The Cooking Club had everything, ingredients, cookware, all of it, but Su Yu still had Ei carefully wash the ingredients and utensils they’d be using this time several more times over, especially after that horseradish-scented dish soap smell from before!
When cooking, washing the vegetables comes first.
Su Yu had to be strict.
There was no help for it.
If it were anyone else wanting to learn a thing or two about cooking from him, he’d at most offer pointers on some of the finer details.
For instance, when teaching Lumine and Kamisato Ayaka, he basically just gave verbal guidance on the usual order of adding ingredients or how high to keep the oil temperature.
But this sort of thing varies from person to person.
He understood the principle of teaching according to aptitude.
Facing a cooking prodigy like Ei, one that came only once in a hundred years, he had to approach it with the utmost caution.
Today he was going to teach a dish that supposedly even an elementary schooler could pick up with ease, or rather, something that couldn’t even be called a dish: the fried egg!
Heat the pan, add oil, crack an egg, flip it, plate it, pour on soy sauce.
Simple and crude like this, there was no way it could go wrong!
And yet, even as Su Yu thought this, seemingly foolproof, he still felt a chill run down his back…
Until Ei stood before him, ingredients and pan washed clean, face full of anticipation.
Ignoring Yae Miko beside him, who wore the look of someone watching a good show, Su Yu looked at Ei and felt some puzzlement in his heart.
After all, in his impression, wasn’t Ei a shut-in girl and a stay-at-home martial arts maniac?
What was with this girl brimming with youthful vitality, looking like she was about to become a cooking expert?
But on second thought, the reason Ei had become a shut-in in the game was because of the deaths of her sister and many friends.
In this everyday world, everyone was doing fine, and Raiden Makoto was even dutifully working without complaint.
So…
in other words, this energetic girl before him was the real, original her?
Who knows, maybe her hard training in cooking was also to give her sister a surprise?
After that bit of imagination, Su Yu came back to his senses.
This time, he was determined to teach Ei cooking, to make her into a cooking expert, starting with the fried egg!
“Come!
Let’s begin today’s lesson!”
Ei, seeing Su Yu, who’d just been spacing out and now suddenly shook her with unwavering conviction, was also completely bewildered.
But the moment she heard it was about cooking lessons, she immediately cast aside her doubts and entered a learning state.
Bang!
…
Clang!
…
…One hour later, after the pan had been sent flying for the seventh time, Su Yu, clinging to his last breath, wiped the stains on his face, whether charcoal or soot, with a still-trembling hand, and slowly got up.
I concede…
Su Yu had to admit that just now he’d been a clown, actually deluding himself into trying to break through the underlying code.
“Are you all right?” Ei nervously helped Su Yu up by the arm, gripping his sleeve tightly. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Su Yu’s earlier guess had been right.
The reason Ei was so fixated on cooking was because of her sister, Raiden Makoto.
From childhood to adulthood, her sister had always shielded her from wind and rain.
Now that she’d grown up and become sensible, she wanted to try to help her sister too.
But after she’d messed up documents Makoto had already organized within an hour, sent a message meant for Logistics to the Security Office, and mysteriously sorted a hundred documents down to just eighteen, Makoto never dared let Ei help her again.
Thinking she still had her martial skills, she’d immediately gone to help at the Security Office.
Facing a student who was late, she’d swung her wooden sword ten times in a second, sending the dumbfounded latecomer straight into the ICU.
From then on, she was certified, a member who could openly slack off.
Not causing trouble was the only thing asked of her.
But the girl was in the throes of adolescence, quite unwilling to give in, so she chose to switch to a different track.
And that track was cooking!
As for the reason…
once, when the two sisters were watching TV, a plot appeared in the drama where a younger sister made a delicious cake for her older sister.
Although Makoto didn’t say a word, Ei still noticed a trace of longing on her sister’s face.
She, Ei, though called a trouble-making spirit by the world, was still clever as hell!
She immediately chose to throw herself into the path of cooking.
Of course, this road was clearly not so easy to walk…
Even the simplest fried egg was beyond her!
“I should be…
fine, right?”
Su Yu rubbed his arms, aching from the blast of air, then looked at Ei, who aside from a bit of dust on her face was completely unharmed, and couldn’t help but marvel at the girl’s formidable physical body.
Sure enough, Ei’s martial strength and her cooking talent were inversely matched.
Only a sufficiently high combat power could support her surviving out of the kitchen.
“Let me see, this fried egg hasn’t vaporized yet.
How about you give it a taste, classmate Su Yu?”
Yae Miko, equally unscathed like nothing had happened, leaned over the messy counter, picked up a lump of indescribable substance with chopsticks, and looked over meaningfully.
This fried egg was indescribable, untouchable, unobservable.
It absolutely must not be eaten!
Su Yu made up his mind.
Though the reward was wonderful, one had to be alive to enjoy it, no?
“Eh, so even Teacher Su Yu can’t do it either?
Eh, I really can’t do anything after all.”
The small hand gripping Su Yu’s arm tightened again. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
Ei lowered her head slightly, her pretty brows furrowed into a knot, her tone filled with disappointment.
“Er, you can’t exactly say I can’t do it…”
He didn’t know whether it was the first half or second half of Ei’s sentence that affected him, but either way, if he couldn’t produce something today, Yae Miko beside him would surely nail him to the pillar of shame and savagely trample him.
Such a thing absolutely could not happen!
Whether to prove he could do it, or because of Yae Miko ever ready to strike beside him, Su Yu suddenly thought of an excellent plan.
The fried egg failed because the stove was lit, oil and a wok were used, and even seasoning was used.
All of that was too far over Ei’s head.
Better to find an ingredient that reduced the steps, tools, and procedures to the minimum.
That’s right—it was the cold dish!
“Raiden, don’t be discouraged.
It’s not that you can’t do anything, it’s just that today is the first time we’ve met, and I know too little about you, so I couldn’t find the method suited to you right away.”
Su Yu rubbed his arm while patting Ei’s shoulder with the hand that still had some strength left, and that pat rekindled a sliver of hope in the girl.
“Really, teacher?
You just said the fried egg was the simplest dish, and yet I still made it like this.
Look at me, do you think I still have a chance to become good at cooking?”
The path of cooking was her last hope, but the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.
Even Ei, who could stay calm and composed even when pranked by Yae Miko, was now somewhat uncertain.
Chef Mao was already the person with the strongest cooking talent in Ei’s impression.
If he couldn’t do it, and now Su Yu, said to be even more talented at cooking than Chef Mao, also couldn’t do it…
This truly dealt a serious blow to the girl’s heart.
But at this moment Su Yu was full of confidence.
As the old saying goes, even Master Zhuge had his moments of stumbling.
How could he be cowed by a temporary setback?
“Raiden, how are your knife skills?”
“Knife skills?
I can’t even make the simplest dish, let alone anything so advanced as knife skills.”
Ei, who’d originally still held some hope, instantly deflated upon hearing a cooking-specific term like “knife skills.” Her little mouth puckered, and she began to sulk.
“When I say knife skills, I actually mean your swordsmanship.
Whether you can wield a blade as if it were an extension of your arm.
For instance, if I told you to carve a flower into a block of tofu with a knife, could you do it?”
How confident was he in Ei’s swordsmanship?
As confident as Furina was about little cakes, as Ningguang was about Mora, as Kaeya was about tricking people, as Venti was about slacking off, even as Cyno was about cold jokes.
“I can do it!”