Mission 24

Yor's recent pattern of late returns has Loid quietly suspicious, and when she finally comes home, grim-faced with both hands wrapped in bandages, she skips dinner entirely. Anya peeks at Bond's latest vision and sees a future in which Yor is crying, leaving her worried about the cause.

The truth unfolds the next evening. After work, Yor turns up at Camilla's door with a leaking grocery bag, the tomatoes inside crushed, and Camilla wearily confirms another session is happening. Dominic greets Yor warmly, earning a glare from Camilla for having created the situation. Three days prior, Yor had confessed to her coworkers that a breakfast she cooked confined Loid to the toilet for an entire day, and that her marriage might not survive her cooking. Sharon's household has a maid, Millie's expertise ends at can openers, and Camilla suggested a class, but Dominic volunteered Camilla's considerable kitchen skills, and the lessons were born.

Yuri arrives as the designated taster, delighted to eat his sister's food, though he sours on hearing the meals are ultimately meant for Loid. The lesson itself is carnage. Yor turns potato peeling into a pile of bloody chunks, then chops clean through the cutting board, protesting that she is far more comfortable with knives than peelers. Her minestrone emerges studded with bones and a whole fish head, sending Yuri into ecstatic convulsions and dropping Camilla and Dominic to the floor after a single curious bite. A simpler meatball assignment produces something with a fishtail protruding from it, and Yuri, still eating, reports visions of his late mother beckoning him toward the light.

Camilla pieces together the deeper problem: Yor fed Yuri her own cooking throughout their childhood, warping both siblings' sense of taste. Asked whether they recall any dish from their parents, Yuri describes a stew their mother topped with a fried egg. Guessing at a simple southern-style base, Camilla walks Yor through it step by step, noting along the way that Yor has seemed less robotic lately, though she refuses to credit the marriage for it. Learning the Briars come from Eastern Nielsberg, Camilla stirs in sour cream, the regional touch, and the first spoonful stuns both siblings with recognition.

At home, where Loid has been training Bond and pondering security-dog schooling, a late-returning Yor announces she is cooking dinner, to visible alarm. She explains the secret lessons, apologizes for hiding them, and serves her stew. One wary bite becomes genuine enthusiasm from both Loid and Anya, and Yor weeps with happiness, understanding that the marriage has become more to her than cover for her contract killing; making her family happy matters in itself. Emboldened, she follows up with an original creation, and both taste-testers hit the floor.

Anya sees a future of Yor in tears through Bond's precognition.

Yor's secret cooking lessons at Camilla's house are revealed, with Yuri serving as an all-too-willing taster.

Camilla deduces that Yor's childhood cooking distorted both Briar siblings' palates and reconstructs their mother's stew.

Yor's stew wins over Loid and Anya, and she realizes her attachment to the family is real.

Camilla identifies the family stew as a southern style, a possible hint that the Briars hail from an Ostanian region paralleling real-world Thuringia or Saxony. The dish itself is modeled on goulash.

This is Camilla's first major chapter; Endo wrote the story specifically wanting to redeem her.

The chapter illustration references the DVD cover of season six of the American series 24.

The chapter opens the Midterm Exams Arc and is adapted in Episode 16 of the anime. Bond, Anya, and Loid Forger appear on the cover.