“No more monster fighting?”
You glance behind you, into the gloomy, broody, rather ominous darkness of the somehow-still-empty alley.
Yeah, so far, so good.
“Hey, I’m not making any guarantees.” Ziros chucks the bag of trash easily into the dumpster and slings an arm around your shoulder again as you head back for the cafe door. “Looks like the alley is all clear for now, but who knows—you seem to attract trouble.”
“Fair enough. After all,youcan’t seem to stay away from me.”
“That’s different.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. That’s mag—”
You shush him as you step inside, but fortunately Lizzie is too busy helping a small queue of customers to notice he was totally about to saymagic.
Man, what a relief not to have been attacked by monsters,andto have gotten the trash taken care of!
Now if only you could figure out how to enlarge your sword on command, you’d be all set.
Just as you’re gathering your things to finally head out, you happen to notice the pastry display case. You were so preoccupied all shift, you completely forgot Mel said you could help yourself for your birthday.
With a quick explanation to Lizzie between customers, you grab a pastry for each of you and Ziros to enjoy on the walk home.
Enjoybeing the key word.
A word maybe you didn’t realize would be so far from reality.
“These are…” Ziros coughs, and it looks like he’s resisting spitting it out.
It takes all your effort to swallow the first bite of yours.
“Like eating chalk?” you ask with a laugh, glancing down the sidewalk as if expecting Mel to suddenly pop out from between buildings and overhear you dissing the merchandise. You squint down at yours with a grimace. “Man, I was wondering why we get so few sales on them.”
After Ziros’ cake earlier, the bar has been set pretty high, but this is especially bad.
Ziros glances at a nearby trash can, and you can’t exactly blame him if he doesn’t finish his.
With baking skills like he has, this must seem especially bad.
“You don’t have to finish that,” you say, though guilt keeps you powering through yours.
Yuck.
Does it still count as wasting food if you throw away something that was hardly food to begin with?
“Did your boss bake these herself?” Ziros asks, heroically eating the last bite of his as you choke down the remainder of yours.
Water!You need water.
“Not sure. I think she sources them somewhere.”
“Like, last week.”
“What?”
“I think these are old. There’s no way a pastry baked in the last day could possibly be this dry.”
