It was Truffles who started clapping first when I finished the cake decorations. Soon, almost everyone else followed. Almost.

“It’s just some fucking decorations!” Violante shouts, eyes blinking wildly around. “What are all your molded heads clapping for?”

I can see the veins popping on her neck.

But the claps don’t stop.

As I turn to stare at some of the people in the bakery, they get even louder. I bask in their afterglow, looking at a pale Flaminia clutching her chef’s hat, nearly ripping it.

“I am done,” I tell the pink-haired [Chef], looking at her cake. It’s more like a fat stack of giant pancakes with small decorations made of caramel than an actual cake composition. I can feel its disgusting sweetness in my mouth even before tasting it.

Flaminia’s eyes are wet.

She felt it, didn’t she?

A lifetime of being the best of the best.

Enfant terrible, they said.

Let’s give some credit to the culinary critics.

“So,” I say as the claps die down, “that was just some decoration. If that’s your cake, we can proceed to taste-testing.”

“We’ll need to evaluate the looks first!” Violante says, blistering with rage, looking wildly at Clodia.

Clodia turns toward Lucillus and Antoninus.

“Antoninus, you want to judge too?”

The brute [Guard] nods as he licks his lips, clearly famished.

“You two, put the cakes here and take a step back,” Clodia says. She moves a table in front of everyone, and I bring my Cassata Siciliana there.

Flaminia has yet to say a single word since I made my baroque decorations atop the Cassata. She keeps grinding her teeth, though.

She knows she has lost, I muse to myself.

“Antoninus, Lucillus,” Clodia says, “which one do you think looks the best? Remember, looking the best also means it’s more appetizing. Overall, though, judge the one which pleases your ears more.”

Lucillus frows as he looks at me instead of the two cakes. There’s some confusion in his eyes—not about the cakes, obviously. Just when looking at me. That’s where the confusion comes from.

Heh, I know. It shouldn’t have come to this. I wanted to put my skills on display little by little. Perhaps, in another life, Flaminia would have actually appreciated what I was doing by her side, and this would have never happened. But you know, if my grandma had wheels, she would have been a bike.

“Joey’s clearly better!” Antoninus half-shouts. “Can I taste it? The Pigfeed he put there smelled really good!”

I have to actually rein in a laugh to keep my serious composure. We can go back to smiles once all of this has died down.

“What?! Are you kidding me?! That idiot [Guard] clearly knows nothing about baking! Flaminia’s work—”

“Violante!” Clodia thunders with eyes full of fire. “Shut up! We judge in silence. Say another word, and I will throw you out. Am I being clear?”

The racist woman snarls but then steps back and, indeed, shuts up.

“Lucillus?” Clodia asks with a sigh. “Pass your judgment, cousin.”

“Joey wins,” he says in a daze. “It’s clear.”

I know, right? I shake my head.

“I agree. Looks go to Joey. It’s unanimous. Now, onto the taste. Let’s start with Flaminia’s cake.”

Flaminia moves to cut the cake as I wonder what’s next for us. The pink-haired Elf is still as pale as a ghost, but she has not given up yet. She had not reined in Violante or Melina, especially when they were bullying Raissa. There are problems that clearly need some intense solving.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

What would my mother have done in this situation?

Huh. Probably stab Violante. And then sue her too. In this order. About Flaminia… my mother would have fired her. Yeah. Hardcore style.

“Chef, would you mind introducing your cake?” Clodia asks her employee.

And one of my once-favorite Elves nods, taking a deep breath and steeling herself. Her back straightens up, and a bit of color comes back to her cheeks.

It seems that even though she most likely knows how this will end – well, that’s my supposition – she still has some pride left. Good. I don’t need to work with spineless cowards.

“I have been working with caramel for the past week. The Valerii have gone crazy for the caramel-infused fillings of cakes. This is where the inspiration for this cake came from. It has a layer of caramel covering the outside and a thick, caramel-infused filling between each layer. Cakes are meant to be sweet and give us a taste of happiness when we are tired or bored. They are a slice of an evergreen forest. That’s why I wanted to provide a sweet experience to my customers—so that they might forget about their plights for at least a few spoonfuls.”

Clodia nods, actually impressed.

Then, all three judges move to taste the cake.

“This is… really good,” Lucillus nods to himself. “Very sweet.”

“This is a cake fit for nobility,” Clodia smiles at her [Chef].

Only Antoninus frowns slightly while eating the cake but says nothing.

“Ok, let’s drink some water now to cleanse our mouths,” Clodia tells the two [Guards].

Not long after, they are standing in front of me.

Before they can say anything, I pick up a knife and plunge it into the Cassata. All the people around hiss in pain at the destruction of my art, and a smile escapes from my lips. I swiftly move the slices onto some plates, carefully arranging them so that the decorations face the judges.

“The clinking of spoons against plates has accompanied the greatest deals in the world. Foreign politics and diplomacy are delicate,” I make a brief pause in my speech, looking around the whole bakery. There are clearly uncertain eyes at the moment, thinking that Pigfeed and cheese won’t be able to surpass Flaminia in a contest for the best taste. And there goes my second smile.

“[Generals] and great [Commanders] are quirky and need to focus on the battlefield more than any other thing. If anyone here were a [Baker] for a quirky [General], they might lose him the war by serving his favorite dish cooked poorly on the eve of battle.”

“A dessert is the subdued climax of any meal. Nobles invite their fellow nobility from afar to taste their cuisine and show off. But remember,” I explain with a steady voice, “the deals between them often take place during meals. But when? Not during appetizers or entrees, that’s for sure. They take place during desserts, when the chats have died down, and the real talk enters the room. The little kids get out the door to enjoy some dessert in a separate room from their parents. Only those in the know can stay at the table.”

“And so, picture me this; there are three nobles around a table about to discuss the future of a city, or worse, a nation. What happens when they taste an excessively sweet composition, one made by the arrogance of their [Baker]? What is a [Baker]’s arrogance, you might wonder? It’s the thought that you need to have a theme, to intrude on your composition. Your piece tells a story by itself, not because of you. If anything, you should slowly fade into the background and leave the dessert to take shape on its own.”

“I come from a place where many [Bakers] are as arrogant as many of you,” I say in the midst of some outrage. “They think they always know better, that they should whip their cakes as a master does with their slave. I have earned a controversial reputation for shaming those people in an attempt to show a different way. Desserts don’t have to be opulent in all their components. They must be what they are—desserts. You don’t need to make a statement with a cake. The cake needs to keep the negotiations afloat.”

I see Clodia raising a hand to interrupt me.

“I am not done,” I thunder, and everyone suddenly takes a step back as if pushed by some weird force. “This is a lesson, not an introduction. I hope that even those who won’t work here after today will treasure it.”

“A [General], or a [Lord], for what matters, doesn’t care about your little ideas on caramel. Caramel is an ingredient like any other. It’s not your signature—nor should it be anyone’s signature. You want to leave your mark as a [Baker]? Try doing that without being a pretentious prick. And to do that, you need to not intrude. What if that cake appeared during a delicate negotiation? Imagine the three nobles around the table, please. One of them doesn’t really like cakes that are too sweet, maybe. What now? Your arrogance and the misuse of an ingredient have thrown an entire negotiation out of the window. Now, one of them will negotiate in a bad mood. Is that good?”

I slowly turn around to stare at my very people.

Quintus, Tiberius, Stan, Truffles, Claudius.

Raissa.

“Four people who’ve never really baked anything and a [Baker] that was ridiculed because she had been taught by a racist idiot who cannot dose sugar. Those are my people.”

I turn to Flaminia now.

“Not you, Flaminia. You chose the path of arrogance. You chose to be the little woman who needed to take her frustration out on her employees. You want me to call you chef? You don’t deserve it. And if you don’t change this music, you won’t deserve it in a hundred years.”

“Your cake is childish and arrogant, like you—no surprise there, at least. Violante ruined it, by the way; she put too much sugar in the mix. That made it terribly sweet, more than it should have been. You already had too much sugar in the overall mix, but it could have marginally worked if the mix had been less sweet. Go ahead, taste it, will you?” I say.

Everyone turns to look at Flaminia, who looks at me with anger.

“Who do you think you are, Joey?” She chews the words out with rage.

I walk up to her cake, take out a spoon from my uniform and plunge into it. I chew the overly sweet composition and sigh. Then, I pass the same spoon to her.

“Taste it. If you don’t want to be honest, it’s fine with me. But that also means that one of us is going to be fired after I win,” I’m about to turn when something else comes to me, and I look over my shoulder. “And Clodia is about to taste my cake, which means I’m not sure which one of us will be fired.”