We made our way to the kitchen in the back of the cafeteria and Marin immediately began eyeing all of the equipment at her disposal. I’ve cooked a little bit in my life, but baking isn’t something I have the most experience with outside of some cheap boxed brownies where you only need to add some eggs, vegetable oil and water. I imagine that the ultimate baker wouldn’t be doing it by those same means. I decided to try and look around the kitchen for some tools that look like they’d help make some brownies. I spotted an automatic mixer out of the corner of my eye.
“Hey, Marin, I found a mixer. You want me to grab it?”
“No need! I found a whisk in this drawer and a bowl in this cupboard, so I’m all set.”
“Wouldn’t this mixer be faster?”
“For your average baker maybe. In my culinary school confection courses, they told us to only train with a whisk because automatic mixers won’t always be available to you.”
“Reminds me of when math teachers talk about not always having a calculator on you when they teach you long division,” I said. Marin giggled.
“Yeah, but I doubt there will be an automatic mixer app on your phone that’ll do anything helpful.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
Marin started scrounging around in the cabinets, fridges and the walk-in freezer that were present in the kitchen. This kitchen was quite large, and as expected there were many potential weapons present in the vicinity. There were large knives on the wall, meat tenderizers in the drawers and large skewers hanging on the cabinets. Weapons for just about any cause of death you could think of. Hopefully, it’s not as easy for someone else more dangerous to convince the guards to let them in.
“Looks like we’ve got everything that we need for some gourmet brownies,” Marin said while piling a bunch of stuff on the counter. “We’re going to do a simple, yet very delicious brownie recipe that won’t take too long but also won’t sacrifice any of the elegance.”
I looked on the counter and there were a lot more ingredients than the three that were required to make cheap boxed brownies. There was dark chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, cocoa powder, and cinnamon sugar all laid out. Marin looked at me mischievously.
“I propose we do a little competition, what do you say?” Marin asked.
“What kind of competition? If it has to do with baking, I guarantee you’ll wipe the floor with me.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be more of a competition of woman versus machine rather than me versus you.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
“We’re both going to make our own pan of brownies and we’ll see who can mix faster, me, or the automatic mixer that you will be using.”
“That does sound interesting. You can finally prove that the machines won’t take over by beating them in a competition of speed. I’m in.”
“Great! I’m gonna put that evil robot in its place!” Marin said while thrusting her fist in the air. I laughed.
“Alright, so how do we start?” I asked.
“I’ll help you put the ingredients together in your mixing bowl, then we’ll count down from three and start mixing and the winner will be the one who fully mixes theirs first.”
“Okay, seems pretty straightforward. I’ve mixed brownies a few times before so it shouldn’t be an issue.”
Marin then started putting the ingredients in each of our bowls. She didn’t grab any measuring cups and seemed to know all the amounts needed by heart and could measure them with just her eyes. As expected from the Ultimate Baker. No instructions or measurement tools needed. Only the ingredients and the tools needed to mix and cook them. She worked fast and within a minute all the ingredients were in our bowls ready for the competition to begin.
“You ready to go?” she asked while looking over at me.
“I was born ready.”
“Alright, I’ll count us down. We’ll start on ‘Go’”. I nodded. “3…2…1…GO!”
I turned on my automatic mixer and it was immediately mixing at a speed my eyes could barely follow. It must’ve been a high-quality mixer. It even had a timer on it that showed how long you have been mixing for. I was making great progress, and I estimated I’d only need about twenty more seconds of mixing before I’d be done, so I looked over at Marin…and couldn’t believe my eyes. Her whisk was moving so fast it was at a speed my eyes couldn’t follow at all! Her face was one of pure determination and her movements were insanely quick and obviously very experienced. I looked over at my own bowl and saw that I was nearing the end of the mixing and figured this would be a close match. I looked back over at Marin, and she was sitting on the counter next to a brownie tin full of perfectly mixed batter. I couldn’t believe it. After ten more seconds I finished my mixing and looked at the time on the mixer which was stopped at forty seconds. Amazingly, it only took forty seconds with this high-quality mixer to mix the brownie batter perfectly, but even more amazing was the fact that Marin had done it ten seconds faster than that. She didn’t look remotely tired either, even after going at that incredible speed.
“I guess you win. I can’t believe you can move your arm that fast!” I said.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“They taught us well! I was an exchange student for my last year of high school. I went to France to attend their best high school confectionery program, and they were very adamant about us learning quick hand-mixing.”
“Must’ve been some school…You’ve definitely convinced me that you are the owner of your title.” I bowed to her.
“Why thank you, kind sir.” She said bowing back while slightly lifting her apron. “Now let’s throw these puppies in for 32 minutes and get ready for the final headcount. It’s a good thing we ended up doing brownies because they always go quicker than a lot of other desserts.”
“Brownies truly are good for a lot of things,” I said.
“Sure are. Brownies are one of the first desserts they taught us to bake back in my school. It’s almost nostalgic every time I make them now. Reminds me of simpler times, y’know, before things turned so weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, the whole college from hell scenario we’re living in.”
“Ah. Yeah, that was kinda obvious. Dumb question.” I said, feeling slightly embarrassed. Marin giggled.
