Work Text:
Tap-tap-tap, tap, tap.
Jingle jingle.
Groooan.
“Hey, Himiko! I’m back!” Ouma yelled, opening the door to Yumeno and his tiny apartment. As he stepped from the unappealing hallway outside and into the warmly-lit inside, he couldn’t help but smile.
“Welcome back!” Yumeno chimed, hopping off the couch and making her way towards him, tossing her smartphone away onto the nearby seat cushion. As quickly as she said it, she just as quickly pointed towards the sink. “Wash your hands.”
Giving a sigh, Ouma put the grocery bag, the item he had in his full hand, onto the nearby kitchen counter. “Yeah, yeah... I know...”
“You’re not doing it fast enough!!! Hurry!!!” Yumeno insisted as he turned on the sink.
“Himiko, I get Corona is dangerous and all,” he started, squirting soap into his palms and lathering them up, “but do you think that washing hands like this... like...” Soon after, he began to rinse his hands, “like it’s the end of the world is gon—”
“Stop!!!” Yumeno abruptly yelled. And no sooner, was she creating another demand. “20 seconds! Wash with soap for 20 seconds!!! The newsman said to do it for at least 20 seconds!!!”
Ouma rolled his eyes as he re-pumped soap into his hands. As he did that, Yumeno, with hands trembling, took the bag from the kitchen sink and placed it onto the table. As soon as Ouma rinsed off his hands, he whisked his body around to view the nearby Yumeno, all the while, drying his hands with the nearby towel.
Carefully, she picked up the edges of the plastic bag with the edges of her thumb and index finger and shoved the plastic down onto the table, revealing groceries almost like she was revealing the prize of some show or revealing a surprise behind some curtain.
“Himiko,” Ouma started, “this is a bit much, don’t you think?”
“What?” Yumeno said as she very blatantly took hold of one of the items from the bag with her bare hands.
Ouma struggled to hold back raising an eyebrow at her wonky behavior.
He threw the towel back onto the counter. “Never mind. Anyways,” he began, throwing his, now dry, hands out in front of him. “I braved the storm, battled the dragon, defeated Mr. Corona, so how about a hug?”
Yumeno briskly pat him on the shoulder, “Yeah, yeah, good job,” and walked away to put the item she was holding into their fridge.
Ouma stared. “Okay, what the heck is going on with you?”
She stuck out her hand as if to say, ‘stop.’
“Not right now, Kokichi. I’m in the zone.” She said dramatically, putting the first item into the fridge.
Ouma couldn’t help but quirk up his lips at such a response. “The zone??”
“I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna make...” she fisted her hand, “fried milk!”
Ouma’s face wrinkled in obvious confusion. “Fried milk?” he inquired.
“Yuhuh!” Yumeno affirmed as she continued to grab items, sloppily putting them in. “You know how usually we’re both too busy to, like, actually cook things?”
“More like, you’re too lazy to cook anything you’re not willing to work for.”
Yumeno frowned at him, “You can cook too, y’know.”
Ouma gave her a smile, “Hey, my specialty is hatching and carrying out evil schemes. Not cooking.”
“Well, I’m not good at it either!!” She stressed hard, to the point Ouma had to give a smile at the way she stated it. “Anyways, I wanted to make fried milk,” Yumeno spoke decidedly, with a face plastered on that didn’t look like she was going to give up regardless of who may tell her otherwise.
“So,” Ouma started, “you made me go all the way to the store, infested with the horrible Coronavirus, just to satisfy your craving for fried milk??”
“Nnn? Yeah?” she turned to him, “You got a problem with that?”
Ouma gave a devious smile, “Nah, I think I just fell in love with you again. I mean, that’s so.... Evil.”
She gave him a smile as she turned around to pick up her second to last item. “Well, you’re stuck with me. You can leave if you want.”
“Ehhh, I think I’ll stick around.” Ouma said as he put his arms behind his head. “This whole fried milk thing sounds interesting. What even is it, anyways?”
“Well, like...” turning around, she paused in place. Now looking at Ouma, she stuck out her open hand. “I saw it in a video okay?” Immediately after seeing Ouma’s amused smile, she turned back to the fridge to find a place to put the item in hand. “So... like, the person has these cubes of milk, right? And they have them on a stick. So, what they do is.... Dunk it. In oil, I think?? And...” Placing the object down, Yumeno gestured her hands out to shoulder height and shook them, “Ta-dah! It comes out as fried milk!”
Yumeno picked up the last of the groceries left on the table, which was unsurprisingly, the milk. As Yumeno put the milk into the fridge, Ouma couldn’t help but ask, “So.... How are you gonna make it?”
Yumeno slammed the door shut and crossed her arms in thought. “Dunno.”
She had a habit of doing this, but Ouma couldn’t help but be confused every time it happened. “You don’t know?”
Staring blankly at the fridge, she hesitated. “... Maybe I’ll wait until the milk cools up again?”
Ouma dropped his arms. “Himiko, that doesn’t make the milk into cubes....”
Yumeno stared at the fridge, once again, in thought. But quickly her eyes light up, pounding her fist into her open hand. “Oh! Maybe I’ll freeze it!”
Ouma narrowed his eyes at her, immediately adjusting his prior schedule in his head.
