Ten days later, in the clinic within the ruined city, a girl in a maid outfit pressed her face up close to Zenos’s until they were nearly nose to nose.
“Come on!” Arty urged. “Come on, come on, come on, come on!”
“All right, all right! I’m going,” Zenos grumbled. “Personal space, please.”
He stood up, gently pushing Arty away, and headed for the dining room where the three leaders of the demi-humans were seated around the wooden table.
“So, what’s going on today?” Zophia asked.
“I came by like I always do, and that girl over there told me to wait in the dining room,” Lynga said.
“Do we get to eat Lily’s fabulous cooking?” Loewe asked. “I certainly hope so.”
Arty let out a mischievous chuckle at the demi-humans’ conjecture. “You all helped me back at the campsite, so I figured I’d treat you to a dessert I made myself!”
“Oh! I just remembered I have something I need to do,” Zophia said.
“My stomach really hurts all of a sudden,” Lynga remarked.
“Come to think of it, I’m pretty full,” Loewe mused.
“Wait, whaaat? Whyyy?!” Arty cried out, tears in her eyes.
The demi-humans exchanged uneasy glances.
“I just...have a really bad feeling,” Zophia explained.
“Yeah,” Lynga agreed. “My tail is tingling.”
“My skin’s strong as steel, and it broke out in goose bumps,” Loewe said.
As hardened leaders who had long kept their respective unruly tribes in check and maintained order in the slums, the three had a keen sense of danger.
“It’s okay! It’ll be good this time!” Arty mumbled to reassure herself as she went to the kitchen.
She brought back a large tray, filled with what appeared to be oddly shaped baked goods of various sizes.
“Here you go!” she exclaimed, a mix of hope and anxiety on her features. “Help yourselves!”
Zenos and the three demi-humans each picked up a pastry and took a cautious bite.
“H-How is it?” Arty asked nervously, watching them chew with bated breath.
“Huh. Not bad,” Zenos said with a nod.
“Some are overbaked, some are underbaked,” Zophia commented.
“I can kind of taste some sweetness,” Lynga noted.
“This is a cookie, right?” Loewe asked.
“Yaaaaaaaaay!” Arty shouted toward the ceiling, thrusting her right hand high into the air.
“Is it that exciting?” Zenos asked.
“I mean, they were recognizably cookies!”
“Oh. Still at that stage, huh...”
Well, considering Arty’s first attempt at cooking had looked like a failed demon summoning, this was certainly a big step forward.
“Arty worked really hard on these,” Lily said as she emerged from the kitchen with a steaming teapot, which she then placed on the table.
“This is all thanks to you, Lily,” Arty said. “Thank you.”
“You did it, Arty!”
The pair beamed at each other, exchanging a high five.
Arty’s slender, pale fingers were covered with tiny cuts, evidence of her struggle with cooking. She’d insisted on not healing them this time, claiming she’d wanted to keep the wounds as proof of her efforts.
“I’m surprised,” Zophia remarked as she sipped her tea after the meal.
Arty confidently put her hands on her hips. “Surprised by the incredible culinary talents that allowed me to master cookies in such a short time?”
“No, not that.”
“Then what...?”
“You’re the saintess and royalty too, right? You’re basically someone straight out of a fairy tale to people like us. It’s just hard to imagine a girl like you living in the slums and working hard at cooking.”
“Yeah,” Lynga added. “It’s so weird to me that I’m talking to a royal.”
“Agreed,” Loewe said. “I’d figure a royal would be all, ‘What is this horrendous dish? Off with the cook’s head!’ or something.”
Arty seemed lost in thought for a moment, then nodded. “That...sounds exactly like my brother, actually.”
“Oh, yikes,” Zenos blurted out.
The saintess gave him a vague smile. “But I don’t actually know for certain that he’d behave that way. I didn’t get to interact much with my family, and I’ve always been treated as a special case, even among royalty.”
Those who awakened to their powers as saintesses spent most of their lives in a spire at the edge of the palace. Aside from royal tutors, attending handmaidens, and occasional brief meetings with nobles and other royals, she hardly got to interact with others.
“So to me, it’s you all who seem to have come straight out of a fairy tale,” Arty explained.
Though she’d learned from her tutors about the kingdom’s history and class system, it had all been purely theoretical. The Saintess’s Spire had been specifically built so as to avoid having a view of the slums too—so Arty knew of the poor, but nothing beyond that.
“But I’ve learned that this kingdom is nothing like a fairy tale,” she concluded.
The slums were a place with no steady employment, where people had no guarantee of the next day’s meal, and where collapsing from hunger in the streets was seen as a matter of course.
“I...used to think food would just materialize, and that cooking was simply something that happened on its own. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? Even making a single cookie takes so much work, and I had no idea...” Arty murmured, staring at her injured fingertips.
Perhaps the reason she didn’t come across as entitled was because her isolated upbringing had never given her the chance to wield any sort of serious authority.
“You know, at first I figured you’d last three days before giving up,” Zenos told her. “But you’re surprisingly adaptable.”
Arty smiled proudly. “You underestimated me, I see. Well, this is nothing! I’ll be making lunch today, so I expect you all to stay and eat.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Zophia replied.
“I’m stuffed with cookies,” Lynga remarked.
“I came here to eat Lily’s cooking, personally,” Loewe said.
“Oh, come on...!” Arty lamented.