He Opened A Matchmaking Agency In 18Th Century London [EN]: Chapter 85

85. Jooba’s Hidden Talent

Lord Jacob Evans was extremely agitated.

He seemed to have overheard Tae-oh’s words as he entered the dining room.

Jacob glared fiercely at Tae-oh and shouted,

“Who are you! What gives you the right to talk about Leonard and the daughter of that wretched family? Why are you in my house spouting nonsense about marriage with that filthy bunch!”

With his appearance, the atmosphere in the house instantly turned gloomy.

The emotions of the family sitting at the table, as well as the maids around them, shifted to dark and somber hues.

The strong hatred and anger he possessed filled the room like smoke, constricting Tae-oh’s chest.

It was an overwhelmingly dark and negative feeling.

The stifling atmosphere was palpable in the expressions and gestures of the people around Jacob Evans.

‘That’s him. The main culprit behind all the misfortune in this family.’

If a person with a difficult personality joins a team with good harmony, the team’s cohesion falters very quickly. Moreover, if that person is in a leadership position, the impact is even greater.

Looking at the Lord, the corners of his mouth were asymmetrically raised, and his upper lip was pulled up, revealing disgust and anger.

In this state, persuasion would be ineffective, but Tae-oh decided to at least offer a greeting.

“Greetings, I am Theo Sanderson…”

He cut off the words with a violent wave of his cane.

“Oh, enough! Stop talking nonsense and get out of my house as soon as you’re done eating!”

Jacob was displeased and felt that Tae-oh was overstepping his bounds by mentioning the improvement of relations with the Butler family in his absence.

“Jacob! This is Lord Sanderson. You’ve probably heard the rumors; he’s close to His Majesty the King…”

Bang-bang-

“Mother!”

Jacob nervously struck the floor repeatedly with his cane. Then, glaring at Lady Evans with fierce eyes, he raised his voice.

“I don’t need anything to do with His Majesty the King! And this is my house! Don’t ever bring someone like that into this house again! Do you understand?”

“······.”

This time, he glared at his siblings one by one and said,

“You all listen carefully too! If anyone brings an outsider into this house without my permission, I won’t let it go. And! If you associate with anyone related to the Butler family, anyone will suffer the consequences! Do you understand?”

Lord Jacob Evans, who had roared and threatened, glared fiercely at Tae-oh one last time and left the dining room.

His words were not mere threats.

His voice was filled with a frighteningly evil emotion.

It felt like he would punish anyone who associated with the Butler family severely.

“I’m sorry… Lord Sanderson…”

Leonard approached Tae-oh and apologized.

“It’s alright. There’s no need for you to be sorry, Lord Leonard. Well, I think it’s best if I leave now.”

Lady Evans, who had also risen, said to Tae-oh with an embarrassed face.

“My eldest son’s personality isn’t usually like this… I think he’s accumulated a lot of resentment since the accident. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll try my best to talk to Jacob later. My late father cherished Miss Elisa very much, so if I ask, he might allow Leonard to visit.”

“Yes. I would really appreciate that. If things continue like this, Miss Elisa’s condition will deteriorate too much. That’s what I’m really worried about.”

“Yes. I understand.”

Tae-oh greeted Lady Evans and the other family members and headed to the carriage.

‘Sigh… It’s going to be tough because of Lord Jacob, who is so hostile. No matter how I think about it, there doesn’t seem to be a good solution. This is a problem.’

Lord Jacob Evans’s emotions went beyond hostility, leaving only strong hatred and resentment.

And that emotion was firmly rooted deep in his heart, so firm that it would not be shaken by anything.

The only thing to rely on was Lady Evans persuading Jacob. But judging from the emotions he showed today, reconciliation did not seem easy at all.

‘For now, I have no choice but to focus on preventing Elisa from deteriorating rapidly.’

The best Tae-oh could do now was to help Elisa maintain her current condition. And it seemed like he would have to find other ways over time.

◈ A few days later, Theo’s Coffee Plantation.

After the unpleasant first meeting with Lord Jacob Evans, Tae-oh had been visiting the coffee plantation early every morning for several days.

