Chapter 174. Scheming (5)
Evading Clarisse's interference, the conversion of the old printing house into a kitchen had begun.
Directing it all: Jurgen. Assisting: Serena.
But with just the two of them, it was physically impossible to transform the printing house into a kitchen within the deadline.
―Chug-chug-chug-chug
With a heavy rumble like advancing tanks, several carriages came barrelling into the factory yard.
From them poured out a flood of muscular men. Leather aprons tied around their waists, forearms black with grease.
"Miss Serena! We're here!"
They were the employees of Renoir Workshop, who had raced to the capital in a single day after receiving Serena's urgent summons.
The carriage cargo holds were loaded with all manner of tools and materials.
"Uncle, you brought everything I mentioned?"
"Of course! We swept up everything from welding machines to cutters."
"And the materials?"
"The Alchemic Steel was too heavy, so it's coming on a follow-up carriage!"
Workers who had collaborated with Y&P Trading Company long enough to move in perfect sync.
The foreman's gaze drifted briefly toward Jurgen.
"So what incredible thing are we doing this time?"
It was a look shining with anticipation. To the whole Renoir Workshop, Jurgen was the employer who always brought interesting work along with generous pay.
"There's no time. I'll brief you immediately."
"As reliable as ever, Miss!"
Serena spread the blueprint she had drafted with Jurgen across the top of a drum barrel.
Serena glanced at Jurgen. He gave a slight nod, and she continued the explanation.
The challenges that needed solving in order to supply Braised Ribs Rice Bowls at this Birthday Banquet came down to two things.
Rice, and Braised Ribs.
"First, we're going to get the steam for mass cooking from this boiler."
One of the workers tilted his head.
"Pardon? Steam for cooking? But this boiler is industrial grade, it is."
They had handled countless outsourced jobs over the years, but Y&P's food hygiene standards were nearly as exacting as a top-tier Alchemy workshop. It was only natural to be puzzled at abandoning that now.
"Yes! That's why we're going to build a separate heat exchanger inside."
The idea was to run a new pipe — through which the boiler's hot heat passed — inside a large purification tank attached to it. Think of it as a kind of double-boiler.
Serena then tapped the schematic in quick succession.
"We'll send the steam produced this way over here."
The foreman peered at the diagram.
"This is…… what is it?"
It looked nothing like an ordinary rice cooker. A rectangular steel box, one might say.
Serena turned to the next page of the schematics and continued her explanation.
"Think of it simply as a steam oven. We're going to fit steam nozzles densely inside here. Open the valve, and high-pressure steam fills the interior completely."
Inside it, trays shaped like square pans filled with rice would be placed and cooked by steaming.
Need it even be said? In the modern world of Earth, it was the kind of steam rice cooker used by armies and school cafeterias.
"Ohhh……"
The foreman was impressed. It was certainly far more efficient than hanging hundreds of pots and managing fires to cook 200,000 portions of rice.
Fill one tray with rice and water and you get roughly 25 portions. Stack twenty such trays in layers, and—
"One cycle of this steam oven gives 500 portions."
"Exactly. We just make a whole lot of them. And then……"
Next up was the player that would take care of the Braised Ribs.
"We're going to roll steel plate into a circle and make a massive pot two metres in diameter."
"A round pot, you say? That's easy enough. But where do we light the fire? Should we dig a hearth?"
"No? We already have the steam we secured just now."
Here, the steam would be recycled.
"We make the pot double-walled and run the hot steam through the gap between the two layers."
That way, without any open flame, the entire outer wall of the pot would be enveloped in hot steam, bringing the interior to a boil in an instant. It was a Steam Rotary Soup Pot, used even in the modern world.
"Would that actually work?"
"We'll make it work. We've been paid."
At Serena's bold declaration, the foreman grinned back and picked up his wrench.
The engineering principle was flawless. Bringing it to life was the craftsmen's job.
"Hey! You all heard that! We die here tonight!"
"Yes sir!"
The foreman's thunderous shout rang through the factory.
"Split into teams and scatter!"
The technicians of Renoir Workshop dispersed as one. Blue welding sparks flew, and the sound of hammers striking iron filled the old printing house completely.
***
Two days later. A heavy silence hung over the study of the Rosemore family's Villa in the capital.
Clarisse stood at the window, gazing down at the capital's panorama.
"Strange."
Clarisse murmured quietly.
"It's too quiet……"
She had put the Security Bureau in motion and played the trump card of 'open flame strictly prohibited within a 3km radius.'
By her expectations, Penelope should by now be running wild with fire at her heels. She should have come to the Security Bureau to lodge a complaint, or things should have erupted into chaos with her scrambling to find restaurants on the outskirts beyond the 3km boundary.
In the latter case, Clarisse would have laughed. She had already moved in advance to ensure none of the larger restaurants on the outskirts would sign a contract with Y&P Trading Company.
But the only news coming in was a silence unsettling enough to make her skin crawl.
"Miss Clarisse, reporting in."
Just then, the informant she had dispatched materialised out of the darkness.
The informant emerged from the shadows.
"Y&P Trading Company's movements?"
"Quiet. They haven't sent so much as a single letter of complaint to the Security Bureau."
