Cream Puffs That Set Rivalry Ablaze (2)
The cream puffs were a little awkwardly sized.
Roughly a touch smaller than an adult's fist.
Which meant they were a bit much for Catherine to polish off in a single bite.
If she stretched her mouth to the point of tearing she might just manage to fit one, but while Mary—who was for all practical purposes her personal maid—could get away with that sort of thing, it would be a rather unseemly spectacle for anyone else to witness.
Still, she couldn't hesitate forever.
Catherine soon squeezed her eyes shut, opened her mouth wide, and chomped down on the cream puff in one go.
Just as expected, not even half of it made it inside.
She was about to bite through the rest as best she could—
when Mary, without the slightest hesitation, shoved the rest in with a fork.
"Mm! Mmm!?"
Forced in like that, the cream puff split open and the white whipped cream inside began to spill out. Karem spun his head away at once.
For Catherine's dignity alone, he could not bring himself to watch.
Seriously, the second I think she's getting used to things, she always comes charging in like this.
"Mmm!"
"I know it's rude, but I guarantee you this."
Catherine's brow naturally furrowed.
Only for a moment.
She understood what Mary meant at once.
The cold, slightly crumbly outer shell of the cream puff that had filled her mouth softened and turned moist the instant it met the warmth inside. As the surface drank in moisture and grew pliant, a rich yet unobtrusive butter aroma gradually spread through her entire mouth, up into her nose, and down the passage beyond.
And then—
Pop!
"Mm?! Mm?"
"You understand now, don't you?"
"Mmm."
The whipped cream exploded.
There was no other way to put it.
Whether the shell that had been cradling the cream had weakened, or whether she had simply moved her overstretched jaws without thinking, the cream burst free. A dense milk fragrance and sweetness seized her mouth, while the subtle butter notes that had come first lingered a heartbeat longer in her nose and throat before vanishing completely.
By that point the puff pastry that had held the whipped cream at its critical threshold had gone as limp as a deflated balloon—yet its texture had not followed suit.
No: it felt closer to something else entirely.
It carried the same softness as the crepes in a crepe suzette that had been steeped to their limit in syrup.
The difference was that this was less sweet.
Not in a negative sense—in a thoroughly positive one.
Crepe suzette, which assaulted every sense at once—sight, taste, smell, touch—was famous for an impressively tender texture. Looking back, though, the fact that it had been thoroughly soaked in syrup left it feeling more wet than anything else. If it had a single flaw, that was it.
The cream puff she had just eaten was different.
The puff pastry, having taken on both the whipped cream and the moisture of her mouth, had softened through and through, yet it never once felt soggy.
The gentle give against her teeth.
The moist silkiness on her tongue.
There was more than enough of it left for her to register every one of those sensations.
Of course, before she could even chew, the mere motion of her tongue had shredded it to pieces.
Yet it did not simply tear and vanish.
The puff pastry, now soft in a way it had not been at the start, was wrapped in the whipped cream inside her mouth. Between every single scattered particle the dense cream had soaked in, preserving that tenderness right up to the final moment of disappearance.
And then it truly was gone.
Catherine had tasted and felt every last bit of it.
Already?
Enough time had passed for a proper mouthful, yet to her it had felt like the briefest of instants.
A clean, lingering aftertaste—like the bittersweet regret that stayed with you after finishing one of those pure-love romance novels that had long since fallen out of fashion—circled in her mouth.
"This is the real deal."
The rudeness Mary had committed was already forgotten; only a deep afterglow remained on Catherine's face.
"What, you've been hiding this level of skill the whole time? You have some kind of complaint?"
"My only complaint is when someone else does the work I ought to be doing."
"Hmm. Yet you eat the snacks the kid makes just fine yourself."
Ah!
Mary's eyes went wide, as if that particular thought had never occurred to her.
Even so, she neatly sliced another cream puff in half while she spoke.
Mmmmm. Catherine accepted the cleanly cut cream puff like a baby bird, and a blissful smile spread across her lips.
"Still, letting something this good go to waste would be a shame."
"I suppose... I have no choice but to agree."
"Hm? You spent all that time on high alert, and now you're accepting it this fast?"
"Well, when you see something like this..."
