What You Eat After a Meal Is Dessert — So What Do You Eat After Dessert?
"...How was it?"
The moment I stepped away from Minty's booth, I asked Master — or rather, that protagonist guy — for his honest review. I was genuinely curious whether he simply had a cast-iron stomach that let him choke down something like that without flinching.
"It was disgusting. Cough, cough..."
"Th-then why did you do it? I could have handled it."
"Because you looked like you were about to cry."
"......."
Maybe it was the sheer wrongness of what he'd just eaten, but my heart kept pounding. Well — after watching someone swallow a culinary crime that severe, a racing pulse from pure outrage was only natural.
...It is absolutely not racing because of him.
"Anything else I can help with?"
"...The rest is all stuff I can eat myself, so I'm fine."
The only one I wasn't fully sure about was Tobacco. From what I remembered, she didn't even have a booth — her affection route was pure relationship grinding, which put her a long way from the whole "eat the nightmare food" concept.
"Cinnamon, how's the booth going?"
"Pretty okay, actually. Want a churro?"
"Yes, two please. One to go."
After putting something that horrific in our mouths, we needed a palate cleanser. I ordered one for myself and one for the protagonist, then watched Cinnamon prepare them.
"Here you go."
"Thank you. Two sauces?"
"Yep. One's chocolate, the other's cheese."
Warm, thick dipping sauces and churros to dunk in them. The mingled scent of sugar and cinnamon was genuinely delicious — after the horrors I'd just witnessed, looking at these felt like pure healing.
"Whoa..."
Even cooled, the churro still had a solid crunch, delivering a sweet, savory, oily richness. Just eating it plain was already high-quality enough. I tried the sauces just in case, and those were excellent too.
"This is incredibly good."
The warm chocolate sauce was aggressively sweet, but the depth of the chocolate itself was remarkable. The cheese sauce, by contrast, was salty and richly savory, pairing with the churro's sweetness into a perfect sweet-and-salty balance. Aside from the churros having gone a little cold, there was almost nothing to criticize.
"Haah, so good... Ah, Cinnamon — can you dip this for me?"
"So there really is someone who does that. I figured nobody would."
...More precisely, people try — but almost no one finishes. Most of them get steamrolled by the sheer madness of the mint-choco-cheese cutlet. Even in the game, the number of players who actually obtained the brooch was vanishingly small.
"They put real effort into preparing this content. The least I can do is enjoy it."
"...Isn't the Royal Guard the one that actually put in the effort?"
Cinnamon gets it. Those two idiots earlier had just been thrilled that the event they'd hosted had a good atmosphere.
I almost pulled Cinnamon into a hug without thinking — but the protagonist, who'd somehow ended up right beside me, caught my arm before I could follow through.
...I nearly committed inappropriate skinship against adorable little Cinnamon.
"Ah, Master."
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing in particular... Ah — these are churros. Please have some. I bought one for you too."
"Mm. Thanks."
Two stamps left. Who to hit first? Starting with Cocktail, who actually had a booth, made the most sense.
"Hey, Cinnamon."
"My name is Cinnamon."
"I know. Give me one too. I'm hungry."
"Here."
...And then Tobacco herself wandered over — the one without a booth. Technically she was just visiting her guildmates, but still.
"Hello. You're Tobacco, right?"
"And? You know me?"
"You're a member of the Dessert Research Club."
"Yeah, I am. Not that I actually do anything."
The Dessert Research Club was genuinely full of weirdos. Surprisingly, Minty and Gourmand at least liked dessert — their direction was just completely off. Tobacco, standing right in front of me, didn't particularly like dessert at all.
"Ugh, way too sweet."
"Really? Doesn't dipping that much cheese make it salty instead?"
"It's covered in sugar. Can you give me one without?"
"Nope, can't do that."
"Tch..."
She especially disliked sweet things. Not that every dessert had to be sweet — I knew she liked the savory end of the spectrum — but even those she treated more like meal substitutes. She was a character with essentially no food she loved under the actual concept of "dessert."
The Dessert Research Club was such a perfect free-ride for freeloaders who barely contributed that she just stuck around. How a character like her even ended up in a dessert-obsessed guild was something the game had shown in a flashback-style scene once — and the reason was so absurd and yet so weirdly convincing that it left the entire player base collectively stunned.
...Her logic was that a post-meal smoke counts as dessert.
Dessert, after all, means something you eat after a meal. And if you light a cigarette after eating, that too can be considered a kind of dessert. Therefore, someone who enjoys a post-meal smoke is, by definition, enjoying dessert.
The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced this insane guild didn't have a single normal person in it.
