A/N: Here's a new chapter! I'll be posting an update of a rough schedule of the new chapters and stories you Bakers can expect in the coming winter holidays as soon as possible! :) Hope you're still reading this.

*

"I'm surprisingly good at this," said my yolk-and-whites-separating husband, tossing the fourth egg shell into the bin without really looking at it. It went right into the basket. "You should definitely hire me as your full-time assistant."

"But you're already my full-time bodyguard," I bumped my hip into his, although barely meeting his upper thigh. Too much height. "Pass me a vanilla bean."

Xander reached over to the side of the counter and did as told, wiping his hands on a towel before touching the pod. "I'd like to hand in my resignation letter for that position and apply for the above-mentioned."

"Nu," I made a slit in the bean and scraped out its contents in a breath, finding myself strangely calm despite the circumstances. "I'm rejecting that unless, well, unless you've got a reason. Some explanation to, um, impress me. Your employer."

Grind the dried sakura into powder? Or use the paste? But it's salt-pickled. If I wash it, it's not going to be dry. Or wash, and then put it into the grinder anyway and make it into something like a paste? Then add the premade paste to taste, or for colour. How pink would Giselle want it to be? I was handed a bowl of whites while combining the milk, vegetable oil and vanilla but I pushed it back, pointing my elbow towards the electric mixer and waiting for Xander to read my mind. He did.

"Beat that up?"

"Yeap."

"There you have it, your first reason," he laughed amidst Chef Randy's announcement of the remaining time. "I can read your mind."

I teased him by pretending to frown. "Uh huh, really? What am I thinking now?"

"What sort of pink Giselle was talking about when she said she wanted the cake to be," he winked and my jaw dropped. "That, or how amazing hot your husband looks when he'd reading your mind."

"Aaaljsfhosdiajsdkaeu," said me to me, quickly returning to my mix and grabbing the sieve to hide my face and my ears that were most probably red. "G-go away!"

Xander laughed, swirling the electric mixer around the bowl, checking the time whilst doing so. I noticed his gaze resting on the station in front of ours, which appeared to be filled with durians. The smell was so strong that it turned heads, including Miss Rachel's. I caught a glimpse of her narrowed eyes just before lowering my gaze to the egg whites to check if they were at the right consistency for the adding of sugar.

"Stop now?" Xander had followed my gaze and took it as a cue of warning. I told him that it was about time to add the next ingredient.

Being the diligent assistant he was supposed to be, my husband gave the rough draft of our impromptu recipe a scan. "Sugar. Four t-s-p."

"And t-s-p stands for?" I peered up with a cheeky smile and he obliged with a laugh.

It reminded me, all of a sudden, of the time that had passed and the moments we'd spent, together and apart—warming the words of a story that had seemed, almost, cold and never to be baked. The crossing of paths, manifested in the appearance of the very thing that brought us together: hot-cross buns.

Xander leaned over, our foreheads meeting. "Teaspoons."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I was folding in the egg whites and coming up with alternatives to give the cake a natural pink colouring when I noticed that I had something missing.

"Xan, did you take a small bottle of pink liquid?" I turned to him at once, hearing a loud, thunderous beat in my ears. "Um, the sakura syrup."

My husband looked up from the cream cheese and heavy cream he was combining. "I didn't know they had that. Is there anything you can replace it with?"

I'd already vetted my options the second I realized I'd completely forgotten about it and it didn't take me long to tell Xander there weren't any.

"I-it was there, yesterday—when Mr. Yamazaki was introducing it along with the pickled cherry blossoms. But for some reason, I don't recall seeing it on the shelves and maybe that's how it just... slipped my mind. I was so busy thinking about the sake-to-cream-cheese-ratio that I..." Okay Chip it's pointless to brood over spilt milk, said me to me. You have the dried cherry blossoms and the paste. Put it together with the batter and taste that first.

