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“…and that’s when I figured, we’ve gotta have all the ingredients between here and the storage room. If Monokuma won’t make us donuts, let’s just do it ourselves!”
Aoi Asahina pumped her fist in the air as she entered the kitchen. As always, it was immaculate, counter overflowing with fresh fruit and vegetables and steel countertops shiny and untouched despite the fact that freshly-made food appeared in the cafeteria three times a day. Three of her classmates trailed behind her: Makoto Naegi, who was smiling gamefully; Kyoko Kirigiri, who wasn’t; and Toko Fukawa, who never smiled unless Byakuya Togami was involved. “Any f-f-flour you find here is just going to be p-poisoned, or—or mixed in with a bunch of spider eggs, or infected with some kind of… d-d-deadly disease!” protested the latter. “Y-You guys just brought me here so you could make me eat it first, didn’t you?!”
Kyoko fought off the urge to roll her eyes. “We’ve been eating this ‘Monokuma’s’ food for a week. If whoever is behind this wanted to poison us, they could easily have done so already.”
“Yeah, plus, why would they want us dead? He needs us to make his ‘backups’ or whatever, right?” Their entire class had spent the last six days scouring the school for parts, and they’d all breathed a sigh of relief at the announcement that they had Sunday off. Hina started rifling through the cabinets under the central counter as she continued. “Don’t you want to tell Togami you baked something just for him?”
Perhaps she had underestimated Asahina’s intelligence, Kyoko thought as she watched Toko snap to attention at the mention of her beloved heir’s name. Abruptly the author was shoving Hina out of the way, commandeering her search through the cabinets and moving at an almost implausible speed. In a few moments her hands were full of baking utensils—several of which Kyoko was pretty sure weren’t involved in donut making at all—and she was barking orders at Naegi to go get a sack of flour from the storage room and “make himself useful already.”
If there was one thing she had learned about Naegi over the past week, it was that he was far too pliant for his own good. He went with only a minor protest that he wouldn’t know where to find such a thing (“W-W-Well, ask! Buddying up to everybody is the one thing you’re g-good at, isn’t it?!”), leaving Kyoko to face Fukawa’s vigor next.
“Y-You! Turn on the oven! You should know what temperature to set it to, since you’re so… so damn s-smart!”
She was, but she didn’t. The Kirigiri family, despite their secrecy, was wealthy enough that her grandfather had always had servants to prepare their meals, and Kyoko hardly had the free time necessary to pursue cooking as a hobby. There was also the matter that hot surfaces such as stovetops and ovens made her… uneasy. Not afraid. Not even nervous. But uneasy. A phantom pain prickled in her left hand.
Kyoko reached toward the oven dial, contemplating the wisdom of asking Asahina for help. This was Hina’s idea in the first place, after all. In the end, her pride won out, and she tentatively turned the dial to 200. That… sounded correct, didn’t it? It was approximately halfway between 0 and the maximum. Of course, assuming the median was always the correct answer was a logical fallacy. Kyoko was smarter than that. But she was also too smart to ask for assistance turning on an oven, of all things…
“Did you hear, Kirigiri? Turns out we don’t have to bake anything after all.”
Kyoko whirled around. She had been so engrossed in puzzling out the oven’s secrets that she hadn’t even noticed Naegi’s return, several boxes of pre-made donuts of several different flavors in his arms. Being trapped in this school really was dulling her observational senses. His smile faltered at her clear surprise. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Then he nodded to the boxes he was holding. “I think we just need to put these in the microwave for thirty seconds or so.”
“Oh, that’s perfect!” squealed Asahina. “Because, like, I was getting hungry already, you know? I don’t know if I could have waited however long it would have to taken to make them from scratch!”
“Y-You’re always hungry,” scoffed Fukawa. “You’re going to get f-f-fat.”
As Asahina squawked in protest, Naegi set down the boxes on the countertop. “Oh, I, uh, I think the oven’s still on,” he pointed out to Kyoko.
“Ah.” So it was. Still stuck on 200, and she still didn’t know if that was the right temperature to bake donuts at. She moved to return the dial to its previous position, but as she reached out her hand, her eyes unwittingly traveled to the tiny window into the oven’s interior. The interior burned a smoldering red, and despite herself, she flinched, phantom heat coalescing in her outstretched hand.
Her first thought, once she regained her senses, was that she hoped desperately that Naegi hadn’t noticed her moment of weakness. Her second thought, glancing in his direction, was that he definitely had. His mouth was slightly open in an unvoiced question, frozen in place, wide eyes peering at hers. Kyoko inhaled and prepared for the inevitable question.
Instead, Naegi reached forward silently and turned the dial himself, silencing the low rumble of the oven. Then he gave her another blinding smile. “Would you rather have glazed or chocolate-covered?”
Kyoko swallowed. “I suppose I’ll take cinnamon, actually.”