Cocktail was pretty weird for similar reasons. Who on earth calls the drink you have after a meal "dessert"? Granted, Cocktail actually liked various desserts that paired well with alcohol, so she fit into the guild better than Tobacco did — but listening to that explanation still made my blood pressure rise a little.
"Tobacco, you don't seem to care much for sweets?"
"Not really. I don't refuse them entirely, but if something's too sweet it just feels gross. Cigarettes are way more subtly and elegantly sweet. I prefer that."
Standing next to her, I could definitely catch a hint of tobacco scent — though it was more like a tobacco-concept perfume, stripped of the usual foul cigarette smell.
"Haaah... Why is this a no-smoking zone, anyway?"
"Couldn't you just step outside and smoke?"
"They told me not to leave during the festival. Something about my position."
Right — I'd put that option in myself. Without it, Tobacco would already have been long gone from the venue. So if I wanted to reel her in, maybe I just needed to create a place where she could smoke?
But she doesn't actually seem anxious or stressed about the cigarettes.
Based purely on her setup, Tobacco looked like someone freeloading off the Dessert Research Club and living however she pleased. And yet here she was, deliberately coming over to eat churros that didn't even match her taste — grumbling about how sweet they were while still putting every last bite in her mouth.
Yeah. That feeling was definitely there.
She'd joined intending to use them — and somewhere along the way, she'd grown attached. Not because of her own preferences or the guild's goals, but because the guild members themselves had become precious to her.
In that case, I don't even need to grind affection. I can just push straight through.
"What's this?"
"Do you happen to have one of these stamps?"
"I think I got one."
"Ah — then what about a booth? You get these by buying dessert at a booth, but I didn't know where yours was, Tobacco."
"Hmm... So that's what you've been doing. I decided not to run a booth, so I don't have one. Hand it over — I'll stamp it for you."
I'd thrown that out on the assumption that if she liked the guildmates who'd created the event, she'd help make sure it ran smoothly. Strike.
"Thank you."
"...Thank those idiots. I didn't do anything."
Whew. Getting two stamps earlier had felt like pure hell — and here I'd just picked up two more while eating delicious churros and making small talk. Adorable, kind Cinnamon really was the best.
"Don't mind her. She's not a bad person."
"I know. Thank you too, Cinnamon."
"I'm the one who should thank you. Heading out now?"
"Yes. One last stamp to collect."
Might as well finish what I'd started. I'd planned to go alone, but the protagonist had been trailing after me this whole time.
...He's probably worried I'll overdo it.
"Master."
"Hm?"
"I'm really fine. I'm not a child."
"I just want to be next to you. Do you mind?"
"...When you put it like that, it's a little hard for me to say I do."
He'd just bailed me out earlier. Telling him I didn't want him around after that would just make me a complete jerk. Besides, the thought of having a drink for the first time in a while was getting me a little excited. I'd been so busy I hadn't even managed to crack open a single can of beer.
"Welcome. Just the two of you?"
"Yes."
"You can't choose the type — there's only the one variety I've prepared. Is that all right?"
"Ah, yes. Most of the booths here work that way anyway."
If I remembered right, it was a cocktail with black and white layers. The name escaped me. Honestly, I wasn't sharp enough to remember every single cocktail from an early-game event...
"Angel's Tip. A very simple drink — cacao liqueur with cream floated on top."
My memory had been correct: a dark liquor topped with a mound of pure white cream, garnished with a single small cherry. It looked surprisingly elegant. Cacao liqueur — so chocolate-flavored, then?
"Mm...?"
It was far sweeter than I'd expected. The deep chocolate flavor and the aggressive sugar hit my tongue so hard they forcibly erased the alcohol lurking underneath. That sweetness mixed with the cream on top until it felt almost like drinking rich chocolate milk.
"Do you like it?"
"Wow — this is genuinely exactly my taste..."
The proof seemed a bit high; there was a definite kick. But the drink was so good I could swallow it happily anyway. The sweetness was strong enough that I found myself craving something like crackers to go with it.
"...This is really excellent."
And right as that thought crossed my mind, Cocktail set out a few canapés made with crackers.
...The pairing was so perfect that Cocktail started looking like an actual angel. Since everything hit my preferences so precisely, I just kept inhaling the drinks and canapés as she served them.
"Ahh, this is seriously amazing..."
"Jasmine?"
"Ehehe, Master~ Our wonderful Maaaster..."
...This is weird. Why does this feel so good?
Being held by Master made the whole world feel like it was floating. Hehe — at this rate I might even kiss him.
"Mph!?"
"Mm...?"
Ah. I did it.