Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume19 Chapter 2 (section)

===Intermission===

Once the ingredients arrived, the rest was easy.

The process was not all that difficult.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

The Princess hummed quietly to herself while she worked.

The Pilot Elite living quarters were kept separate from the general barracks. She had a bathroom, bath, and kitchen here. But she had never been picky about food, so she had mostly just used the freezer and microwave.

But today she had courageously chosen to take a step outside her comfort zone.

The recipe sites had all tried to scare her by talking about how difficult the process of double boiling was for homemade chocolate, but she had discovered they made a convenient product that did it for you. It looked like one bowl sitting inside another and you only had to pour water in between the two bowls and plug it in. Then the heating element would heat the water to the perfect temperature. It was a cheap-looking set made of plastic which reminded her of a hand crank ice cream maker. It looked kind of childish, but when there was a safe and easy walking path up the mountain, there was no need to grab your ice axe and scale the sheer rock face.

Three cheers for online shopping.

She had pretty much everything she might need, from the ingredients to the tools.

She couldn’t believe the package had arrived on the designated day way out here in the remote Tunguska District of Siberia. The delivery man’s dedication to his work was truly impressive.

(I arbitrarily decided on chocolate ice cream, but is that really the best choice?)

She thought on that for a while, but that was just one of her many ideas. It wasn’t something she had dedicated herself to doing.

In the Island Nation, it was apparently important to give a present of chocolate on February 14.

She had lost a lot of allies during the battle against the Retro Gunner…or against the Ghost Changer really. But it wasn’t the 37th’s style to let that get you down. Mourning the dead was fine, but carrying that weight around would only get you killed as well. So to keep yourself in top mental condition, it was important to enjoy some cheerful events during difficult times.

The double boiling set had come with a few different molds. The heart shape was too embarrassing for her, but the square made it look too much like a piece of an industrial chocolate bar, which brought into question why she had bothered making her own. She expressionlessly groaned in thought before grabbing one of the plastic molds. It was an ordinary circular one, but it looked vaguely Object-ish to her.

Cuteness was all about curves.

Chicks and kittens were mostly round.

“Quenser is always breathing heavily when he stares at the Baby Magnum, so he must like round things too.”

While guessing at his tastes on a level as generalized as “do you prefer the north pole or the south pole”, she placed the chocolate-filled mold in the fridge. According to the manual she had found by scanning the 2D code into her mobile device, the device was made to cool the contents to the entered temperature as efficiently as possible.

It would take time for the chocolate to fully harden.

She had prepared a few different types of wrapping paper and ribbons, but the different combinations would provide very different impressions. She could use this time to think through all of them one by one.

She felt like she was making good use of the limited free time she was given between missions.

(I should go check on Quenser. That might give me a hint for the wrapping.)

That sounded like a good idea to her.

So Milinda Brantini exhaled through her shapely nose and left her special living quarters.

However.

She came to a stop in one corner of the maintenance base.

She hung her head all alone as she heard the words spoken on the other side of the door.

“The environmental destruction by Objects theory can still be found in certain corners of the internet.”

The words were spoken by Quenser Barbotage of all people.

Intentionally or not, he had never mentioned that topic when she was around. Now that kindness stabbed cruelly into her like a knife.

Yes.

That meant the theory had to be true.

“But someone out there has been ensuring it’s only seen as some crackpot theory. So Elina said they wanted to ‘rebut the rebuttal’ with actual numerical data and a scientific paper to back them up.”

Her entire life was built on a lie.

That harmful lie was the only thing giving her a place in this world.

“…”

She stood there thinking.

She bit her lip.

And she silently slipped away.

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