Salt Fat Acid Magic [Nom-Fiction | Food Fights | Culinary Academy]

"So you're saying you think Flambé is a bad king?" Blanche reached across the table and took a couple of Archie's fries.

Archie fought the urge to swat her hand away. "No. I'm saying I think he could be doing more to help the people of The Platter. And if you wanted fries, you should have ordered fries."

"I'm not supposed to eat fries, so I don't order fries."

"But you eat mine."

"I can't help it! They're so good here. They double-blanche them. And you know what double-blanched fries means?" Blanche raised her eyebrows and walked her hand one finger after another across the table. "It means double fries for Blanche."

Archie gave into the urge to protect his precious fries and flicked Blanche on the knuckles.

"Ow!" Blanche stuck her knuckle in her mouth, and Archie gave her a look that showed he would do it again if he had to. Blanche waved her hand out and got back to poking her fork in her summer salad. "You called him complacent."

"I acknowledge that the word might be too harsh, but I believe the essence of it still applies. Look at what Khala does for their people. They have these roaming bands of Chefs that go from village to village and improve lives."

"Chefs do that here too."

"But not as often. And not…What's the word for it?" Archie leaned back and looked around the restaurant. "Systemic. Right? Like, it's not a government program that benefits the needy. Instead, it's…opportunistic Chefs looking to make coin."

Blanche raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips.

"Okay, again, opportunistic is a harsh word, but still true. In The Platter, smaller villages only ever benefit from the services of top Chefs if they can make it financially worthwhile for those Chefs." Archie's hands swung around as he got more and more heated. "Which they can't, because there's so much more money in Ambrosia City. It's—it's, you know, all the attention is put into the biggest branch of the tree, and any fruits on a smaller branch are left to rot."

"I'm not disagreeing with you."

"Like, imagine if once you graduated, rather than just working at the best-paying position you get, you had to serve for a couple of years in these specialized Chef groups that helped across the kingdom."

Blanche held a fork full of avocado and lettuce suspended in the air in front of her mouth. "You're talking about mandatory government service?"

Archie leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. "Maybe. I don't know. Maybe mandatory, maybe not. If it was mandatory, then yeah, you'd want it to be right after school. Because you wouldn't want to uproot an established Chef with their own restaurant. I don't know. That's for someone else to figure out."

"Who's complacent now?"

Archie threw a fry at Blanche. She scooped it off her lap and did a little dance as she ate it. "Grand King Flambé, as great as he is, might not have the most clear picture of what life is like in The Platter."

"Oh, but Archie the Great knows all."

"I'm sure he knows much, much more than I ever will. But I know some things he doesn't. I know what it's like to struggle. To live in a place that is endangered. That is shrinking. Wilting. Flambé spends all of his time between the wealthiest parts of Ambrosia City and his trips to Uroko. I don't think he sees what Platterian villages are going through."

"The Bhante never leaves the Monastery, but Khala is your ideal model."

"Not my ideal model. But I think they figured something out because they had to, and they had to as quickly as they could. Their needs are more dire. When faced with a matter of survival or extinction within three years, humanity is great at finding a solution. But if you draw that extinction out to a century-long event, we look away until it's too late."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Blanche giggled as she ate.

"What?" Archie asked. "Do you disagree? Or am I boring you?"

"No, not at all. I think it's very interesting. I'm just surprised that you have all of these thoughts."

Archie scoffed and chuckled. "What, you thought I didn't think about things?"

Blanche shrugged. "I was just into you because you're cute. I didn't know I was getting the whole package."

"Flattery isn't gonna get you more fries."

Blanche pouted. "Just one?"

Archie sighed and gave her the worst two fries he had, hoping their quantity would make up for their quality. Blanche ate them without complaint.

"So what are you going to do once you graduate?" Archie asked.

"Hmmm…" Blanche covered her mouth as she chewed. "A lot of it depends on how good I am, honestly. I might stick around at Blue Orchards for however long they can still teach me things. But after that, I might start my own little farm in the Roots. Or I have this idea of a restaurant that is owned by me and a cooking-focused Chef. So we'd work together as equals to make a menu. I work the field, they work the kitchen."

"I like that."

"It'd have to be new, whatever I do. I'm not interested in maintaining something established as much as I am building something from the beginning."

"Nurturing from a seedling."

"Exactly."

"Okay, so what if instead of staying at Blue Orchards, you were…conscripted…" Archie showed his hesitancy to use the word with a little waver of his hand. "...to a mobile farming division. I mean, in a few years, you could practically be an on-demand farm with how talented you are. And then wherever you go, children get more well fed, adults get to focus their energies on commerce or whatever. They…build a new school. Fix up roads. I don't know what they do, but they're free to do it because they don't need to work in the fields. And they get higher quality harvests."

"I like the idea. Really, I do. But if a program like that existed, I wouldn't have to be conscripted to do it. Just give me a living wage and I'll do that until I'm ready to start my own venture."

Archie realized he had gone several minutes without taking a bite of his beer-battered fish, but he was too into the conversation to start now. "Of course you would. You're like…the most caring and nurturing person I know."

"Aww."

"Someone else might need to be forced into that role, though."

"So you're advocating for young Chefs to not have a choice?"

"I don't know! I'm just saying there is merit to the idea of a short-term mandatory service. Even if it's just a year! You go in at twenty-two, you come out at twenty-three, what have you really missed out on?"

"So you'd be okay with having that choice made for you? For you specifically, I mean. You'd have no problem having that year of your life preordained?"

"I mean…yeah. I suppose I would have a problem with it. But if I knew that was the way it was, I'd suck it up and do it."

"You'd miss out on…what is your plan once you graduate?"

"Just like you, I think it depends on how good I am. It'd be great to be an established fighter in the IKC by then."

Wait, that wasn't right. He was supposed to go back to Petrichor. He started to correct himself, but Blanche pushed onward.

"You really want to fight for a living?" She scrunched her face up in disdain. "After what we saw?"

"Of course I do. I protected people. If I hadn't taken my training with Picea seriously, who knows what would have happened. People could have died."

"People did die, Archie." Blanche set her fork down. "Dozens of them did."

"Okay, yes. But more could have died." Archie breathed in a ragged sigh. Their conversation had quickly gone from enjoyably heated to uncomfortably so. He couldn't understand how she couldn't understand. "I could have died. Nori could have died. Hawthorn probably would have died. Barley certainly would have died. Me learning how to fight stopped that. Why would I want to stop now?"

"But you're talking about fighting in an arena."

"For now! But who knows when I'll have to fight again?"

"You sound like you're looking forward to it."

Archie sighed. "I'm not looking forward to a situation in which someone is in danger. I think it is inevitable that such a situation will occur, and I'm looking forward to being strong enough to do something about it."

Blanche leaned back, but her upper lips stayed tense. "I could go my whole life without seeing any more violence."

"Well, you'd be so lucky."

Blanche sighed, and the energy of the night deflated like a balloon.

Archie looked at his last few fries without appetite. "You want these?"

"No," Blanche stated. She looked off in the distance, zoned out. "I can't eat fries."