Casual Heroing

“Nipples?” Flaminia asks.

“Nipples!” I say.

“Nipples?”

“NIPPLES!” I laugh out loud.

“I don’t believe it,” she laughs too.

“Oh, you better.”

She’s impressed by how fast we finished together and now we’re having a sweet recess, while some other people come and clean our table.

“You are telling me that some people in your country make cakes that look like nipples?”

“It’s not from my country, it’s more like where my parents come from. They do these small white cakes that look like boobs with a candied cherry on top. They are delicious!”

“I swear—” Flaminia can’t stop laughing. She is basically bent over the table holding for her dear life.

The laughter is so loud that Clodia swiftly comes toward us, worried that I’m hampering the productivity of the all-female workplace with my manly ways.

“Flaminia, you flat-eared dumbell, what’s so funny, huh?”

“Boobs!” Flaminia keeps laughing, apparently finding the idea of a boob-cake the most hilarious thing in the world.

“Boobs?” Clodia slowly spells out the word while turning her head toward me like an owl. In a creepy ‘I’m going to peck your eyes out’ way, if it’s not clear enough.

Judging from the murderous stare, she thinks that I made an inappropriate joke, doesn’t she?

“I was describing a cake that looks like a boob. And they call it St. Agatha’s Nipple,” I raise my hands defensively. “And we had already finished the kneading and all!”

Clodia looks at our table, which is indeed clean after we deposited the dough in some huge containers. I do wonder how they make it rise without yeast, honestly.

“So you didn’t make inappropriate comments in regards to Flaminia, did you?”

To be fair, I stop thinking about all the jokes I cracked before, trying to figure out whether or not some of them were inappropriate. Knowing me, the answer is probably ‘yes, some were extremely inappropriate’.

But now, look at the real magic.

“Oh, Clodia, come on. The kid was just telling me a couple of things from wherever he comes from. He wasn’t inappropriate and he’s one of your hardest workers. He managed to almost keep my pace without skills! Give him a break, will you?”

“Whatever,” Clodia stares at me from head to toe and then shrugs. Then, she goes on with her work somewhere else.

Flaminia winks at me and clears away some laughter tears from her eyes.

“Come on, let’s get going, I’m going to show you something that will to blow your mind.”

…

[Dough Raise]

I’m looking at multiple people channeling a skill to make the dough rise inside the massive metallic containers.

“Now, we have to wait a couple of hours for the whole skill to work its magic and that’s going to make our bread super puffy!” Flaminia tells me while sticking out her chest proudly.

“So, you use skills to make the bread rise, huh,” I scratch my chin, thoughtful.

“What else would you use?” she looks at me as if I’m some kind of a savage.

“Well, you will have to coerce the answer out of me,” I wink at Flaminia.

“These youngsters…” she mumbles in good will.

“Oh yeah, they are terrible people, aren’t they?” I put both hands on my sides and nod wisely.

At some point, my jokes should have stopped working. I’m honestly still tired even after having slept for so long. I can’t help it, the dimensional-lag has thrown me for a loop.

We start baking the bread as soon as the skills have run out.

“Which shapes?” I ask curiously.

“Mh?” Flaminia and I have started speaking a bit less. She, too, is getting a bit tired.

“Which shapes do we need for the bread?” I take some oil to lubricate my hands and avoid the dough sticking to them.

“The usual shapes? Long ones for the bigger ones meant for families, smaller round circles for the bread we are sending to the Watch, and so on.”

I look around for a second, confused. It is true that in an establishment this big it makes sense to streamline things as much as possible, but I do feel like they could have done something better.

However, as soon as I see a flash of tiredness in Flaminia’s eyes, I immediately smile and copy the shapes she’s putting on the massive steel tray.

There are moments to be a smartass and there are moments when you don’t want to rock the boat. Read the room, rookie.

The ovens are massive constructions that are fed wood by the shovel and with three people manning them at all times.

“They have variants of the [Cook] class specialized in managing ovens and temperatures. The guy there is a [Apprentice Blacksmith] who comes here to help manage the ovens for the bread batches and makes a pretty penny out of it.”

These people are trained very well and they switch back and forth with grace you would never find in any bakery on Earth. Only huge fast-food chains are probably more efficient, but that’s to the detriment of quality.

I wouldn’t say that me and Flaminia became thick as thieves in our first shift together, but I certainly found a friend for the future.

“Hey, Flaminia. You don’t happen to know Officer Lucinda, do you?” I try to keep it as casual as possible, but the Elf woman has already pinned down my behavior.

“I would advise against whatever you are thinking, Joey,” she says with a smirk, “she’s a very talented mage, gunning for the Nine Towers Academy. She’s working for the Watch mostly because she wants to make some money on her own.”

“Woah, do you have a file on her or something? If so, can I have it?”