Fruit Skewers

When there was only one fruit-bearing apple tree outside the window, Ina made a lot of apple foods, apple crisps, and apple jams every day to use up all the apples. Now, there was an additional fruit-bearing hawthorn tree. Ina looked at a basket full of plump, bright red hawthorns that she had picked, and wondered what she should make this time.

She immediately thought of the candied haws on a stick, glittering, transparent, and brightly colored. Seeing Ina staring blankly at a basket of hawthorns, Anty approached her, "Miss Ina, do these need to be washed?" In the Dragon Flame Restaurant, it was not allowed to use such an address as 'Saintess.' Anty boldly guessed that Miss Ina might be doing something incredible in hiding her identity, such as selling food to many people and allowing everyone to be happy.

The hawthorns needed not only to be washed but also to have their seeds removed. Dusì and Anty helped to remove the seeds and the unpalatable hawthorn stems from the washed hawthorns using metal straws.

Ina came back with a bundle of trimmed wooden sticks, dried the water stains on the processed hawthorns, and skewered them.

Each stick, about 20 cm long, was strung with five large and round hawthorns. They looked very appealing in their bright red color.

"So beautiful," Dusì and Anty surrounded the wooden board where the candied haws were placed.

"It will look even better in a while," Ina promised confidently.

Ina boiled sugar syrup with rock sugar, but she failed the first time! She forgot that boiling syrup should not be stirred, and the syrup grained, turning into a white, sandy texture. But Ina didn't waste the syrup; she accepted the mistake, continued to cook until crystallized, and finally tossed the unskewered hawthorns in it, making a pot of sugar snowballs.

"It's indeed more beautiful! Like a snow mountain~" Anty complimented, looking at the snow sugar wrapped around the red hawthorns. Dusì, looking at the neatly stacked hawthorn skewers on the side, understood that what Ina might want to make was not sugar snowballs, but she didn't point it out. Instead, she picked up a sugar snowball and stuffed it into her mouth. The sweet outer shell and the sweet and sour hawthorn were a perfect match, making her salivate, and couldn't stop eating.

After they ate a few, Ina put the sugar snowballs aside. Hawthorns shouldn't be eaten too much, as they might cause toothache from the acidity. They still had to eat candied haws later!

Although she made a mistake in the product, Ina didn't give up. She boiled another pot of sugar syrup and started to sugar-coat quickly when big bubbles began to form in the pot. The sugar-coating speed had to be fast; if it was slow, it would not only cause the syrup to harden quickly but also possibly result in a string of cooked hawthorns.

She succeeded several times in a row, greatly boosting her confidence. She quickly asked Dusì and Anty to wash some strawberries and skewer them just the same.

Skewering strawberries was quick. The two of them finished quickly and curiously gathered around the pot as if watching a magic show. Ina immediately thought of an interesting method, she cleared her throat, "Watch me perform a magic trick."

She took out the sugar-coated hawthorns, turned the wooden stick gently with her fingers, and with a "whoosh", the sugar coat on the hawthorn stick turned into fluffy sugar threads.

"Oh!" The two of them exclaimed with great admiration.

"It's like cotton candy!" Anty shouted, pointing at the silvery sugar threads.

Ina made more than twenty hawthorn candied haws, ten sugar-coated strawberries, and a dozen mixed fruit skewers with apple pieces, cloudberries, currants, and cranberries.

By this time, the sugar syrup in the pot had become very hard and it was impossible to continue making candied hawthorns. Ina didn't waste the remaining sugar syrup either, she kept cooking it until the syrup turned amber, which is caramel.

If the tea leaves outside had been roasted and dried, adding milk would make a cup of caramel milk tea. Unfortunately, the tea leaves were still tender, so Ina used this caramel to make caramel pudding, wasting nothing.

About ten minutes later, the sugar syrup solidified and cooled, and the candied hawthorns were ready to eat.

