Chapter 17: Princess Mia... Gives a Do-or-Die Presentation

How did it come to this?!

The sheer all-consuming cruelty of the reality confronting Mia filled her with despair.

Why? Why? Why me?!

The whole of the world seemed to darken before her eyes as she desperately looked for a way to solve her problem.

Turning the clock back a little bit...

After meeting up with Bel and Lynsha, Mia left the rest of the work in Ludwig’s capable hands and returned to Saint-Noel.

“Finally! I can sit back and relax!”

With a wide grin, she stepped into the student council office, feeling almost a little nostalgic; she hadn’t been here in quite some time.

“Hello, everyone. I’m terribly sorry for my prolonged absence. Thank you for holding down the fort while I was gone.”

After apologizing to her fellow council members, she started dealing with all the work that had been piling up.

Granted, it’s basically all paperwork, and I certainly have no business second-guessing anything Rafina already okayed, she thought as she started mindlessly signing the documents on her desk.

Expecting to cruise through all the paperwork, her eyes almost popped out of their sockets when she looked over one of the papers that had come to her from Rafina. Detailed on it was a new problem—one that was bigger, badder, and harder to stomach than even the ones her academy city faced. Specifically...

“Huh? What? Why? Wh-Where did all the sweets go?”

One of the documents from Rafina listed the new menu schedule for the cafeteria that was going to be implemented, and it had far fewer sweets than before. Even Mia’s favorite, the fruit tart, was gone.

Wh-What happened?! H-How has it come to this?!

She was almost in tears.

“Oh, while you were gone, the three of us did some research into dietetics. It was quite fun, wasn’t it?” said Rafina, glancing at her two co-researchers.

Tiona and Chloe nodded, and the three shared a chuckle.

Wh-What in the moons is that?!

Mia, for her part, was completely bewildered. She had no idea what “dietetics” was, but if it meant taking away her sweets, then she was pretty sure she didn’t like it. Faced with this mysterious foe, she made an effort to regather her wits and fight back.

“I-I see... So you researched, uh...dietetics...”

“Yes. It’d been a blind spot for me as well. I’d never fully considered the relationship between the food we eat and our health, so I was astonished to learn there was a field of study like this. And I remembered that you’d mentioned we should look after the health of our students, so we reviewed our cafeteria menu and decided that in order to better balance its nutritional content, we should reduce the amount of sweets and add more vegetables.”

I-I said no such thing! Never in a million years!

Realizing that denying the claim would do her no good, she kicked her mind into overdrive, trying to think of a way to solve this problem. When it came to protecting her sweets, the Great Sage of the Empire spared no expense.

“Of course,” said Rafina with a frown, “even though it’s good for their health, if we plan to trade sweets for vegetables... I suspect there will be some pushback. Dealing with that will probably be the hardest part of making this happen.”

Yes! That’s it!

Seeing a way out of this predicament, Mia wasted no time taking advantage of it. She scrunched up her face into a look of grave concern and nodded.

“Yes, you’re right. That’s a very serious problem. Therefore, we might want to consider keeping things the way they are for now, and hold on to this as a topic for future consideration...”

“No, it’s one of the policies that you put forward, so even if it’ll take some work, I’d like to see it through.”

Rafina gave her a look of passionate determination. Tiona and Chloe responded in kind.

Since when did you three become best buddies?! Argh!

“Interesting. For those who must rule, the maintenance of their health is certainly important, but I must confess this is my first time hearing of the term as well. Dietetics, was it? Hm... Ah, so that’s why you were so obsessed with mushrooms. Once again, your foresight amazes me, Mia,” Sion said with genuine admiration.

Abel and Sapphias followed suit, nodding their agreement. No one made any attempt to oppose the motion, to Mia’s dismay. The lack of sweet teeth in the room was profoundly confounding.

Augh! My sweets, they’re slipping away... I need to do something... But what?

Refusing to give up, she kept thinking in spite of the overwhelming majority against her. She was surrounded. She was alone. But sometimes...a girl just had to stand up for her desserts. There were some fights that were worth fighting, and this was one of them.

What can I do to save my sweets? I need an idea... Something... Anything! Come on!

A vision of the head chef’s portly face flashed across her mind. His voice, deep and throaty like a bear’s growl, echoed in her mind.

“We developed this recipe for Your Highness. Behold, the vegetable cake.”

“That’s it! The vegetable cake!”

And that was when it came to her. Not just an idea but an inspiration, brilliant enough to turn the tides of fate and reverse her sugarless future. Her mind, so used to relying on the intake of sweets to hit peak performance, now achieved the same feat unfed, driven by a primal urge to defend its precious fuel. There was beauty to this fervor, like an ouroboros of mutual aid, as need guarded function and function fed need.

...Or maybe she just had a sugar addiction. In any case, after a long, quiet moment, she spoke.

“Whether to include more vegetables in the student diet...or to preserve the quality of the sweets menu... In my opinion, we should do both. To that end, Miss Rafina, I propose an addition to the meal schedule in the form of cakes that are good for your health.”

“Cakes that are good for your health?” Rafina echoed in surprise. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Do they really exist?”

Mia nodded with the confidence of experience.

“They certainly do. The cakes I speak of represent the pinnacle of Tearmoon’s ingenuity and technical prowess, and they are called vegetable cakes!”

“V-Vegetable cakes?!”

She proceeded to give a fervent presentation, on which hung the fate of her beloved treats.

“First, for the new cafeteria menu, the sweets can be left unchanged. Instead, we can remove some particularly unpopular items, such as the vegetable salad, and that thick vegetable soup. In their place, we shall add the vegetable cake.”

“B-But, Princess Mia, if we don’t cut down on the number of sweets, we won’t solve the problem of people eating too much of them, will we?” asked a hesitant Chloe.

Mia gently shook her head.

“That won’t be a problem, Chloe, because the vegetable cake is so good... Mmm, so good... You won’t be able to resist...”

That seemed to click for Rafina. She nodded.

“Ah, I see what you mean to do. Rather than removing tasty items from the menu and replacing them with healthy but less appealing ones, you’d rather expand the menu to include items both tasty and healthy. And you have just the recipe in mind.”

“That’s exactly right, Miss Rafina.”

The two traded comprehending nods.

“You’ve outdone me again, Princess Mia. I hadn’t even been aware of the connection between the cafeteria’s menu and our students’ health. Meanwhile, you’ve already prepared a recipe for its improvement.”

“This is news to me too,” said an astonished Tiona. “I’ve been to the capital a few times, but I’ve never heard of a cake like that.”

“Neither have I,” agreed Chloe. “I’ve never seen it mentioned in books. Princess Mia is so knowledgeable.”

The three girls showered Mia with gazes of admiration, which had the effect of lighting a fire under her ego. She crossed her arms and nodded with smug satisfaction.

“If my idea is approved, then I can send word to Lunatear right away. So what’ll it be?”

The meeting ended with Mia promptly penning a letter addressed to her faithful head chef in the imperial capital, asking him for the recipe for the vegetable cake. The pastry she introduced to the menu would go on to prove exceptionally popular, becoming a renowned speciality of the Saint-Noel cafeteria. Later, after graduating, she would recognize the accomplishment of her head chef and present him with the Mia Medal of Freedom.

To the profound indifference of all of you, certainly, but anyway...