Let's Try Baking
It can foster creativity… and cultivate independence…
After achieving that miracle comeback victory, we ended up playing a few more rounds of other board games as well.
After sharing those few games together, Margrave Ivan left with a promise that we would do it again next time.
The room grew quiet.
Somehow, I felt a little empty.
Just moments ago it had been so much fun.
…Yes. It had been fun.
I had genuinely, wholeheartedly enjoyed that time spent playing board games with Ivan.
It was the first time.
The first time I had ever felt this way.
At the Duchy I had never experienced anything like it. I had never even imagined playing with someone else. Father, Stepmother, my older brothers, my younger sister—none of them had ever played with me.
I closed my eyes and replayed the moment of that miracle comeback victory. Just turning it over in my mind made my heart pound thump-thump. If only I could show someone that moment and watch their reaction. Of course it was impossible, so all I could do was wish for it.
How long did I savor the joy of that reverse victory?
Suddenly my gaze drifted toward the bookshelf.
“…Right. I should be reading.”
The instant I saw the books lined up on the shelf, I remembered the promise with Margrave Ivan to talk about the novel again next time. Since it had come to mind, I picked up a book and opened it, intending to read even a little.
And how much time passed after that?
“…Not today.”
I closed the book. The letters simply would not register in my eyes.
“…I want to do it again.”
The thrill I had felt when I pulled off that miracle comeback—the afterglow of that thrill—still lingered. Strong enough to shatter the concentration I needed for reading.
…Should I ask to play again tomorrow?
A few months ago I would never have thought such a thing. To be precise… I would never even have dared to let the idea surface. The people around me would never have granted a request like that.
Which meant that, deep in my heart now, there lived a quiet certainty: if it was Margrave Ivan, he would say yes if I asked to play again tomorrow.
It seemed I had come to believe in the kindness that the man named Ivan Cloers showed me.
That night I dreamed.
It was a dream similar to the one I had had before. Margrave Ivan appeared in it, and so did I. In the dream, Margrave Ivan neglected me. He did not cast me out, yet he paid me no particular attention either. The Margrave Ivan of the dream seemed utterly uninterested in me. And the me of the dream kept anxiously watching his every mood.
It felt strange.
People say dreams are the opposite of reality, and it seemed to be true. The Margrave Ivan in the dream was so different from the real one that it would not have been an exaggeration to say they shared nothing but face and voice.
…As expected, I preferred the real Margrave Ivan far more than the one in the dream.
I woke.
I looked in the mirror. The face looking back at me seemed a little brighter than the face I had worn in the dream. Brighter, too, than the face I had worn in the old days.
If I told the me of a few days ago about my life now, would she believe it? No matter how I turned it over, I did not think she would. That was how completely my days had changed. Even I felt as though I were living inside a dream; the chance that past me would believe it was zero.
And if it was not merely like a dream but truly a dream… I hoped it would never end. The feelings I would have if I woke from it and opened my eyes in that room at the Duchy were too terrible even to imagine. Nothing is as cruel as giving something only to snatch it away again.
Smooth.
Extremely smooth.
After giving her one solid dopamine shower through board games, I could feel the distance between Aria and me shrinking dramatically.
Today the words “Let’s play board games together” came out of Aria’s mouth first, you know?
That was extremely encouraging. If she still found me burdensome, would those words ever leave her lips? Absolutely not.
It seems she no longer watches my mood or feels pressured around me… but maybe she is only setting down that caution when it comes to board games. So I cannot rest satisfied with the current situation; I still need to draw closer.
There was just one thing that bothered me.
“…Soon Aria needs some moments to shine.”
I have no choice since I still do not know what her talent even is… but even so, is the “whoa, amazing!” ratio not way too low?
The Headpat Story I want is not just any Headpat Story—it is an Overpowered Headpat Story.
Therefore the environment I build for her cannot be a plain Headpat Story environment either; it has to be an Overpowered Headpat Story environment.
Right now Aria is hiding her talent, so should I not wait until she reveals it before I start constructing the Overpowered Headpat Story setup?
