Yumeiro Patissiere

Chapter 24 The Chocolate Cake of Love Battle!

Ichigo was working hard today; she had been practicing her piping skills in cooking class and she had been studying French in the normal classroom. The sweets princes had seen that Ichigo was a hard worker indeed, but Makato still didn't admit in words of how good Ichigo was. Rumi told Team Ichigo that the theme for the next round of the Grand Prix, in two days, was up. This time the round was to do a chocolate cake and the theme was love. "Chocolate is Kashino's specialty," said Sennosuke "so we will win this round for sure". Makato was frowning though. "Why does it have to be love?" he asked.

Suddenly Miya came up and hugged Makato like a maniac. "I'm so glad the theme is love," she said, "this will be you and me together Makato-Kun". She was still like a love-struck maniac for Makato. "That's why Makato-Kun if my team wins this round, you will have to join my team". "What?!" shouted Makato "I absolutely refuse this bet". "What are you scared?" said Satou "you're said to be the chocolate sweets prince of this school, yet you're running away from this challenge". "Does that mean you have no confidence in winning?" asked Shiyotani. "I have confidence in winning," said Makato "I won't lose to anyone when it comes to chocolate". "If you have confidence then accept the mistress's challenge" said Satou. "And if you lose you will be on my team" smirked Miya. Ichigo looked at Miya in disgust; it was obvious that the spoilt Miya was very determined to have Makato on her team. "Fine," sighed Makato "I accept your challenge". Miya was delighted to hear that. "But if I win I will stay with Team Ichigo and you will forget about having me on your team". "I accept" said Miya "but you will be mine Makato". She left, with Satou and Shiyotani, laughing. Ichigo had a bad feeling about this.

Team Ichigo started to think, in the greenhouse, about what they should do for the cake Grand Prix challenge. Satsuki was talking about love but Makato was finding it nonsense. "You shouldn't disregard feelings of love, otherwise it will end up biting your back" said Satsuki. "The heiress doesn't have the skill to defeat mine," said Makato "the only skill she has is ordering high-quality ingredients, and yet the high-quality ingredients for chocolate didn't even beat Amano's chocolate. I will win". He started to leave. "Hey Kashino, where are you going?" said Ichigo "we haven't decided about what chocolate cake to do". "I will leave that to you three," said Makato "as long as it's a chocolate cake I don't care about the rest. And anyway, I have no clue about anything that's related to love". Then he left.

"Okay, is Kashino so moody about love because he was never really loved much by his own family?" Ichigo asked Sennosuke. "It's more than that," said Sennosuke "ever since he was small he never had a good impression of girls. The thing is girls always surrounded around him like crazy all the way from kindergarten all the way up to now. He also got mountains of love letters, girls taking photos of him without his permission, and girls would follow him everywhere like stalkers". "Gosh that's rough" said Ichigo. "Because of that he started to hate girls," said Sennosuke "and it got worse when we lost in the cake grand Prix because of Koshiro-san". "I take that's why he doesn't have faith in me much?" asked Ichigo. "Well he does see that you are a hard worker Amano-san, he just has trouble saying his true feelings" said Sennosuke. "I still don't see what girls see in that sadist," said Ichigo "but forget that now; we need to concentrate on our chocolate cake for the Grand Prix. Oh but what we also need to do is watch out for Team Koshiro, because seriously I don't trust Koshiro-san or her team". "We don't trust her either," said Satsuki "she's the type of girl who doesn't do things fairly". "Yes and another thing about her reality is that she doesn't really understand the true meaning of teamwork; she just takes all the credit for herself," said Sennosuke.

So Ichigo, Satsuki and Sennosuke started to think about what to do for the chocolate cake challenge. Right now they were in the school library looking up all the types of chocolate cakes there were like black forest cake or devil's food cake. Then Sennosuke found what cake they should do; he decided on a sachertorte cake. Sachertorte cake was an Austrian chocolate cake and it was known as the king of chocolate cakes. "I like that idea," said Satsuki "except it can be very difficult to make. Only chocolatiers with high-skill levels can make it because this cake takes a lot of effort in chocolate tempering to make. And the chocolate coating on the surface of sachertorte cake is the most important bit". "I believe that Kashino can handle this one," said Ichigo "he may be a grumpy, bad-mouthed, sadist; but he works very hard and he tempers chocolate like there's no tomorrow". "I agree," said Sennosuke "besides this will draw Kashino's chocolate skills to the maximum". Satsuki agreed too and he had faith in Kashino's skills. The one thing they needed to do now thought of the design; the design of sachertorte cake was plain and simple and they needed to think of how to match the theme of love with the cake. Ichigo volunteered to do the design and Sennosuke and Satsuki agreed to let her do it.

