Aria cupped her chin and just stared hard at the floorboards.
"I’m still thinking about it Papa," she muttered with a dead serious tone. "I want to make sure it’s something you actually like."
Adrian just had to smile at that.
He gave her a small nod and looked over at Serena.
"And what are you planning on making?"
Serena shifted in her seat looking pretty awkward.
"Honestly I have zero clue about what to do," she admitted. "Got any ideas for me?"
Adrian just gave a half shrug. "I mean what kind of stuff do you normally like eating?"
"Well I do like a really good sandwich," Serena pointed out before quickly shaking her head. "No wait, I like the meat that you make. Yes, I really like your meat."
The corner of Adrian’s lip twitched.
To Serena, that sentence didn’t sound bad at all since she was obviously just talking about his steaks. But Adrian was a modern guy from Earth. For him that phrasing carried a wildly different and highly inappropriate meaning.
’Yeah.’ Adrian thought to himself. ’You should totally love my meat. Long, thick and juicy, who doesn’t love a good sausage...’
He quickly shook his head to clear the gutter from his mind. He forced himself to look slightly away from her.
"So..." Adrian coughed awkwardly. "So you like the steak?"
Serena nodded repeatedly.
"I really like the fried chicken too," she added.
"Okay then," Adrian said. "Making a good steak isn’t even that hard to do. I can just teach you the basic steps if you want."
Claire instantly glared at him.
"That is totally not fair," Claire argued. "This is supposed to be a cooking competition. You can’t just teach her!"
Adrian glanced at the knight.
"Yeah that is a fair point."
Serena immediately pouted and glared at Claire.
"Well you picked an incredibly easy dish to make!" Serena shot back. "That isn’t fair either! I actually picked a dish that is super hard to get right. Doesn’t that mean it’s only fair if he at least shows me how to not completely screw it up?"
Claire crossed her arms over her chest with a loud scoff.
"Look. Just because I used my brain and picked an easy dish doesn’t mean I should be actively punished for it."
"Well the competition hasn’t technically started yet," Serena argued back. "So he can legally teach me the damn recipe before we even begin. And then once we start competing for real he doesn’t have to lift a finger to help me."
The two women just sat there staring daggers at each other in total silence.
Adrian leaned back and watched the petty argument happen.
"Well," Adrian chuckled. "That is a pretty good loophole."
Claire just glared at Serena for a few more seconds. Then she finally broke eye contact and turned around.
"Fine," Claire huffed. "Do what you want."
Aria looked back and forth between the two of them.
"So we have rice and we have steak," Aria said out loud.
Adrian nodded. "So what are you going to make to beat them?"
Aria just looked up at him.
"I don’t really know what pairs well with both rice and steak," Aria muttered. "But we can’t really just eat plain white rice alone, so the steak needs to have some flavor to carry it."
Serena smirked. "I will make sure my steak has plenty of flavor."
Aria just nodded slowly.
"And the rice also needs to be cooked perfectly," Aria added seriously. "Because even if the meat has good flavor, bad rice will ruin the whole thing."
Claire let out a massive scoff at that.
"You really don’t need to worry about that part at all. I will make sure that I cook my stuff perfectly."
Adrian just sat there watching the whole thing happen.
The atmosphere in the carriage suddenly felt really weird to him. It was this strange and highly competitive tension that he was not used to dealing with.
He looked down at Aria.
He honestly wondered what the hell his little angel was scheming in her head right now. Seeing her this serious about anything was pretty rare so it was a nice change of pace.
Aria finally spoke up after a few seconds of quiet.
"I need to make something that goes well on its own," she said. "And it also needs to pair perfectly with both the rice and the steak. Or just one of them just in case their dishes fail."
Adrian raised an eyebrow at the kid.
"Wait. So you basically want to make a dish that works as an emergency backup while also making their food taste better?" he asked.
Aria nodded her head.
"Yeah," she mumbled quietly. "But I really don’t know what to make that fits."
Adrian just chuckled.
"Well even I don’t know what to make off the top of my head with those kinds of restrictions," he admitted.
Aria just nodded and went back to staring at the floorboards while completely lost in thought.
Adrian watched her think for a bit.
"Why don’t you try making a curry?" he finally suggested. "We can make one with a really thick and gravy like consistency so it goes perfectly with both the rice and the steak. You could just use the gravy part as a sauce for the meat and dump the rest over the rice to eat it however you want."
Aria’s eyes lit up instantly and she nodded repeatedly.
"I can totally do that!" she said.
"Do you even know how to actually make it though?" Adrian asked.
She immediately shook her head.
"No," Aria admitted bluntly. "But Papa is going to help me right?"
Adrian leaned back into his seat and crossed his arms.
"I am absolutely not helping you," he said with a huge smirk. "This is a competition."
Aria instantly pouted.
She threw her arms around his bicep and aggressively mashed her face right into his arm.
She flat out refused to let him go.
After a few seconds she slowly tilted her head back to look up at him with massive innocent eyes.
"Aren’t you going to help me Papa? Please?" she begged in a stupidly cute voice.