Maki's hand froze.
The packet of cookies crinkled softly between her fingers.
She didn't answer, but her silence said enough.
Jie Jian's voice rose, full of disbelief.
"No way! Aren't you a high school girl? How can you not know how to cook?"
Maki glared into empty space, as though she could glare Jie Jian to death through her own eyes.
"Does anything you say make sense? Why would being a high school girl mean I have to know how to cook?"
"How does that not make sense? Don't high schools have cooking classes that teach girls to cook?"
"Where are you getting this stuff?"
"From anime."
Jie Jian said it with absolute confidence.
"In the anime I watch, high school girls always make boxed lunches for the classmates they have crushes on. How are you supposed to do that if you can't cook?"
Maki opened her mouth, then closed it again.
After a long silence, she sighed and said helplessly,
"You really need to watch less anime. There aren't any high school girls like that, okay?!"
For some reason, Maki felt as though she were talking to a foreign anime geek who had never set foot in this country.
But hadn't Jie Jian said he was her son from the future?
Why did he seem to know nothing about high school girls?
Does that mean my son grows up to be a shut-in nerd who's never dated anyone?
That's terrifying!
Maki didn't ask Jie Jian.
She knew that even if she asked, he wouldn't tell her the truth.
Maki tossed the empty cookie packet onto the floor, stood up, and brushed the crumbs off her hands, sounding as though she had given up.
"I can't cook. Happy now?"
Jie Jian sucked in a breath.
"You really can't?"
"No."
"Someone