A Gift for One Alone
In truth, a great many of the quarrels that break out do so over the most trivial of reasons.
Which liquor tastes best, whether a dish needs a sauce and which kind, the proper way to grip a fork and knife, how one brushes one's teeth, the correct method of eating pizza—and so on.
Countless people across the nations of Earth were no different, and Europa was much the same. Wherever people lived, things tended to look remarkably alike.
What starter weapon to recommend to a novice adventurer, which side dish paired best with Eisenwalt beer, which dressing suited a salad most perfectly, which province produced a nation's finest cheese—the list went on.
Catherine still remembered, with perfect clarity, the full-scale war that had erupted between Berseingeto and Eisenwalt over the question of whether beer or wine tasted better.
Head first? Or tail first?
The moment she heard those words, Catherine knew by instinct.
If this spreads, there's going to be another free-for-all.
"Kid."
"Yes?"
"Did you aim for this, too?"
"Hm?"
Catherine eyed the pastry and Karem in turn, suspicion plain on her face.
What would happen if, on a land already arguing over the perfect doneness of a steak, you carelessly scattered recipes among people who had hungered for food their whole lives?
Whether chicken ought to be grilled or fried, whether dipping steak in ketchup made one a heretic, which dessert vanilla truly belonged with—these were only a few of the fresh flashpoints that had sprung up at mealtimes over the past year.
Even in Winterhome, shouting matches over similar topics broke out with alarming frequency. The only reason they never escalated into actual fistfights was the dignity of the place itself, and Alfred.
In other words: without those two factors, fists would have been flying long ago.
"Head or tail. Is there even a difference?"
"Uh, not really? I packed the filling carefully all the way from head to tail."
"So it shouldn't matter which end you start from."
"Well, there's a difference in the first bite of texture, and also which way's easier for me to feed you."
Waiting for her choice and getting none, Karem simply took hold of the salmon bread's tail and held the head out toward Catherine. She stared at the pastry thrust under her nose for a moment, then asked—
Crunch—
The outer shell shattered against her teeth with a crisp sound and a satisfying crackle.
Right after came the soft, moist bread, yielding under pressure so that the sweet, savory green-pea paste oozed out and clung to her teeth.
"It's similar to the one you introduced a while back."
"Dorayaki—no. The ingredients themselves are the same as the half-cake, yeah. This is salmon bread."
Still, there was a decisive difference.
Crunch— crunch— crunch— crunch—
Deliberately baked at high heat in the mold until both sides turned evenly crisp, the salmon bread's shell stayed shatteringly crunchy no matter how many times she chewed.
In his previous life it might have been different, but the only real distinction between the dorayaki and the salmon bread Karem made now was the tool itself.
And that tool made all the difference.
Where dorayaki—or half-cake—sought the soft harmony of bread and paste, salmon bread offered the constant interplay of a dry, brittle shell against a soft, moist interior.
"I've had it several times now, yet it still feels oddly unnatural how well they go together."
"The sugar and bean combination?"
"Exactly. Paste or not, in the end it's just mushy peas simmered down with sugar, isn't it? I simply cannot grasp why that would pair so well with a pastry."
"As long as it tastes good, right?"
For a moment Karem recalled Catherine's reaction when he first unveiled the pea paste. Unlike Mary, she had shown open discomfort—exactly the same look she gave beaver vanilla and the Red Witch's Fingers.
But was it really that objectionable? Unlike those earlier cases, this was a perfectly ordinary combination of food and spice.
"There it is again. That habit of yours."
"You eat vanilla and say it tastes good."
"What lunatic dries the whole thing, chops it into chunks, grinds it up, turns it into dessert, and then feeds it to other people?"
Persistent as ever… Karem kept the thought strictly internal. Saying it aloud would earn him a genuine kick in the shin. So instead he simply pushed the last remaining tail into Catherine's mouth.
"Ask for permission first. Report before you do anything!"
"So how long are you going to keep calling me 'kid'?"
"…Useless talk."
Catherine flinched hard and whipped her head away.
"You're still young and your dreams are oversized. Even if your body has finished growing, you haven't even held a coming-of-age ceremony yet. What nonsense."
"Ah—His Grace the Duke did mention something about a coming-of-age ceremony."
"Hah? A kid barely turning twelve? Don't tell me you actually told His Grace about your previous life."
"No. Even though my body has grown, if I still acted like my peers it might be different. But he seems to be wrestling with whether to treat me as an adult because I was never very childlike to begin with. I get the feeling he wants to set a precedent now that things have come to this."
"Hmm. A precedent. Fair enough."
Catherine crunched down on the head of the salmon bread Karem held out.
The thick, pudding-smooth custard cream—no graininess at all—spread its rich sweetness through her mouth.
"If you count people who retain memories of a past life, take the Curse of Aging, and come back, yours is practically the only case. Small wonder His Grace is deliberating."
"So I'm thinking of going through with the ceremony."
He had wrestled with it for some time, in his own way. How could he get this woman to call him by his name? The answer was simple: remove the reason she called him "kid."
And if she found another excuse?
He would just keep at it until the word "kid" finally dropped from her lips.
"…I'm asking just in case. Why?"
No—Catherine already knew the reason.
How could she not?
She had realized it once already, been pestered about it by everyone around her, and only a few hours ago had even gotten an earful from that damnable old man.
…Maybe I should have tried reading a novel or two.