Karem picked up the cream puff sitting on top of the pile.
Puff pastry—sometimes called "eating air"—only grew harder the larger you made it, the greater the volume you tried to achieve.
He carefully tore the cream puff open.
A soft crackle-pop, and the inside was packed solid with whipped cream, the pastry itself a lattice of countless tiny air pockets.
If he had to compare it: a honeycomb (puff pastry) wrapped around honey (whipped cream).
Karem popped one half into his mouth in a single bite.
As if something like this could ever taste bad.
"Soft, moist... yeah, baking really is something else."
"Well, this one's freakishly good. Without your creativity, something like this never would have existed. Any room for improvement?"
"What if we filled them with custard instead of whipped cream?"
That's the original version, after all.
Karem swallowed the rest of the thought.
See? Catherine, having gulped down her cream puff, looked at Mary.
Mary turned her head and clicked her tongue without a sound.
She hated to admit it.
But she could not deny it.
"If you can keep turning out things like this, I don't think it would be so bad to leave my snacks entirely to him. Kid."
"Nom. Huh?"
"What's the party in question think? Honestly, half the snacks until now have had Mary's help, haven't they?"
She said "half," but if that help included making the dough, it was essentially all of them.
Gulp. Karem swallowed the remaining half, picked up another cream puff, and—
"I concede defeat. Nom."
—said those two words with perfect calm and ate the cream puff in one bite.
"Right, it's a shame but you admit—wait, what? You did?"
A far blander reaction than she had imagined.
Catherine, who had made the suggestion in the first place, was the one left flustered.
Yet someone else was even more shaken.
Mary, whose blank face still managed to scream pure shock, froze as if struck by lightning magic, then teleported the short distance, seized Karem's shoulders with both hands, and shook him.
"How can you accept it so easily!!"
"After seeing something like that, I can't exactly cling on looking pathetic, can I?"
"Giving up this easily—do you take kitchen work lightly!?"
"Wait, you're the one who's angry?!"
"To surrender so readily! I cannot accept this!"
"I never claimed to be confident at baking in the first place, you know?"
And yet dishes like that came out of the head of someone who claimed to have no confidence?
Catherine frowned as if she had just heard the most absurd nonsense imaginable.
Both of these creatures were spouting the most preposterous things, but she would not tolerate any further rudeness. This was her snack time.
Catherine rapped the table and drew both their gazes.
"Do you intend to waste my precious time? Stop the empty nonsense that has no nutritional value whatsoever and find a compromise."
"A compromise, you say."
"Kid, you handed it over because you weren't confident in baking, correct?"
"Well... yeah?"
Karem nodded.
It was genuine, but the cooking skill that had once been nothing more than a hobby had been tempered through Jigmeser, refined by his previous life's recipes and this life's varied environments and ingredients, and was still growing.
Baking, though—where fermentation and the final product depended entirely on the heavens—wait, the heavens? Could praying at the temple raise the success rate for this too?
He had managed meju that way, so it might be possible.
Still, dropping by every single time would be a bit rude.
What about visiting now and then with offerings and asking for a favor only occasionally...?
While Karem drifted into thought, Catherine's attention shifted to Mary.
"And you, of course, are sulking because the kid handed over the work he had been doing far too easily."
"This house brownie Mary has lived decades. I cannot endure such an insult!"
"Th-that far? No, ahem, never mind."
Catherine cleared her throat and composed herself.
"Why not simply compromise so that you and the kid prepare the snacks together?"
"Pardon?"
"Mary, your baking is easily among the top three even among your own kind, and kid—your creativity is so astonishing that not a single cook in the castle can approach it."
Catherine cast a sidelong glance at the mountain of cream puffs on the table.
"You may have taken a solid hit this time. But the point is simply to realize the kid's ideas with your skill, Mary, isn't it?"
"Oh."
There was such a method. Mary smacked a fist into her palm.
The gesture said she had never even considered it.
"That way you get to cook at least some of the food I eat—exactly what you've been wanting—and the kid, while stepping back a little, is still doing work that falls under the personal chef's domain."
I will hear no objections. Bang bang!
As if that sound had actually rung out, Catherine wore a thoroughly satisfied expression and ate the half of a cream puff Mary offered her.
