That Wonderful, Delicious Red One (1)

The incident happened one week after the donut commotion.

“You’re kidding… We’re completely out of cacao!?”

My shocked voice echoed through the kitchen.

Impossible. There should still have been at least three large sacks of cacao left…!

“That’s right, every last bit of it is gone! How could this happen…!?”

Those were Anne’s words after she had gone to the storeroom to fetch some cacao.

I could hardly believe it, so I went to check for myself, but sure enough, every sack of cacao that should have been there had vanished.

“Why…?”

I muttered in a daze. Without cacao, I could not make chocolate.

And I had been just about to serve the young master a new kind of chocolate.

We stood there dumbfounded. Then a triumphant voice called out from behind us.

“Oh, what a shame. You’ve run out of cacao. And you were still planning to use it, too.”

There was no mistaking it. The voice belonged to Jacqueline.

When I turned around, there stood the red-haired, twin-tailed Jacqueline with a nasty grin on her face.

“Jacqueline, don’t tell me you…”

“Oh, you have no right to complain. The ingredients belong to everyone. There’s nothing wrong with us using cacao to develop a new snack, is there?”

“Ugh.”

I could not help groaning.

She was right about that. The cacao was not reserved exclusively for us.

I knew the other teams had been using cacao in an attempt to imitate chocolate, but this was excessive.

“If you’d just asked, I would have taught you how to make chocolate.”

“Hah!? Don’t patronize me! Why should I have to let some complete beginner like you teach me from on high!?”

The moment I said that, Jacqueline flared up, her eyebrows shooting upward in anger.

But she quickly curled her lips into a smirk and spoke in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Hmph. Still, without chocolate, you’re nothing special, are you? Everyone already knows how to make donuts after what happened the other day. Maybe your true colors are finally about to show.”

That was true. During the incident the other day, I had taught everyone how to make donuts.

Afterward, I told them they were free to make donuts whenever they wished, so the other teams had begun serving them to the young master as well.

Though perhaps because of their pride, Christina-oneesama’s Team One and Jacqueline’s Team Four would never stoop to doing such a thing.

Anne, who had been listening to our conversation, began trembling and raised her voice.

“Jacqueline…! Don’t tell me you did this just to harass us!”

“Oh my, calling me by my name now? You’ve certainly gotten full of yourself, Anne. Before she showed up, you were the lowest-ranking maid here.”

“That has nothing to do with this! If you want me to call you oneesama, then act like someone worthy of it!”

Anne was usually timid, but today she was absolutely furious.

Still, perhaps that was understandable. After all, chocolate was something Anne and I had worked desperately to make almost every single day.

“It’s hard work, but I’m happy because the young master loves it,” Anne had always said with a smile.

“Hmph. Listen to Shirley’s little tagalong acting so high and mighty. The young master is bound to get tired of chocolate eventually anyway. It’s only a question of sooner or later.”

“Th-that’s…”

“Well, it’s your own fault for thinking the same old trick would work forever. Go ahead and serve him some boring snack and let the young master down!”

With that, Jacqueline walked away, laughing loudly.

She truly was quite a character. It was as though she had stepped straight out of a girls’ manga.

Did people really engage in harassment this obvious?

As I wondered about that, Anne spoke on the verge of tears.

“What are we going to do, Shirley? Without chocolate, we’re finished…! It’s all over!”

Hmm. This girl was rather extreme in her own way. There was no need to despair that much.

Still, perhaps it was understandable that she felt that way.

Personally, I had wanted to teach the other teams how to make chocolate too, but Anne had stubbornly stopped me.

According to her, if we wanted to survive, we could not casually teach our secrets to the other teams.

Since the young master was enjoying it so much, she wanted chocolate to remain ours alone for just a little longer, even if only a little.

But perhaps that had been a mistake.

And this was the result.

I placed a hand on the dejected Anne’s shoulder and said,

“It’ll be all right, Anne. I told you I have plenty of other snack ideas, didn’t I? We’ll manage somehow.”

“Shirley… But I wanted to keep serving chocolate.”

It seemed Anne had developed quite a special attachment to chocolate.

In that case, there was no helping it. To reassure Anne for the time being, we would start by finding a new supply of cacao.

“Anne, do you know where the cacao came from?”

“Um… I don’t think we bought the cacao from anywhere. I think the Field Witch-sama grew it at the Royal Palace Farm.”

The Royal Palace Farm. The Field Witch. Those were some rather intriguing words.

That was right, that was right! There really was a place like that and a person like that here in the Royal Palace!

I had wanted to visit for ages, but I had become so busy that it had completely slipped my mind.

In that case, what we needed to do was obvious.

“Then let’s go to the Royal Palace Farm and ask this Field Witch-sama when the next cacao harvest will be ready!”

And so, we set off for what sounded like a wonderfully exciting place.

“Wooooow…!”

The moment it came into view, I could not stop myself from crying out in delight.

Beyond the vast gardens surrounding the Royal Palace stretched fields and orchards as far as the eye could see.

“Amazing, it’s huge! And there are so many different varieties!”

Yes, it was far, far larger than I had expected.

Dozens upon dozens of different trees stood throughout the orchards, and there were dozens of different kinds of fields as well.

Since I had heard that it was run by the so-called Field Witch-sama, I had imagined a small personal farm.

“Amazing, amazing! There are so many varieties you never see in town! I can’t believe the Royal Palace had a place like this! So everything I saw in the refrigerators and storerooms was grown here…!”

“H-hey, Shirley! You can’t just go in there without…”

Unable to contain myself, I dashed into the farm.

Anne was saying something behind me, but I had much more important things to focus on.

“Wow, they’re huge! What magnificent grapes!”

When I saw the hanging grapes, I could not help exclaiming in admiration.

Each grape was plump and full, growing in enormous clusters so splendid that even in Japan in my previous life, I would rarely have seen anything comparable.

There were also apples, pears, and sugarcane.

The sight of so many different ingredients growing vigorously before me was like paradise.

To think I could encounter so many wonderful ingredients again—I really had been reincarnated into a marvelous world and a marvelous country!

…Or so I thought as I looked around with sparkling eyes.

That was when a sharp, angry shout rang out.

“Hey, you two! Don’t just wander into the farm without permission!”

“Eek!?”

I instantly straightened my back and jumped in surprise.

Wondering what was happening, I timidly turned around… and saw a small figure approaching us with an angry expression.

“Hey, maids! Who told you that you could come onto the farm!? Haven’t you heard that unauthorized personnel aren’t allowed in here!?”

“I-I’m sorry! I got carried away…!”

Eeeek. She was scary.

The girl who came right up to us was quite distinctive, with brown hair braided down to her waist, a pointed hat like something a little witch would wear, and farming clothes.

Her face was lightly dusted with freckles, and she was glaring at us with a terrifying expression.

Her clothes and face were smeared with dirt, so I wondered if she might be someone who helped the witch, but then Anne spoke with a strained expression.

“You idiot, Shirley, that is the Field Witch-sama…! Apologize properly!”

What!? Her!?

No way! She looked younger than me, or at most around my own age!

But if she was a witch, then she really must be frightening.

What if she thought I had trespassed and damaged her farm? Would she turn me into an animal, or boil me alive in a cauldron…!?

I began trembling uncontrollably.

The witch stared me up and down as I cowered before her, then finally spoke.

“I don’t recognize you. Are you new?”

“Y-yes, I only started recently! And, um…”

Seeing my chance, I quickly held out the basket I had been carrying and desperately said,

“I-I baked you some sweets to thank you for always providing us with ingredients!”