I did just that; albeit reluctantly since I knew it simply wasn't enough to enhance the floral scent of the cherry blossoms. Nothing would beat having syrup, since it not only added a good, concentrated flavour without changing the colour of the batter—which the paste would have done, since I would have to use more to achieve the same flavour—but also a specific sweetness that wasn't overpowering and would most probably go well with the cream cheese and sake, which tasted strong to begin with.

By then, I was beginning to go off in my pebble world and spin around rather helplessly when Xander, being the mind-reader-bodyguard-baking-assistant-husband, threw the question out in the open.

Without warning.

"Does anyone have a bottle of cherry blossom syrup to spare? We only need a few drops." He continued to mix the cheese and cream, stopping to pop open the bottle of sake.

Terrified by his sudden call for attention and more so by the lack of response, I froze. Everyone else seemed to have their full attention on what they were doing at the moment, without a second to spare. Not a single head turned, but I spotted a few shaking in response.

"I think we're the only ones using cherry blossoms," I concluded after a long pause, turning to Xander. "U-um, thanks though. But also no thanks! I mean, it's not that we can't ask around, but, well, you should have at least told me you wanted to do that or or it could have been pretty embarrassing."

My husband laughed. "Sorry. It's worth a shot, and I know you'd never do something like that." I nudged him in the abs.

Chef Randy's voice came through the speakers once again about hoping to see 'creative, novel ingredients being used for a recipe as traditional', and that we had less than half an hour to finish it.

"How much of this should I add?" Xander held up the bottle of sake, a teaspoon in his other hand. "It's one of the lighter ones but the burn is strong."

"How sweet is it?"

"Only the aftertaste is."

"W-what's that?" I blanked out for a second, trying to separate my thoughts of 'how to compensate for the sakura flavour' and 'how to sake'.

Xander laughed. "It's what you taste on your tongue after drinking it. And no, you're not going to taste test anything in this mixing bowl," he warned. I disapproved.

"But I can't tell you how much to add unless it's to taste! I've never made this before."

Bending over to scan the label of the bottle, I figured that a tiny coin-sized dollop of cream wouldn't possibly... but then there were the chocolates from last night...

"Alright then," my husband pulled the bottle out of my reach and filled a teaspoon with sake. "Trust me?"

I sighed, making a face. "If Giselle doesn't like it, I'm blaming you."

"She blames me all the time," he shrugged soon afterwards, smiling and going with the flow. I glanced at the clock, sorting out the things to prioritize. Making a half-hearted roll was out of the question; if I was going for a unique flavour in the first place, dialling down on the fragrance just because I'd forgotten about the syrup was not a valid excuse.

Taking the sieve and filling it with a handful of pickled cherry blossoms, I placed it over a tiny bowl and then transferred both into the biggest pot I could find.

"What are you doing?" Xander leaned over to see me working at speedy speeds.

"Steaming the petals," I explained, filling the bottom of the pot with water before turning on the heat. "I'm not sure if it's going to work but I'm hoping it'll produce something like a concentrate or an essence. Uwaa, I shouldn't have forgotten about the syrup."

"Who needs ingredients when you have an amazing brain like that?" Xander raised a brow, teasing. "You can think of any solution."

"Stop complimenting me and mix your cream cheese," I reminded, although entirely because I needed to distract my husband from my blushy face. "And remember to taste it—oh wait, I think you can use a spatula instead of a whisk now, and um, fold it. Oh, and can you get the mini-blender under the counter to your right."

I put a handful of dried cherry blossoms into the blender and added one teaspoon of paste only after it was ground into a powder-like texture. Then, rinsing more cherry blossoms, I added them into the mix.

Folding the sakura flavours into the roll's batter, I tasted it after it was perfectly combined. Not exactly what I had intended. Checking in on the steaming petals, I found several drops of a pale pink liquid in the tiny bowl I'd placed below the sieve.

"That smells really good," Xander put his head right over the pot before I pushed it away.

"Xan! That's dangerous."

"Only because your glasses would fog up when you do that," he laughed and I caught a glimpse of his hand reaching up to pinch my nose before stopping mid-air, as though remembering that it was covered in cream cheese.