The candied hawthorns were wrapped in a thick and sweet transparent sugar shell, and the sugar on the side placed on the board was especially thick. Anty gently licked this layer of sugar, seemingly since meeting Lady Ina, eating sugar for her has become less of a luxury and more commonplace.

At Ina's urging, Anty finally took a bite. The fiery red hawthorn wrapped in the icy, transparent sugar coat was like artwork, making her reluctant to destroy it. At first, it was the crunching sound of the sugar shell being bitten, and when her taste buds tasted sweetness, the hawthorn was also bitten open. The sourness and sweetness mixed together, and the taste immediately conquered Anty. The fruit also had such a crispy texture, she announced that the candied hawthorns had surpassed cotton candy in her ranking!

Dusì ate a sugar-coated strawberry, she bit down seriously, and similarly seriously commented, "It's very sweet, like eating ice cream."

When Elvys saw everyone gathered in the kitchen, he knew that Ina was researching some novel gourmet food again. He quietly appeared at the door, sneakily looking inside.

The kitchen door slammed shut in front of the black cat.

"I don't want to find cat hair in the sugar I'm eating."

Elvys was both angry and aggrieved: hadn't they noticed after all this time that he doesn't shed any hair at all!

In a short while, the door opened again. Ina came out with a colorful string of sugar-coated fruit skewers. She waved at the black cat, who hesitated for a while but eventually came over reluctantly.

This skewer contained cloudberries and currants. The ripe cloudberries were golden, and the currants were transparently radiant red. Skewered together, they were especially tempting. More importantly, these berries were very small, just right for the black cat to bite off in one mouthful.

Black cat Elvys stood awkwardly to one side, arrogantly lifting his head: you must apologize for your rude behavior just now before I will forgive you.

Ina used chopsticks to pick off a berry coated with sugar and put it into the mouth of the black cat, who was constantly meowing at her.

"Crunch." A gentle sound of the sugar shell cracking was heard. The crushed cloudberry burst with juice. The ripe cloudberry itself had a creamy texture, sweet with a unique sour taste. The black cat licked his mouth and looked at Ina beside him. Alright, forgive you once, come another one, meow.

After the black cat had eaten a whole string of sugar-coated fruits, Ina remembered that he had also eaten quite a lot in his last meal. Fearing that he might eat too much and get a stomach ache, she casually reached out to pinch the black cat's belly.

Elvys panicked and ran away.

Ina scoffed, "What's wrong with a touch, you're such an ungrateful little little badass." There were too many strange things about this black cat, such as its eerie red eyes and its calm gaze that always scrutinized its surroundings. Even stranger, it never raises its tail. Whether it's a male or female is still a mystery.

According to The Goldfinch, this black cat is smart and strong and should be a magical beast capable of speech. But it is silent all day, only meowing lowly when Ina teases it.

It's really not cute.

Ina handed a few skewers of sugar-coated hawthorns to Anty, who had finished eating quickly, and pointed in the direction of the backyard, "Take a few skewers over to him."

She didn't know if liches had a sense of taste, but Xavier was among the more powerful of the liches. Surely, he could taste food, right?

Xavier stared at the crystal clear fruit skewers handed to him. He didn't understand what the black dragon in the restaurant was up to. Picking tea was a hard job. His eyes were sour and stinging, and he only filled the shallow bottom of two baskets.

Faced with a girl with a brilliant smile, holding out the fruit skewers toward him, Xavier couldn't refuse. He silently took the skewers and put them in his mouth.

Poison is useless against a lich. However, if that black dragon wanted to get back at him by making him eat strange-tasting food, it could be done. He had put in a lot of effort to retain his sense of taste from when he was a human.

Upon putting the beautiful fruit skewer in his mouth, Xavier was taken aback.

"What is this?" he asked Anty, who hadn't left yet.

"Sugar-coated hawthorn, sugar-coated strawberry, sugar-coated..." Anty looked worriedly at the skewer mixed with cloudberries, currants, and cranberries, "sugar-coated various berries!"

