Interlude: A Christmas Short Story (Part Two)

"Heh heh heh! Everyone, when you make a cake, isn't there something that gives you trouble?! No, no, you needn't spell it out."

There I drew a big breath to build the tension, and raised the whisk I'd been gripping high overhead. In the kitchen, wrapped in a breath-held silence, the sound of someone gulping down their spit rang out.

"Yes... every one of you must have known the agony of an aching arm. Yes, the fiendish task of whipping meringue and fresh cream...!"

Who in the world first made meringue, I wonder. To go to the trouble of separating the white from the yolk and beating the white alone within an inch of its life. I'd never think of it. Or rather, even knowing it's needed for a cake's fluffiness, I still wouldn't want to. Modern Japan has a magic tool called a hand mixer, but in this world you have to mix by hand in the truest sense.

"And so, the new item I recommend with full confidence is this!"

What I thrust before the head chef, who stood with his arms crossed and a stern face, was a special item packed with dreams and hope!

"The round-and-round whisk!"

Ta-daa!!

The new item, developed together with Sissi and Old Bob, was a crystal of hard work, made after endless trial and error, shaving and fitting together bamboo and wood and bamboo skewers and all. Several coiled springs of different sizes mesh, and when you turn the lever on the handle round and round, the whisk on the end spins at high speed. It's a cooking tool I'd seen in my past life, but with my proud knack for being a klutz there was no way I'd remember its exact workings, and needless to say, getting it finished took many twists and turns.

But. The head chef's eyes, watching me spin the round-and-round whisk with full confidence, stayed as calm as a quiet lakeshore. No, a lake's surface.

"...Huh? Not very interested?"

At me tilting my head, the head chef opened his mouth with a heavy sigh.

"Miss, you do not understand the true essence of cooking..."

"Wha...! Head chef, what a thing to say!"

"No, it's fine, Sissi. Head chef, will you tell me? The true essence of cooking!"

Swallowing hard, I gazed back into the head chef's serious eyes.

"I too have been a housewife for umpteen years... I've cooked enough to be planning dinner's menu from breakfast time. But in the end I'm an amateur. There's no way I could match the head chef, who's honed himself as a professional cook...!"

"Miss...!? Wait, to begin with, Miss, your occupation is being a young lady, not any 'housewife,' and you are still all of seventeen years old."

"Thinking of dinner already at breakfast...?! What an appetite...!"

Sissi and the cooks began murmuring in a stir, but nothing reached the ears of us two, gazing at each other as if strung tight. Stern-faced, the head chef slowly opened his mouth.

"Cooking is muscle...!"

...Huh?

"To whip egg whites is the supreme joy! The feel of your arm's muscles right on the edge of bursting, the ice-hard cold of whipping fresh cream! All of it is a trial bestowed by the gods!"

"Head chef...!"

"Bursting sweat! Leaping muscle! That is what becomes a natural saltiness...!"

"Nooooooo!"

Having unwittingly learned the secret of the head chef's saltiness, before I knew it I'd landed a jumping knee on the head chef's brawny abs. Looking back on it, I'm proud it was probably the finest jumping knee of my life.