Was Hikigaya obsessed with younger girls?
Hikigaya himself wasn’t very clear about this.
But perhaps, possibly, maybe—there was a tiny, infinitesimal, statistically negligible possibility that it was true.
What Hikigaya didn’t know—and would never know, because the universe had a sick sense of humor—was that Himeragi Yukina was the most suitable candidate selected by the Lion King Organization after analyzing countless preference data of Hachiman Hikigaya.
In other words, among all the shrine maidens that the Lion King Organization could select, Himeragi Yukina was the one who best fit Hachiman Hikigaya’s fetishes.
But Hikigaya didn’t know that.
And so, Hikigaya was still being stubborn!
“It’s just a sense of surprise,” he declared, crossing his arms.
“A middle school student wearing an apron or something. Nothing more. Purely platonic surprise.”
Fetishes, he told himself firmly, as long as you don’t admit them, they don’t exist.
This is basic psychological self-defense.
“Yuihama-san.” Yukino’s voice cut through the room like a guillotine.
“You try making the cookies once first. Let me observe where your problem lies.”
“Okay!” Yui Yuigahama waved her small fist, looking full of energy.
“I will work hard!”
As for the result…
It left much to be desired.
Although Hachiman Hikigaya was a complete layman when it came to cooking—his expertise began and ended with instant noodles and microwave rice—even a layman like Hikigaya could see that Yumi-chan’s cooking level was simply appalling.
There were broken eggshells floating in the beaten eggs.
The flour was clumped together in a way that didn’t look like cookie dough at all—more like lunar surface terrain.
And even Hikigaya, who was standing on the side watching, knew that was salt, not sugar…
You really don’t need to put that much of an industrial seasoning like vanilla extract, he wanted to scream.
And your milk is about to overflow.
Stirring evenly doesn’t mean you should just poke around with a stick.
The viscous unknown liquid is scattered all over the table…
What about Yukinoshita?
Save the situation!
Hachiman Hikigaya turned back to look at Yukino Yukinoshita, only to see that this unflappable woman was already pale—her face drained of all color, as if she had seen the end of the world.
This cooking skill, Hikigaya realized, seemed to have transcended the limits of humanity.
Stop, Yumi-chan, he pleaded silently.
Stop.
This is not making cookies at all.
Is this making some kind of terrifying biological weapon?
“Let’s add some instant coffee powder,” Yui said, reaching for a container.
“I feel like it can enhance the flavor.”
Not bad, Hikigaya thought.
At least she still has some normal thinking.
He wanted to say something encouraging—until he saw the mountain of black powder she dumped into the mixture.
A feeling called sympathy welled up in his heart.
Suddenly, he wasn’t jealous of the popular handsome guy at all.
Especially the one secretly loved by Yumi-chan.
Having to accept this love that was enough to be fatal…
“It’s really hard,” Hikigaya murmured.
“Unknown handsome classmate.”
You have my deepest condolences.
May your digestive system rest in peace.
“Hachiman?” Yuzuru tilted her head.
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing, Great Angel.” He shook his head solemnly.
“I’m just expressing appropriate respect to the warrior who is about to sacrifice himself in the distance.”
Yuigahama’s cooking was barely completed after much stumbling—after Yukino had to intervene several times just to prevent the mixture from achieving sentience and crawling off the table.
This lump of dough with complex ingredients—too complex, Hikigaya thought, ingredients shouldn’t require a chemical safety data sheet—was scorched in the oven for what felt like an eternity.
What emerged was a black lump.
It didn’t look much like food.
Rather, it looked like the coal used in rural areas in earlier times—the kind you’d find in a historical drama about the Meiji era.
“Okay, A-Hiki!” Yui presented her creation with disturbing enthusiasm.
“Come and taste it!”
“I refuse!”
“In that way, you might become a useful Hikigaya.”
“You just said test the poison, right?!”
Yukino Yukinoshita didn’t answer.
