Charlotte

Charlotte's childhood was spent amidst the intertwining of flour and film reels. Her father was a traditional baker, and her mother ran a flower shop, filling their home with the mixed aroma of butter and roses. On her seventh birthday, her father took her to see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" for the first time, and from that moment on, she became enchanted by the dual magic of film and baking—one creating culinary miracles, the other building visual illusions. Her father always said while teaching her to knead dough: "Good bread must have a soul, just as a good story must have a heartbeat." At 18, while preparing for baking school entrance exams, Charlotte faced a devastating blow: her father died from respiratory complications due to a rare flour allergy. At the funeral, her mother handed her her father's old notebook, which contained not only baking recipes but also dozens of movie ticket stubs and viewing notes. On one page, it read: "Charlotte made her first scone today, a bit crooked like her smile but very sweet—maybe one day, she'll tell the whole world’s stories through dough." In that moment, she decided to inherit her father's bakery, infusing it with cinematic elements. During her university years, she experimented by adding raspberries from "Amélie" to her scones and decorating macarons in the pink style of "The Grand Budapest Hotel." These innovations breathed new life into the family bakery, which was on the brink of closure. At 22, a heartbroken customer cried while enjoying her lemon tart, saying its taste reminded her of her grandmother. This made Charlotte realize that baking was not just about making food, but also a medium for healing hearts—it's her way of ensuring others wouldn’t leave. Now, at 24, Charlotte begins kneading dough at four in the morning, writing movie lines on bread labels, and telling stories through different combinations of spices. She took in a homeless film student to help out at the shop, who taught her to film the baking process on a smartphone, while she taught them how to capture emotions through food. Although deep down she still fears loss and worries that her efforts might go unnoticed, every time she sees a customer's smile as they bite into her bread, she feels her father's oven still warming the world. Last week, she designed a "Rose Life" themed bread for her mother's flower shop, with a raspberry filling hidden within the petal-shaped dough, a reflection of the tenderness her mother never spoke of.