Flaminia has to take care of some custom orders tonight, which means I'm back working with Raissa. Actually, from what I understand, I'm probably going to work up the ladder even though my baking knowledge might match Flaminia's skills.

Meh, whatever.

As long as there's food, some cash, and cute girls around me, I'm totally fine with it.

"So, yeah, Clodia got angry at me in the end because I couldn't do paperwork. She kept saying that perhaps I just convinced myself that I couldn't do that," I explain to Raissa. "She says that if you truly believe something, even if it's not true, most low-grade truth-stones will take it as the actual truth."

Raissa, the shortest Elf I have known so far, shrugs.

"Maybe she's right."

"Heh," I scratch my head with flour-filled hands, leaving a streak of white across it.

I don't take it personally, to be fair.

I am quite candid about my personal life. If someone asks, I'll answer back. Many people back on Earth believed the same—that I could simply force myself to do some stuff, or do it incrementally, and all would be well.

I don't want to bore you with the details of it, but nope, it really didn't work. The one thing that worked... almost... Ok, maybe I'm not super ready to talk about this. Or even to think about it.

"Perhaps it is. I'll get a... [Healer]?" I see Raissa nod. "Yeah, a [Healer] and maybe work through it."

I mean, it could be worth a shot. Who knows, maybe they have some kind of magic with someone touching your head with a wand and, boom, you are cured of anxiety forever.

Or maybe now you’ve got PTSD.

Or an STD.

Well, it requires a wand to interact with something else to get either of those, I suppose.

As I go through the most menial tasks with Raissa, including making more fresh pasta, I start thinking to myself. The short Elf is clearly overworked and tired, not really in the mood for big conversations. And so, I take the occasion to think.

I am not one of those people obsessed with their future, honestly. Whatever I'll make of my life here in Amorium, I'm good with it. Actually, my mother had to keep sitting me down until her very last days to make me think about the future.

I wonder what's happening on Earth now. Is the bakery on fire? Or are they running it smoothly even without me? Has Melissa taken over? She's good with the administrative stuff anyway. Better her than anyone else. She'll probably put more sugar in the artisanal gelato to sell more and...

"Joey!" Raissa slaps my hands.

Huh?

I look down at the dough in my hands, strangled, and see my fists closed tightly, trembling slightly. I take a deep breath and apologize for wasting time.

I take much more care in making sure that my hands and body are all working properly as I keep thinking about Earth.

Melissa and Rashid are my two top minions—that's what I call my employees for fun.

The trouble is, I might have spent too long in Italy when I was studying in culinary schools. I met a chef named Lorenzo who bankrupted his own restaurant because he refused to use cheap produce. He just raised the prices of the dishes and slowly went out of business. The cooler part of the story is that he managed to open another successful restaurant without making compromises.

The bad part of the story is that it took him a while. And he was one of the chefs I learned from while in Italy. He even gave me a spot in his kitchen to learn for a couple of months. The guy was basically a fat Gandalf with a bit of Dumbledore. Lorenzo was his name. Sadly, he died a few years ago. But he died doing what he did best—cooking delicious food and murdering down his gullet with every single ricotta-filled Sicilian cannolo in Italy.

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What Lorenzo and other masters taught me was that diabetes is not a diet; it's a lifestyle. Jokes aside, I've seen chefs punch farmers in their mouths because they had been handed bad produce. Trust me, fat chefs with Michelin stars on their backs punching down sketchy farmers might have been the peak entertainment of my entire life.

But also, it taught me about ethics. It taught me that, forgive me, mom, for swearing, 'fuck compromises.' Italians are very weird people. If you think the Taliban are intolerant, try changing some Italian recipes. Once, I was slapped on the head by Lorenzo: he was recording a video for this cooking YouTube channel, and he said, 'there are many variants of this recipe; this is mine, you can do it however you want at home.' And after hearing that, I thought of trying my hand at it. True, I mostly did baking in his kitchen, but I also covered for others when needed.

