But I gotta say, we couldn’t have sold all the cakes and cookies if it hadn’t been for Akane Kominami.
Even if someone used the exact same utensils, ingredients, and baking techniques as Akane, her desserts would still come out on top. Her timing and intuition for baking was just uncanny.
I secretly called Akane “Alice.” She wore a frilly apron and would fit perfectly in a fairy tale—just like Alice in Wonderland.
And that’s right—once, she staged a totally stylish tea party when we discussed Alice in Wonderland. She recreated the baked butter, molasses tarts, and the Mad Hatter’s tea. She’d given us all hats, too, saying, “You all have to put these on, please!” I don’t know where she found those pieces of headgear, but she gave Mirei a playing card’s military helmet, Sayuri rabbit’s ears, Diana cat ears, Sonoko a funky hat, and Itsumi a crown with hearts on it. Yes, we were, respectively, the Playing Card Guard, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts. And it goes without saying that Akane was Alice.
It was a really fun tea party. Whenever something small happened, Itsumi would melodramatically shout, “Off with her head!” Everyone would laugh.
Come to think of it, that tea party was the first time I noticed the big red scar on Akane’s left arm. I hadn’t seen it before because her clothes cover her arms in the winter, and she wore a cardigan in the summer because she was always cold. But her Alice cosplay was half-sleeved. I didn’t realize that I’d been staring at it, but she apparently noticed my gaze and quickly hid her scar. Oh no, I didn’t mean to be rude, I thought, worried that I had offended her. But Itsumi took Akane’s arm and gently caressed it.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know,” she said comfortingly. “It’s really very cute. It’s kind of shaped like a lily.”
Itsumi’s words lifted Akane’s spirits. They helped me out, too—I mean, she saved me from looking rude. Itsumi understood how Akane felt and instantly cleared the air. She’s super sensitive to how people felt. Again, I was touched. Itsumi was a genuinely wonderful girl.
✦ ✦ ✦
I really like Akane, but I have to say, something has been bothering me.
When was it that Itsumi told us that she was going to close down the Literature Club when she graduated? I feel like that was what started it. This meant that the salon and Literature Club would be permanently shut down after just two more semesters.
I mean, the salon was originally made for Itsumi. It was sad to think about it closing and stuff, but I had always figured that everyone knew it would close when Itsumi graduated. So one day, she told us that the salon was going to be donated to an orphanage.
Then Akane, who was normally very adult-like and composed, suddenly stood up and argued with her. We were all surprised at how vehement she was. She said things like:
“Are you trying to take the salon away from us?!”
“Can’t you donate anything else to the orphanage?!”
“This is tyranny!”
The kitchen was Akane’s rock, her support system. Her house and restaurant had burned down, along with all of her plans to own her own restaurant. So this meant the salon’s kitchen, and I’m not exaggerating this time, was her only reason for living.
But Itsumi didn’t back down.
“Didn’t Jesus say to ‘love thy neighbor’?” she scolded Akane. She didn’t listen to Akane’s arguments, and the salon was still set to relocate at the end of the term.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was around then that Itsumi started saying she “didn’t feel well” after tea time.
Before, Itsumi used to sing lightheartedly along to the music she’d play in the salon while stepping in time with the beat, but after her argument with Akane, she just lay lethargically on the couch. She claimed reading made her head hurt and stopped contributing to our discussions. Akane fed us mouth-watering risotto and sandwiches—but Itsumi continued to wither away.
I just couldn’t take it anymore. I would have done anything to revive my lovely Itsumi. The campus had become so gloomy and boring without her vivacity. Writing is the only thing I can do well, so I wrote her poems of encouragement and read them aloud to her to cheer her up. But that sort of thing didn’t help her. The only thing I could do was stand there feeling frustrated as I watched Itsumi grow weaker by the day.
While thinking of ways I could cheer her up, I suddenly remembered her fondness for Mozart. I chose Peter Shaffer’s play, Amadeus, to be the theme of our next discussion, and held a special viewing of the movie version in the salon. I brought in a Karajan CD from home, figuring that anything to do with Mozart would make Itsumi happy, but she rejected my offer, saying that she was “too tired to listen.”
Then, I thought as hard as I could and it was like a light bulb went off in my head: What if we tried making the desserts from Amadeus? There’s a scene in the movie where Mozart’s wife, Constantine, eats a dessert called the “Nipples of Venus.” You make the breast by soaking a chestnut in brandy, coating it in white chocolate, and then topping it off with a chocolate chip. It’s a cute little dessert that was once very popular in France.
Even though Itsumi was exhausted, I knew she still had an appetite, and I was positive that she would eat our sweets if we made her some. I may be tooting my own horn here, but I thought it was a great idea. But I can’t bake very well, so naturally, I asked Akane for help.
There weren’t any chestnuts in the kitchen. Akane declared, “There must be a way to make it with chocolate truffles. I’ll give it a try. Leave it to me!” She skillfully began baking without even looking at the recipe. I watched her with admiration, but, knowing that I would be too clumsy to help out, decided to wait in the living room and leave it up to the pastry chef.
When I entered the living room, I saw Sonoko taking Itsumi’s blood pressure. I was looking at Itsumi’s pale arm when I had another brilliant idea. There’s a classic French dessert called the “Arms of Venus,” a roll cake that contains dried fruit. I thought it would be very fashionable to bring out both Venus’ arms and nipples at the same time. Only the sweets of a goddess were fit for Itsumi.
I’m a genius, I thought, feeling all proud of myself. I rushed online, printed out the recipe for the Arms of Venus, and then flew into the kitchen.
“Akane, do we have any dried fruits?”
Perhaps it was because I’d entered so suddenly, but Akane seemed to shudder all over in surprise. And then…I saw her hiding something behind her back.
“Shiyo, don’t scare me like that.” Akane turned to me and grinned, her cheeks twitching.
“What were you just doing?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Are you hiding something?”
“Um, no. What are you talking about?”
“Nothing…It’s fine, I must have been seeing things.”
“You must have been. I’m almost done with Itsumi’s desserts, so can I please finish in peace?” As she said, round balls of ganache were already sitting on the counter.
“Okay. I’ll go wait outside then.”
Akane didn’t take her hands out from behind her back until I’d left the room. It was kind of weird. She wasn’t acting like herself. In the end, I wasn’t able to give Akane the recipe for the arms, and she had only made the nipples. The little pinches of pink chocolate on top of the balls of white chocolate were really cute, and everyone loved them. Of course, Itsumi also enjoyed them as much as I’d hoped she would.
“Hey, it looks like Itsumi’s the only one with big nipples,” Sonoko snickered while we were eating.
Itsumi hadn’t noticed it until it was pointed out to her, but it was true: the pink parts of her dessert were slightly bigger than everyone else’s. For some reason, it felt like some sort of sign…
That’s when I first noticed. We’d tended to eat cakes, tarts, and other desserts you would cut up and share. But now, we were only served macarons, pudding, individual treats. Meaning that it wouldn’t have been hard for Akane to slip something into Itsumi’s dessert if she’d wanted, right?
And, I remembered, Itsumi always said she felt ill after eating one of Akane’s light meals. Then, there was also the time that Akane baked madeleines when Mirei first joined the club. Mirei showed up the next day all embarrassed, telling us that she had thrown up after eating something her body couldn’t handle.
If I’m not mistaken, on Mirei’s first day, Itsumi told Mirei she was full and had given her her madeleines. I remember that well because I’d been jealous of Mirei.
So what did this all mean? Was my dear Akane putting something in Itsumi’s desserts?