.

Her grandfather always said to never linger on the past, but prepare for the future. And right now, hers was looking very bad, if she didn’t do something.

There were whispers as she was being led away, servants clearly not knowing how rude it was to talk so openly while on the job. Yuzuki’s ears pricked, hearing them talking about her pale hair.

It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, even back home people thought her blonde hair was strange or an attempt at getting attention. However, it was a holdover from her grandmother, a French woman who married her dear grandfather. Looking around, many people here had brown or black hair. Not a lick of blonde or even red anywhere, though she did see white from the older workers in the castle.

“Look at her eyes…two colours.”

“Eyes of the devil.”

That, however, was new. Yuzuki had heterochromia, which meant both her eyes were of different colours; brown and green. Was it not common in this world? Back home it wasn’t common either, but nobody called her the devil because of them.

Thinking about it, the kids she got pulled into this world with all had black hair and eyes; not a single dyed head of hair among them. Other than differences in features, they basically fit right in with everyone else.

Feeling petty, she made a scary face at the women talking about her, spooking them into running away. Served them right!

The guards led her through many corridors, eventually ending at a door where Yuzuki could feel a draft. Was she to be sent to a dungeon outside and not within the castle? Not knowing what was to come, the woman braced herself as the doors opened and she was taken outside and flung into the back of a wagon, the door locked behind her so she could get back out. Though she did try struggling with it, Yuzuki ended up knocked onto her behind when the wagon began moving, taking her way with a violent jolt.

And so this was how Yuzuki Fujikawa, knowing nothing of where she was and what was going on, began her new life in the world of Vestia.