"What about securing a restaurant? Are they looking further out on the outskirts beyond where we've already made our moves?"
The informant shook his head.
"No. Since yesterday afternoon, they have shut themselves inside an abandoned printing house in the Third Industrial District and have not come out."
"A printing house……?"
"Yes. According to surveillance of the site, Y&P's technicians, Renoir Workshop's personnel, and an enormous quantity of materials are all converging there."
Clarisse couldn't understand it. A printing house was, literally, a place for printing books.
"What on earth are they doing in there?"
"Perhaps…… it is speculation, but it appears they may be converting the factory into a large kitchen."
"……Converting it into a kitchen?"
Clarisse's eyes wavered.
Converting a printing house into a kitchen? Checking the location, it was indeed outside the restricted zone.
But things kept unfolding in ways she hadn't anticipated, and it unnerved her.
However—
That didn't mean she could simply leave it alone.
Stopping Penelope from achieving success at the Birthday Banquet was something that had to be done, one way or another.
"We can't leave this as it is."
"Shall we smash the machinery?"
"No, we can't do that."
In the North it might be one thing, but in the capital that sort of approach was out of the question.
To begin with, she had yet to even grasp the Queen's true intention in extending a hand to Penelope. Moving rashly now risked handing them an unwarranted pretext.
"Let me think for a moment."
Clarisse sank briefly into thought. Converting a vast factory overnight.
There would be a key technician overseeing both the design and construction.
"Renoir Workshop, you said?"
"Yes. Serena Renoir is directing the site."
"Serena Renoir……"
Clarisse knew that name.
Renoir Viscountcy itself wasn't a family that had left a particularly vivid impression on her. Clarisse wasn't idle enough to keep a minor viscountcy in her head.
But Serena Renoir was a little different.
A long-standing collaborator of Y&P Trading Company. Yet an outsider.
Unlike Jurgen, who had flatly refused Clarisse's proposal, she was the weakest link.
If the key technician disappeared, the construction would stop. A very simple fact.
***
After the overnight work of Renoir Workshop's employees. The printing house was rapidly transforming into a kitchen.
―Tssssssk!
The very last welding job had just finished. Every steam pipe extending from the boiler room was now connected to the Steam Rice Cooker and the Soup Pot.
"Running integrated pressure test!"
At Serena's shout, the foreman opened the valve.
―Pushhhhh
With a faint hiss of steam, the needle on the pressure gauge rose steadily. Proof that not a single spot was leaking — absolutely perfect.
"Haaaaah……"
Only then did Serena exhale and sink to the floor.
Face plastered with black grease. The towel wrapped around her head was soaked through with sweat.
This was already the second consecutive night of sleeping in snatches at one corner of the factory.
In other words, for Serena, it was something she was very much used to.
"Next is adjusting the clearance on the paper cup conveyor belt!"
Just as Serena picked up her wrench again and was unsteadily rising to her feet—
"Miss, leave that to us and get some rest today."
"Oh come on, I'm still fine. I'm used to it."
The foreman placed a firm hand on her shoulder.
"If you collapse again because of this, there'll be hell to pay. We can handle the minor calibrations."
"That's right! You know what we're capable of!"
The foreman patted Serena's back with rough, sturdy palms.
"Go get some sleep."
"Hmm…… at least let me check the clearance first—"
"Tsk."
Faced with genuine concern, Serena finally relented.
Pushed out by the technicians' insistence, Serena was eventually shooed outside the factory.
―Creeeak. Clunk.
Unlike the sweltering heat inside, the air outside the factory was chilly in the cold early morning.
"Phew, that's refreshing."
Of course, Serena was from the North. She wouldn't bat an eye at something like this!
"I really am proud of myself, though."
She had received a great deal of help from Jurgen, but before long a system she had designed and built herself would be running in the real world. A system that had never once existed before.
As an engineer, there were very few moments as satisfying as this.
"Just four hours of sleep and then back……"
Gazing at the faintly rising dawn stars, Serena started the engine of Bunny 2, her beloved car that had arrived in the capital by train not long ago.
―Vroooom!
And so, as she was driving along the narrow path—
She heard the sound of a car coming from the other direction, out of the darkness.
"Hm? Has the materials carriage arrived……?"
Just as Serena tilted her head in puzzlement. A sleek black sedan glided up and blocked her path.
"……?"
A black vehicle bearing no crest whatsoever. No matter how she looked at it, it was something that had absolutely no business being here at this hour and place.
What Serena felt was a very intense sense of déjà vu.
She had definitely been kidnapped this very same way before—!
―Click
Just as the car door was about to open—
―Vroooooom!
Serena's hands worked the manual stick in a flurry of motion. Clutch down, gear shift, straight into reverse.
―Screeeeech!
She spun the car 180 degrees in an instant and floored the accelerator.
"Aaaaagh!!! No thank you! No more kidnappings!!!"
Serena's Bunny 2 vanished into the darkness like a shot, tyres screaming.
"Good grief……"
The attendant who had just been about to speak to her from the car.
"……"
And Clarisse, who had made the journey to win Serena over.
Both of them stood staring blankly at Serena's rapidly disappearing tail lights.