Grabbing a mitten, I brought the bowl over to the blast freezer and placed it inside, counting to ten before taking it out and returning to our station to combine it with the rest of the batter.

"Twenty minutes!"

Barely enough time to put this into the oven and decorate. Oh nu.

Parchment paper. Spray. Spatula. I plopped the fluffy pink batter into a rectangular pan before using a side scraper to smooth over the surface. And into the oven.

I breathed deeply, pausing for a second to collect my thoughts and calm the strawberry down. Now would be the time to think about presentation. Presentation. Elegant? No, it didn't quite suit the colour. Simple? Just some ribbon piping down the centre, maybe pleated, using whipped cream, and maybe a dust of—

So invested I was in calming strawberries that I hadn't noticed someone calling for me until Xander did, and I looked up to see Mr. Yamazaki checking in on our work.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded vigorously. "A-ah! Yes! Uh, yes I'm good."

"You are trying sakura?" Shin's father picked up the packet of dried cherry blossoms I'd cut open and used. "Not a lot of people are using it. Down the row, only three." He smiled, eyes resting on the draft of our recipe. "Ah! Sake cream cheese?"

Mr. Yamazaki chuckled. "おもしろいですね。"

"What does that mean?" Xander asked in my stead, having returned from his trip to the refrigerator and leaving the cream cheese inside to chill.

"I-it means, um," he was being put on the spot and I blamed Xander for that. "Interesting. Fun. Very exciting."

Relieved, I thanked him but also expressed my worries about the taste, and the possible lack of fragrance. "I know it's meant to be subtle, but I don't want it to end up just like sugar, or, well, a plain sweetness that would just seem... tart after a while."

"Mm, mm," Mr. Yamazaki nodded. "I understand. And you asked, I believe? For the syrup?"

I felt my ears burn. "Well, yes... but we didn't mean to."

"We definitely did," Xander butt in to correct me, leaving my jaw not-so-intact. "But no one's giving two shits about it."

Appalled by his language, my tendencies to poke his abs surfaced at once but only because I was busy watching the consistency of the whipped cream to be piped on top of the roll, I didn't. Instead, I used the next possible thing I could think of—my nose. Just, not his abs. I ended up nose-poking his upper arm, the highest I could reach.

Mr Yamazaki didn't seem to notice. "Ah... oke, I see, I see. But you have worked around it? The syrup, I can't help with that, but I trust you found way to solve the problem."

"Yeah, he did," Xander laughed, and what I least expected was him turning to stop me mid-poke by nose-poking my nose in return. Nose-ception.

"I will look forward to tasting!" Shin's father nodded before moving on to the station behind us and continuing his round of checks.

While whipping the cream, Xander and I discussed about the final presentation of the roll cake, throwing out random ideas.

"You could have the pickled flowers all over the plate?"

"But! That's so cheesy," I turned the idea down at once, unable to imagine pickled flowers on the plate for no particular reason. "I was thinking: simple or elegant. Which would suit the roll better? Oh—and can you pass me the piping bag and a leaf piping tip after you're done washing the spatulas? Thanks hehe."

"Neither," my husband replied unexpectedly. "I think with that colour, you should go for 'cute'. It makes more sense, and you've already rid of the cracks by using egg whites only, right?"

"Oh... oh yeah, and, well, it makes the whole cake sort of fluffy. Like, jiggly and satisfying to cut."

Xander laughed at my description. "Then I guess you have it. Cute."

I agreed on the final decision, correcting my instructions to pass the leaf piping tip to the largest round one he could find before giving the batter in the oven a quick check. Almost done.

"You don't need to, I don't know, do the thing that people usually do? Test it with a toothpick?" Xander held out the piping bag and rounded tip towards me, waiting for me to take it.

I shook me head. "I can tell when it's done. I've been baking for more than ten years, Xan!"

"Fine," my husband rolled his eyes. "I'm jealous of baking. You've done it more than you've done me."