She was going to need some help.
“These aren’t as good as I thought....” Yumeno said aloud as she bit another chunk off of her skewer. “I mean, it doesn’t even look melty like the picture. It just looks like.... A block.”
“Hey, you were the one who said to take them out of the oil....”
“It was scary!!! They were turning brown so fast!!!”
Yumeno and Ouma were now sitting at their tiny dining room table, a skewer in each of their hands with two cubes of fried milk each. However, now that they weren’t avoiding the scalding hell that was deep-fry, they were now, quote on quote, arguing about what went wrong during the cooking process.
“Well, it doesn’t even matter, does it?” Ouma said, not seeming to even care about the end product they came up with. “It’s edible, so therefore, it’s good.”
“What kind of response is that... It’s not good!” she said dejectedly. However, as soon as she said that, she stared at the cubes with delirious hope, “You think I can fix it with my magic?”
“Nishishi! I think you could make it better via, what I would call, Trial and Error,” he declared especially dramatic.
Yumeno pursed her lips out at him, “Do you not care?? Are you not upset??”
“Um, no??” Ouma forthrightly said. “After all, this was kinda more of a you activity than it was for me.”
Yumeno slouched in her chair, “Hnnn.... I’m just mad, alright?” She twisted the skewer every now and then, pouting all the while. “Just let me be mad...”
Ouma nodded at her reassuringly, “I am, I am. See this smile?” He pointed at his face. “Does this look like the face of a man who’s telling you to stop complaining?”
Yumeno paused, a question starting to linger in her mind. “Hey... I’ve been meaning to ask, but...” She looked up at his face before speaking. “Why do you never get upset when I cook horrible things? Or even, just.... Food in general?”
“Huh?” Ouma had stopped himself from taking another bite. “What do you mean?”
Yumeno sat back upright. Leaning forward, she placed her weight onto her forearms onto the table. “Well, I don’t cook very well, right?”
“Um...” Lowering his skewer, Ouma raised an eyebrow at her series of questions. “Are you trying to make me start a fight with you, now? The ‘guy not liking the girlfriend’s cooking’ trope has already been done to death about a million times, y’know? I’d really hate to contribute to something that overused...”
Yumeno didn’t say anything to what was, obviously, a joke on Ouma’s part. She already knew him well enough to know that he was trying to change the subject, so instead she was just waiting for him to talk.
And of course, Ouma knew this himself.
Unfortunately, one of the more uncomfortable parts about being in this sort of relationship with someone is this gradual, mutual understanding of what is left unsaid that edged what was normally most comfortable for him.
Maybe in the past, he would have just left, or continued to make jokes until she gave up.
But for him now...
“I don’t have a lot of points of reference, okay?”
Yumeno raised her eyebrows at his statement.
“It’s just...” Ouma leaned back, staring blankly into the fried milk, “any and all food is good as long as you’re alive the next morning, right?” He briefly looked at her with a serious face while waving his free hand outward, “And sometimes you just don’t have things like a stove or cash to eat whatever you want, alright?”
Soon after that, he found himself leaning back into his seat, twirling his skewer around with his fingers. “Besides, there’s really no use in complaining... they’re just empty words that don’t do anything... It’s not like complaining changes what’s in front of you. You just have to... make do with what you’ve got. So, there’s no point.”
Even if what he said was vague and brief, as Yumeno thought about it more, things started to make more sense. She could feel new question popping up into her mind, however, she knew he wasn’t going to like it. But regardless, they were in a relationship, right?
Opening her mouth the slightly open, she quietly asked. “Are you scared to care?”
“Pshh,” Ouma looked away, immediately giving out a sound of disagreement. “I’m not answering something that cheesy. But...” He quickly looked back at her, “But, you get what I’m saying, right?”
Yumeno blinked.
“Nyeh... yeah, I do, but...” she looked down, gesturing ever so slightly with her open hand in time with her words. “Still, I would like to know when you like something I make.... Or even just... the food we buy... You can always make.... What did you....” She stuck out her skewer towards him causing him to look at it in turn, “You can always make points of reference now, y’know....?”
Ouma’s eyes narrowed at her, “Okay, but what if I made whatever hypothetical reference now and then things change for the worse? Then creating that reference now is just unproductive and causes long-term pain, yeah?”
Yumeno narrowed her eyes at him this time lowering the skewer in turn, “Can you stop being so difficult? Not everything is a debate, y’know...”
“But I like debates!” Ouma whined. “Can’t you, at least, amuse me??”
She sighed, looking pointedly at him, “Well, unfortunately for you, that spell I cast so that you’d be stuck with me forever isn’t expiring anytime soon. So it’s not like that’s gonna change.”
Ouma looked down at his fried milk, letting her words process into his mind. Putting down his own skewer down onto the table, he soon found himself quickly taking a bite off of hers.
Yumeno reacted immediately, “Nyeh?! Hey!!”
Of course, Ouma didn’t look as though he cared. “That was revenge.” He stated, folding his arms and chewing the piece in thought. “Sheesh, what crappy revenge, though... I feel like I’m biting into bready gelatin.”
It took a second, but...
Yumeno gave him a bright smile.
“Right?!?”