Xavier crunched down on the hawthorn and moved the skewer of "sugar-coated various berries" toward his mouth. Cloudberries and other berries also had a sweet and sour taste but were more juicy. They were a different flavor compared to sugar-coated hawthorn.

Skeleton Orldington leaned over, curiously looking at the crystal clear fruit skewers in Xavier's hand.

Xavier shook his finger at it: "You can't eat it, it will leak out from your bones. I've tasted it for you, it's pretty good."

After he finished eating, he was about to continue picking his tea leaves. Ina stuck her head out of the back window again: "Xavier, you can often walk around town. You're an employee of the restaurant, not a slave."

"I'm less free than a slave," Xavier muttered, knowing that he would be "forced" to walk around town again.

Just as Xavier stepped out of the restaurant, he ran into the old woman who had almost fallen in the morning and he had helped her up. The old woman smiled at him: "Child, I brought you a scarf. This morning I saw you wearing so little, your hair still wet, weren't you cold?"

Thanks to the passing birds, Xavier had ruined a piece of clothing and washed his hair, not expecting it all to be noticed by this old woman. But he is a lich, he wouldn't feel cold. Xavier looked at her somewhat cautiously. When she saw he didn't take it, she continued: "It was knitted for my son, who never came back after he left the house once. It's never been worn, don't worry."

Recalling those hands as warm as a mother's, Xavier took the beige scarf. The old woman looked behind him: "What about that pretty little skeleton? I brought it something too."

Xavier's voice was dry: "Aren't you... afraid of me?" Mysterious strangers and eerie skeletons don't seem like good people, right?

The old woman didn't bat an eyelid: "But you are an employee of the Dragon Flame Restaurant." Xavier was very surprised. What kind of magic does this restaurant have that it can earn such trust from the town's residents?

In the end, Orldington also wore a brightly colored red scarf. It seemed to like it very much, dancing around constantly.

Xavier continued to wander around the foggy town. Keira was milking a cow, and the other cow waiting by her side was impatient, the fullness of milk causing it discomfort. Xavier immediately stepped forward to help this cow with milking.

Frank's chicken coop had expanded so rapidly that he hadn't had time to find workers to help, and it took a good amount of time each day just to clean the coop. Xavier immediately appeared in the chicken coop to help clean.

In this way, he repaired collapsed walls and fetched water for dry pots. Xavier appeared in every corner of the town, lending a hand to everyone who encountered difficulties, and leaving without a second thought once the job was done. Xavier's reputation in the foggy town was unprecedentedly growing. The residents praised him, and he was the talk of the town. The hot topic of conversation shifted from what to eat at the Dragon Flame Restaurant today to the new kind-hearted young man hired by the restaurant and his pretty little skeleton.

Residents who had benefited from him even came to the restaurant to give him and Orldington gifts, including homemade cheese, delicately carved wooden ornaments and even a piece of light blue broken glass with rounded edges – a gift from a child thanking Xavier for helping to throw down a ball kicked onto the roof.

Everyone was singing Xavier's praises in front of Ina, their words of praise like a flood. However, Xavier's face did not show any joy. He looked at Ina's expressionless face with a feeling of desolation in his heart. He thought Ina would see through his lie of helping out of kindness, saying he was only doing so out of necessity, and it was not what he intended at all.

Ina had long forgotten her casual remark to Xavier about him being willing to help others. She nodded and said, "Yes, Xavier has always been this warm-hearted."

Xavier was stunned. He... has always been this... warm-hearted...

The boy who was willing to expose his identity on the street just to save people came alive in an instant. He desperately tore through the cold exterior he had wrapped himself in, crying out with all his might, "There's nothing wrong with saving people, the one who was wrong back then was not me!"

Ina received a message: [Xavier's favorability towards you has increased by 50!]

Ina: He can't seriously believe me after I just made a few polite remarks, can he?

It was hard to imagine a nearly two-hundred-year-old lich getting excited over a compliment. Ina shook her head helplessly, not understanding the thought of these undead creatures.