Chapter Twenty - A Dream Too Big for One Pair of Hands

The late afternoon sun slanted low across Moonlight Crumbs, streaking the counter with soft gold. For once, the bakery was actually closed — no clattering trays, no flour dust clouds, no customers eagerly snapping pictures for their followers. Just Elias, Mira, and Hikari sitting at the tiny folding table near the window, bowls of Kobayashi's leftover ramen in front of them.

The ramen had gone lukewarm a while ago, but none of them had touched it.

"I want to renovate," Elias said, his voice cutting through the quiet like a dropped spoon.

Mira blinked, mid-sip from her soda. "You want to what?"

"Renovate the bakery," Elias repeated, fingers tracing an invisible line on the tabletop. "Not just renovate — expand. I want people to have somewhere to sit. Somewhere warm. Maybe even a small corner for tea or coffee."

Hikari's eyes sparkled immediately. "Like a real bakery café!"

Elias nodded. "Yeah."

Mira leaned back in her chair, soda can balanced on her knee, watching him closely. "That's… ambitious," she said slowly.

"Too ambitious?" Elias asked, half-joking, half-serious.

Mira didn't answer right away. Instead, she swirled the leftover broth in her bowl, her face blank in a way Elias hadn't seen before.

"You don't think I can do it?" he asked, more defensive than he meant to be.

"No, that's not it," Mira said quickly. "It's just…" She hesitated, then flashed a grin that didn't quite reach her eyes. "It's weird hearing you talk about the future. You usually just… survive."

Elias flinched slightly at how true that was. "I'm tired of just surviving."

Mira's smile froze for half a second before softening. "Then I guess we'll need a killer marketing campaign for the grand reopening," she said, slipping back into her usual chaos to cover whatever she was really feeling. "I'm talking flyers, livestream baking sessions, maybe even—"

She stopped herself, shaking her head. "Nah, never mind."

"What?" Elias frowned.

"Nothing." Mira stood up, stretching dramatically. "You two finish planning your magical cookie palace. I'm gonna go annoy Kobayashi until he gives me more gyoza."

"Mira—" Elias started, but she was already out the door, the bell jingling behind her.

The alley outside smelled like rain that never quite fell, a faint humidity clinging to the air. Mira shoved her hands into her pockets, walking without a destination, her sneakers scuffing the pavement louder than usual.

Expand the bakery.

Make it bigger.

Build a future.

It was all good news. It was great news. Elias was finally thinking ahead instead of hiding behind dough and sugar and old ghosts. This was what she wanted, wasn't it? To see him thrive instead of just exist?

So why did her chest feel so tight?

She kicked a loose pebble down the alley, watching it skip along the concrete.

The truth curled somewhere low in her stomach, bitter and hard to swallow.

If Elias kept growing — if the bakery got big and polished and successful — where did that leave her?

Mira wasn't a baker. She wasn't even particularly good at marketing; half her ideas worked by sheer luck and chaos. All she really had was her place at the counter, stealing cookies and making fun of Elias until he smiled despite himself. That was their rhythm, and she didn't know what it looked like if the bakery became something…bigger.

Would he still need her once there were real customers — not just weirdos looking for haunted cookies and late-night comfort?

Would there still be room for Mira Solace, professional mess, once Moonlight Crumbs became a "proper" café?

Her heart squeezed painfully around the thought, because deep down, Mira knew the truth.

She wasn't scared the bakery would grow.

She was scared Elias would outgrow her.

She stopped walking, staring at her reflection in the glass window of the shuttered video store. Her hair was a tangled mess. Her socks didn't match. Her phone case was cracked and held together by a sticker of a screaming possum.

Elias was building something.

Mira? She was just passing through, like always.

She exhaled sharply, shaking herself out of it. "Get a grip, Solace," she muttered. "It's not about you."

But the fear lingered anyway, quiet and persistent.

She came back half an hour later, carrying a paper bag of gyoza she didn't even want. Hikari and Elias were still inside, heads bent together over Elias' worn-out notebook, plotting floor plans and furniture options with the kind of hopeful excitement Mira didn't know what to do with.

It was beautiful.