That is knowing only one thing and missing the second.
In the Overpowered Headpat Stories I have read, do the surrounding characters only ever praise the protagonist’s single talent?
At least not in the ones I have seen. Maybe it is because praising only one thing makes the story monotonous… but the important point right now is that they do not praise only the talent, so let us move on.
The key is that the “people around her” do not praise “only one thing.”
So even if I alone keep telling Aria she understands the novel really well, that single line of praise is nowhere near enough.
If I had known it would turn out like this, maybe I should have laid on some Forced Praise when she pulled off that miracle comeback yesterday…
“…Even aside from that, for Aria’s self-esteem recovery I need to pile on a lot of Forced Praise.”
Okay. Decision made.
Today I am going to properly engineer a Forced Praise angle for Aria!
What is the single most important rule when delivering Forced Praise?
The core is that the person receiving it must not notice it is Forced Praise at all.
It is not so different from the deliberate-loss strategy I mentioned yesterday. If the Forced Praise is found out? The sincerity of every compliment evaporates. After that, even genuine praise will just be filed away in Aria’s mind as more Forced Praise and ignored.
So if I am going to do it, I have to set the stage so carefully that there is no room left for doubt.
“To create a Forced Praise angle, Aria has to actually do something first…”
Honestly, right now Aria is not doing much of anything. Extremely passive… or maybe reactive is the better word.
Thinking about it that way, the fact that she was the one who first asked to play board games really does feel like a miracle.
“Anyway, that means I ultimately have to be the one who gives her a task.”
And if I am going to assign her something, it would be best to choose something she is likely to be good at.
Even though I plan to instruct the servants to deliver Forced Praise… if Aria herself can clearly see that she did poorly and the people around her still gush over her, will that look like praise? It will look like sarcasm.
So… something Aria seems good at…
…I hated myself for the fact that household chores were the first thing that popped into my head.
I hated it even more because she would actually do them well if I asked. But when we first met she had said she could scrub a floor clean, and that line was still burned into my brain, so I could not help thinking of it.
Honestly, it had been shocking…!
Household chores… household chores…
Then does she know how to cook a little too?
They probably never made her cook at the Duchy… yet because of that household-chores image, I somehow feel she can handle cooking to some degree.
Then…
“Baking? Baking doesn’t seem bad.”
Honestly, in the current noble society of the Kaisis Empire, baking is hard to call a major hobby among young ladies. Still, when people list examples of noble young-lady pastimes, it gets mentioned often enough.
Why? Because long ago—before Ivan Cloers was even born—it enjoyed a brief but massive boom. Uniquely, a young lady from a count’s house whose hobby was baking presented the cookies she had made to the crown prince; with those cookies she captured his heart and eventually married him—an event that properly shook the entire social season.
Thanks to that short-lived baking craze, the pastime earned a permanent place among the example hobbies of Kaisis Empire noble young ladies.
Perfect. Let’s have Aria bake.
If I set her to baking, she will learn from the maids who already know how. Then those maids can naturally deliver Forced Praise. And baking produces actual results—cookies, bread. If Aria shares those results with the people around her, the recipients can pile on even more Forced Praise.
Certainly… baking has excellent Forced Praise cost-effectiveness. One baking session unlocks multiple variations of hype.
The more I thought about it, the better it looked. At this point baking could simply be locked in.
Then… the remaining problem was how to get Aria to bake in the first place. Just ordering her to do it felt wrong…
Some plausible justification would be nice.
But a good justification refused to appear…
Is there even a plausible reason to make someone bake?
“If you bake, you can foster creativity… and cultivate independence…”
No matter how hard I thought, only the kind of promotional slogans that come out of baking-academy instructors kept spilling from my mouth.
“How about trying baking once?”
In the end, after fretting for three solid hours and still failing to invent a plausible justification, I simply went to Aria and, without any decent reason at all, asked if she wanted to give it a try.
“…Yes. I’ll try it once.”
And Aria coolly agreed.
…If I had known it would be this easy, I should have just said it without all the fretting.
My three hours!!!