Chapter 35
Clatter, clatter.
In the kitchen, bathed in peaceful sunlight that heralded the approaching lunch hour, an unexpected cooking class had begun.
“Now, handle the dough gently, like a baby! But put some muscle into it!”
“...... Pardon? Gently but with muscle?”
I was rolling out tart dough with a rolling pin as long as my forearm.
The apron was absurdly small for my build, barely hanging over my chest like a bib.
“Wow...! As expected, Mrs. Wintersword, you’re absolutely perfect.”
“Oh, really? Hehe.”
Beside me, Kara was peeling a grapefruit, and beside her was...
“Hiyah! Hup!”
Princess Elysia was kneading the dough with a solemn expression, her face covered in flour.
Where had the dignity of an imperial princess gone? All I could see was flour flying everywhere.
By now, she was probably already mired in the sticky dough and unable to escape.
I rolled the pin absentmindedly and thought,
‘How did things end up like this?’
Clearly, only thirty minutes earlier, I had been engaged in an advanced psychological battle with Elysia in the detached quarters.
It had been a tense time, securing her testimony about the kidnapping and gauging the thickness of the mask she wore as a princess.
But when I came to my senses, I was standing beside the princess, baking.
Count Eisen and Lonas were both sleeping like the dead from staying up all night, while I was covered in flour here.
‘I haven’t even entered the academy yet... Every single day is already so brutal....’
Was this the force of the original story’s opening chapter?
Or the force of a heroine whose very existence brought trouble and disaster?
The incidents and accidents never stopped.
The trivial and the horrifying alike.
“Your hands have stopped! The dough can’t breathe!”
From one side of the kitchen, the dessert master Patiss, who had been passionately explaining the recipe, called me out.
I sighed and glared at him.
I was grateful, but he was the culprit behind this whole mess.
* * *
Ten minutes earlier.
In the guest room of the detached quarters, I had been clutching my head, dragged along by Elysia’s impossible-to-follow way of speaking.
Truth and lies.
Her attitude kept swinging between performance and sincerity, and just as my patience was about to run out—
Knock, knock.
“Sir Wintersword, a guest has arrived.”
It was Butler Mader’s voice.
“A guest? At this hour?”
“Yes. Since the count and the young master are both asleep... waking them was out of the question, so I had no choice but to come find you.”
I asked Elysia to excuse me and stepped outside.
An unfamiliar face stood outside the door.
But the man was giving off a faintly nutty, sweet scent that no perfume could produce, so I immediately knew who he was.
It was Patiss, the owner of the tart shop Alina had visited.
He stood there fidgeting nervously, holding a large dessert box.
“Good heavens, sir! It’s an honor to meet you!”
“What brings you here?”
“Well... something happened to the young lady in front of my shop, didn’t it...? I heard she returned safely, but my heart has been so heavy....”
Patiss extended the box, looking close to tears.
“I brought some of the best-selling desserts from our shop, hoping for the young lady’s speedy recovery. I thought perhaps something sweet might soothe her shaken heart....”
He was a good man.
The shop owner had done nothing wrong, yet he had come all this way out of guilt simply because the incident had happened in front of his shop.
“Thank you. Alina will be happy. I’ll show you to the main residence for now. I’ll offer you a cup of tea as well.”
I was about to lead the unexpected guest to the drawing room in the main residence.
But then.
Creak.
The door to the detached quarters opened quietly behind me.
“......?”
A pair of golden eyes glinted through the crack in the door.
“P-Princess?”
Kara’s startled voice came from the gap as well.
It was Elysia.
Her shining golden eyes were fixed not on me or Patiss, but on the elaborate dessert box in Patiss’s hands.
Sparkle, sparkle.
Like a retriever that had spotted its prey, lasers were practically shooting from the princess’s eyes.
She looked as though she might fire 「Incineration」 with her eyes at any moment.
‘...Ah, this is bad.’
An ominous premonition swept over me.
I lost track of how we had gotten there.
Before I knew it, Elysia had followed us out, and we had moved to the drawing room in the main residence.
Patiss was so flustered by the princess’s appearance that he did not know what to do.
Of course, he did not know her identity and simply thought she was an exceedingly important guest.
With trembling hands, he placed the dessert box on the table.
“Th-this is... snowflake meringue cookies, and chocolate fondant... sir.”
When the lid opened, the colorful desserts sparkled like jewels.
A sweet fragrance filled the drawing room.
“Wow....”
Elysia’s mouth fell open.
The princess could not take her eyes off the box.
She had probably eaten desserts in the Imperial Palace, but she seemed to be seeing northern desserts—rustic yet showcasing the natural flavors of their ingredients—for the first time.
Gulp.
I could hear Elysia swallow loud and clear.
Like a large dog trained to ‘wait,’ she merely stared while swallowing back her drool.
But she could not bring herself to say, “Give me some, too.”
This was a get-well gift for the injured Alina, after all.
‘I want to eat it. I desperately want to devour it. But I’m a princess. No, before that, I’m a human being. I can’t steal a get-well gift meant for a patient.... I can practically hear her thinking it…’
The inner conflict I had been unable to read until moments ago was now written plainly across Elysia’s face.
Even Patiss began sweating nervously under that pitiful, burdensome gaze and glanced at me for guidance.
His eyes seemed to ask, ‘Um... should I give some to her, too?’
“Haa....”
I let out a deep sigh.
In the face of this, all the psychological warfare in the world seemed utterly pointless.
Just then, Kara, who had been standing beside me, gently covered the back of my hand.
“Are you all right? Your brow is especially furrowed today.”
Kara whispered with a worried expression.