I blinked. "Huh? But I can't... I can't do you, y-you're not a verb, 'baking' is a verb, that's... that's not very logical, Xan," I concluded, transferring the whipped cream into the icing bag.

Chef Randy was at it again, announcing that we had about five minutes remaining.

Immediately, I was wearing my mittens and giving the oven a check before confirming that it was ready. "Can you put on a mitten?" I told my husband. "I need you to take this to the blast freezer and put it in for about thirty seconds to cool it a-s-a-p please please please."

"Got it." Then added, as though it was an afterthought (however inappropriate): "I didn't know you begged so much when you're baking."

*

We were frantically doing our best to put everything on the plate when Mr. Yamazaki, with a small bottle of what looked like pink powder, came by again.

"This is the closest I find to sakura syrup," he whispered, placing it on the counter. My eyes widened. "This is sweet sakura sugar powder. Actually paste, same, but freeze dry. Mild, subtle flavour but very very good for fragrance. Maybe too late but, um, see what you can do with it."

"But we can't accept that! It's our fault for forgetting about it. It would be unfair to everyone else..."

Mr. Yamazaki shook his head. "Unfair? Baking is not competition," he smiled. "There is no reward. No medal, no trophy. Only full, happy tummy."

Half of me wanted to scribble the quote onto a notepad and frame it when we got back home but the other half wanted sob like a child before requesting a group hug; that was all before another announcement of the remaining time snapped me back into shape.

"I-I don't know what to say," I managed to Mr Yamazaki, thanking him profusely. Even Xander, who had been drying the tools he'd washed, looked impressed. "It's our fault for forgetting about it, but you helped us. Thank you so much."

Mr Yamazaki waved a hand before his face, shaking his head. "No no. Hurry! There is not much time left."

I turned to Xander to ask for the sieve that he'd washed and dried, but he was already holding it out towards me. "O-oh, that's very fast."

"What can I say?" He helped crack open the brand-new bottle of cherry blossom sugar while I piped a bead border down the very center of the roll. Thank goodness we went for the round tip instead—it completed the look perfectly. "I'm your best assistant."

"Okay assistant," I laughed, giving in. "I'm counting on you."

With barely a minute left on the clock, I dusted the roll with the pink sugar powder after piping and found myself thanking the cupcakes above for someone like Mr Yamazaki. The sakura sugar powder added a light, floral fragrance at once and enhanced the overall appearance by adding a bit of a sparkle. It was simple and yet, suitably fancy.

"What next?"

"Cut the sides—about an inch will do," I searched the drawers for plates while Xander pulled out a knife. "Then transfer it to another plate for us to have a quick taste."

I watched the cut as closely as I could to observe whether the roll turned out as fluffy and soft as I'd intended it to be. Unfortunately, a ten-second-countdown had begun.

"Why the fuck is there a countdown?" Xander laughed while transferring the cut-portion to another plate which I had missed entirely. "They're taking things so seriously. A couple of seconds doesn't matter."

I shushed him and quickly removed the excess powder around the far sides of the plate with a paper towel. "Everyone's really professional about this, maybe. It almost feels like a competition."

Xander had produced a dessert fork and was about to dig in when a sharp, shrill 'time's up!' rang from the speakers and startled me into an ice block.

"Alright!" Chef Randy clapped her hands together and Mr Huang beside her nodded with a smile. "All of you, bring your rolls up front. We'll be inviting our guests to have a taste but before that, we'll be asking all of you to give your novel ideas a brief introduction!"

Everyone brought their cakes and shuffled to the front of the studio, where a long table with the name cards of every bakery placed a distance apart from each other was set up. Xander and I found 'Baked Love' pretty easily, since it was arranged alphabetically, and for some reason, a man with a huge and bulky camera was standing right in front of us.

"And we will start with..." Mr Huang gestured to the upper end of the table. "Andy. And his daughter, Elena. Yes, what do you have for us?"

