That night, Qualia was in the kitchen. The first one to find him there was Ace.
“Qualia, why are you in the kitchen?”
“Qualia will now construct dinner.”
Qualia was designing the blueprints to cook, meaning, recipe, after inputting every ingredient on the shelf and in the refrigerator. He took all the experiences he had so far eating tasty things, and calculated an optimal solution.
“Why are you constructing dinner?”
“It has been surmised that tasty things have the power to mend human hearts. Ina’s heart is exhausted, so Qualia will offer dinner to Ina.”
“I also want to feel ‘tasty’ right away.”
“Qualia took you, Lobelia, and Spirito into consideration. Request that you stand-by until it is complete.”
“Request accepted.”
Ina tried to go back to being a maid after the incident with Liebe, but Spirito was having none of it, so she stopped her and made her rest for the time being,
Qualia also saw no sign that Ina’s heart had recovered, even after accepting her tears for a while. He was worried.
He wanted to do something, and these emotions led him to decide to perform cooking, whether or not that was the optimal solution.
“Calculating optimal solution. Qualia will construct ‘a dish by using boar meat, potatoes, carrots, red wine onion, butter, Worcester sauce, boiled in ketchup soup’.”
“How do you make ‘a dish by using boar meat, potatoes, carrots, red wine onion, butter, Worcester sauce, boiled in ketchup soup’?”
“‘A dish of boar meat, potatoes, carrots, red wine onion, butter, Worcester sauce, boiled in ketchup soup’, starts by weighing a kilogram of boar meat.”
“…The rest of the world calls that a beef stew.”
Lobelia said, as she walked into the kitchen. She could not hold her tongue anymore after hearing what they were calling it, that was so far from common sense.
“That’s nice. Being able to cook is a big plus for a boy. Do you want your big sister here to help?”
“Request your cooperation.”
“Before that… Are you close to finding what you want to do, miss new member of Hello World?”
It goes without saying that the founder of Hello World did not ignore the sudden presence of Ace, especially considering her history with her friend Love, another magic doll. Lobelia looked at Ace the exact same way she looked at Qualia, or Ina.
“Not yet. I will define what I desire as I perform my role in Hello World.”
“…It can be surprisingly difficult to find out what you want to do. It might be lurking somewhere unexpected.”
“How did you find what you want to do?”
“I think it would be right to say a friend made me aware… A magic doll like you, called Love.”
“There is a record of the individual called Love.”
“…Well, in my case, I think it’s less what I want to do, and more what I strongly feel I should do to the world.”
Qualia recalled the world Love wished for. A world where humans, beast people, and magic dolls like Love could smile from the bottom of their hearts.
The magic doll girl’s wishes were very similar to Qualia’s.
And some sort of twist of fate brought another magic doll in front of Lobelia.
“…Ddos only thought about his own gains. He was willing to kill beast people, put others in danger, and take away the freedom of magic dolls like you all for money. That’s why his life ended with him being eaten by a monster he invested in.”
Ddos was a textbook case of a human that was wrong, was what was confirmed once again to Qualia as he heard Lobelia speak to Ace.
“Let’s think. What do you want to do with the world, Ace?”
“…What I desire from the world has not been defined inside me.”
She said, although it seemed Ace had more to say. It was not completely undefined, it simply had not grown enough to be put into words.
“Well, the guard knight chivalric order Hello World is first and foremost a place that greets the world. First, let’s try to make a smile.”
“Yes, that is my current role. That is why I am preparing beef stew with Qualia.”
“You are wrong. Qualia is already done with the process of preparing beef stew.”
“Eh… Done already… Wait, seriously!? When did that happen!?”
Lobelia raised her voice without thinking, as the brown stew boiled in the pot where the fire was raging. Qualia had finished cooking according to his optimal solution while Ace and Lobelia talked.
It smelled nice too, and the ingredients were cut evenly with a margin of error of less than a millimeter.
No waste, no mistakes. He just followed the blueprint in his head plainly.
“So there’s actually a boy who is this good of a cook… Honestly, I feel my heart swooning. Yes, it smells nice.
“…Ou…”
Lobelia peeked at the beef stew with a fascinated expression, and Ace also went from a blank expression to slight excitement when she looked down at it. But after tasting it, Qualia’s lips went stiff for a moment.
“Analyzing situation. This is not tasty.”
“Hoe? Really? Hn? No, it’s good.”
Lobelia also tried it, and felt there was nothing wrong with it in particular. If anything, she felt it came out pretty good. She did feel there was something missing, but not enough to worry about.
But Qualia could not close that task that there was something missing. He detected a small, but fatal bug in his programming, and went deep into calculation again.
“Using feedback. No problems found in beef stew recipe. No abnormalities found in preparation process. Further analysis necessary. Executing creation of tasting sensor with 5D printer to determine cause of…”
“Wait wait! I don’t like to waste food!”
“If you are throwing it away, request that you offer it to me!”
Ace and Lobelia held and stopped Qualia, who was clearly going to use the beef stew for something other than eating.
The optimal solution should have been perfect, but the output beef stew lacked in tastiness.
Well made food was different from good tasting food. There was a difference between something that was made well, and something tasty.
Qualia did not understand this, and surmised that Ina’s heart would not be healed if he gave that to her. Lobelia then pushed his shoulders from behind, probably sensing that he was not convinced.
“It’s fine, just try taking it to her.”
“That is wrong. It is determined that anything other than tasty food will have little effect.”
“I’m at least two years older than you. Trust your big sister, mister perfectionist.”
Qualia was chased out of the kitchen while holding the beef stew’s container by Lobelia’s small hands, and he was guided to the room where Ina was sleeping.
Meanwhile Ina… Was having a nightmare.
A nightmare that went back to three years ago, brought about by her big brother, that was supposed to have been left in the past.
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