“Are you actually disappointed?” Irene looks at my frown.

“Well, I thought she was after me-me, if you know what I mean. Not after my baking skills.”

“Is it that important now? Considering you actually invited me for dinner?”

Dammit.

Think.

Think.

Reply.

Smart reply.

“Obviously not,” I say, blanking on any other response.

“It does seem like you would love to have her coming after you, though.”

Think.

Think.

Smart reply.

SMART REPLY!

“Sure, why not?”

Christ.

“Interesting,” Irene says, nursing sips from her glass.

I turn to put the now caramelized onions into a wooden bowl, covering them with a lid.

Let’s try to focus on the cooking, I suppose.

I have already sliced the potatoes into large chunks. True American-sized fries. No small, inferior-sized French thingies. I place a hand over the pan filled with oil—I’ll fry them once at a slightly lower temperature and then a second time for the perfect crunch.

I move my hand over to a glass bottle that I filled with several small slices of truffles and some olive oil.

“Did you put sugar in the onions?” I suddenly hear Irene’s voice from behind my shoulder.

I almost crash into the runic stovetop before regaining my balance amidst her giggles.

Holy f—

“Yes,” I exhaled slowly after she almost gave me a heart attack. “Caramelized onions.”

“Flaminia’s signature… that caramel?” Irene’s sharp eyebrows go up. There’s a lot of curiosity in her eyes.

“Flaminia’s? Nah. She just learned how to use it for cakes, but it’s not really my favorite. You can do interesting things for smaller confectionery with caramel, but cakes? Nah. It gets old pretty fast. The novelty, at the moment, is what keeps the interest of the nobles, I suppose. Well, that and the overall low quality of the other products that makes caramel stand out.”

“How so?” Irene gets to my side. I take a long look at the pretty dress she’s wearing and then at the pan of oil.

I really don’t want her to stink like fries…

Sadly, an open window is not exactly a proper air ventilation system.

“Can you take a step back? I need to make sure we don’t smell like fries,” I say, silently activating one of my skills.

[Advanced Mana Sense]

I might be a little nervous, but magic is magic.

[Light Shaping]

I stretch the [Lights] that I am generating in the shapes of a fan’s blades and give them a good spin. In the blink of an eye, a rudimentary fan is blowing the smell of oil toward the open window.

I deactivate [Advanced Mana Sense] and charmingly turn to Irene.

“Wouldn’t want to make that pretty dress of yours smell like a kitchen,” I give her a wink.

“Not a [Baker], but a proficient [Mage],” she says with less surprise than I had anticipated. Instead, she has a smirk that makes my heart jump a little and moves my eyes back to the onions.

Yes. Onions. Focus on the onions.

“I suppose, yes,” I shrug. “Just a normal Baker. With no brackets. This world decided to nerf me, you know? Too good to be a normal [Baker]. It’s much easier this way.”

“This world?” Irene asks while her eyes follow my hands.

“Yeah, no? Also, another step back, please. I need to put the potatoes in the oil.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Quite the waste of oil,” she muses.

“Oh, you don’t know?” My head slowly turns to her with wide eyes. “Wait, aren’t fries a thing?”

“Fried potatoes? You can do that, but that oil you are using could feed a family for a month. Who in their right mind would use it like that?”

Damn, I see.

It does make sense, though.

“Well, let’s splurge a little, I suppose.”

“So, how is it, being a [Mage]?” She asks, making her wine throttle around the chalice.

“Meh, I can only do a few things. [Lights], for instance. The rest? Nope. I’m just learning it as a hobby.”

“What is a hobby?” She asks.

“Huh?”

“What does it mean? Is it a Human word?”

I turn to the woman with a deep frown.

Wait.

What’s the etymology of hobby? Is it actually an Earth-only thing? But… Don’t these Elves speak English?

“Errr… it’s, like, something you do to kill time?”

“Kill time?”

“Let’s say you get back from work, and you have several hours to go by. Maybe you read a book, right?”

“A book?” Irene snorts. “If I get home early, I take care that my brother has eaten, that my sister has not spread paint all over the house and that the house is clean. If all of that is taken care of, I will stop by the market to buy some little treats for my family or something I might need for myself. Or, again, maybe I’ll just start fixing up some old clothes. Is that what you mean?”

I wrinkle my nose like a rabbit in response, my hands too busy with the food to do anything else.

“No? Like, you must have some free time. What do you do when every chore is taken care of?”

“Talk to my sister or my brother,” Irene shrugs. “Maybe take a walk in the park and see who’s still around the bakery. What do you do? You read books? Magic books?”

Book, sadly. Magic book.

I feel a little spark of electricity climbing up the back of my neck.

“Oh, yeah, before coming to Amorium, I would read a lot of fiction. Now, I mostly do magic as a hobby.”

“And when do you clean your apartment?” She says, looking around the rather messy place. “Well, I guess you don’t really do that, do you?”

Ouch.

What, is it my fault that my mother spent so much time at my apartment that I could barely operate my own washing machine? Obviously not.

“Waiting for the right woman to clean up after me,” I say with yet another wink.

“I can see why you would invite me here, then,” she snorts. “But I’ll tell you, Human, I don’t know how you do things on Teiko, but here, it doesn’t work the same way. We don’t allow men to have multiple wives.”

WHAT?! HUMANS DO?! ARE HUMANS THE ONES WHO ALLOW MULTIPLE WIVES?!

“One good wife makes up for all the wives one could wish for,” I say smoothly, grinding my teeth right after.

“Are you really interested in marrying an Elf? You would be the scandal of the entire city, you know?”

“I? Not us?”

Boom. That was a good one.

“Oh, we would be a much bigger scandal than you could handle, for sure.”

“Heh, I can handle pretty big scandals, don’t worry.”

“Oh, you’ve already had some?”

I swear to God… this woman…

“What? No, no. I—my goodness. Nothing. Do you want me to explain what I’m cooking? I was trying to do that, but we went on a tangent.”

“I would love to stay on the tangent,” she smiles sneakily, “but do go ahead. I don’t want to unroot the tree before it bears fruit.”

“So, for the burger, I made some simple buns,” I say, purposefully avoiding any bun jokes since they haven’t been working out great so far. “A seared burger made of premium Amorium beef, with caramelized onions, a bit of pastrami, some cheese, and truffle fries on the side.”

“What’s pastrami?”

“This?” I point to the pastrami-like cold cut in a little bowl.

“Leafdrift?”

“Ok, what?”

“That’s Leafdrift. Steamed, smoked, and seasoned beef? Leafdrift,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Alright, someone needs to break this down for me. Do you people notice these forest-related sayings? Like, am I going crazy?”

“Oh, it’s because we had lots of great forests.”

I look at the woman while taking out the fries and heating up the pan for the burgers.

“Is that it? Like, aren’t, I don’t know, [Dru—” I bite my tongue before I can activate the side-quest, or worse, the main quest. “You know what? It’s charming.”

I pick up my glass of wine as I look at the brunette and sip a little of the Elven vintage, wondering. Wondering about what, you might ask. Well, whether she will be interested in my… meh, bad joke. Never mind.

A bit of awkward silence falls between us, but at least it lets me finish up the burgers. I made four. Just to be sure, you know. I don’t know how much this woman eats. Me? I am famished after this afternoon. That’s why the burgers are majestic.

“That looks really good,” she says as I poke a patty with one little wooden stick to keep it together. I drizzle the truffle oil on the fries and then move everything to the table.

“It should,” I say as a small frustrated sigh escapes my lips.

I’ll be honest, if I haven’t made that clear already, this isn’t going as I thought it would. Nonetheless, I turn around with two big wooden plates in my hands. The smell of the fries reaches my nostrils and raises the corners of my mouth.

Something familiar.

Bread feels neutral. But truffle fries?

“Many think that putting truffles on fries is a great waste of money,” I explain to the beautiful woman. “Myself? I think that people should stuff their mouths with food rather than air. Too good for this, too good for that. Food is either good or bad.”

Want an example? Pineapple on pizza? It’s like saying, why don’t you put some apple slices in your sandwich? At this point, I genuinely believe anyone eating pineapple pizza only does so to irritate the rest of the population.

“Fries? Is that what Humans call fried potatoes?” She gently plucks one of the fries, smelling it with raised eyebrows.

“It’s hot,” I say.

“I’m a [Chef], Joey. I could put a piece of blazing charcoal in my mouth if I wanted to,” she says, plopping the fry into her mouth and giving it a slow chew. “The second frying made it crunchy. The first slowly cooked it on the inside. Why didn’t you boil it, though?”

“Boiled potatoes absorb too much water,” I wink, “that means they don’t get as crunchy.”

“Fried in oil,” she muses, “with truffle oil poured over them. It’s not going to be easy to sleep or do much after this.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s a bit greasy, but that’s what makes it so good.”

Irene’s eyes sweep over me before looking at the truffle fries again and popping another one into her mouth. After yet another analytical chew, she sighs and just starts eating normally.

Eating the fries before the burger. Good. She passed the first test.

“This is good enough to be on a restaurant’s menu.”

Alright, we are talking shop, then. Heh, I suppose it’s less awkward than a random conversation.

“This is better than any menu I’ve seen in Amorium,” I reply cheekily.

She smiles and shakes her head.

“I’ll say it is really good,” she says, raising a fry up to her eyes, “but it’s a bit too thick, no?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Who?”

I smile.