"It doesn't matter if my image is ruined, I don't have much of an image anyway, but this is the only chance to interact with an idol! I would definitely regret it if I missed it!"
Seeing Tanaka Yuzuna's confident look, Kuroki Ya could only reluctantly let go and stop bothering him.
If he thought that way himself, how could he stop him?
To be honest, Yumemi didn't want to choose Tanaka Yuzuna for the taste test, but he was the only one who raised his hand in the entire venue, and there was no one else besides him.
Having no other choice, she approached him with a professional smile, knelt down at the edge of the stage, and handed the cake to Tanaka Yuzuna.
Tanaka Yuzuna trembled all over, holding the cake in his palm as if it were a precious treasure.
"Since this student is so enthusiastic, then let him try it," Yumemi reminded him, "This wasabi was specially selected, and its taste is very pungent. You must not eat it all in one go…".
The cake was not big, about the size of a cream puff. Before Yumemi could finish her sentence, Tanaka Yuzuna ate it all in one go.
He could eat twenty or thirty cakes of this size in one sitting.
"How do you feel?" Yumemi asked.
At first, when he just ate it, Tanaka Yuzuna didn't feel anything, only that his tongue was burning.
Less than two seconds later, he suddenly felt the pungent smell of wasabi rush straight to his brain, reaching the top of his head, making him feel unable to breathe, as if his soul had left his body, and his face instantly contorted.
Then, he started coughing violently, his face turning a purplish-red color, and he kept sneezing.
His eyes immediately turned red, then started tearing up, tears and snot mixing together, making him look utterly pathetic. Yumemi subtly took a step back, then smoothly handed a bottle of water to Kuroki Ya.
"Please give this bottle of water to your friend," she said with a concerned look.
"Hey, Tanaka, drink some water quickly." Kuroki Ya quickly twisted open the bottle and made Tanaka Yuzuna drink it.
Tanaka Yuzuna gulped down half a bottle of water, and the choking sensation slowly disappeared. At this moment, his entire face was flushed, and it looked like it would take him a while to recover.
While Tanaka Yuzuna was eating the wasabi cake, the photographer filmed him throughout, then projected his reactions onto the big screen, so everyone saw his plight.
Yumemi returned to the center of the stage: "Everyone, you have seen the reaction of this volunteer. Next, the two of us will try this unbearable pungent wasabi to see whose acting skills are superior and who can hide it to the end under such pungency!"
Everyone's interest was piqued. They were all curious if their acting skills would really work under the wasabi cake.
After all, the reaction to eating wasabi is too obvious. If eating spicy food is physical damage, then eating wasabi is true damage, completely unbearable physiologically.
"Ayanokoji, are you ready? If you are, then I will…" Yumemi was about to call out "start" when Ayanokouji Kiyohira suddenly stopped her.
"Wait, let's swap our cakes."
After seeing Tanaka Yuzuna's reaction, Ayanokouji Kiyohira somewhat understood that this endurance game Yumemi had set up was definitely meant to prank him.
She wanted to see his pathetic reaction after eating the wasabi cake and then laugh at him.
All these cakes looked the same; it was impossible to tell which was a regular cake and which was a wasabi cake just by looking at their appearance.
It was possible that the plate in front of Yumemi contained only regular cream cakes, while his own contained wasabi cakes, or even doctored ones... This was something he had to guard against.
So, swapping before the competition began was the best option.
Yumemi pouted, but didn't refuse, saying with a smile, "We can swap our cakes. However, you have to believe me, the cakes on both sides are configured the same, you don't need to worry about that."
"You two prepared the cakes, so you should know the answer, right?" Yumemi looked at the two teammates standing beside her.
They both nodded, then placed the card with the answer in an envelope, covering it on the table.
After the two of them made their guesses, they could use this answer to verify the true answer.
"Hey!" Just then, someone in the audience stood up and couldn't help but ask, "Don't you have a referee for this competition? Otherwise, how will you determine the winner?"
"We don't need a referee, because you, the audience, are the judges who will witness our wager!" Yumemi showed a kind smile and waved to the audience, "Everyone, please, we'll be counting on you to give us a fair judgment later!"
The person who had just spoken was stunned by this smile, his face turned red, and he quickly sat down.
All the preliminary preparations were complete; next, it was time for the tasting segment.
When eating the cakes, they needed to follow the sequence, from A to B to C. Before each bite, there had to be a ten-second interval to give the other party time to observe your reaction.
In the tasting segment, Yumemi, as the host, naturally began to taste first.
With a full smile, she put the cake from plate A into her mouth, then chewed it, even closing her eyes as if savoring a delicious treat.
The cake was small; she finished it in two bites. Ten seconds later, she began to eat the second cake with a look of enjoyment.
Ayanokouji Kiyohira silently observed her reaction. When eating the second cake, her expression remained unchanged; she ate it with a smile.
While eating the cake, she even had the leisure to playfully wink at Ayanokoji.
After ten seconds, she picked up the third cake.
She still chewed slowly and deliberately; watching her eat was like a pleasure, pleasing to the eye.
After finishing this cake, she still had a brilliant smile on her face.
"Why hasn't her expression changed? Could it be that there's no wasabi in her cake…?"
Yumemi's facial expressions were also projected in real-time onto the big screen by the photographer. Some people began to suspect that Yumemi had not eaten any wasabi.
But just then, Yumemi's smile suddenly couldn't be maintained, and she let out a sneeze. Following that, as if unable to stop, she began to cough, patting her chest and coughing violently with her head down.
When she looked up, everyone noticed that her entire face had a blush, her nose was red, and her eyes were as red as a rabbit's, as if she had been crying, her face filled with an aggrieved expression.
The real-time tracking camera projected her face onto the screen. The stark contrast between her tearful appearance and her previous smile caused many boys' hearts to skip a beat.
A girl's crying face can sometimes be more captivating than her smiling face. Yumemi's expression, as she struggled to hold back tears, was truly pitiable.
In that instant, this expression alone gained her many fans.
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