When he caught me, I swear to God, for a moment, I thought he would dump the pasta pot on my head. To this day, that is one of the scariest moments I've lived through. And I've been robbed three times in broad daylight in NYC.

The second scariest moment of my life came from the father of one of my Italian love interests. Apparently, the guy was actually in the mafia. But that's another story.

I still remember Lorenzo telling me, 'Giué,' he couldn't speak a word of English, sadly, and least of all, pronounce my name properly, 'people at home can do whatever they want. We are professionals. You must make the best you can inside the boundaries of the recipes. Never change a recipe unless you are an absolute master of it. If you can make a recipe a hundred times and every single time it's absolutely delicious, then you can think about making small changes.'

Do you know what's fascinating about this? First of all, as a red-blooded American, I found it absurd. Rules? Nah, let's do our own version of everything. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I started drawing a comparison with censorship throughout the history of literature.

My mother had me take a lot of Latin and Ancient Greek classes. She said that even though we were in America, that's what smart Italian kids studied. With this excuse, I had to study an ungodly amount of ancient literature.

But anyway, did you know that the most flourishing period of literature in known history was under Augustus? That's pretty much when the works that have forever changed the world's literature came out. Shakespeare, for example, was a big Ovid fan. Now, Ovid was relegated to modern-day Romania because he most likely bedded Augustus's first daughter, Julia the Elder. And yes, Ovid is my spirit animal.

But the point is Augustus was a censorship freak. Forget conservative Christian mothers banning Twain from school because his books have the n-word Augustus would ship you to a foreign state or outright put you on a cross in case you were a nobody.

And that's when Virgil wrote the Aeneid and Ovid the Metamorphosis. Those are the two biggest influences on Western literature by any means. And it all happened under the worst censorship ever. And those are just the two major examples. Many other huge writers lived under Augustus.

The guy was worse than the Chinese government in most aspects. If he had had the same degree of tech the CCP has, he would have been an absolute animal. Perhaps, we would even remember him much differently than we actually do.

I stop my hands from fidgeting again as I handle the dough.

Life is good, I try telling myself in order to calm down. I have a job, and I have people who are nice to me. Plus, what could I possibly complain about when there are all these beautiful women around me? Some anxiety? I mean, I did meet an alleged Dragon Lady. If I didn’t die then, what’s going to get me, some stupid flour?

I sneak a glance at Raissa. The short Elf is entirely absorbed in her task. She probably has many worries of her own, right?

And so, why should I feel so bad?

Everyone has their issues; I’m not special.

I tried telling my mother this so many times as well. Sure, I’m good at some stuff. Sure, I was a smart child. So what? If you are smart, that’s just one more incentive to live a quiet life, no?

I slowly exhale as I move onto more flour, stretching my hands. I’m not really used to kneading the dough by hand anymore. I should build a small kneading machine for these people. If they have clocks, we can pretty much extend the same mechanism to a mixer.

Maybe I can call it the Luciani 3000, who knows. Or the Luciani Buns Kneader, with the premium version being the Super Buns Squeezer.

And talking about buns. I sneak a far glance at Violante, the most gifted Elf in the rear department in the entire bakery. I honestly have no idea what they fed that girl, but we should make that an Elven-wide staple.

Should I approach her? Mmm. If so, how?

It’s not that easy. I mean, other than some casual flirting with Lucinda, who’s apparently a straight-A student with little romantic experience, I don’t have any action going on.

But more than that, I do not have any experience with Elven dating customs. I still remember when phones were barely a thing, and you had to walk up to people, sure. But... isn’t this that brought to the extreme?

What else could I use to guide my romantic life?

Huh.

Damn!

Among his great works, Ovid also wrote a manual on how to get laid! The damn dude was a goddamn legend.

I stop working the dough as I realize something.

Everything in that book can be applied to this place much better than Earth since it’s basically ancient times with skills.

Could this be how I actually make Biggus Dickus my official cognomen?