The Classmate Who Is Adored by Everyone Smiles Teasingly Only at Me-Chapter 1V .3 - Determination and Sprouting Canelé
Determination and Sprouting Canelé 3
“Anyway, I felt the surface of the Canelé I made the other day was a bit too soft, so I tried increasing the baking time. Is it crispier than the last time, or has it lost moisture instead?”
“Even if you ask that, I don’t remember the last time…”
When he asked the girls, led by Miki, about the most crucial point of today’s Canelé, they furrowed their brows and looked troubled but didn’t offer any useful opinions.
It had been about half a year since he entered high school.
He repeatedly had the girls in his class taste his creations, but he couldn’t get any beneficial feedback.
Asking high school girls who are neither critics, reviewers, nor judges for detailed impressions is quite a stretch, and he understood that.
He never expected them to give detailed feedback in the first place.
However, he couldn’t help but wish they would try a little harder to provide some feedback.
“These Canelés are delicious. That’s good enough, isn’t it?”
“That’s not what I meant…”
He wanted to say something more but swallowed his words.
There was no use dragging it on any further.
With a light sigh, he handed a stack of paper he had been keeping in his pocket to Miki.
“Well then, as usual, please write your impressions on this questionnaire paper.”
“Uh… um… okay, I understand.”
She seemed reluctant, but she still accepted the stack of questionnaire papers.
People often commented that using questionnaire papers was quite old-fashioned and that he should just have them send feedback through their smartphones.
Soma himself thinks the same way.
Sending messages would require minimal effort and a tiny amount of electricity and data costs.
However, using questionnaire papers requires using a convenience store’s copy machine, which costs ten yen per sheet.
Despite that, he bothers to prepare questionnaire papers because the response rate is overwhelmingly higher this way.
The presence of the handed-out questionnaire papers silently pressures people to write their feedback.
Today as well, almost all the girls who tried the Canelés submitted their questionnaires after school.
That is quite good, but whether the content is proper or not is a different issue.
“Damn it, there’s not a single useful comment.”
After school, Soma stayed alone in the classroom, reading through the questionnaires, grumbling to himself.
“What’s with this [Well, it was okay] or [Better than the last time] or [3,5☆]? This isn’t an online review; write proper sentences!”
He couldn’t help but feel the urge to tear up the questionnaire papers.
It was such a miserable situation that he could only be saved by the fact that there were no blank sheets.
“Maybe I should stop having the girls try my creations.”
He threw the stack of papers on the desk and looked up at the ceiling.
Clearly, the cost-effectiveness wasn’t very good.
However, having a third party try the food was essential and indispensable.
When he tasted something he made himself, biases inevitably affected his evaluation.
The girls’ palates were better suited for sweets than boys who preferred ramen or gyudon.
While there were plenty of complaints since he couldn’t think of anyone else suitable for taste testing, he had no other choice but to ask them.
“It’s quite challenging to get genuine critiques from a regular high schooler, huh?”
While sighing in resignation, he resumed tallying the questionnaires.
As he glanced through the questionnaire papers, he once again felt disappointed that there weren’t any helpful comments.
“——Ah, I found you!”
A cheerful voice echoed in the classroom.
Looking towards the entrance with the questionnaire papers still in hand, he saw Chika coming in with a smile as bright as her voice, childishly waving her hand.
“Thank goodness, Ichinose-san is still in the classroom. Here, take this.”
She came all the way to Soma’s seat and handed him two questionnaire papers.
“I’m sorry, I’m submitting this late. I went to get Miki-chan’s feedback.”
“What about her?”
Soma stretched his neck to look behind Chika, but he couldn’t find the tall, black-haired girl who should always be with her.
“Miki-chan is in the Student Council. She’s the vice president, so she’s busy.”
“Oh, I see.”
Chika showed a slightly lonely expression, but Soma pretended not to notice and read the received questionnaire papers.
However, soon his expression became stern.
“No… she’s not very helpful either.”
The comments she wrote were no different from the other girls.
There were traces of her trying her best to come up with feedback, but when asked if it would be useful for future confectionery making, he had no choice but to say it wouldn’t be.
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“Ah, um, Miki-chan was really trying her best to write it.”
Chika frantically tried to support her best friend while flapping her hands, but Soma’s expression didn’t brighten up at all.
“I understand that she was trying to fill in the blanks somehow.”
When he flipped through the questionnaire papers and looked at the second one, he considered whether he should stop having the girls try his creations.
There, written in clear and beautiful handwriting, was something that caught his attention.
『The taste was very good, but there seemed to be an issue with the baking. It feels like the baking time is a little too long. During a lunch break, we said it was crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, but I don’t think you need to be overly conscious of that. The crispy and chewy texture is one of the characteristics of Canelés, but if you focus too much on that and compromise the deliciousness, it’s counterproductive. I felt that the previous Canelés were more delicious.』
Other good and bad points were also written thoroughly and politely.
“This is…!”
He couldn’t help but be amazed.
“I’m sorry if I sounded arrogant. I thought that just praising you wouldn’t be meaningful for the taste-testing, so I ended up writing various things…”
He gazed at the brown-haired girl, who bowed apologetically with a sense of guilt.