At that time Chocolat was really angry with Makato; Makato had ordered her to leave him alone because she was disturbing him. "I'm Kashino's partner for crying out loud!" she shouted "and yet she treats me like I'm not important to him at all! Humph I don't care what happened to him anymore!" Vanilla, Café and Caramel could see that Chocolat was indeed very, very cross.

That night Ichigo was in her room and was about to go to the library on the second floor of the dorm rooms. "Aren't you going to work on your design here?" asked Rumi. "No," said Ichigo "I need some inspiration for this design, so I'm going to the library to find it". "Okay good luck with that, and if you need help I'll gladly give you help" said Rumi. Ichigo thanked Rumi, and then she and Vanilla headed off for the library. "What design are you thinking Ichigo?" asked Vanilla, once they were in the library. "Well Vanilla," said Ichigo "people falling in love with each other isn't the only type of love in the world. There are other different types of love like family love, or friendship love, and what you like most of all in the world is a type of love. For example I love cakes, and Hanabusa-Kun loves roses". "Ah I've got it, that is good Ichigo," said Vanilla "so what will you do for that?" "Let's see" said Ichigo. She began to draw at once and then she came up with a design. Her design turned out to be pink frosting colored sachertorte cake, with hearts made from different ingredients like blueberries, fresh cream, orange candied peel and they were to represent the different types of love. "Wow I like that" said Vanilla.

Suddenly there was a loud tap at the window. "What was that?" asked Vanilla. "I don't know," said Ichigo "it's either someone's idea of a prank or the wind must have knocked something". She told Vanilla to watch over her drawing while she took a look outside, but no one was there. While Ichigo looked outside the window, Youko Ayukawa entered the room and sneakily snapped a photo of Ichigo's design on her phone. "Hey!" shouted Vanilla. Ichigo turned around when she heard Vanilla shouting and saw Youko. "What are you doing here?" asked Ichigo. "I saw the light on and came to see who was in here" said Youko. Vanilla told Ichigo what Youko had down and Ichigo frowned. "I take Team Koshiro has decided what to do for the challenge then?" she asked calmly. "Yes we have" said Youko, and she left. "I should have known that Ayukawa would pull this stunt of stealing my design again" said Ichigo. She hadn't forgotten when group B stole her birthday cake design. "What are we going to do now Ichigo?" asked Vanilla. "We do what we did last time;" said Ichigo, "we think of a different design for the cake and this time make Team Koshiro suffer a humiliating defeat". "Yeah, but what design will you do now?" said Vanilla. "I'll think of something," said Ichigo "but while I'm doing that, Vanilla flies to the boy's dorm rooms and tell the sweets princes and the spirits about what has happened". "Got it" said Vanilla, and she flew off at once.

At that time Youko Ayukawa was emailing Ichigo's design to Miya's phone. The truth is Miya had intended to cheat for this challenge and to do that, she had Youko Ayukawa spy on Team Ichigo and find out what they were going to do. Right now Miya was studying chocolate tempering with the teachings from a man named Monsieur Leon. Monsieur Leon was a very high-skilled professional chocolatier from France. When she got Youko's email, she thought that the victory was in the bag. But she did not know that Ichigo had seen through her scheme and was designing a new design for the challenge.

The day of the challenge came. Yesterday Ichigo and the sweets princes practiced on the sachertorte cake and they were ready to face Team Koshiro. "I still think you should have told the teachers about Miya's plot to cheat" said Caramel. Vanilla did tell the sweets princes and the spirits of what Youko did. "Sorry Caramel but we can't do that," said Sennosuke "we have no evidence to prove that Team Koshiro was planning to cheat, and we can't just tell without any proof". Team Ichigo decided to keep quiet and pretend they didn't know anything until the challenge started. That way it would show Miya that her plot to cheat had failed.

Everything was ready and then Youko turned up and so did Rumi. "Ichigo everything is okay now" she said to Ichigo, and took her seat in the audience stands. Then a surprise came up; Monsieur Leon had decided to watch today's match too. Team Ichigo couldn't believe it, especially Makato. Miya explained that she was tutored by Monsieur Leon of tempering chocolate. "No way" said Makato. Satou and Shiyotani explained that the Chateau Seika not only made and sold sweets, but they also sold high-quality chocolate to professional patissiers and chocolatiers because Chateau Seika had its own cacao bean farm.

Makato couldn't believe that Miya had been taught by the famous Monsieur Leon and that he was going to watch today's challenge.

The end
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