The Expected Ending
Having pulled off the pudding, I was walking around with my shoulders puffed up in pride. On the strength of that swagger I went looking for something else to make. Nothing else, though, looked nearly as makeable as pudding had.
"Hmm..."
I dove onto the bed and, on a whim, took in the view outside. It was morning, and through the distant trees cars were weaving this way and that along the road.
Come to think of it...
Maybe it was the dead of winter, but I was craving something sweet something fierce. After yesterday's pudding triumph, nothing stood in my way. I decided to make dalgona, that crisp sugar candy that always came to mind when winter rolled around.
Back when I was little I'd been a regular at the dalgona machine in the stationery shop in front of school, so I didn't have to worry about the method. Melt the sugar over a flame, toss in a pinch of baking soda, give it a stir, and the candy was done.
Of course I still needed a mold to press into the melted sugar. I'd already prepared one earlier, so that was nothing to fret over. I grinned to myself and waited for the staff to clock out. Bora was around today, but she rarely came into my room, which meant I'd have plenty of time to myself.
Between rounding up the sugar and the baking soda, the day slipped right by. Both were easy enough to get. The problem was that Baldy had taken the gas burner yesterday, so I had nothing to melt the sugar with. Still—if you don't have teeth, you chew with your gums.
With my genius brain, it was an obstacle I could overcome easily enough. I crept toward the office. Whatever I needed was bound to be in there. Truly a magical space.
Having successfully infiltrated, I glanced around. It was seven o'clock; I'd just eaten dinner with Bora. After dinner she always vanished somewhere for an hour. She said she was working, but it had nothing to do with me, so I didn't much care.
"Ah!"
Spotting my target, I dashed over. What I wanted was the electric kettle. I unplugged it, scooped it up, and carried it back to my room.
I set the sugar and the baking soda out on the desk and plugged the kettle in. Every ingredient was ready. All that remained was to follow the recipe.
With no gas burner, I meant to use the kettle in its place. I set it on the floor and connected the plug. The water that had been inside was long gone—no, I'd left just a little. Without any water at all, the kettle wouldn't turn on.
I opened the lid and dumped the sugar in. Shoving a whole bag into the kettle, I could see it was nearly half full.
"Heh..."
I couldn't help admiring my own genius for using an electric kettle in place of a gas burner.
Click.
The kettle switched on, and I crouched to watch it slowly heat. How many minutes passed like that? The sugar inside began to melt and bubble up in a furious boil.
Sweet steam rose in soft curls from the mouth of the kettle, and the smell alone made my mouth water. Once I was sure the sugar had mostly melted, I lifted the lid. Inside, it was sticky and thick.
I stirred with a spatula, gearing up for the grand finale. I took the bag packed with baking soda and snipped the top open with scissors. Only a little soda was supposed to go in, so this called for incredibly delicate control.
"Ah!"
But whether it was my trembling hands or not, far more soda went in than I had ever imagined. Panicked, I reached to shut the kettle off.
The soda was faster than my hand. The brown sugar syrup boiled up in a furious bubble and spilled straight over. The kettle was instantly coated in the mess.
The floor became a disaster zone of soda-laced sugar syrup. Staring at it, I could already see myself across Bora's knee, getting my backside smacked.
I needed to reach over and kill the power, but the kettle was rattling so violently I couldn't bring myself to try. It had to be scorching. What if I touched it and burned my hand?
"No!!!"
I ran around the room. Smoke from the burning sugar had already filled the place. Luckily the heat was so extreme that the kettle shut itself off. The aftermath, though, was brutal.
"Bora... Bora!!!"
I had no choice but to call in the relief pitcher. The only person who could fix this was Bora. But she wasn't in the office right now, and she couldn't answer my call.
"Waaah!"
The kettle was belching white smoke. The room was full of it; I could barely see in front of me. Before long the sprinklers kicked on and the floor turned into a shallow lake, and the fire alarm began shrieking through the entire building.
"Eh..."
I realized I had committed a truly enormous mistake. The room was already soaked through. The kettle the office staff loved so much was ruined. I'd turned the place into a complete wreck, and this was not going to end with a scolding.
My head started to ache. I'd only meant to make a perfectly ordinary piece of dalgona, and it had gone this wrong? I stared blankly at the sprinklers spraying water. I knew I shouldn't think it, but it was secretly kind of refreshing.
"Hana!!!"
There was a clatter, the door flew open, and Bora burst into my room. She took one look at me, drenched from head to toe, and let out a long sigh. The sprinklers had already turned the place into a disaster.
"Good grief..."
Bora glanced at the kettle lying on its side and seemed to piece the situation together. I stood there fidgeting. Watching her face, I tried to slip quietly out. Just a little farther and I'd be free of the room!
But just as I was nearly clear, Bora caught me by the scruff of the neck. One look at those blazing eyes and I had no choice but to squeeze mine shut.
"Hiiing..."
I sat in the office with both hands held high overhead. Because of my mistake, a few of the staff still in the building were cleaning my room. The TV and the monitor had taken on water and broken. At least the computer tower had been tucked safely under the desk, so maybe that one had survived.
I stole cautious glances around. I knew I'd caused a major incident, so I had to be careful how I moved. Having seen Bora's eyes blazing earlier only made me more afraid.
I hadn't been spanked, but I was currently serving a hands-in-the-air sentence, and my arms were starting to hurt. To think my perfect plan to make dalgona had failed... Yesterday's pudding had turned out just fine...
Then Bora came into the office. I had no choice but to hang my head. They said the building management office had gone into an uproar when the fire alarm went off. From experience so far, this was not going to end with a single smack. Ten, at minimum.
"Hana. Why did you take the kettle?"
Fortunately, Bora still seemed to be in possession of her reason. I answered in a voice thick with guilt, wearing the most apologetic face I could manage.
"I was... going to make dalgona and share it..."
"Dalgona?"
"Yeah."
Bora, still holding the bag of baking soda, looked at me as she spoke.
"Mm... If you wanted to make it that badly, you should have asked me to do it with you."
"I wanted to give it as a surprise, like the pudding last time."
"Then shall we go make dalgona together, Hana?"
I peeked up at her. Was the mood shifting toward letting this slide? I nodded at her words.
"Yeah!"
"But... you did something wrong, so you'll have to take your punishment, won't you?"
"Eh..."
Bora gently lifted me and laid me across her knee. Under her hands, I had no choice but to stay put, face down.
Swish, swish.
Bora's hand smoothed over my bottom. I thrashed without thinking, trying to get away, but she seemed to have expected exactly that and pressed me firmly in place.
A moment later her hand rose straight overhead. I could feel what was coming. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain about to land.
Smack!
"Hic!"
"Next time you want to do something like this, you tell me first. Understood? You didn't even have a gas burner, and you still went and did this. And Hana—you always have to be careful with fire."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
Thankfully, it ended with a single smack. I slid down off Bora's knee and rubbed my bottom. That was how the pain went away faster. Even so, considering my room had become a flood and the fire alarm had gone off through the whole building, I didn't seem to have been scolded all that much.
It was the kind of mistake where ten smacks wouldn't have been strange at all.
"Hana, you'll have to sleep in another room tonight. All right?"
"Okay."
My original room was already a slurry of sugar and water. It would need a thorough cleaning for several days, which meant I had no choice but to impose on the lace-trimmed princess room.