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CHAPTER 1 – POSTER GIRL AND DARK MATTER
PART 06
——
After school, I hurriedly made my way over to the “Nozomiya” to taste
or rather, be poisoned by, Tsumiki’s cooking.
But having waited in vain at “Nozomiya”‘s main counter with no one in sight, I sent R on a mission to peek into the kitchen.
“Rekka-san, please don’t die here, ok?” she commented before floating away.
I didn’t know it I should be worried or irritated by her comment.
A terrible anxiety gnawed at me as I rested an elbow on one of the tabletops and let out a sigh.
The only people in “Nozomiya” at the moment seemed to be only R, Tsumiki and myself. I’d heard from Tsumiki that her parents were out on an errand in town, and wouldn’t be back till late.
I’d actually considered asking Satsuki to come along, but she’d gone off to the hills at the back of the school in search of magical herbs before I could ask her.
“I’ll make some simple medicines to protect your stomach, Rekka, as well as some anti-curse and poison antidotes,” she’d said before she left.
Satsuki’s concern was a real comfort to me.
Jokes aside, I was sure that the only thing stopping death from conquering me were her spells.
I hoped that she would hurry back with them.
Just then, Tsumiki, dressed in a short-sleeved top with her hair wrapped in a triangular head scarf, came out of the kitchen.
“It’s done.”
Alright, here we go

This was it, my first assignment as a taste tester
I had only a brief moment to steel myself before it began.
“Nnrgh!?”
For the nth time that day, an “Armageddon” exploded inside my mouth as I toppled from the chair and spasmed on the floor.
Glaring down at me with a sullen expression on her face, Tsumiki tapped on my shoulder with her ladle and asked in a casual tone,
“So? How does it taste?”
“Extremely bad!”
I yelled as a pounding headache set in, but that pain was nothing compared to the torture happening in my mouth.
“That’s because you don’t cultivate good habits.”
“Why do I feel like I’m in Hell, being judged by a demon!?”
After downing countless cups of water to cool my body, Tsumiki finally led me into the kitchen to her preparation table. Shouldn’t she have done this before making me eat her creation?
I would forever remember what happened next

~~~~~
“Whoa! Why on earth are you mixing those ingredients together!?”
“I’m creating a new sauce.”
“But you’ve already added in more than ten ingredients! The bowl’s so full that it’s overflowing!”
“Shut up, just lick the spoon and try it.”
“Mmph
! 
Bleargh!?”
~~~~~
“Wait. What is this collection of weeds? Some of them still have mud on the roots.”
“Weeds are just undiscovered herbs, some of which may just be edible. Let’s put them all into the blender.”
“GYAAH! Why did you add in fermented mackerel!?”
“Weeds and fermented mackerel have similar-sounding names*, so they probably will taste good together. Let’s blend!”
“But fermented mackerel isn’t a plant! And this really stinks
did you clean the mud off those weeds?”
“But they say that mud on vegetables is a sign of freshness.”
“That’s what grocers say when they sell it to you. You have to clean them after you buy them!”
“Oh, that’s right. I’ll add in some gelatin here so it’ll thicken up into a jelly. Jellies are usually sweet, so let’s add some sweetness too. Do you prefer chocolate or candy?”
~~~~~
“So
why is it that everything you cook turns out to be Dark Matter?”
“Who knows?”
“That’s because you keep adding weird things! Don’t you know!? If you mix all the colors on your paint palette, you’ll end up with black! This is the same! Please, let’s try to make something more ordinary!?”
“But an ordinary dish isn’t going to win Food Champion! We need something that’s impactful!”
“We’re not celebrities auditioning for some movie! Don’t you think there’s something more important than impact?!”
“
A theme song?”
“This isn’t a pro-wrestling competition—!”
~~~~~~

Rather than a cooking session, this was turning out to be more like a comedy show.
Without even the most basic knowledge and doubt of her own skill, Tsumiki’s cooking was truly so novel and extraordinary, it almost seemed like food from another dimension.
“Arghh~ seriously! You’ve been talking too much! I should have done this myself!”
Tsumiki muttered furiously.
“

”
I had no more energy to argue with her as I leaned back heavily against my chair, mind blank.
An awkward silence descended upon the kitchen.
“
I’m throwing this away outside.”
With that, Tsumiki picked up a huge plate piled with black blobs and headed out the service door.


