So You Call This a Trial? Part Two

Aoko recalled the pain of her past.

Every morning, she got up early to learn how to make lunchboxes from her mother. After school, she fought the neighborhood aunties for discounted vegetables at the supermarket. And she was responsible for Alice's three meals a day.

While everyone else was happily playing, she had been buried in cooking lessons. Aoko felt like crying.

It wasn't that Aoko lacked resolve. The room and Tamamo Cat had triggered a chain reaction.

Entering the room alone would have been fine. Meeting Tamamo Cat alone would have been fine too. But when the two came together, they set off a reaction. That was the rule of this room.

The next door would open only when the person taking the trial genuinely came to love cooking, understood its pleasures, and found a reason to cook.

Of course, after recalling everything in depth, their cooking skill would rise a level. That counted as a positive buff.

The tenth room had another name: the Cat Room's Delicious Cooking Paradise, the Gourmet Trial.

Aoko's greatest strength was her adaptability. Once she understood what she needed to do, she could throw herself into it completely.

Whether she was going from student to Magician or from single woman to fiancée, she could adjust to her new role.

"It's just cooking, right?" Aoko said. "Watch me make a dish you can't stop praising."

The kitchen knife in Aoko's hand sprang into motion, and the vegetables on the cutting board were chopped at lightning speed and tossed into the pot.

Alice and Manaka Sajyou stared, dumbfounded. They had both seen Aoko cook before, but this time, she didn't look like she was making dinner. She looked like she was fighting.

"Yes! That's the spirit!" Tamamo Cat cried. "The kitchen is a battlefield! You