Chapter 3
Hilda Everett, wearing a lab coat, asked her recently adopted daughter, Monica.
"What precautions should you take when using a precision balance for experiments?"
"Use it on a level surface, and don't touch it with your bare hands."
"Why mustn't you touch it with your bare hands?"
"Because if skin oils make the apparatus rust, we won't be able to measure accurately."
"Very good."
When Hilda beamed at her, Monica bashfully lowered her head and fidgeted with her fingers.
Both Monica's appearance and her halting way of speaking were remarkably childish for a twelve-year-old.
...Even so, she had improved considerably since Hilda first took her in.
When Hilda had only just taken Monica in, the girl had been terribly emaciated, weakened to the point that even eating solid food was difficult. Above all, her speech had been even more clumsy than it was now.
Monica had forgotten human speech so thoroughly that numbers came more fluently to her lips than words.
When Hilda told her, "You do like numbers, don't you?" Monica had answered flatly,
──Because numbers aren't scary.
Hilda was struck speechless.
Numbers weren't scary—in other words, to Monica, words were scary.
The girl, hurt by so many heartless words, had protected herself by forgetting language and shutting herself away in a world of numbers.
Hilda had known Monica since she was little.
It was true that Monica had been a child more interested in numbers than picture books from an early age... but she had still been able to smile properly.
Hilda wanted to do something about that.
The most important thing was for Hilda to build a relationship of trust with Monica.
The best way to build trust was to work on something together.
So Hilda had chosen this.
"This beginner's guide to baking says, 'Baking is all about accurate measuring'... you see."
Hilda gazed at the ingredients she had measured with an experimental precision balance and declared emphatically,
"In other words, now that we've finished measuring everything perfectly, it would be no exaggeration to say we've already completed this batch of cookies."
It was an exaggeration.
Nevertheless, Hilda confidently handed the book to Monica.
"Now, let's move on to the next step. Will you read the recipe for me?"
"Yes. Um... Next, add sugar to the butter and mix it well."
Hilda put butter and sugar in a bowl and tried to knead them together with a wooden spatula.
But it was a cold day, and the butter was still hard, so it stubbornly refused to mix.
Monica was watching the bowl anxiously, so Hilda put on an adult's composed expression and said, to reassure her,
"In times like this, you do this."
Hilda set the bowl of butter and sugar over a pot filled with hot water and heated it in a bain-marie.
The butter melted into a gooey mess, blending with the sugar.
Butter would melt once it went into the oven anyway. Hilda concluded that there was no harm in melting it now, then looked at Monica.
"There, it's mixed. Now, what's next?"
"Um, add the beaten egg in several portions and mix it well."
Following the instructions, Hilda poured the beaten egg into the bowl in several additions and stirred it into a sloppy mess.
She couldn't help wondering whether cookie dough was really supposed to be this runny, but surely adding the flour would bring it together nicely.
"There. What's next?"
"Um, next, sift in the flour."
"Sift in the flour, hmm."
After repeating the instruction, Hilda seized a fistful of flour.
Then she raised her arm high...
"Hngh!"
She slammed the flour into the bowl.
With a poof, flour billowed into the air, coating her entire upper body, but Hilda paid it no heed as she grabbed and flung in fistful after fistful.
Once she had added all the flour, Hilda announced to Monica through her flour-covered face,
"...Cough. Monica, listen. The important thing in this step... is ventilation."
"Ventilation."
Hilda nodded and threw the kitchen window wide open.
The north wind whistled in with a shrill phee-woo, making it colder than ever.
"If flammable powder is suspended in the air at a certain concentration and you use a flame, the propagation of combustion can cause an explosion... I once hovered between life and death because of that."
"B-baking is scary, isn't it?"
"Don't worry. If we follow the proper steps, we'll surely make something delicious."
By this point, they had already failed to follow several of those steps, but Hilda hadn't noticed.
"Now, don't be afraid. Let's move on to the next step. What does it say we should do next?"
"Um... cut and mix the flour in."
"I see, cut and mix... This is dangerous work, so you stay back, Monica."
