Yumeiro Patissiere

Chapter 6 Birthday party at Piyo-Piyo Kindergarten

After the chocolate test was over, Ichigo got the surprise of her life. She discovered that Makato, Satsuki, and Sennosuke had sweets spirits too. Satsuki had a male sweets spirit named Café and Café was dressed as a butler and he was very polite, and his specialty was coffee. Sennosuke had a female sweets spirit named Caramel and she was nice but shy, a klutz, a cry baby and a real worrywart, and her specialty was caramel. Makato had a female sweets spirit named Chocolat and her specialty was chocolate. But she was rude, bossy and bad-tempered like Makato was, and she didn't seem to think much of Ichigo. "I can't believe that you were chosen to be in group A," Chocolat said rudely to Ichigo "you don't seem to be as skilled as Kashino". "Well I'm sorry to disappoint you Chocolat," said Ichigo, standing up for herself, "but Henri-sensei is the one who chose for me to be in group A, so there!" "That's right Chocolat!" shouted Vanilla "and there's nothing you can do about it!" Apparently Chocolat and Vanilla were rivals and they never got on well with each other; in fact, they also fought with each other. Café, Caramel, and Chocolat also had the same dream as Vanilla; they wished to become patissiers in the royal court of the kingdom of the sweets.

As Ichigo already knew that Sennosuke's dream was to own a Japanese and European mixed sweets shop and Satsuki's dream was to work alongside with his mother, who's a florist, as coordinators for food, clothing, and residences, and Makato's dream was to become a great chocolate patissier, she told them about her dream. Her dream was to own a cake shop and make cakes that would bring smiles to people's faces. "In the past, when I made cakes to share with my friends, my friends always smiled while eating them and that always made me feel happy. It also made me happy whenever I used to make some cakes for my grandma and that she would smile from them". "I call that a lovely dream," said Satsuki. "I take it your parents and sister became happy with your cakes too?" asked Sennosuke. "Not really," said Ichigo "to tell you the truth I never revealed my talent for making sweets to my parents and sister before in the past. I believed that revealing my talent would never make a difference with the distant relationship that I have with my mother and sister. I only revealed my talent to them after Henri-sensei told me about St Marie Academy". The sweets princes and the sweets spirits started to feel a bit sorry for Ichigo for not being close with her own family that well, even though she had been very close with her grandma. "Have you and your mother made amends yet?" asked Sennosuke. "Well we did a bit before I left home for St Marie Academy, but I still don't feel close to her yet".

The sweets princes and spirits decided to cheer Ichigo up a bit with a cake. They made her a sponge cake with strawberries and whipped cream in the middle, and they made marzipan figures of Ichigo and Vanilla for the top. Ichigo was grateful and thanked everyone. She stared at the marzipan figurines and picked one up. "I always find it amazing how patissiers make figurines like this with marzipan or icing," she said "I've seen patissiers make figurines for cakes lots of times on TV, but it always looks so complicating. Especially when you have to make sure that the design is just right, with no faults like cracks and everything else. I've made some designs myself before, but I'm still not brilliant with that yet". "Making the design for cakes is not as simple as you think," said Satsuki "when designing a cake you have to look in on every detail and you make sure that it is something that those, who are eating the cake, will like it. Even the smallest mistake is something that you can't make". "Like when you're making clothes right?" asked Ichigo "in the last school I had a friend, who's mum is a fashion designer, and she used to tell me that you must never make any faults when designing clothes, not even one". The sweets princes were impressed with how clever Ichigo was.

That evening Rumi was talking to Ichigo about the task that both group A, group B and group C had to do the day after tomorrow. There was a preschool called Piyo-Piyo Kindergarten a few miles from St Marie Academy and the students always made birthday cakes every month for the students whenever it was their birthday. Ichigo couldn't wait for that; she liked kids and she couldn't wait to make birthday cakes for them.