Honestly, a faint unease had lingered. After that brazen confession, nothing had changed. Karem had gone on behaving exactly as usual. She had even wondered, once or twice, whether he had simply been joking in a moment of madness.
But asking her to call him by that name—that was a genuine shift.
Yet who would even recognize it as a romantic gesture?
Anyone besides Karem, who still didn't understand why she hadn't reacted, and Catherine, who had zero experience in such matters, would give them both the flattest look imaginable. Even Alicia, just passing by, would stare at them like their soup had gone cold and demand to know whether that counted as affection and why they were just sitting there waiting.
Karem only realized that fact now.
So he crushed down the embarrassment and awkwardness as hard as he could.
Harder than before.
He mustered the same courage he had found when he first confessed.
"You already know the reason."
"…"
"…"
"Say it plainly."
"…Yes, ma'am."
"Keh-heh. And you call that a line?"
Karem didn't answer Catherine's question. Instead he set the salmon bread he had been feeding her down on the plate for a moment and buried his face in both hands.
His head felt feverishly hot, as if he had caught a full-body cold.
Wasn't there a saying that people die when they suddenly start doing things they never do?
He felt ready to die of sheer mortification.
"…Kh, kkh."
"Yes. You're allowed to laugh."
"Ha… haah, hahaha! Hahahahahaha!"
Catherine clutched her forehead.
The laughter simply burst out of her.
Part of it was how ridiculous he looked—acting bold one second and then crumpling with shame—but the greater part was pure relief.
What, so he was just embarrassed?
She understood the reason in an instant. Both of them were equally inexperienced, and yet he had still walked right up and said it out loud. That could only mean one thing.
He had made a decision far larger than his usual self.
It was exactly the same as when he confessed before.
They had already laid everything out in the open, so why were they both acting so awkward about it now?
Every worry she had been chewing over suddenly became meaningless. The abrupt release left a hollow space somewhere in her chest.
But—equal to that emptiness—came a ticklish, hard-to-name sensation she couldn't quite pin down.
Some people would call it satisfaction.
Others would call it relief.
And someone else might call it—
"…"
"Hoo. I've calmed down."
"Riiight. Had enough time to compose yourself? Then I'll finish eating."
"Yes. But, Lady Atanitas."
"What."
"Why is your face—"
"I think the custard cream just now suits me better than the pea paste."
Catherine mumbled the words and hurried him along.
Anyone could see how blatant and awkward the deflection was.
But Karem completely failed to notice.
Normally he would have caught it at once, yet he had just poured out the second-greatest emotional effort of his life only seconds earlier. He simply had no room left for observation.
For the record, the first had been the confession itself.
"Right. The coming-of-age ceremony. Now that things have come this far, it might not be a bad idea to go through with it."
"I'll take the one with custard cream… wait. What did you just say?"
"I won't repeat myself."
"Uh."
"So, that secret gift you've been hiding so carefully?"
"Ah, it's nothing much."
At Catherine's urging, Karem picked up another salmon bread from the plate. Its color was a shade deeper than the two varieties she had just eaten.
"Do you remember what you said in the tower before you came to the village?"
"That was only a few hours ago. Do you even need to ask?"
Of course she remembered.
Alrune, used only in limited fields.
The roasted Alrune made by drying and toasting it.
The Alrune's Tear brewed from that, and its derivative drinks—those she could touch with her own hands.
Then what about food that used them? Could she touch that as well?
"Wait… you don't mean—?"
Catherine tried to swallow on reflex. All she tasted was a faint trace of custard cream; her mouth felt as dry and dusty as if she had just eaten a whole bowl of chicken breast. In that short span of tension, every drop of moisture had vanished.
Being nervous was only natural.
The Curse of Famine.
At first it had withered every living thing she touched, directly or indirectly.
Now its range and targets had shrunk to food and drink alone.
Yet because of that, Catherine had been stripped of the simple freedom every person took for granted—serving herself a plate of food with her own hands and eating it.
This was the moment an Archmage set her next goal.
Of course she had never told a soul.
Anyone outside her fellow mages who heard it would only ask how that could possibly count as a goal, whether something so trivial could truly be an Archmage's dearest wish.
That humble, everyday action everyone else performed without thinking—that was the goal of the Archmage Catherine Marigold Atanitas.
And now that wish was about to be granted, however limited, this suddenly?
Come to think of it, she had drunk Alrune's Tear and Brownie's Joy with her own hands.
She had formed a hypothesis from that, but like this? Actually?
"While making the custard cream, I mixed in roasted Alrune powder and raised the cream ratio. Alrune custard."
"That action-first habit of yours, I swear…"
"Just in case, I also added Alrune's Tear to the batter."
Catherine stared silently at the darker salmon bread Karem held out.
"…"
"…"
"Aren't you going to take it?"
"Just a moment. I need to prepare myself."
"Pardon?"
"What if I grab it and it just… withers away?"
"…Whoops, my hand slipped."
"What?"
Whoosh— Karem gently tossed the salmon bread.
Sometimes, when a person concentrates hard enough, the world around them seems to slow.
A state of selflessness—immersion, simply put.
Feeling time stretch so that one second flowed ten times slower, Catherine layered enhancement magic at a speed she had never once used before and shot her arm out faster than an ordinary eye could follow.
Thud—
The salmon bread settled into her hand.
Attached Material
— Mushy Peas —
This is a picture ChatGPT drew for me~