Finished Pasta Making Shouldn't Be This Hard

Of all the courses Carmin had been enrolled in, cooking had to be the least interesting to him. In his current state, he couldn't eat anything and could only drink water. This meant that learning to make food was a pretty useless skill for him to have. Regardless, it was only for a bit longer and then he'd move to the next grade and take different classes. So he figured he might as well just put up with it and try his best for the time being.

Listening to the teacher as she explained the plans for the day quickly revealed that this cooking class would be exceptionally terrible. He sucked at cooking already, but now he was going to have to work with someone and suck at cooking at the same time.

Who was he even going to work with? Everyone seemed to quickly get into groups on their own. He decided not to make any move, if he stayed put and everyone was able to find partners, maybe he could get to be on his own. That sort of depended on the class having an odd number of students though. It also depended on the teacher not sending him to work with an existing group of two as a group of three. Needless to say, there were holes in this plan of his.

Primarily, Ferret had been enrolled in remedial classes for all the basic fundamentals, given she hadn't ever had any sort of schooling. However, some classes fell outside of these boxes, and culinary had been the first one that she'd picked. How much of the reasoning for this was the access to extra food during the day and how much was a genuine interest in learning was up for debate.

The dragon girl stared at her teacher while she explained what they were supposed to do, raising a brow when she said it was supposed to be fun. The prospect of cooperation being somehow entertaining was something she was more than a little skeptical about. Much like Carmin, she didn't move at all from her spot while everyone else started pairing up, crossing her arms and huffing. "Hey, Miss Whats-your-name, I wanna do this on my own. Or, like, just let me eat the eggs."

So far so good. Carmin seemed to be in the clear. Two classmates in the same group had each grabbed a basket of ingredients, so one of them asked if he still needed one and handed it over. Once he had the ingredients, he walked to the empty station right behind him and he was good to go. He didn't like to disobey teachers, but it would be okay if he never said anything and just started working on his own. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out so well.

When he heard the teacher call out his name, he knew his plan had failed. And sure enough, as he turned around, he was introduced to his new co-chef. Ferret? He had never even seen this student before, were they always in the class? He didn't pay much attention to those around him, so it was possible he just hadn't noticed them. Though he certainly hadn't heard of anyone with that name before, that much he would've remembered. What kind of a name was that anyway? It was basically the equivalent to someone naming their kid dog. Unless this person could transform into a ferret somehow, then it would maybe work.

Carmin seriously didn't want to work with this girl, but he wasn't about to argue with a teacher, so he chose to be obedient. "Alright." He was going to listen but he wasn't going to be happy about it.

"Eh? Carmin?" The dragon furrowed her brow a bit, squinting at Celeste before turning on her heel to look at where the other student's voice was coming from. The appearance of the plant kid was...unique, to say the least. She'd never seen anybody that looked remotely like that, and didn't exactly plan on being gentle about that fact. "Wait, why do I have to work with a head of cabbage? I don't like vegetables." Ferret huffed just a bit, but eventually uncrossed her arms and grabbed her ingredient basket.

"Fine, whatever Miss Forest. Let's get this shit over with I guess." Approaching Carmin now, she looked the other student up and down for a moment, her eyes not hungry for once but absolutely scrutinizing. "You better at least be useful. And you better not fill up the food with plant...juice." Looking back at Celeste, and then down at the pasta maker, she growled a little while giving the hand crank a couple turns.

"This doesn't look like food. I still would rather just eat the eggs."

Head of cabbage? Carmin clenched his fists, determined to bottle the feelings up for the time being. But that was not going to be an easy task. This Ferret person hadn't even walked over to him yet and he was already absolutely livid.

He watched her as she walked over to him, easily blushing as she scanned him without even trying to hide it. The comment that followed left him seething. He imagined a lot of people thought things like that about him, but at least they usually had the decency not to say them aloud. There was no way he could possibly endure this for a whole class.

He took out the recipe card rather aggressively, keeping his eyes on it as he spoke to the girl. "You know, I don't want to be here anymore than you, you could at least try to cooperate." Irritation was clearly present in his words.

Ferret growled just a bit when she was reprimanded for how she talked, yet another thing about this place that angered her. Rules upon rules upon rules, even when they didn't actually affect anything. It was just plain stupid in her mind. She was distracted a bit from this course of thought by the mention of recipe cards, having no idea what those were and subsequently digging through the basket to find it. Immediately, she groaned, glaring at the card and promptly flicking it away towards Celeste.

The dragon then turned back to Carmin, scrutinizing the plant kid even more intensely this time and huffing at his tone. "Okay, here's what's up. Number one, shut up. Number two, I guess I do have to cooperate because I...can't read. So I guess don't shut up entirely, but don't be a bitch either."