Three embaressed naked females.

While the house had been repaired and mostly cleaned, there was a distinct smell of char in the air, along with an underlying sweet scent.

"He's back!"

"Get ready..."

"Shush!"

They were clearly hiding behind the couch. Shiroe just closed the door, folded his arms, and waited for whatever it was they were about to do.

"Surprise!" they sang in unison, suddenly springing up from behind the couch. All three of them were completely naked, except for Eva, in the middle, who wore an apron. Although she was red and squirming, she seemed to be holding it together pretty well, given the circumstances.

What was not holding together well was the cake she was holding up. It was a sad, shriveled, charred mess, crudely half-smeared with homemade frosting. From the way they were reacting, they all knew it was a terrible cake. But it was the best they'd been able to do. Shiroe sized them up silently, his cold, critical gaze moving from the cake to one of their faces, to the cake, to the next of their faces, watching them squirm and turn red as they waited for his inevitable disappointment.

They knew what they'd done.

But beneath that facade, Shiroe felt his heart melt as he looked at this sad little wreck of a cake. He knew from personal experience how hard baking could be. And they'd attempted this using only the crude wood-fired stove that had come with the farmhouse. Frankly, it was a miracle that they'd produced anything at all.

And they'd done it by working together, no less.

So after they'd stewed in their own juices for a bit, when he was so filled with pride for their effort and so charmed by their behavior that he could feel his game face threatening to slip, he reached out, dug a finger through the cake, scooped out a little piece, and tasted it.

"Hmm. Not bad," he said, taking the plate from them.

The way they beamed at his mild compliment! The way they tittered in relief and excitement. They'd done well! He'd forgiven them! At this point, his poker face did actually start to slip, so all he could do was walk around the room and check over their work, so he wouldn't spoil the effect.

Once he'd regained his composure, he returned to his chair, and opened his book. When the scene was set just as it had been when he'd first scolded them, he snapped his fingers. And as they took up their positions, not in formation, but at the foot of his chair, he said "Now tell me what you've learned."

And as he pretended to read, this time he did take in their every word, smiling despite himself when Niki dropped some blunt truth-bomb, or Eva embellished the tale with some flourish, or Amara quietly revealed some guilty secret in the space between her words. He spoke as little as possible, only nudging the conversation if he felt there was a chance they might take the wrong lesson out of this.

But as they spoke, something peculiar happened. At some point, when they weren't looking, the utter disaster of a cake on the coffee table had mysteriously transformed. It was now inexplicably a perfect cylinder, as precise as any mechanically-produced cake Shiroe had ever seen in his vague memories of 21st-centry Japan. The frosting, too, was smooth and pristine, forming delicate scalloped lace that Shiroe wasn't sure even modern technology could replicate. And in the center of that smooth, white, pristine canvas, in sparkly pink frosting, were the words "We're Sowwie!" written in elegant script.

And once his eyes had settled on it, the three women turned to stare at the impossible transformation the cake had undergone.

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