She just stared at the strange-shaped object with a grave expression—the kind of expression a general might make when confronted with an enemy weapon of mass destruction.
It seemed she couldn’t understand it either.
This was normal, Hikigaya reasoned.
Just like how a top student during an exam could never understand why a poor student couldn’t even solve a basic problem.
Humans who could see the answer in their minds just by looking at the question could hardly understand this feeling of culinary despair.
“Let’s just taste it.” Yukino’s voice was grim, resigned—like a soldier accepting a suicide mission.
“We can’t easily draw conclusions without knowing how it tastes.”
As if having made some kind of resolution, she broke off a corner of the strange object, divided it into two, and handed one part to Hikigaya.
“You try it too.”
“Are you sure…” Hikigaya stared at the charcoal-like fragment in his hand, “…that charcoal is really something that can be eaten?”
“Although the taste might be hard to describe—” Yukino’s eye twitched, “—considering that the ingredients used are technically safe, it shouldn’t reach the level of food poisoning.”
“Is it really necessary to go to this extent?”
“Isn’t there a saying?” Yukino met his eyes.
“If you don’t enter the tiger’s den, you won’t catch the tiger’s cub?”
That saying, Hikigaya thought, usually doesn’t refer to eating the tiger’s leavings.
No.
No coma!
After the Fourth Progenitor swallowed the mysterious dark matter—against every instinct in his body, against the protests of the Familiar Beasts within him, against all laws of God and man—he did not fall into a coma!
Was this truly the constitution of the legendary strongest vampire?
Or was he just too stubborn to die?
“Hachiman!” Yuzuru grabbed his arm, her eyes wide with concern.
“Are you okay? Swallowing such an ominous thing…”
“I shouldn’t die.” Hikigaya waved a shaky hand.
“What about Yukinoshita?”
He turned to check on Yukino Yukinoshita.
That brilliant woman seemed to have lost her luster at this moment—standing there silently, her body exuding an atmosphere called gray.
Her usual sharpness had dissolved into something hollow and empty.
Was it an illusion?, Hikigaya wondered.
Yukinoshita’s eyes seemed to be moist.
She shouldn’t be crying, right?
Snow woman’s tears or something—that’s too supernatural.
“Really—” Yui Yuigahama’s cheeks puffed out, insulted.
“Is it that bad?”
She gritted her teeth—foolishly, Hikigaya thought—picked up a piece, stuffed it into her mouth—
Her face changed drastically.
“Drink water.” Kaguya, on the side, proved to have the best emergency handling skills of anyone in the room.
She quickly handed a water glass to Yui.
“Although I didn’t eat it, I can imagine.” Her voice was calm, clinical.
“Don’t chew it. It’s better to swallow it with water.”
Kaguya, Hikigaya noted, had clearly seen some things in her life.
“Senpais.” Himeragi Yukina’s gentle voice came from the corner—where she had quietly brewed a pot of tea like the responsible middle schooler she was.
“Please come and drink some tea to ease up. You look like you’re having a hard time.”
Hard time, Hikigaya thought, was an understatement.
He had faced a time-manipulating spirit today.
He had dodged bullets that stopped time itself.
And somehow, the thing that had brought him closest to death…
…was a cookie.
Made by a normie.
For her crush.
The universe, Hachiman Hikigaya concluded, had a truly transcendent sense of humor.
After everyone gulped down a large cup of Himeragi’s black tea—thank you, government-issued observer, he thought—they seemed to have recovered a bit of their sense of taste.
A bit, he emphasized.
The trauma would remain.
After drinking three cups in a row—three, Hikigaya counted, each one more desperate than the last—Yukinoshita’s eyes finally regained their luster.
But the fine sweat on her forehead still indicated the unspeakable great horror she had just encountered.
What kind of cookie, Hikigaya wondered, leaves a snow woman sweating?
“Are you all recovered?” Yukino set down her cup, her voice steadying.
“Then let’s discuss how to improve it now.”