But... what exactly had changed from the way things already were?
Karem felt a distinct "something's off" sensation.
No, really. Even before this, whenever kitchen work came up he had cheerfully dumped all the bothersome, heavy-lifting jobs onto Mary.
Dishwashing and kitchen cleanup, of course, but also dough-making,
whipping meringues or cream,
and so on and so on.
There was one difference from before, at least.
The lead role had simply switched from Karem to Mary.
Karem watched with a gaze full of salt as Catherine ate the cream puff offered by a Mary who was radiating pure delight at having resolved the matter.
Catching that salty look, Catherine let out a short laugh and jerked her chin.
Even without words the meaning was obvious.
You knew, didn't you.
Karem sent her an even saltier look.
Only for a moment; then he let out a small sigh and simply ate the cream puff in his hand in one bite.
"This is the ending that satisfies everyone, I guess."
Karem's mutter stayed trapped inside a mouth still full of cream puff.
Ah well, what did it matter?
At least the one who had been reacting the most annoyingly—Mary—looked like she understood, so for the time being Karem could relax and enjoy his daily life.
Of course, that wouldn't last long either.
Karem could guarantee it.
Before long she would start coveting the territory of Catherine's three meals a day and late-night snacks as well.
That much, at least, he would never yield.
Having taken one solid hit, Karem's resolve burned bright.
"By the way, these cream puffs are really delicious."
"Hm? Cream puffs?"
"Huh? Oops."
"Cream puffs, is it..."
Startled that the thought had slipped out of his mouth, Karem floundered.
Catherine, who this time bit into the cream puff Mary offered just as she had at the start, looked down at the plate that now held only a single layer of them left.
Mary popped a cream puff into her own mouth and murmured,
"Choux, choux... that's the Berseingeto word for cabbage, isn't it?"
"Hmm. Hearing that, they do rather look like little cabbages. In their fashion it would be choux à la crème."
"The pronunciation is fine, but the meaning is a bit much. Cabbage? Cream puffs sound cuter."
"Well, the inventor says so. Still, it was quite good this time as well. Your naming sense improves by the day, doesn't it?"
When Catherine praised him as not bad, Karem blinked at the sudden compliment.
Just like earlier—the moment you let your guard down she came in with a sudden hook like that.
Feeling oddly awkward, Karem scratched his head and changed the subject.
"A-anyway. Once you finish these, are you going to keep going?"
"Of course. There are still this many magical tools left to sort through."
"Ugh."
"I'm doing all of this for your benefit, so endure it."
She wasn't wrong, but that didn't stop the exhaustion.
Still, Karem had no option to refuse.
The last of the cream puffs vanished completely, and Karem's briefly interrupted magical-tool fashion show was about to resume—
until someone knocked on the door of Catherine's office.
Knock knock knock—knock knock knock—
Mary, who had been about to step out with the empty plate, opened the door at once.
The door swung open—
"Pardon the intrusion."
"Young Master Robin? What brings you here?"
"The egg tarts were great, Karem. You weren't in the kitchen, so I wondered—turns out you were with Atanitas."
"Me?"
Robin nodded as if to say yes, he had been looking for him.
Then he lifted the round frozen orb hanging around his neck.
It was Skadi's holy relic that Karem had lent him.
"I can control it even without this now, so—"
"Come inside first, young master."
"Then if you'll excuse me, Atanitas."
Once Catherine had ushered the guest in, the sight of the relic around Robin's neck suddenly brought the earlier incident flooding back.
Robin's talent-awakening rampage, as it had been called.
Every nearby servant, maid, and soldier had frozen solid because of it.
Karem, who had taken no protective measures at all, had remained inexplicably unharmed.
And that had all been thanks to the holy relic.
Could it be...?
Catherine looked at Karem.
Karem was thinking the exact same thing.
Master and servant shared a single thought.
"Lady Atanitas. Self-defense seems more than covered with that."
"No... we'll have to run the experiments first to know for sure... but it did stop a magical rampage head-on, so... hmm... well... yes."
Catherine could not quite deny it; she nodded with clear reluctance.
Finally free of this nonsense!
Of course, Karem cheered only on the inside.