Inferiority

After Ensen and Julia's talk, they both felt their relationship had taken the initial steps in healing.

With the heavy topic out of the way, Ada felt the uncomfortable vibe slowly fading away and began to talk happily with both of them.

While she focused more on Ensen because she didn't see him often anymore, she made sure to involve her mother into the conversation.

After a few more minutes of talking Ensen had finished his food.

The food was surprisingly good, especially considering he expected a quality way lower from his sister's cooking based on his prior experience.

Dying to know how she had improved her cooking skill, Ensen stared at his sister with shining eyes and asked.

"Dinner is delicious. I'm wondering how you became such a good cook." Ensen said, trying to hide his intent, feeling competitive towards his sister. He swore in his heart that someday he would beat her in a cooking competition.

"Oh I just cooked a lot more often after James and I got married, so I guess it got better from that," Julia said, not paying much attention to his answer.

With the light in Ensen's eyes fading, he muttered to himself "So I need to get married to get better at cooking?"

Ada turned her head towards the barely audible Ensen speaking something.

"What was that Ensen?" She said curiously, intent on hearing what he had said.

"Oh don't worry about it, nothing important," Ensen said as he wore an awkward face. His plan had backfired severely. After all, he wasn't even close to getting married. Plus even if he could get married right now, he wouldn't have time to cook in the first place since he would still be too busy with managing the Academy.

'Looks like I'll need to find another way.' Ensen thought to himself in disappointment.

Turning his attention elsewhere to save himself from embarrassment, he decided to grab some more potatoes as he waited for the others to finish their meal.

After everybody had finished their meals, they decided to move over to the living room to continue their conversation.

Sitting on the couch, Ensen asked Julia "So what do you do for work now?"

"Oh, I write for a local newspaper, nothing impressive. I do have a food review blog which is kind of popular, so I get a little money from that too. It's mainly my husband James who earns most of the money." Julia said bluntly. Unknown to her, however, once Ensen had heard she was an amateur food reviewer his eye began to subtly twitch in inferiority.

'That's it, I will beat her in cooking if it's the last thing I do!' Ensen proclaimed to himself in his mind. While he wasn't too bothered about other people being better skilled in cooking, he was always very competitive when it came to his sister.

After a little more talking, Ensen glanced at his phone and noticed that it was nearly 8 pm. Thinking it was about time he should leave, he slowly stood up.

Looking towards Julia, he slowly said "It's getting a little late, I should probably get home now."

Although Julia still wanted him to stay, she felt more comfortable knowing the fact they were going to be keeping in touch from now on.

Getting up from the armchair, Julia followed Ensen as he walked towards the front door.

"Wait for just a second please," Julia said before turning around and walking towards the dining room. A minute or so later she had returned with a container full of some of the leftovers from tonight's dinner.

"We can't eat it all by ourselves anyways." She said with a gentle smile, pushing it into Ensen's hands as if forcing him to accept it.

Not planning on resisting, either way, Ensen grabbed the container and held it with one hand.

After a long hug from Julia, Ensen waved goodbye to Ada as he left the house and walked back to his car.

After unlocking and entering the driver's seat, Ensen sat there in deep thought before turning the car on. It did not take nearly as long as it did to arrive at his sister's house, mainly because he actually knew how to get back to his apartment. The lack of traffic helped as well.

After taking the elevator towards his floor, he looked in the direction of Kaitlin's door. Noticing that the place where he had previously left the cookies and the note were now empty, Ensen lightly smiled and hoped she liked them.

Entering his apartment, Ensen first put the leftovers from dinner into his fridge before deciding to ask the system something that he had been curious about.

"Do you know what Julia's cooking rank is?" Ensen asked, researching how hard it would be to surpass his sister in the skill.

[Julia Fuentes cooking skill: B+]

"Wait, it's so high? But she used to be horrible at it." Ensen said with confusion and doubt towards the system.

[Through a mixture of a positive working attitude, perseverance, and a moderate amount of talent in the field, she has managed to develop her cooking skills rapidly. Leaving you behind by miles.]

"That last part was unnecessary," Ensen said, even though he agreed with the evaluation of the system. Realizing that he would have to elevate his cooking skill to an extraordinary level for him, he decided to put that to the side for the moment.

Turning his attention to another issue that he needed to resolve, he needed furniture for the Academy building when it had been completed. While Ensen could do a… mediocre job at selecting the furniture and laying it out himself, he really needed a professional to make it actually look good.

As such, Ensen knew that he would need somebody to help make the selection for him. Knowing that the process would take rather long, he needed to find a way to get around both the delay it would take to find an agent and the general time the planning would take.

Luckily he had an old friend from his time as a student at SilverLeaf Academy who had been working as an interior designer for the past few years. While they weren't too close anymore, Ensen had no problem in using his connections to get himself fast-tracked.

He worked in a relatively small-sized firm in town as far as Ensen knew. He seemed to be pretty good at his job too which was always a good thing.

Deciding he would call him tomorrow, he first needed to check if he still had his friend's number saved on his phone. Luckily he found it without too much trouble.

Ensen spent the rest of the night reading an online version of Academy managing for beginners that he had managed to find. It had been widely recommended as a good introduction book that focused on the more crucial information every principal needed to know.

After reading for a few hours Ensen decided to go to sleep, although he wouldn't call his old friend until quite later just in case he would be off work or something similar like that, he still didn't want to ruin his sleeping schedule.

Crawling in bed, Ensen thought back towards the delicious dinner and the people he shared it with. Slowly dozing off, Ensen wore a satisfied smile on his face.

Waking up the next morning, Ensen lazily spent the first hour of his day simply laying in bed while continuing to read the online book from the previous night. After an hour his stomach began to cry out for food.

Agreeing with his body that he was hungry, Ensen got out of bed and headed towards the kitchen. After thinking for a bit, he decided to savor his sisters cooking and grabbed the container with the leftovers. Scooping out a little into a bowl he had grabbed, he quickly microwaved it before sitting down and eating.

After he had finished eating, Ensen slowly washed his dishes and walked towards the couch, continuing to read the book.

A while afterward, Ensen looked at the time. Realizing it was around 11 am at this point, he thought it would be a good time to give his friend a call. Slowly opening his contact list, Ensen found a contact named Haris Cleveland.

Clicking on the contact, he was about to click the call icon when he heard a knock at the door. Putting down his phone, he put it in his pocket before slowly getting up from the couch and walking over.

Looking out of the door with the peephole, he didn't manage to see anybody. Not sure what was going on, Ensen opened his door and looked around the hallway to try to find the culprit.

Right as Ensen was about to give up and go back inside he looked down and noticed that the container he had previously taken to Kaitlin was sitting next to the door, similar to what he had done.

In addition, there was also a note laid on top. It had two simple words that put a smile on his face.

In large cursive characters, the word 'Thank you.' was spelled out elegantly.