And in the evening, he came down from the plantation and worked hard on Elisa’s psychological treatment.

Today, he decided to tour the slave quarters of the coffee plantation.

The coffee plantation was changing day by day, and the changes in the slave quarters were particularly amazing, so much so that touring them made him feel good.

“Wow, when did you make this? It’s really amazing!”

Tae-oh was looking into the slave quarters with the manager, Noah, when he admired a certain room.

It was the room of a female slave, Becky.

Until recently, it had only contained a small table and a bed made of two or three planks on a rickety support.

But today, it had a sturdy-looking table and bed, as well as a kitchen cabinet, shelves, and cute wooden chairs, all quite nicely arranged.

In addition, the cabinet contained the forks, spoons, and dishes that Tae-oh had bought last time, neatly displayed, and the bedding was washed clean and neatly arranged on the bed.

“I know whose handiwork this is without even asking, haha.”

At Tae-oh’s words, Noah smiled and nodded.

“Yes, that’s right. It’s Samson’s handiwork. He really has an extraordinary talent for carving and making things out of wood. He roughly imagines the size and shape in his head and then quickly carves the wood to fit perfectly, which is truly admirable.”

If a slave had made something like this on another plantation, they would have been whipped on the spot, and the things they made would have been destroyed.

However, Tae-oh’s coffee plantation guaranteed freedom outside of regular hours, and Samson generously used his skills for the benefit of all the slaves in the residence every time.

“Yesterday, Samson made and put in the table and cabinet late in the evening. Becky was so happy that she even shed tears. Haha.”

“······.”

Tae-oh felt sorry for the life of being forcibly dragged to faraway Jamaica against one’s will, losing freedom, and suffering from hard labor, only to be happy with just a wooden cabinet and a table.

Still, he was relieved that her happy emotions seemed to be reflected in the items placed in every corner of Becky’s room and the flowers in the vases.

He wanted to free the slaves who had been unfairly dragged here and let them live freely, but Tae-oh did not have the power to change everything.

But at least he wanted to make the kind slaves on this coffee plantation live happily within this place.

*

“Wow – how did you do it? That’s amazing, Jooba!”

Jenny’s surprised voice leaked to the entrance as I entered the restaurant.

Tae-oh looked at Noah with a puzzled face, and he pointed to the restaurant.

“They’re preparing lunch in the restaurant, but it seems like something’s going on. Let’s go take a look.”

“Okay.”

In the restaurant’s kitchen, Jenny was hugging Jooba tightly with Becky.

“Did you find a gold mine in the kitchen or something? What are you so happy about that you’re hugging each other?”

Jenny, who turned around at Noah’s words, smiled brightly and greeted him.

“Oh, you’re here? Master! Hoho, Manager, we were making pumpkin pie for lunch dessert.”

Before, they were wary and cautious, but now they treated Tae-oh without hesitation.

“But actually, Becky and I had never made pumpkin pie properly at the old plantation. We had only seen it a few times from the side. So when we actually made it, it didn’t taste right.

We were worried about it for a while, but then Jooba smelled this allspice [a spice with a flavor resembling a blend of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg] and brought it over and told us to try putting it in?

Jooba had never seen pumpkin pie before and of course had never made it, so I honestly didn’t trust him. But just in case, I put it in and baked it again, and it was really delicious!

So I was surprised and asked him how he did it, and he said he imagined that the smell of pumpkin pie and the smell of spices would go very well together, hoho.”

“Oh, it seems like Jooba has a very special talent for food, haha.”

“······.”

Allspice is a spice commonly used in the West Indies and is good for making sweet or fragrant dishes.

However, it was not a spice used in African cuisine, so it was unfamiliar to the slaves.

Moreover, it was hard to believe that Jooba, who had never made or eaten pumpkin pie, had imagined the taste when the two smells were combined just by smelling the pumpkin pie and the spice.

Experts say that absolute olfaction or absolute taste, which can be seen occasionally in movies or cartoons, does not actually exist.

However, it is only that the ability to distinguish better than ordinary people through long-term training and to imagine what kind of smell or taste it will change into when the smell or taste is mixed increases empirically [through experience].

