A
I kinda liked the cute white-haired girl that the headmaster had introduced to me. She was really peppy though; I could barely keep up with her enthusiasm at life.

I led her to the culinary building on campus, then through that building to the fourth kitchen. There are about fifteen kitchens in the building, and three large cafeterias. There were also six storage freezers, two butchery kitchens (where we can butcher our own animals, if a recipe calls for it), and ten total storage closets, separated by the type of food stored. It was a big building, to say the least.

My culinary class was assigned to use kitchen 4, so that's where I was going. Once we got there I went to the counter and made sure it was clean, then set my knife case on it and took the sharpening rod and knife out of it. Maze leaned on the counter and watched me as I sharpened the knife, then I set it down on the top of the case.

"I'm going to go get ingredients," I told her, then left the kitchen with a large bowl and went around the storage rooms to gather things. Maze didn't follow me; when I got back, I set the bowl on the counter and grabbed the other utensils I'd need from around the kitchen.

"What are you making?" Maze asked me, still watching me as I gathered the utensils.

"I'm testing out recipes for salmon." I said, pulling a salmon out of my bowl and starting to cut the fish. She jumped when I chopped off the head, looking a little bit disturbed, but she seemed to relax a little more when she noticed that it was dead before I decapitated it. I filleted it, then cut the fillets into quarters so that I had several to test with. I took one, then put the others in plastic wrap and put them in the tub of ice I had prepared so that they would still be fairly fresh when I used them.

Maze sat in a chair and watched me as I prepared and made the first fillet, then once it was done I handed it to her to taste. She ate some of it, humming at me and looking up mid-chew with an enthusiastic look on her face. I chuckled at her.

"I can't understand you, finish chewing first," I said. She blushed a little bit and nodded.

"That was really good," she exclaimed. I smiled a little bit.

"Alright," I said. "Anything that I could fix? Just tell me literally anything." I could tell she had no idea how to judge food by tasting it.

She thought for a minute. "Um... I guess it's a bit salty?"

I nodded and took out one of the fillets from the ice bath, deciding to grill that one. I kept testing different methods of cooking the fish, and different toppings and things on them. Maze seemed to think that when I grilled it and made a sweet-ish honey-barbecue glaze was best.

This was only for an assessment, not a competition, so I didn't have to worry about the pressure of what the other students would come up with. We ended up testing out recipes until around seven o-clock, having used two full fish before I narrowed down what I wanted to do for the actual assessment. By then Maze was pretty tired, because she had been eating small meals of fish for like, seven hours. I made sure that we took breaks with the food testing, so that she wouldn't get sick, and I made sure she knew that she could tell me that she wanted to stop taste-testing any time, but she never did.

I offered to walk her to her dorm, but she insisted that she was fine. I made sure that she made it to the elevator at least before going to my dorm for the night.

M
I spent the rest of that day testing foods for Anubis. All of the food was super good, I had a hard time finding anything for him to improve with each dish. My favorite by far though was the grilled salmon fillet with a sort of sweet and tangy glaze on it. I think he had also put some cinnamon on it, and I love cinnamon, so that was a plus too.

I was pretty sleepy by the time he decided to stop testing foods, and I was full. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor where my dorm was, then to the room that the Headmaster had told me was my dorm. I opened the door with the key that I was given, opening it slowly just in case I had a roommate and they were asleep. I noticed that one of the bedroom doors had a name tag on it, so I figured that my roommate was indeed asleep in there, so I went to the other bedroom and opened the unlocked door. I then changed into pajamas and laid down in bed, falling asleep pretty soon.

I had enjoyed spending the rest of the afternoon with Ani. He didn't talk very often as he was cooking, or at all really. But his voice was pretty low and soft, and was almost smooth, if that makes any sense. Though he was quiet and didn't talk a lot, the silence wasn't uncomfortable or anything. It gave me time to just admire him anyway.

I found the way he looked to be intriguing. His face was so elegant looking, and the downward slope of his eyes that gave them the sort of sad puppy-dog look combined with the deep brown color of his eyes made him have this relaxed expression on his face all the time.

I also got to look more at his tattoos. The one full sleeve of tattoos was all floral patterns, lots of vibrant and colorful flowers. One thing I thought made it look especially beautiful was that each pattern was a different style, but they all seemed to go together. The other arm was so far smaller things, like I saw a snake and a skull, but then there was also a little dragon. The tattoos on his knuckles spelled 'unique' across his index fingers to his ring fingers. There was a heart on one thumb, a tiny skull on the other, and two roses on his pinkies. One rose was fully bloomed, and the other was wilted.

He was pretty skinny, and was taller than me. It was a little worrying with how thin he was, his arms were pretty skinny compared to how other men's arms are, muscle aside, he just didn't have a lot of fat there either.

I was really excited to start school next week, actually. Ani was the only person I had met so far that I consider a friend already, and I was excited to spend more time with him in the future.