Hilda set down the wooden spatula, gripped a kitchen knife with the blade pointing down, and stirred the contents with it, clattering the blade against the bowl.
For the record, "cut and mix" means mixing the dough with a spatula using a light cutting motion. It absolutely does not mean mixing while hacking at it with a knife.
"There! The dough is ready! All that's left is to roll it out, cut shapes with a cookie cutter, and bake them... But now that I think about it, we don't have any cookie cutters, so I suppose I can just roll it out and cut it into pieces."
Hilda roughly flattened the lumpy dough, which was still gooey in places, with her palms.
"Let's do it together, Monica."
"Yes!"
Following Hilda's example, Monica patted the dough flat with her palms. Working dough like this was surprisingly fun. For a while, the two of them focused wholeheartedly on spreading it out.
Once the two of them had finished spreading out the dough, Hilda realized something.
The oven hadn't been used in years, and it was in no condition to use, what with all the dust and grease.
"Even in times like this, don't panic or make a fuss. A capable woman solves the problem with a micro-flame spell with its coordinates fixed."
When Hilda kindled a fire with a shortened incantation, Monica, for once, looked up and gazed intently at Hilda's face.
"Hilda-san, you're amazing."
Compared with children her age, Monica's expression was terribly awkward, but it nevertheless shone with admiration.
Hilda found that both ticklish and delightful, and smiled.
Without noticing that the would-be cookies before her were puffing out little clouds of black smoke.
＊ ＊ ＊
"Monica, Nero, the cookies are ready. Let's have tea."
At Isaac's voice, Monica hurriedly ran her pen over the last sentence of her report.
Nero, who had been dozing atop the bookshelf, slipped down from it, transformed into human form, and took a seat.
Lately, Nero often took human form when eating sweets. He said it was easier to eat that way.
Leaning back in his chair, Nero looked up at Isaac as he arranged plates on the table.
"I'm still not used to you calling me Nero. It gives me this weird itchy feeling."
"Then should I call you Mr. Bartholomew Alexander?"
"Call me senpai, senpai. I've been at Monica's side longer than you have, so show some respect and call me senpai."
"Maybe I'll think about it once you remember my name."
"For someone so sparkly, you're awfully cheeky."
Nero glared at Isaac and reached for the plate of cookies.
But Isaac whisked the plate away before Nero's fingertips could pinch a cookie.
Nero pursed his lips and looked over at Monica, who was still writing her report.
"Monica, are you done yet? I'm starving."
"Yeah, just a second... Done!"
As Monica's head shot up, Isaac smoothly slipped the quill from her hand and returned it to the pen stand.
Then he set a cup of coffee in front of Monica.
"Please, help yourself."
"Yes, thank you."
Monica took a sip of coffee, then picked up one of the cookies Isaac had made.
The flower-shaped cookie, topped with jam in the center, was crisp and delicious. Its refined flavor would not have been out of place at a tea party at Serendia Academy. The browning was perfect, too.
While Monica nibbled at her cookie a little at a time, Nero stuffed cookie after cookie into his mouth with gusto.
"These crispy cookies are damn good. Sweet ones are great, but I like those salty ones you made the other day better."
"Ah, the savory ones with cheese kneaded into them. Those go well with wine, too."
Isaac gave a mild acknowledgment, then bit into a cookie himself. He murmured under his breath, "Not bad."
Isaac called it "not bad," but Monica considered it an extremely impressive achievement.
Monica knew very well how difficult it was to bake cookies.
"Ike, you're amazing. Baking sweets is so, so, so hard and difficult..."
Monica's words came with unusual emphasis, making Isaac blink and tilt his head.
Monica stared intently at Isaac's clothes.
As far as Monica knew, making cookies was an extremely messy process, especially when sifting in the flour. Flour always went flying everywhere.
But Isaac's clothes were completely clean.
"Ike, you're really good at sifting in flour... Oh, but be careful of a dust explosion."
"………………Huh?"
Imagining Isaac clutching a handful of flour and slamming it forcefully into the bowl, Monica solemnly murmured, "Ventilation is important."