Necks were craned and toes were tipped, all except mine because I'd long given in to the futility of additional height. Mr Andy proceeded to describe something along the lines of a Gula Melaka swiss roll with avocado cream filling.

My tummy took this as a cue to rumble.

"Ah! Like smoothie," Mr Yamazaki had commented good-naturedly, to which everyone else laughed. "It looks very nice. This is a swiss roll, yes? Not a roulade."

I assumed Mr Andy had nodded since nothing was actually said but Chef Randy went on further to comment about the presentation before Mr Huang gave his final comments on the taste.

Overall, the evaluation was nothing as strict or frightening as I thought it would have been, since my preconceptions were mainly formed by the startling countdown they had just minutes ago. Either way, I simply couldn't wait to try everyone else's cakes and learn about flavour combinations—no one could deny that it was a sea of inspirational fish. Gotta catch them all!

"Ah, Rachel! What do you and Jennifer have for us today."

This time, I tried craning my neck. It didn't make much of a difference since I couldn't quite see Miss Rachel or what she and her assistant had made anyway.

"I have come up with a Matcha roulade with cherry blossom buttercream and cherry blossom jam, topped with a layer of white chocolate," she described with a smile in her voice, and my tummy thundered in response. I hungry am. And oh, so she was one of the few who used cherry blossom in their recipe.

"Ooh!" Mr Yamazaki seemed rather excited. "Coincidence. I have similar one at my first store in Tokyo. Just, no white chocolate. Why did you add chocolate on top?"

Flashes of light. Clinking of utensils. I turned to Xander to project a silent plea for tol information from tol viewpoint.

"We need to wipe that smug shit off her face," was all he whispered in response, leaning down to say beside my ear.

I demanded a refund. That wasn't the information I was asking for!

"I noticed that the roulade you showed us yesterday cracked as soon as it was rolled. It's a traditional aspect, I guess, but I didn't like how it looked since it wouldn't necessarily match what I'd sell at my store," Miss Rachel explained. "So I decided to cover the cracks with an icing. White chocolate goes very well with Matcha, and that is why I made the decision."

From where I was standing, I could catch a tiny glimpse of Chef Randy sending a dessert fork-full of Matcha roulade into her mouth and her nodding. Mr Yamazaki did the same.

"The texture of the roulade itself is very accurate," Chef Randy said. "Is this your first time making one?"

"Yes, actually."

"Then you are fast learner," Mr Yamazaki complimented, and the person in front of me shifted a little just in time for me to catch his thumbs-up. "I think the only problem is the flavours, then."

"What did you use to make the filling? It has a very strong flavour," I heard Mr Huang.

"Sakura syrup."

Behind me, my husband snorted.

"How nice of her to share."

I nudged him with my elbow before returning my attention to Miss Rachel and the other chefs.

"That only?"

"Yes."

"Maybe that is the reason why it turned out so strong. You assumed that the syrup was not enough to make up for the lack of other sakura ingredients, and so you were heavy-handed with it, am I correct?" Mr Yamazaki sounded frighteningly strict all of a sudden and I, along with many others, did a double take.

"That is not good. Too much of the syrup will make the flavour one-dimensional. The thing about sakura is that it is meant to be subtle. It is not supposed to be a strong flavour."

Chef Randy chipped in soon after. "I thought it was a great attempt at combining the unique ingredients with ones that we are familiar with. The only thing you missed out was that all three flavours, Matcha, chocolate and cherry blossom, turned out to be going against each other."

"Fighting," Mr Yamazaki finished with a demonstration of punching his own fists. It was slightly hilarious.

When the chefs moved on to the next patisserie, I caught a glimpse of Miss Rachel's face amidst tall shoulders and even taller heads. She appeared very upset, clenching her jaw and her eyes slightly red. It made me feel bad for her.

Two pastry chefs down and a short break later, it was our turn to have our roll evaluated. I'd turned to my husband with fingers crossed behind my back before producing the bottle of sake we'd brought along to the table.