A little over a year after I joined the club, everyone, with Itsumi and Sayuri at the core, seemed to be getting along well. We all enjoyed the activities and events, and I never imagined we’d have to deal with some of the recent problems.
One day I was in the kitchen, sifting a mixture of powdered sugar and almond flour, when Itsumi came in looking unusually morose.
“Itsumi, is something wrong?”
“Yes, actually,” she sighed. “I’m being stalked. I don’t know what to do.”
“What?”
I immediately thought of the underclassmen who waited for Itsumi in the hallways and en route to school. I’d seen students give her letters and presents before, and others ask her for her e-mail address. Itsumi was always kind to these students, but deep down the constant attention must have been wearing her out.
“You can’t help standing out. Everyone loves you.”
“No, it’s not like that. This one actually follows me home.”
“What? To your house?”
“Yeah. Insisting that she wants to be my brother’s tutor.”
Private tutor. Which meant—
“You can’t turn her down?” I asked.
“I did, several times. But then she even offered to do it for free. I couldn’t possibly let her do that, so I’m giving her a monthly salary…but, even so, I don’t like it.”
“That’s so weird. Why don’t you talk to the principal about it?”
“I don’t know, I feel like that would be underhanded or something. The academy forbids part-time jobs, right? She knew that and yet still went directly to the principal and told him she had to have one to financially survive. He suggested tutoring my little brother as a part-time job. So she basically forced him to give her a job.”
“I had no idea…”
I added a few pinches of sugar to the bowl of thawed eggs that I’d taken out of the freezer, and then whipped the mixture together until it foamed.
“What are you making?”
“Macarons.”
“Wow, are those hard to make?” Itsumi stuck her pointer finger into the bowl and licked the sweet meringue off her finger like a child. I put the sifted cocoa powder into the bowl and smoothed out the mixture with a rubber spatula.
“How do I put this…it’s kind of sad. Pitiful, really. There’s no way a poor girl like her can ever fit in at our academy, but she still tries so desperately. She doesn’t have any money to go to the beauty salon, so she just goes to the nurse’s office and bleaches her hair with hydrogen peroxide. She embroiders brand-name logos into cheap handkerchiefs. None of the other students want to go near her and yet she thinks that she actually fits in. Everyone just secretly laughs at her behind her back.”
“That’s really sad,” I agreed.
The preparations were complete. The real showdown that would determine the macarons’ success or failure would now begin. I pushed the rubber spatula against the side of the bowl and folded over the bubbles in the mix.
“Why are you folding when it’s all nice and fluffy?” Itsumi asked, surprised.
“Because I have to macaronage.”
“Macaronage?”
“It’s where you fold over the bubbles so the batter doesn’t expand too much. If there are too many bubbles, cracks will form in the surface of the batter and the macaron’ll break apart. But if you get rid of too many, it’ll lose its shape and become flat. It’s difficult to figure out how much you should macaronage.”
“So, I’m guessing this is the most important part of making macarons.” Itsumi watched attentively as I tirelessly folded the bubbles over. The batter now had a glossy shine to it.
“Can I try for a little bit?” she asked.
“Sure.” I normally would never trust someone else with such a crucial step of the process, but I knew Itsumi had a good sense for these things, and I dutifully passed her the bowl. This was proof that I really trusted her intuition.
“Anyway, that’s why I can’t reject her outright,” she continued.
Itsumi evenly folded over each section of the batter as she slowly turned the bowl. After a few minutes of folding, she put down the bowl and raised the rubber spatula in her hand. The chocolate-colored batter drooped over.
“What do you think? Still not enough?”
“Nope, not yet. Try smoothing out the bubbles a little bit more.”
Itsumi listened to my instructions and kept at it. Light drops of sweat formed on her smooth forehead.
“But it’s not just that.”
“She doesn’t just stalk you? Showing up at your house already sounds pretty out there to me.”
“Believe it or not, some things from my house have gone missing.”
“No way!” I was shocked.
“At first it was just small things, like handkerchiefs and make-up bags, but then it escalated to a Remoges watch and fine glasses. She even stole money from my wallet.”
“Isn’t that something a thief would do?”
“Right.” Itsumi was about to go at the macaron batter even harder when I stopped her hand and lifted the spatula. The batter dripped in a pretty ribbon into the bottom of the bowl.
“Did you tell the police?”
“I can’t. The students are like family to me.” Itsumi seemed really at a loss.
I separated the batter into two pastry bags and gave one of them to Itsumi. We squeezed the batter into circles on the parchment paper.
“My circles didn’t come out as pretty as yours,” she pouted.
“Practice makes perfect.”
We were able to make over one-hundred circles on the parchment paper, but needed to let them dry before putting them in the oven.
“Why don’t we have some tea while we wait?” Itsumi put some water on to heat and placed tea leaves in the teapot.
“What kind of tea are you making?”
“I thought some Earl Grey might be nice. I heard strong aromas help relieve stress.”
Itsumi boiled the water, steeped the leaves in the teapot, and when it was ready, poured the tea into our Minton teacups. We drank our tea in the kitchen instead of the salon. I enjoyed it when teatime was more casual, like this.
“Do your parents know?”
“Of course they do. I mean, our money and possessions have just been disappearing from my house. She doesn’t care that my family wants her to stop tutoring. She just hangs around, eats our food, and then leaves.”
“Urn…Well, I can get rid of her if you want me to.”
“Huh?” Itsumi popped her eyes wide open and she burst out laughing. “Akane, you’re funny. How could a petite doll of a girl like you possibly ‘get rid’ of someone?”
She stopped laughing, and smiled with relief. “Thanks for that, I feel a little better.”
“You can come and talk to me anytime you’d like.”
Since then, Itsumi often came to the kitchen to talk to me when she had problems with the private tutor. She’d follow me to the sink, refrigerator, and oven while I moved around the kitchen. Those were the only times where it felt like I was actually the older one in our relationship. I was surprised at how much she had let her guard down in front of me.