"What the heck?"
In the Floor 56 Safe Zone, Asuna pulled out her lunchbox in irritation.
The lunchbox was really just a container to serve as a bowl. Food in SAO only had a durability limit measured by time; once the durability ran out, the food simply vanished, and it was the same even if you tucked it into your inventory.
Her loss stung a little, because the way Kirito had beaten her relied on a cheap feint—"pretending to have a second sword" to bait her into blocking. Then again, if he'd overwhelmed her in a straight, head-on assault, she'd probably have felt even worse about it.
Calling it cheap wasn't quite fair. PvP and monster-hunting were fundamentally different things, and this was just a normal tactic.
"Mnnh."
A soft, chewy little voice sounded behind her, and she tensed on reflex before remembering she was inside a Safe Zone.
Not that a Safe Zone was absolutely safe. Not long ago, for instance, the murder guild had invented a new method: send an unrestricted PvP request to someone while they slept, grab their hand and tap "accept" for them, then immediately draw and cut them down inside the Safe Zone. A PvP kill wouldn't even flag the killer's cursor as an orange player.
Under Asuna's gaze, a cat-eared little girl in a shrine-maiden outfit—badly out of place for this floor's theme—came trotting up to her with that gait unique to small children, eyes locked, unblinking, on the lunchbox in her hands.
A Teleport Crystal could only warp you to a town Safe Zone within a given floor. Yimi, experimenting by pouring mana into the thing, had somehow popped out on the highest floor players had reached so far.
Players who diligently trained life skills clearly rarely ventured up to the dangerous high floors, which meant the front lines almost never saw tasty food beyond NPC-grown crops. But Asuna was an oddball.
Maybe as a way to relieve the pressure of the front lines, she'd sunk plenty of effort into improving her cooking; at the very least, on the current high floors, no player made food that tasted better than hers.
That aroma was exactly what had drawn Yimi out from the center of the village and right up in front of her.
Asuna stared at her little face, blanking for a moment. "An NPC?"
She hadn't seen her around town these past few days, so why come marching up all of a sudden? And there was no exclamation mark over her head, either.
A very cute NPC. A pity that, after what had just happened, Asuna couldn't summon much fondness on cuteness alone.
Recalling the argument she'd had with Kirito over the NPC business, Asuna's heart sank again.
She pinched a fried meatball with her chopsticks and, under Yimi's yearning stare, placed it in her own mouth.
"Mm."
Yimi plopped down beside Asuna, gaze fixed on the remaining meatballs in her hand.
Asuna twisted away in the opposite direction, staring off into the distance without so much as a glance to the side.
"Om nom, om nom—"
Then, before Yimi could open her mouth to offer a head-pat trade, Asuna deliberately shattered her own ladylike image, wolfing the whole meal down, and tugged the hood she wore for solo outings a little lower.
The pointed act made the little kitty pout unhappily.
She hopped away from Asuna's side, took the pot and Mini-Hakkero out of her storage space and set them up, then produced the last piece of White Whale Meat she'd carried from the previous world—no bigger than an adult's palm now—and set it stewing right beside Asuna.
"?"
Cooking in a public place? That kind of behavior, doing a fixed thing at a fixed time, was exactly the sort of thing an NPC would do.
Asuna wiped her mouth and stood, only to catch the little girl sneaking another glance at her.
The moment their eyes met, Yimi hurriedly turned her head away, refusing to look at her.
Cooking in this game didn't take all that long, so an aroma Asuna couldn't make sense of came brushing past the tip of her nose, tempting her.
She was certain she'd seen it clearly: the little NPC girl hadn't added any seasoning at all, and yet it gave off a meaty fragrance she'd never encountered. Could it be—
"An S-Grade Ingredient?" Shocked, Asuna circled around to stand in front of Yimi.
For a cooking enthusiast like her, this was an absolutely irresistible temptation.
"Hmph!"
Yimi hugged the pot and scooted aside, turning her back so Asuna couldn't see.
Suffer, you.
"?"
Something occurred to Asuna. She quickly opened her menu and found that a new line had appeared in her quest log at some point.
Quest: Let @@ have a taste of something yummy.
Quest Reward: /
"..."
It clicked. She snapped her fingers.
This had to be a random event triggered by eating inside a Safe Zone once your cooking hit the right level and you were above Floor 55. If she'd just handed her food to this little girl a moment ago, it would absolutely have triggered a "Your cooking meets my approval" quest, and then the "Prepare an S-Grade Ingredient" quest!
But because this NPC hadn't triggered any quest dialogue beyond the panel entry, she'd had no idea, and had unknowingly chosen to refuse.
And because of that refusal, she'd triggered this little sulking-fit behavior, leaving Asuna to drool. This kind of design—Kayaba Akihiko really was a sinister, nasty man.
Why would she do this? She normally wouldn't act this way!
Asuna scratched at her hair in frustration and glanced at the quest log. The quest was still there.
There was still a chance to salvage it, right?
"Wait here for a second."
She hurriedly turned and went to the nearest NPC resident, paid to temporarily rent his kitchen, and used the ingredients already in her inventory to try to recreate that bento one-to-one.
Cooking in SAO was a fair bit faster than in reality, and cooking level affected the speed too. Yimi's cooking level was clearly not high, so by the time Asuna finished the bento, Yimi's fish soup had just come off the heat.
"Here." Asuna handed the bento to Yimi.
Yimi took one look. "Hmph!"
She hugged her little bowl, turned around, and ignored her.
And, mimicking the way Asuna had just eaten, she gulped down the fish soup in big mouthfuls, transferring the misfortune of scalding her tongue elsewhere.
"Rua—"
A child's mouth, after all, couldn't open that wide, so chugging the fish soup like that spilled it straight down her clothes; she even poured some up her own nose.
"Okay, okay." Asuna took out a tissue and helped wipe her off.
She opened the lunchbox and waved it in front of Yimi. "Look, this is what you wanted to eat just now."
"Already full." Yimi packed up her pot, turned, and walked off.
Before she knew it she'd wandered off who-knows-where. She still had to go wait for the gradually-less-of-a-dumbass Kirito to bring her a snack.
"..."
Asuna glanced at the quest list. It was still there, hadn't disappeared.
She tugged the brim of her hood lower again and followed after Yimi.
Now didn't exactly seem like the time for this. She should be putting her mind toward how to break through the field boss.
But this was an S-Grade Ingredient! If she missed it, she might never see one again.
Yimi turned her head to look at Asuna. Asuna stood stock-still.
Yimi turned back around and kept walking. Asuna kept following.
Yimi turned her face again. Asuna froze again.
"Meow!" Yimi broke into a run.
"Wait!" Asuna took off running after her.