“All right, it’s time to crown our winner! Judges, get ready to raise your placards for the dessert you think was best! Let’s find out who the goddess of victory will smile upon in three…two one!”
A third drum roll. The result…?
“Zero votes for the Nur Empire! Three votes for Bauer! It’s the Bauer team’s victory! Yahoo!”
“I figured as much. Congratulations, Bauer team,” Marthe said.
We won. It had been a gamble, but the risk had paid off. We’d gotten our point across.
“We did it, Rae.” Claire put her hand on my shoulder. I looked around to see everyone else wearing looks of triumph and relief. It might have been a close match, but it had been a good one, nonetheless.
However—
“What in the blue blazes?! That’s impossible!”
There was still a sore loser left.
“How could my new recipe lose to some old-fashioned egg cake?! I ain’t tryin’ ta be a bum here, but I’m gonna lose sleep if I don’t get a real reason why!” The head chef slumped down in his chair, adamantly refusing to acknowledge our victory.
“Your behavior is unsightly, Chef,” said Dorothea. “The match is over. You lost.”
“I mean no disrespect to Your Majesty, but when it comes to food, I’m the expert here, and I just know there’s no way my cookin’ could lose! I won’t accept this outcome until I hear a satisfactory explanation!” It was a
testament to the head chef’s pride in his work that he dared address the much-respected Dorothea this caustically. No ordinary person would dare talk back to her.
“Humph. You really don’t understand why you lost?”
“Not one bit!”
“Care to explain then, Rae Taylor?”
“Umm…” I hesitated. Would an explanation from me really convince him? Still doubtful, I was about to reluctantly begin when—
“Pathetic… It’s ’cause yer like this that you’ll never be as good as yer father!” A voice rebuked the head chef.
“M-Mama…”
It was Marthe, the cafeteria lady and the expert analyst for the event.
“Ya went and got yerself a nice lofty position as head chef, only to make an arse of yerself now?”
“Sh-shut it! I ain’t buyin’ these results It don’t make sense that my cookin’ lost, and ya know it don’t!”
“No, I get why ya lost. What ya cooked wasn’t the Nur Empire’s food. Ain’t that right, judges?”
The judges all nodded at Marthe’s words.
“What…? What do you mean?!”
“Think back to the dishes the Bauer team presented,” Dorothea said.
“Onion and bacon pie, white asparagus soup, egg cake… They have been improved upon, but they are all traditional dishes of our proud empire.”
“Ah…”
Dorothea’s words finally made him understand.
This was the condition I’d given everyone at the start—to make new
dishes based on the empire’s existing ones.
YOU ARE READING
I'm In Love With The Villainess Volume 4
Ficción históricaSame as the volume 3 reason I'm doing this is so that people can read it offline and doesn't need internet.
