Editing Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume3 Chapter2 5

===<noinclude>The White Rose. </noinclude>Part 5.===

The pasta cafeteria was by the university school store.

Including the kitchen, it was about the size of a single classroom.  A café was above the pasta cafeteria, and you could get sandwiches, coffee and cake (or so I hear).  The school store, cafeteria and café all made up one building.

As for the reason why it was standing in between the school dining hall and the university buildings was that, as you probably imagine, the students desired such a building, so they built it afterwards.

It was some time after noon, and as it was just before break, the university was fairly vacated, too, so the pasta cafeteria was rather empty.

As they had no real choice, the two quickly ordered ramen and handed the lady behind the counter their meal tickets.

"I just put out the fire, so it might take a bit."

The lady said, as she checked the stamps behind the tickets.  Because there were few people remaining at the university, she'd turned off the heating to save expenses.  Business seemed to be extremely slow, as she was the only one working the kitchen, where you might expect two or three.

"We're not in any hurry."

Yoshino-san innocently smiled, "So would you be willing?"  That she could smile so without deliberately needing to try might be one type of natural talent.  And there couldn't be that many people that would see that and feel ill will.

"Alright, I'll start up the fire again."

The lady tossed the tickets into a specific box, heaved herself off the seat and moved to the big pot.

"Go ahead and take a seat, I'll call you two when it's done."

They nodded and took a seat at the edge.  Even though there were no other people, they didn't feel comfortable taking full advantage of the university building.

"It's my first time eating at the pasta cafeteria."

"Same."

[[Image:MM_v03_05.jpg|thumb]]
Yumi and Yoshino-san looked around and lowered their shoulders.  They'd attended Lillian since kindergarten, but this was outside of their own territory, so it felt like they were on an adventure.  They weren't doing anything bad, but their heart beat rapidly.  It was probably similar to the feeling of eating a chocolate ball for the first time.

"It might take a bit, she said."

"I wonder how long."

Well, Rosa Gigantea had told them not to come back for a while, anyways, so it was a good way to spend time.  –Just as they were whispering, in only about five minutes, they heard, "It's done."  Gosh, how many seconds does it take normally, then?

When they went up together to receive their bowls, the lady advised them to wear a handkerchief down from their neck.  Apparently ramen soup splashes no matter how hard you try.

"I see… I guess it would be a pain if it ended up on this ivory collar."

It was a bit baby-ish and embarrassing, but there was no helping it, so the two of them hung a handkerchief from their collar and split their chopsticks.  The ramen had one roasted pork filet each, along with shredded spring onions, dried seaweed and soaked bamboo shoots.

"Itadakima-su."

First, a sip of the soup.

"… It's good."

"Yes."

The warm soup had a thick taste of soy sauce, and it felt like it spread throughout her body from the stomach.  She wished Rosa Gigantea, left behind at the Rose Mansion, could have had a sip.

"Rosa Gigantea,"

Yoshino-san mumbled after a mouthful of noodle.

"I wonder why she made us stay."

"Eh…?"

Chewing off a bit of pork filet, Yumi lifted her head.  Yoshino-san was looking puzzled.

"Because if she just wanted to borrow 'Forest of Thorns,' as Yumi-san mentioned, she'd just have to take it home, right?  If she didn't want to read it at home, she could read it on the train-ride home.  And if she didn't want to borrow it for a whole week, she could just buy it at a book store, right?"

"But it's free if she borrows it, so that might be why?"

Not that she was too stingy to pay four-hundred some yen, but she didn't see any other reason in sight, so Yumi said it, anyways.

"If you think about three peoples' worth of canned coffee, you could buy 'Forest of Thorns.'"

Well, that's true.  But she couldn't think of any other reason, so she gave up.

What started this all, anyways, she thought, but even though things really began two or three days ago, it felt extremely distant, like everything had vanished beyond the ramen steam.  As her stomach was becoming filled, her thinking power, already not particularly gifted, seemed to deteriorate further.

"How about, we're so cute, she wanted to treat us to ramen."

"Yumi-san, your brain's melting."

Yoshino-san sighed, exasperated, and returned to her ramen.  Carefully, so as to not splash the soup, several yellow noodles were sucked into her pink lips.

Yumi looked at the clock.  It'd been roughly 30 minutes since they left the Rose Mansion.  An hour minus 30 minutes was another 30 minutes.

(It would be close.)

If they kept eating ramen at this pace, they might be able to have spent an entire hour without needing to kill time elsewhere.

(But the ramen would go bad.)

But she didn't want the soup to splash onto her uniform, either.  In the end, there seemed to be nothing to do other than to learn from Yoshino-san and carefully eat little portions of the noodle at a time.

Even if the ban on entering the pasta cafeteria were lifted, you could say with utmost confidence that there was no risk of a mass of middle-school or high-school students flooding into the building.  Because eating ramen without dirtying your clothes was a difficult and time-consuming task.

In the kitchen, one of the ladies that was resting outside had apparently returned, and they began closing the store in earnest.

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