I Was Reborn as a Daddy in Another World

Descent - Part 1

Val stirred from sleep slowly, painstakingly. His body ached like he'd been run through a flour mill, and as he looked up at the roof of his apartment he realised that he'd fallen asleep on the couch again.

He lifted his legs off the arm of the chair, grunting as his hyperextended knees ground and popped their protestation. The sofa was about a foot shorter than he was, and he was paying a brutal price for not dragging himself to bed the night before.

What is that smell? he thought, nostrils flaring, Hell!

He leapt up off the couch, grinding joints forgotten as he recognised the unmistakable burning acridity spilling from the kitchen. No smoke, blessedly, but something was on the verge of catching aflame.

"No!" Theodora yelled as he crashed into the tiny cooking area.

She was standing up against the bench, peering into the toaster oven, but spun toward Val as he entered, her expression outraged.

"What's -" Val began, but Theodora cut him off.

"You're not supposed to be in here!" she yelled, "Get out!"

Val paused, assessing just how critical this crisis had become, and whether he needed to get involved. His eyes moved from the toaster oven, which was thankfully smoke free, to Theodora's dead serious face, and back again.

"Just, hm," he chose his words carefully, "I'm sorry, I thought I smelled smoke. Is something burning?"

"No," Theodora returned, with a no-nonsense tone, "Nothing is burning. Go back to sleep."

He took a breath.

"Alright," he said, level and calm as he could muster, "But if you see any smoke, you'll call me, right?"

Theodora grew more exasperated, somehow.

"Okay, yes," she shot back, the words clipped and short "Just go, I can do this!"

With one last glance around the kitchen, which he now realised looked as if a bomb had gone off, he nodded and backed out of the room.

Reluctantly, he sat back down on the couch, and waited.

After five excruciating minutes, he heard the toaster oven ding. A few moments later, Theodora entered the room carrying a plate.

Val's breath caught in his throat when he saw the blackened lump on the plate, though he had guessed correctly what was coming. With that said, even if he hadn't, a short glance past the plate itself at Theodora's resolute face, her mouth set and her eyes serious, would have given him the same pause. A small, melancholy smile made its way to his lips.

Thoedora placed the plate in front of Val and sat down on the sofa beside him, and Val looked down at what could only be in the absolutely most generous terms called a sandwich.

Theodora knew he had spent the night before with Uncle Ned, his former brother-in-law, and slept on the couch, which historically meant that he had imbibed a heroic amount of duty free bourbon. Theodora also knew that in those moments, her mother would prepare an enormous croque monsieur, banking on the medicinal and alcohol absorbing qualities of the one of the world's most balanced sandwiches, in terms of luxury to home cook viability.

She wasn't allowed to use the stove or the oven and, he assumed, only had a best guess of the ingredient list from observing her mother's work, but the item on the plate was, from a distance, a passing analog of the sandwich she'd seen made.

He examined what was leaking from the black-edged bread. Ham, she'd got that, whatever cheese was on the lowest shelf in the fridge, what was either mustard or maybe a yellow relish from somewhere in the depths of the fridge. She couldn't have made a bechamel so, and Val was getting less confident in his guesses now, he assumed from what he was seeing she had mixed mayonnaise and... Marshmallow spread?