Without even needing to plan it out beforehand, Christina, Elezina, Christina, and even Floedina all began conspiring together to make sugary treats a daily staple. Choosing, most of all, to rally around the flag that it was what Mira wanted, they started indirectly alluding to the need for sugary treats in one’s diet. Their strategy seemed to be aimed at guiding Alfina into lifting the ban on sugary food of her own volition, without having to explicitly appeal to her.
“You guys sure are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
“Did something happen?”
The fifth sister, Elievina, and the sixth sister, Selestina, poked their heads into the dining hall while everyone was busy chatting about the sugary breakfast. Giving a start when they saw Mira in the kitchen, the two then bowed and looked around to see what everyone was so excited about.
The tables were already lined with everyone’s plates, and so the sisters excitedly chatted about sugary treats and whatnot, their plan apparently progressing quite steadily.
It was then that Christina spoke as if delivering a divine proclamation about what was going on.
And, sure enough, the pair seemed to pick up on the gravity of the situation. They started discussing how, while too much sugar was indeed a problem, a certain amount was beneficial.
I kinda just wanna dig into my French toast, but it seems like this has become a pretty big deal…
The six younger sisters were speaking in unison while attempting to convince the eldest one, Alfina, to change course on her blanket ban on sweets. As far as she could tell, the sweetest thing they ever got was fruit, and they only got that on rare occasions. It seemed to have been at least a decade since they’d had any proper sweet food, like the French toast they had sitting in front of them now.
Mira never could’ve imagined that sweet food, which she enjoyed on a daily basis, could be such a rare treat for the sisters. Astonished by this, she wondered if she’d perhaps asked for the French toast a bit too carelessly. It was just that she herself had always loved sweet food. And so, if anything, she found herself sympathizing more with the younger sisters.
Alfina remained silent as her younger sisters preached the merits of sweet food. While this was going on, Mira suddenly asked, “By the way, I’m curious. Why exactly are sweets off limits?”
If sweets hadn’t graced the dining table in over a decade, that meant they had been there earlier. So, how had things gotten this way? Mira wanted to know why.
“Um, well, it happened a long time ago, so why don’t we just forget about it… More importantly, let’s talk about now. Now!” said Christina, the first person to respond to Mira’s query.
According to her, what happened before wasn’t as important as the present moment and the days ahead. She must’ve been incredibly desperate to get sweets back on the menu, as she continued on like some kind of con artist—or rather, some kind of philosophy professor—about the importance of the future.
To be perfectly honest, she was making a fair point, but it seemed crystal clear that she was just attempting to change the subject so as to avoid talking about the past.
“So, how did it all start?” Mira asked Alfina, paying no mind to Christina’s excuses. After thinking for a moment, she began by saying, “I’m ashamed to say it, as it’ll bring to light my sisters’ shame, but…” Then she explained the reason. At this point, Christina started protesting, but the other sisters quieted her down. And, for some reason, the vibe coming from the sisters felt like one of resignation.
“It all happened seventeen years ago, when Floedina’s cooking skills really began to take off.”
The Valhalla they were in was located on a separate plane from that of the surface realm. However, there were rare occasions when various goods made their way there from the surface. Alfina continued that one of these things had been a single book which made a huge impact on their diet.
“Yes, you could even say that that book is one of the main reasons for my cooking being what it is today,” Floedina interjected. When Mira asked what exactly this book that’d helped Floedina develop her cooking chops was, Floedina grabbed the very book itself from a corner of the kitchen.
“I wouldn’t have expected it to be one of these…”
About as hefty as a dictionary and yet looking as if it were handmade, the book was in fact a proper cookbook. Inside, it had neatly written recipes for how to cook all kinds of food, from simple, stand-alone dishes to full meals, as well as recipes that one could quickly whip up in addition to ones that were much more involved. But most conspicuous of all was the sheer amount of dessert and confectionery recipes. The author of the book must have been a former player who loved sweets, as there weren’t just recipes on how to make Japanese sweets, but ones for sweets from all over the world, all written very neatly in the book’s pages.
“This is pretty incredible.”
In addition to its comprehensiveness, the recipes were written so clearly that even someone like Mira could easily understand them.
There were some sweets that Mira had never even seen before that she still thought she could whip up. Since she was in charge of making her sisters’ meals and a fairly big fan of cooking, Floedina apparently couldn’t resist trying her hand at making the recipes inside it.
“Thinking back, things weren’t quite normal back then. Because, whether it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner, our table was always filled with sugary dishes,” Alfina said as she thought back with a chagrined look washing across her face.