‘Well… maybe Jooba…’

Tae-oh thought that just as he was born with the ability to read other people’s emotions without learning, there might be people who are naturally very talented in smell or taste.

Taste is not simply completed by taste.

Sweet, salty, bitter, and sour are just the framework of the ‘taste’ structure, and ‘taste’ as we say does not come out with that alone.

Here, the scent must come out and be transmitted through the ‘smell’ in order to produce the ‘taste’ that humans can feel.

When I first saw Jooba on the slave ship, I could read very delicate emotions even in the midst of the confused emotions, and perhaps that was because of the delicacy that comes from his innate sense of taste and smell.

‘Today may be a coincidence, but I need to observe him carefully in the future to see if Jooba has a natural ability. If Jooba really has such talent, there is no better talent in the coffee business than this.’

Tae-oh carefully watched Jooba, who was smiling brightly with the female slaves.

◈ Fifteen days later, Lord Joseph Butler’s mansion.

Late evening, Elisa’s room.

Fifteen days had passed quickly.

However, Leonard had not visited Elisa even once.

As expected, it seemed that Lady Evans’s persuasion had not worked on Jacob.

In the 18th-century modern aristocratic society, the authority of the person who inherited the title of a family was more powerful than one might think.

In the end, even his mother had a hard time breaking Jacob’s stubbornness, who had become the Lord of the Evans family.

Tae-oh visited Lord Butler’s house almost every evening to check on Elisa’s condition. But there was no sign of improvement.

He was just doing his best to delay the deterioration.

People often take the symptoms of so-called ‘lovesickness’ lightly.

This is because everyone has had feelings of liking someone and has experienced painful breakups, so they mistakenly believe that they understand those feelings.

However, there is clearly a difference in the degree of love.

The probability of meeting one’s ideal type as a lover, both internally and externally, and truly loving each other while living life is extremely low.

Most of us meet suitable people, love each other moderately passionately, and adjust moderately. The pain of a desperate love in youth is also just a fleeting memory that passes like a fever.

Sometimes, one wonders how happy it would be to meet one’s perfect ideal type as a lover and share love with each other, but in reality, the risk factors inevitably increase as much as that when meeting such a person.

When you meet a completely ideal type, dopamine explodes in the body, making you fall in love even more deeply, and oxytocin is actively secreted, making it impossible to escape from that love.

From the outside, it looks frustrating as if they are trapped in a prison, but the heart of the person with their loved one is infinitely happy, free, and joyful.

In fact, people who have met and broken up with such a partner complain of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder or severe depression.

Their heart feels like it’s going to explode, they feel suffocated, and they can’t sleep properly.

The situation of wanting to see that person all day long but not being able to see them leads to endless despair.

For someone suffering from these symptoms, a world without that person feels like a jail without bars, and they lose all motivation to the point that death is the only way to escape this pain.

Tae-oh had occasionally met such patients in modern times and had them stop that love and look back at themselves.

And he helped them gradually prepare for a new love.

However, in Elisa’s case, treatment was not easy due to various barriers.

First of all, due to the influence of 18th-century values, women’s self-esteem was too low, making it difficult to apply modern psychological treatment, and in a situation where she had already developed conversion disorder [a mental condition in which a person experiences physical symptoms that have no underlying medical cause] due to strong stress, forcing her to forget him would only worsen the situation.

In addition, the fact that she knew that Leonard still loved her was strongly hindering treatment through abandonment.

“Miss Elisa, now take a deep breath again.”

Tae-oh was only doing his best to help Elisa maintain a comfortable inner state.

Knock knock-

Then someone knocked on the door.

Thump-

The eldest son, Jonathan, poked his head in.

“Lord Sanderson, would you come out to the living room for a moment?”

“Now? I’m in the middle of treatment?”

“It’ll only be a moment.”

Something urgent and uneasy hidden behind the smile.

Jonathan was suppressing his emotions as much as possible, watching Elisa’s reaction.

“Yes. I’ll be out soon.”

Tae-oh checked her breathing a little more, entrusted Elisa to the maid next to her, and went out to the living room.