And it hurt like hell.

Later that night, lying in her messy apartment with the half-eaten gyoza on her desk, Mira stared at the ceiling and didn't laugh at all.

-

The next day, they started inventory for the renovation plans.

The bakery was already too small — boxes of flour crammed under shelves, ingredients stacked precariously beside the mixer, and every drawer stuffed with tools Elias barely used but couldn't bear to throw away.

While Elias scribbled notes in his old, oil-stained notebook, Hikari opened the low cabinets near the back wall. "Should I toss the expired stuff?"

"Yeah," Elias said absently, still calculating how much wood and paint they'd need.

Hikari pulled out bag after bag, checking dates. Most were fine, but a few containers of black sesame had turned suspiciously gray. She was halfway through sorting when her hand brushed something strange.

A gap in the wood.

"Sensei?" Hikari called, her voice small.

Elias glanced over, frowning. "What?"

Hikari's fingers wiggled into the seam, tugging slightly — and the whole back panel slid open with a soft scrape.

"What the…" Elias stepped closer, crouching beside her. Behind the panel lay a thin leather folder, its edges frayed and stained with flour and age.

Elias' throat tightened. The folder's corner was stamped with a familiar mark — a small embossed cookie shape, the same one his parents used on their personal recipe books.

Without a word, he pulled it out, hands trembling slightly.

Hikari watched in silence as Elias opened the folder, revealing a handwritten list of recipes — but these were different from the ones in the main book. Each one had a number beside it.

Nostalgia Cookie. Grief Cookie. (Smudged) First Love Cookie.… Remembrance Cookie.

And at the very bottom, in different handwriting — more frantic, more slanted — there was a final entry, hastily crossed out but still visible if you squinted:

13. Memory Unravel Cookie.

"What's that one?" Hikari asked, pointing.

"I… I don't know." Elias' voice was hoarse. "I've never seen this before."

The doorbell jingled before they could say more.

Mira stood in the doorway, a paper bag of gyoza in one hand and a scowl on her face. "Why do you both look like you found a body?"

Elias hesitated, then held up the folder. "I think… I found something my parents never wanted me to see."

Mira stepped inside, closing the door behind her with a suspicious glance over her shoulder. "You guys really need to stop having haunted family secrets. It's exhausting."

Despite everything, Elias almost smiled.

They spent the rest of the day translating the scribbled notes in the folder.

The recipes themselves weren't unusual — butter, sugar, flour, all the usual suspects — but each one came with notes explaining what kind of emotion or memory it could capture. The Nostalgia Cookie was first, and Elias recognized the process — it was the exact recipe he baked the night Mira first found the shop.

"This is the magic," Elias whispered, realization washing over him. "This is what they were working on all along."

"Then what's this thirteenth one?" Hikari asked, frowning at the crossed-out recipe.

Mira leaned closer. "Memory Unravel? That sounds… bad."

"Maybe it was their final experiment," Elias said softly. "Maybe they couldn't control it."

The air in the bakery felt heavier, like the walls themselves were holding their breath.

Mira clapped her hands suddenly, breaking the tension. "Okay! Great! New rule — nobody bakes creepy recipe number thirteen unless we really want to die horribly in a magical flour explosion."

Hikari giggled nervously. Elias just stared at the paper.

Part of him wanted to burn it.But a smaller, quieter part wanted to know — what were they trying to do?

What was so important that they risked everything… even their lives?

The bakery quieted after that, the conversation fading into the kind of silence that didn't need filling. Hikari curled up on the bench near the window, her spiral notebook still open on her lap, her pencil dangling loosely from her fingers. Mira lay sprawled across two chairs, one arm draped over her face, the other clutching the very last yuzu cookie like it was a lifeline.

Elias sat back, watching them. His two disasters — one self-appointed marketing menace, one flour-covered apprentice — now sleeping like they belonged here.

The bakery had never been this full. Not with people, but with presence.

The silence used to press down like a weight. Now, it felt warmer somehow — like breathing in after a storm.

For the first time, Elias wasn't the only heartbeat left inside these walls.

That night, after closing, Elias stood at the window again...