“I think it would be faster,” Hikigaya said flatly, “to send Yumi-chan back to the oven to be remade.”
“It’s not Oil Cake!”
“Yuzuru thinks,” the angel announced with absolute certainty, “that Yuihama-san can change her profession to become a Dark Magician!”
“I don’t know any dark magic!” Yui’s face contorted in protest.
“And I won’t be split into several cards!”
A gyaru like you actually knows Yu-Gi-Oh!?
Hikigaya stared at her.
Perhaps there was more to this normie than met the eye.
…Or perhaps everyone had been scarred by the cookie experience to the point of delirium.
Everyone was talking about strange things—Yuzuru suggesting career changes, Yui defending her anime knowledge, Kaguya quietly nodding along—but they reached an astonishing consensus on one point: do not let Yuigahama cook unsupervised.
Even the incomparably confident Yukinoshita—the woman who had never met a challenge she couldn’t conquer—now had some doubts about whether she could really save Yui Yuigahama’s cooking skills.
Doubt, Hikigaya noted.
In Yukinoshita Yukino.
The rarest of all phenomena.
Right up there with solar eclipses and genuine apologies from politicians.
But Yukino still didn’t give up.
Perhaps the word “retreating in the face of difficulties” really didn’t exist in her dictionary—or perhaps her pride simply wouldn’t allow her to admit defeat in front of the class’s resident dead-fish-eyed cynic.
“Then let’s do this.” Yukino folded her arms, her expression shifting into lecture mode.
“I’ll demonstrate. Yuigahama, you follow my steps and learn step by step. We’ll see where the problem actually lies.”
“I don’t think it’s a question of where the problem lies.”
Hikigaya poured a bucket of cold water over the proceedings with the precision of someone who had spent his entire life perfecting the art of negativity.
“I think what should really be considered,” he continued, “is whether Yumi-chan even possesses the concept of cooking.” He gestured at the black lump still sitting on the baking sheet like a crime scene exhibit.
“Even if you follow the steps exactly—measure for measure, minute for minute—are you sure you can determine where the problem lies when the problem might be… existential?”
When the problem, he didn’t say, might be that Yui Yuigahama’s hands were blessed by a god of chaos.
Yukino’s eyes were grave.
She didn’t like Hachiman Hikigaya’s negative attitude—she never did—but she did have to consider his point.
There was a gap in talent between people.
Whether it was studying or sports or cooking, some people were simply born with an aptitude that others lacked.
And Yui Yuigahama, by all available evidence, had been born with an inaptitude for anything involving flour.
…But Yukinoshita Yukino did not give up easily.
“Yuzuru. Kaguya.” Her gaze swept across the room, calculating.
“And this distant cousin of Hikigaya.”
Himeragi blinked.
“Me?”
“You three,” Yukino said, “would you mind participating?” She paused, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully.
“I need a control group.”
A control group, Hikigaya repeated in his head.
She’s treating this like a scientific experiment.
…Actually, that might be the only way to salvage this situation.
“You want us to make cookies too?” Yuzuru’s face lit up.
“Yuzuru can do it, desu!”
“I’m not confident,” Kaguya admitted, “but I can try.”
Himeragi looked at Hikigaya—a questioning glance, seeking permission.
He shrugged.
If you want to participate in this madness, his shrug said, be my guest.
I’m just here for the entertainment.
“I’ll do my best,” Himeragi said finally, tying her apron strings tighter.
“Excellent.” Yukino nodded, her expression grave.
“Then let’s establish the baseline. Three control subjects—each with different backgrounds and skill levels—will allow us to isolate the variables.”
“Variables,” Hikigaya muttered.
“She’s using the word variables.”
“Shut up, Hikigaya. You’re the observer.”
The observer, he thought.
Finally, a title that suits me.
No cooking.
No tasting.
Just watching and judging from a safe distance.
This, Hachiman Hikigaya decided, was the best club activity ever.