“Yeah, but I suppose there’s more to it than that. Even before I arrived, things were weird.” She looked down at her shoes with a somber expression. “I wouldn’t want to bore you with my problems though! We’ve obviously got bigger fish to fry these days, or should I say brownies to bake. Outside problems seem a lot smaller now that we’re here.”
“You can still tell me about it if you’re comfortable with sharing. We’ve got all the time in the world right now.”
It was still strange to me how easy it was to talk to Marin. I keep coming back to this thought, but it’s because it’s so odd to me. I mean we’ve known each other for less than a day. It’s not like I’ve never had good relationships with others where I could be myself, but those bonds take months or even years to forge with someone, and many don’t want to stick around that long due to the constant awkwardness before the seal on my true personality breaks and they truly get to know me for me. With Marin it’s like that seal was never there to begin with. I didn’t think this was possible for someone as socially inept as me, but it’s refreshing to be having normal conversations with someone new without them all being centered around awkward small talk. I suppose I’ll have to use this to my advantage to get to know her more, especially since we’re going to be living in the same room for God knows how long. Hopefully, it won’t be too much longer, but I guess there are pros and cons to it.
“Are you sure?” Marin asked. “I promise it’s not that exciting.”
“Totally sure. We’ve still gotta wait for the brownies to bake anyway, and I’d love to learn some more about my new roommate. Might help us bond a bit.” I worried that I was coming on too strong, even though I tried to tone it down a bit.
“Alright, but you’re not allowed to use my family problems against me ever! You have to swear!” Marin held out her pinky to me.
“I promise, I won’t. This conversation won’t leave this room,” I said while grasping her pinky finger with my own, solidifying the promise.
“There’s nothing more sacred than the ‘unbreakable pinky promise’ so I trust you,” she said, happy with my compliance to her demands. “Okay, so let’s start at the beginning of my lore. I was raised by a single mother in the middle of nowhere in Iowa. We lived in a town of only 800 people, so the whole community was very close.” Her eyes sparkled when she was talking, it seemed like she had fond memories of her home. “My dad was never around. My parents were never married, and I was what you might call a ‘bastard child.’ I never got to speak to him much at all throughout my life. He came to my high school graduation though, which was the first time I’d seen him since some random family event when I was like 10 or 11. I’m not sure what I was expecting of him when he came to my graduation, but it definitely wasn’t what ended up happening. He said a bunch of bullshit about how proud of me he was and how I was going to do great things now that I was invited to go to Fortune’s Favor University. I’m not sure how he found all this out, especially since he never called or texted me or my mom over the past like six or seven years, but get this, he proposed to my mom at the end of my graduation party… and she said yes! I had seen them talking on and off during my graduation and my graduation party, but there’s no way they hit it off that well! My mom is a great woman, and she’s been everything to me my entire life. She helped me become the best person I could have possibly been. She used to bake for me all the time and that’s where my love for it came from, and she always let me bake any time I wanted to, even when I left a big mess…” Marin looked like she was on the verge of tears. “He was NEVER there though! Not through the hard times, the good times, not through any of it! I just don’t understand why she said yes…”
Marin looked more downcast than I’d ever seen her before. She seemed to forget the situation we were in and thought only of her frustrations with her home life.
“I confronted her about it, and she told me that she always loved my father, and always hoped that this would happen, but even if that’s true, I can’t accept it! He doesn’t deserve her!” She had a furious look on her face. “I just can’t help but feel like my dad has a dishonest motive for wanting to reconnect with us after so many years…” She looked up at me. “Am I crazy? I don’t want to stomp on my mom’s feelings if this truly makes her happy, but I don’t want him to take advantage of her. I’ll die before I let that happen.”
“No, I don’t think you’re crazy. From the way you describe the events, I have to suspect that he’s back in your life because of your talent. He wants to piggyback off the wealth or fame you’ll get after graduating from FFU. I might be wrong though,” I said.
“That’s the same conclusion I had. But, even if that’s true, I can’t call him out for it. I would just get shut down and probably get called a narcissist for accusing him of that before I even became successful. I also don’t want to ruin my mom’s happiness…She’s the reason I got as far as I have.” Her eyes were tearing up.
“I’m sorry you’re going through that. That’s a very tough situation to be in. The obvious solution would be to try and get proof that your dad is trying to mooch off of you, but that’s easier said than done, and it would probably upset your mom if you were caught.”
“Yeah, that’s just it. It feels like no matter what, my mom and I lose, and he wins,” she said, burying her face in her hands.
I wasn’t sure if I would be overstepping by trying to comfort her, but something told me to do it anyway. I walked next to her and put my hand on hers.
“I agree that it might not look like there’s a way out where you and your mom are both unscathed, but that doesn’t mean that showing her the truth is the wrong thing to do. If he’s marrying her just for the money, then I think that showing her the truth will help her much more in the long run, even if it hurts a bit in the short term. And there also might be a third option that we haven’t thought of yet where you both are happy. When we get out of her, I promise I’ll help you find that third option if it exists. You have my word.” She looked up at me with tear streaks on her face. I held up the pinky on my free hand to her. She smiled and grasped my pinky with her own.
DING DING!
“Well, looks like the brownies are done,” Marin said, wiping her face. “We should get them out and tell the guards the good news.”
“Sounds good,” I said with a smile. “I’ll grab a couple small plates.”