Swish.
Yamato suddenly stood up and bowed deeply to Yat Sen.
"Please, you must pass these recipes on to us. Any price can be negotiated."
Yat Sen awkwardly twisted her apron in her hands. "It's not that I don't want to teach you. The thing is, special dishes require special recipes to learn, and all of them were given to us by the Commander."
Yamato's eyes snapped toward Hikaru.
Hikaru slowly picked up a strip of shredded ginger pork with his chopsticks, ate it, chased it with a sip of wine offered by Lexington's hand, set down his chopsticks, and let Saratoga wipe his mouth before speaking leisurely.
"My, don't glare at me like that."
Yamato only glared harder. "Do you realize how significant these special dishes are?"
Hikaru's Naval District only had a handful of shipgirls, while Naval Headquarters commanded shipgirls numbering in the tens of thousands. The impact of special cuisine would be beyond imagination.
"Impossible. I can't get more recipes either."
Hikaru spread his hands and met Yamato's gaze calmly.
Recipes could only be found in supply crates or given as special quest rewards. And unlike furniture, which often came in duplicates, recipes were always unique.
There was no way Hikaru could provide Yamato with more.
Shipgirls could see through people's hearts, and Yamato knew he wasn't lying.
Her heart sank with disappointment—how she wished he were lying.
The value of cooking, she realized, might even surpass Ella's tactics, because food had fewer restrictions and lower requirements. Even someone as hopeless in the kitchen as Bismarck could burn a dish and still produce a working buff. That showed just how universally useful it was.
Whereas tactics were destined to be the domain of only the strongest shipgirls.
Thinking of that, Yamato's mind suddenly sparked with an idea.
Her eyes lit up. "Then, could we perhaps hire Instructor Ella and Miss Yat Sen to work part-time at Headquarters? Just ten days a month—no, even five days would be enough. We're willing to pay the most generous salary."
Even without recipes, she could at least lure the people away.
But Hikaru crushed her hopes mercilessly.
"What a fantasy. Our two sides are still at odds. And besides—" Hikaru squeezed Yat Sen's hand—"I wouldn't let my shipgirls leave home just to work themselves to the bone. Who would want that?"
He glanced at Ella and added, "And I wouldn't give up Ella either."
Ella's face flushed, her head bowed in shy embarrassment.
Yamato protested, pointing at Fletcher, who was eating fish. "But you let Fletcher work part-time at the Academy, teaching destroyers!"
"That was back when we didn't even have a Naval District," Hikaru waved her off. "Not negotiable."
Yamato was so disappointed she looked ready to cry.
Yat Sen, feeling sorry for her, offered softly: "Actually, if stored properly, our dishes can last for quite some time."
Yamato lifted her head, eyes shining with hope. "You mean…?"
Yat Sen gestured at the plate of baked beans. "That dish was made with canned beans and the recipe effect. If sterilized, sealed, and refrigerated, it could last at least a year."
Yamato's eyes gleamed. If the buff effects were only lost due to spoilage, then she could guarantee they could be preserved for three years or more.
Even decades-old frozen 'zombie meat' could still be eaten. How could cooked dishes not last a few years? With the right preservatives and storage methods, the flavor didn't matter.
Besides, Naval Headquarters didn't need them to last that long.
A six-month shelf life would already be enough to transport special food all the way to the forward bases in the central ocean.
For those who had never seen the outposts scattered across the Golden Sea Routes, nor the hardships of the battles fought there, it was impossible to imagine just how grueling they were.
And special cuisine would undoubtedly provide tremendous support.
"We're willing to purchase in bulk—any amount you can produce. At one hundred times your cost price. And we can negotiate higher." Yamato fixed her gaze on Hikaru and named her sky-high offer.
It was undeniably a staggering price.
Take the cheapest spicy strips, for example. They boosted destroyer speed by three knots—an impressive effect. But their cost wasn't small either, requiring 50 units of each resource, equal to 50,000 at market value.
[End of Chapter]
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