*sigh*
Letting out a gusty sigh, I clutched at my head with my hands.
Food Champion was scheduled to take place a week from now, which meant that I needed to find the light that would guide this “story” to a happy ending before that happened.
However, I was a person who couldn’t even get my own household chores done. It would be impossible for me to create pro-level cuisine. Even Satsuki, Iris and Harissa would be of no help, and R would never help me with a story’s “resolution” as well.
“

”
Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, I combed my fingers through my hair to neaten it up again.
Tsumiki had always been the poster girl of “Nozomiya”, so she’d never done any cooking before. Though with those skills, her parents would probably forbid her from entering the kitchen anyway.
Of all the people I knew, the ones who could really cook were my old man and Satsuki
 Well, I was sure I could get Satsuki to help out, but it would be almost impossible for her cooking to win the Food Champion.
Then again, I thought that getting Tsumiki to learn from Satsuki was the best choice we had.
However, when I voiced that suggestion to Tsumiki earlier on,
“You’re really such an idiot! You talk as if this place is famous for some delicacy, like how Utsunomiya is famous for gyoza and Sanuki is famous for udon, and ‘Nozomiya’ is a famous eatery with a long tradition in making such delicacies and I just had to learn how to. But no! This city is not famous for any cuisine! And ‘Nozomiya’ is just a plain old family eatery! So doing what we’ve always done is not going to help us win! That’s why I need to create a new delicacy that nobody has ever seen before!”
She’d shouted as she hurled a pineapple directly into my face. That really hurt. No thanks to her, my face was now covered in bandaids.

But Tsumiki’s logic made sense.
For “Nozomiya”, a ordinary eatery with no trademark delicacy, to win Food Champion, we needed to aim for a homerun.
That was why Tsumiki had foregone all theory and jumped straight into those extraordinary cooking methods. There was really no other choice.
“If only there was a real opponent, like an evil Demon King or wizard, to defeat
 This is as impossible as those other opponents. Shit!”
This situation was truly a burden as heavy as the others.
If I didn’t do something soon, Tsumiki and “Nozomiya” would both head towards a bad ending. I had to stop that from happening, no matter what.
“
Cooking, huh?”
Anyway, winning Food Champion was only the first step, we still needed to get the customers to frequent “Nozomiya” once again.
Maybe I could employ some underhanded trick, like getting one of the girls to cast some magic and decceive the palates of the Food Champion judges to secure victory. But if the customers returned to find that the winning new delicacy wasn’t delicious, they would still leave eventually.
“So, will Rekka-san successfully resolve this ‘story’?”
R teased as she floated on her back, languidly kicking her legs and propelling herself through the air.
“Arghh, this is really tough.”
“Oh dear, don’t chicken out now.”
“But don’t they always say that it takes years to master cooking? I was just thinking
if we can’t win with skill, maybe we can search for a totally new ingredient that nobody has ever tasted before
 That may be our only way to win this.”
Though there was a higher chance that we would find some random weird ingredient instead.
If Iris was here, maybe I could have asked her to gather some new ingredients only available on other planets. But she was not here right now, and I had no way of contacting her.
“By the way, Tsumiki’s been gone for a long while, don’t you think?”
“Now that you mention it
”
R and I turned towards the kitchen’s service entrance.
Since she’d headed outside with the plate, she must have gone to the dump near the back of the eatery. I was sure she couldn’t have wandered any further while carrying all that Dark Matter.
But she had been gone for more than ten minutes.
Maybe she was getting something done outside
but I was still vaguely worried.
“Shall we go look for her?”
“Alright.”
I stood up from my seat and headed out the service entrance, with R swimming along beside me.
——
Note:
Tsumiki mentioned that “weeds and fermented mackerel have similar-sounding names”. Wild grass in Japanese is “kusa”, while the common name for fermented mackerel is “kusaya”. Find out more about Kusaya here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusaya