It Really Is the Baking Club - 2
After the thoroughly reasonable arguments from Numbers Two and Three, the Baking Club’s expo booth was settled on a baking concept. Synonyms include a restaurant selling steak or a rice-and-side-dishes joint serving bowls of rice. In other words, something so self-evident it wasn’t even worth debating.
I still couldn’t believe it. Settling on a booth concept and then hashing out the details was only natural, but a club that fractured over the concept itself from the very first step had to be us—the first in Academy club history. We had just carved a shameful new line into the record books.
“Come to think of it, I hear you can make chocolate in the shape of chess pieces.”
“That sounds entertaining. It would let us display the club’s many facets.”
Ryutis and Tanian’s exchange nearly made me lose my mind all over again. How on earth was that “many facets”? What did our club have to do with chess?
Chess or anything else was nothing more than the private hobby of a few members. The Baking Club existed solely to pursue baking. Do not drag personal recreation into an official event.
Well, “a few” was generous—it was most of them—but they were still personal digressions.
“Chess-piece shapes?”
Unfortunately, as long as something stayed inside the baking framework, it was more than enough to catch Luise’s interest. This was the same Luise who wanted novel sweets and once kneaded medicinal herbs into dough. Everyday objects instead of ordinary shapes were the perfect lure for a veteran president’s competitive streak.
“Good idea. Food is meant to be eaten once with the eyes and once with the mouth.”
And just like that, a defector appeared among my workforce. Whether Later truly thought the idea had merit or figured that locking the concept to baking had already discharged his debt of loyalty to me, he joined Ryutis without hesitation.
A decisive betrayal at the most decisive moment. Royalty really did have an artist’s touch for politics.
…It’ll work out somehow.
The president’s interest plus the support of roughly half the members. Thanks to that, talk branched out from chess-piece chocolates into card-shaped cookies and foot-volleyball-ball candies, but I deliberately kept quiet. Shape didn’t matter so long as we were baking.
Yes—Later was right. Food that looked good usually tasted good too. Whether chess pieces or playing cards actually stirred anyone’s appetite was secondary; they would at least draw curiosity.
Should we add a gambling element while we’re at it?
The thought surfaced unbidden. Challenge Ryutis to chess: win and the treat is free, lose and you pay double. It sounded entertaining.
If we were going to go off the rails, better to do it with flair than half-heartedly. People tend to get swept up by that kind of shameless confidence.
Once we formally submitted the booth theme to the Student Council, the club’s atmosphere transformed overnight. What had been a one-woman carry job by the president evolved into a club where every member actually participated.
“If we use pastry, wouldn’t we get roughly the thickness of a card?”
“Three or four layers should come close enough.”
The only pity was that the fuel for this evolution was twisted passion. No matter how I looked at it, they seemed to be manufacturing merchandise rather than baking. Or maybe the merchandise just happened to be made of flour and that was why they were acting this way.
“Luise, is this much whipping enough?”
“Yes! That’s perfect!”
The silver lining was that the Demon Duke, who had shown interest in baking, was actually learning properly. Her skill level was rock-bottom, but her will to improve ranked at the very top.
“Then I’ll make one more—wait just a moment.”
While the existing members wasted breath debating perfect card thickness and the ideal spherical geometry of a foot-volleyball ball, the Demon Duke’s diligence only stood out more. She wasn’t even an official member. Was this normal? Where else does a guest work harder than the actual members?
“Ah, Master, that side is dirt—”
Luise, who had been watching her guest-cum-teacher with gentle eyes, started to stop the Demon Duke as she walked toward a spilled patch of flour. The sentence died unfinished. The moment the Demon Duke’s hair swept across the floor, not a single speck of flour—or even dust—remained.
Robot vacuum cleaner.
I clamped down hard on the laugh that threatened to explode. I already knew her hair had vacuum-cleaner properties. I had never seen it used so blatantly before.
As an ordinary person I could get away with stifling a laugh; any mage who witnessed it would probably have wailed in despair. Maintaining magic throughout the body twenty-four hours a day was supposed to be impossible—yet the technique had been used to create a cleaning tool. Lamenting such a grotesque waste of power would have been perfectly reasonable.
“…It’s clean now.”
After a brief silence Luise muttered in a gloomy voice. Being a mage herself, she understood exactly how absurd the Demon Duke’s little performance had been. Watching it live must have delivered a serious mental shock.
Still, I decided to feel happy about it. Unlike every other mage, Luise was the Demon Duke’s sole disciple. Someday she would reach that same stage.
“—Achoo—”
While Luise watched the Demon Duke’s retreating back with faintly bitter eyes, a sneeze so faint it was almost imaginary drifted across the room. You would miss it entirely unless you were listening for it.
“Sera?”
Yet Erich reacted instantly. The same guy who seconds earlier had been enthusiastically proposing “Let’s put chocolate on pastry to make the card suit patterns!” somehow heard that.
“Uh… uhh?”
Sera herself looked startled by the ghostly response, blinking rapidly with both hands clamped over her mouth.
She was probably mortified. In front of the person you have a crush on you want to look only pretty, yet she had been caught sneezing in a corner. Of course, in a Baking Club room where flour constantly hung in the air, it was inevitable.
“Was that a cough? You’re not feeling sick, are you?”
If your crush charged over with blazing eyes over an ordinary sneeze, anyone would try to hide it. I certainly would.
“I-I’m fine. It was just a sneeze.”
“You said you were fine last time too, and then you collapsed that night.”
Sera flustered, cheeks faintly pink, but Erich pressed on with a rigidly set face. I had wondered why he was overreacting—turns out there was precedent. Saying you were fine and then collapsing justified a little worry.
“Bringing up something from ages ago…”
Even while embarrassed, Sera looked quietly pleased, as though moved that he still remembered.
Leaving her like that, Erich carefully studied her complexion.
“It’s not cold—”
Of course it wasn’t cold. Spring breezes had already started, and with so many high-ranking members the room’s climate control was flawless.
“Pollen allergy?”
It was the flour. Probably not an allergy.
Muttering with such deadly seriousness that it became awkward just to listen, Erich finally seized Sera’s hand.
“Hyung. I’m taking her to the infirmary for a bit.”
“…Sure.”
I had plenty I wanted to say, but I simply let them go. Anyone could see it was overblown fussing, yet the current Erich would never hear it.
The moment Erich left with Sera, Ryutis’s eyes grew distant and misty.
He’s allowed to feel sad.
This once I understood him completely. After every last one of them had been rejected by Luise, the five remaining members had been living the single life together. Now their fellow bachelor Erich was showing signs of graduating from singlehood into coupledom.
They weren’t officially dating, of course, but every person in the club room knew Sera harbored affection for Erich. They held hands at the drop of a hat and she rarely left his side—anyone who failed to notice would have to be an idiot. I figured it out the moment I returned to the territory over break; the rest of the club figured it out the day school reopened.
The tragic part was that “everyone” did not include Erich himself. True to form as a romance-fantasy character, the instant he got tangled in a love line he rolled his awareness and intelligence straight back to the stone age. He had only just started acting like a normal human being…
Anyway, it wasn’t strange that Ryutis would feel betrayed watching Erich alone show signs of couple advancement—
“Now who’s going to set for me?”
…
Fuck.
Betrayal my ass. He was just worried about losing a foot-volleyball teammate.
A club losing its identity, a younger brother whose common sense and intelligence had regressed to the primordial era, and a member who cast “who-cares-if-my-friend-dates”—no, “who-will-set-for-me” regardless of anyone’s love life.
I was going to lose my mind. It was pure chaos, just in a completely different flavor from last year. Had Enen decided the same trial would be boring and handed us a new one instead? In that case Enen was no ordinary bastard.
—Kids that age are supposed to be unpredictable. Even the high and mighty can’t fake their age.
“You’re saying this is normal?”
—A guy who never had a school life wouldn’t understand. That’s only natural.
The Minister’s effortless dig made me want to fire back a string of curses, but I swallowed them. Surrendering to instinct here would have dragged us into a bottom-scraping dogfight.
Still, it rankled. What exactly had he contributed while I was still preschool age?
Life…
It was bleak. My subordinate off on distant assignment kept sending regular reports and working hard, while his direct superior only mocked him instead of offering comfort.
Of course, if the Minister ever actually tried to comfort me, that would be terrifying in its own right. Exactly how catastrophic would things have to get before even he started offering consolation?
—Well, once the assignment ends you’ll get matching leave. You take the pain because there’s reward on the other side.
“That’s true, but…”
That didn’t mean I wanted the facts delivered so nastily.
—By the way.
After cackling at my awkward reaction for a good while, the Minister cleared his throat and continued.
—You remember the Academy opens to outsiders during the expo period, right?
“Yes, of course I remember.”
I had exchanged greetings with any number of nobles last year. Hard to forget.
—This time quite a few will be coming from other countries.
?
—Especially Ernesto Academy. They’re frothing at the mouth—‘experiential learning at a foreign educational institution’ and so on. Completely unhinged.
“…Excuse me?”
What was this all of a sudden? Foreigners? Ernesto Academy?
Ah.
—The headmaster of Ernesto Academy even submitted an application. For the sake of his honor I immediately classified it as a confidential document, so keep it to yourself.
I remembered the Foreign Affairs Minister’s words from before the semester started. Among the moths drawn to the flame that was the Demon Duke, the headmaster of Ernesto Academy had been one of them.
He couldn’t enroll, so he was coming by another route?
Insane.
The sheer, hair-raising mania left me speechless. Was there a single normal person among mages…?