Chapter 66: Carrot Cake

Translator: Moongirl

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On Sunday afternoon, I watched a movie I’d wanted to see for a while, and then had lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant.

Chii-chan had gotten 2 pair tickets, so I, Chii-chan, Arioka, and Mizuhara went together. As we enjoyed some piping hot pizza, the conversation topic switched to Michel’s haircut.

「The club members are trying to copy Michel!」

「Yuck! Even though that haircut’s ruined Michel’s image…」

【If bobbed hair is what ups your popularity with the girls, I’m gonna try it too!】 The members misunderstood completely and were going to gallop to the hairdresser’s. They emailed Arioka before since they looked up to him, and he’d managed to prevent them.

Thank god they got in touch with Arioka before doing anything.

「Michel’s a natural blonde, so if you look at just his hair he does look like a delinquent yankee. Now he’s got an incredibly bad reputation with the girls at school.」

Hair truly is one of the deciding factors in the vibe you give off, I thought once again.

「Oho, a sharp drop in Prince fangirls… So that’s what it’s come to?」

「He said he wanted a change… Do you know anything about this?」 I looked suspiciously at Arioka, who was nodding with a triumphant expression on his face.

「Saa-chan, it’ll get cold if you don’t eat!」 Chii-chan, listening to the conversation, put a baguette in my plate. I cut it up into small pieces and asked Arioka once again.

「‘The Prince’ is a big status, but it can also turn into troub… buha—!」

「Gross! …H-hey, what’s the matter?!」

Arioka had been sipping his coffee as he spoke, and spat it out grandly.

Chii-chan clapped at his back as he coughed. Arioka pointed at the coffee cup, wiping his face with a napkin.

When I peered into the coffee he’d drank, there was a mountain of sugar in it – as if meant for ants’ mountain climbing. It was obviously too much.

No doubt the culprit was Mizuhara, who was ignoring the talk to play with the sugar sticks.

「Mizuhara?」

「I did it,」 he quickly confessed. I looked at him in amazement – although he’d plainly acknowledged his crime, there was not a bit of regret in his face.

「Are you still angry over Arioka eating your cake?」

I’d made carrot cake with Mom yesterday. Mizuhara tried eating it as he watched the movie, but Arioka took the chance to eat all of it.

Mizuhara was quite displeased. It seemed he was searching for a chance to take revenge this entire time.

「What a waste of sugar…」

「You don’t care at all about the sugar that ended up in my trachea, Noda?!」

「I mean, that’s your fault. You took the cake from Mizuhara.」

Chii-chan wiped the table, cleaning up. It was lucky none of the coffee got on his clothes.

「And as for that, I have a reason behind it.」

The other day, Mizuhara and Arioka went car shopping. They’d saved up, and happened to buy on the same day.

Since the price would go down if they bought two cars at the same time, they both ended up going to a dealer that Arioka knew.

「I can’t tell if Arioka and Mizuhara are good friends or enemies.」

「I know, right?」

Even though Mizuhara’s a student, he was getting a car. I didn’t even know he had a license in the first place.

「When I got to our meeting place, Mizuhara-kun was eating carrot cake, looking like it tasted awful.」

Mizuhara kept sighing, constantly looking to and from the carrot cake. It seemed like he was expressing how awful it tasted with his entire body.

「In the end, I tried calling over a distant dove with my eyes…」

「If you had some business with it, you should’ve gone to it yourself.」

「Saa-chan, it’s not that kind of problem, is it? Well anyway, didn’t you make that cake?」 Chii-chan frowned, mistakenly thinking I’d made the cake. I quickly said it wasn’t mine, since I had no memory of ever making a carrot cake before yesterday.

「It did look homemade, though.」

Apparently it was in a simple, pink floral-patterned wrapping, and there was nothing about its ingredients or even the shop’s name on it.

「I timidly tried eating it, and it was surprisingly tasty. The vegetables were moderately sweet, and felt light in my stomach. After I finished it, I guessed Mizuhara-kun hates carrot cake.」

Arioka kept justifying himself, drinking water several times, probably because his mouth was all crunchy with the sugar.

「Today, Noda cheerfully turned up with a carrot cake she’d made. I thought Mizuhara would definitely think Noda’s cake tasted awful and would get hurt, so I just thought that I, Arioka, the elite of the sales department, would go out to the front lines and try it out!」

I knew Arioka didn’t have any bad intentions. 「But Mizuhara said he wanted carrot cake, even though I don’t like carrots and I didn’t want to make it.」

「Is that so?」

「Saa-chan’s taste is like a child’s sometimes. She doesn’t like bell peppers much either.」

「I’d eat them if you gave me one!」

I just didn’t feel like making a pastry made of an ingredient I hated. Mizuhara had recently been fixated on carrot cake for some reason, even though he hated vegetables, and I always ignored him and made something else.

Yesterday I was with my mom, so we made carrot cake. It was faster with the two of us, and fun.

「If I’m being honest, the cake Mizuhara-kun had before was made much better than Noda’s.」

「My bad!」

Mizuhara glared resentfully at me, as if sensing I was planning to not make carrot cake again for a while. 「Mizuhara, isn’t it fine since you don’t like carrot cake? And I don’t like it either.」

「I wanted to eat carrot cake that you made! Arioka, you delete elite, never forget this!」

Arioka was deleted.

「Well, there weren’t any bad intentions,」 Mizuhara followed up after considering Arioka’s situation as he half-heartedly apologized. 「If there were, I would’ve put your shrimp into the coffee instead.」

It seemed he’d taken everything into consideration. Arioka had ordered seafood pasta, attracted to the shrimp. If Mizuhara had put those into his coffee, the damage would be huge.

「Noda, your revered elder’s shrimps are in danger! Why don’t I pay for this lunch?! And in return, please make that cake a second time.」

「Well, it’s fine…」

For some reason I didn’t understand, Mizuhara strangely wanted to eat carrot cake that he hated. He’d keep being insistent on it, so I decided to challenge myself and make some cake when I felt like it.

Between Mizuhara wanting to eat something he hated, and Michel suddenly getting a bobcut, I really couldn’t understand the thought process of boys this age.