“Pr—Miss Elysia really seems to want some. She’s about to drool.”
“...I know.”
But Elysia, who had been staring intently at the box, tilted her head.
“Huh? But... there’s no grapefruit tart?”
“Pardon?”
“I heard that’s the most famous dessert here. Apparently, people line up to eat it.”
Elysia added with an innocent smile,
“Miss Alina and I were fellow kidnapping victims, you know? We chatted a little while we were tied up, and she said the grapefruit tart was the most delicious dessert here. She said she really wanted to try it. Hehe.”
“......!”
Kara, Patiss, and I all sucked in a breath at the same time.
She had just casually uttered the chilling words ‘fellow kidnapping victims’ with that ditzy expression.
As expected, her mental fortitude was anything but ordinary.
Come to think of it, Kara had gone out of her way to avoid calling Elysia a princess in front of Patiss, an outsider, but that one sentence had nearly ruined everything.
If Patiss had not been distracted by her absurd choice of words, he would have realized that Elysia was a princess.
Patiss began stammering as he broke into a cold sweat.
“Ah... th-that....”
He moved his lips awkwardly, then cautiously pulled something from inside his bag.
“Actually... Miss Alina came out to buy a grapefruit tart and suffered that ordeal... I was worried that if she saw a grapefruit tart, it might remind her of that terrible memory and leave her traumatized... so I deliberately left it out.”
A single crushed box.
An old tart box, crumpled and smeared with blood.
“I picked it up at the scene. I thought it might help with the investigation....”
My chest ached when I saw its pitiful condition.
It was filled with Alina’s precious feelings for Kara and Yeppi—feelings she had refused to let go of until the very moment she was kidnapped.
Kara’s expression hardened.
She bit her lip as she stared at the crushed box.
A child who had been put in danger because of her.
Seeing that child’s pure feelings covered in blood and dirt seemed to torment her.
The atmosphere grew gloomy.
That was when it happened.
“Mr. Patiss! That’s wrong!”
Elysia shouted, clenching her fist.
“Pardon? W-what is?”
“We can’t keep avoiding it forever. The ones at fault were those bad kidnappers—not the delicious grapefruit tart or the kind-hearted Alina who went out to buy it!”
Elysia looked around at us with a serious expression.
“It would be so sad if a bad memory stopped someone from eating something they loved. Trauma can be overwritten with better memories!”
“Better... memories?”
“Yes! So how about this?”
Elysia’s eyes sparkled.
“We make one ourselves, then surprise Miss Alina with it—ta-da!—when she wakes up!”
“......Make it ourselves?”
“Yes! If we give it to her and say, ‘This is the one-of-a-kind tart your big sister and big brother made just for you!’ all the bad memories will disappear, and only the touching ones will remain!”
The princess excitedly waved her fists in the air.
“Besides, when the smell of freshly baked tart spreads through the mansion, Miss Alina will wake up feeling happy!”
I stared blankly at Elysia.
‘She’s pretending to be logical... but in the end, she just wants to eat it herself.’
A fierce determination to eat it fresh from the oven.
But.
“...That’s a good idea.”
Kara, beside me, had brightened.
“I felt bad about Alina... I think she’d be happy if we made one for her ourselves. I’m in favor, too.”
Kara joined the princess in support.
There was no way I could refuse after that.
“Haa....”
I sighed and picked up an apron.
“All right. Let’s bake.”
And that was how it began.
This whole mess.
“The dough is too thick! Be more delicate!”
Elysia poked me in the side and nagged me.
I bristled, but forced myself to hold it in and replied,
“Please don’t demand delicacy from a barbarian. And wipe the flour off your face. You look like a panda.”
“Oh, really? But you know what pandas are, too? They’re animals said to live only at the very eastern end of the Kingdom of Slokina.”
Elysia scrubbed at her face with her sleeve, but only spread the flour around further, turning herself into the very picture of a flour ghost.
I shook my head and picked up the rolling pin again.
‘Phew....’
The future where Karl avoided suicide thanks to the letter I sent Kairen.
I had thought my intervention could redirect that course with nothing more than a small collection of written words.
But the moment I sent the letter, Alina was kidnapped, the princess appeared, and now I was baking tarts.
‘The original story is twisting far too quickly.... Of course, I’m the one who changed it the most....’
One unexpected variable after another.
Could I really handle this enormous current of events?
Even amid my tangled thoughts, my hands kept dutifully rolling out the dough.
And shortly afterward.
A sweet yet bitter grapefruit aroma began to rise from the oven.
The scent strangely calmed my mind.
‘For now... I’ll bake the tart and think afterward.’
I had a feeling that if it turned out delicious, everything would somehow work out.
“It’s done! Finished!”
At Elysia’s shout, we gathered around the kitchen table for an ‘emergency tasting session.’
The nutty, tangy scent of freshly baked tarts filled the kitchen.
Two round grapefruit tarts sat in the center of the table.
One was the 「Sweetie Version」, which minimized grapefruit’s characteristic bitterness as much as possible and maximized sweetness with condensed milk and honey.
It was a tart designed for Alina’s childlike palate.
The other was the 「Bitter Version」, which preserved grapefruit’s natural bitterness to give it more flavor and impact.
According to Patiss, it was the kind of tart adults like Eisen and Lonas generally preferred.
“Well, then....”
The dessert master Patiss picked up a cake knife with a solemn expression.
Slice, slice.
The tart was divided into exactly four pieces.
One each for me, Kara, Elysia, and Patiss.
A tart made by three dessert novices.
Hoping that the brow I had done nothing but furrow since this morning would not furrow any further, I picked up my fork.