Chapter Text
When Akko applied to be in the biggest baking competition in the country, it had honestly been a joke. It was Constanze’s birthday and Jasminka was out of town, so she had volunteered to make the cake for the party instead. Of course it was a box cake and there wasn’t much effort Akko had to put into it, but it still turned out pretty well considering every time she used an oven, there was a 50/50 chance of something burning.
But her friends were impressed and by the time the cake was cut, they had all consumed a fair amount of alcohol. And that was the first mistake.
Everyone was just so glad the cake tasted decent that they joked about how Akko could give Jasminka a run for her money, which obviously was in no way true, but Drunk Akko was far too gullible. And far too smug.
“My baking is great, right?” she boasted with a smirk. “Bet I could like… get my own bakery if I wanted.”
Amanda snorted. “Yeah, sure.”
“I’m serious! How hard could baking stuff be? You just read a recipe, right? It’s… well, it’s a piece of cake,” she said, chuckling at her pun.
Amanda just rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say. But, hey, that reminds me. Y’know that one baking show that Jas watches all the time? She told me they’re accepting applications for their next competition. You wanna be a baker so bad, I dare you to sign up.”
She cackled, not believing Akko would be foolish enough to do such a thing. She was wrong.
And so, a very shocked Akko would find out weeks later that the application she wound up submitting in her drunken state had actually been accepted. And that she was going to be a part of an actual baking competition. On… national… television.
In between Amanda and Sucy laughing at her ridiculous luck, Jasminka offered to give her as many tips as possible so she wouldn’t make a total fool of herself. So every day until the competition began, Akko, underneath Jasminka’s guidance, worked hard to turn herself into someone who, at best, wouldn’t get thrown off the show within a minute.
It was no piece of cake, she quickly learned, mainly considering there was so much more to baking than just cakes and most of the things Jasminka had her practice made Akko’s head want to explode. But she very stupidly made her bed and she was going to have to lie in it. So when the first day of the competition arrived, Akko said a small prayer and begged Kami-sama to let everything go well.
Naturally, it did not.
The good news is that she made it longer than a minute. The bad news is that it still didn’t take long before she screwed up, got her finger caught in a mixer, and had blood pouring from a cut.
She yelped and spit out a few swear words that she knew would get censored and clutched her hand to her chest. Akko winced from the pain and the discomfort of feeling everyone’s eyes on her.
The other contestants offered her sympathetic glances while the camera crew came closer, eager to get shots of her wound. Now, Akko was certainly no stranger to injuries. Jasminka alone could attest to that with the number of mishaps she witnessed while coaching her. But getting hurt while trying to make a dumb cake of all things and on television for everyone to see was a new level of embarrassment Akko had never quite reached before. Her face flushed.
Just as she was thinking of how much she wanted to disappear, a voice filled her ears.
“A medic,” someone said, and Akko jumped because the voice was much closer to her than she expected. Sure enough, when she turned to whoever was addressing her, she was met with another girl her age coming toward her. “You need a medic,” she repeated. “They have them in the back, remember?”
Akko’s eyes locked onto hers and her heartbeat quickened. Maybe it was just because she was going into shock from her wound, even though it couldn’t have been that bad. Or maybe her pulse was drumming in her ears because that was just her body’s natural response when it came face to face with the most beautiful girl Akko had ever seen in her life. Her mind went blank.
“Um. I… uh… what?”
Smooth.
Suddenly her wound wasn’t the most painful thing in this predicament. Akko grimaced. “I-I mean, yes, right. The medics. In the back. I’ll just… go see them.”
The girl nodded and the loose blonde curls that weren’t tied back into her ponytail bounced around her face.
Akko admittedly was vaguely familiar with her. She was another contestant, of course. But it seemed Akko spent so much time panicking over herself that she failed to pay the others much attention. And she had never seen her face this up close, otherwise she definitely would have remembered. She could swear she remembered her name, though. It was right on the tip of her tongue…
“Here,” the girl stepped forward, holding out a clean rag. She reached for Akko’s hand and gingerly took it in hers, wrapping the rag around her cut. “Keep pressure on it until you get it bandaged.”
Akko’s hand tingled from where their skin touched. Was it just the loss of blood making her knees feel weak? She gulped. “Yeah, of course. Thanks, um…”
Blue eyes found hers. “Diana,” she reminded Akko with a smile. And what a gorgeous smile it was. “I do hope you’re better at baking than you are at remembering names, Atsuko Kagari,” she lightly teased.
Akko’s heart did a flip. She had never heard someone say her name so prettily. She also forgot that in all her nervousness, she had introduced herself so formally to everyone when they first met. “Oh, please just call me Akko. And don’t worry. I won’t forget your name again.” Not when it was playing on repeat in her head.
“Hm. Alright then, Akko,” Diana said, taking a step back. Akko missed the feeling of her hand almost instantly. “You really should go get that wound taken care of. And when you come back, do try to be more careful. You want to survive the rest of the competition, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” Akko breathed. And while it was true she didn’t want to get eliminated so early, she felt like her reason for wanting to stick around a while had suddenly changed over the past thirty seconds.
Geez… she really was hopeless, wasn’t she?
It was then Akko became painfully aware that the cameras were still rolling. Her friends knew how much of a disaster she could be when beautiful girls were involved, but if this aired on television, they would never let her live it down. Heat rose to her cheeks.
“O-okay, anyway I should go,” she stammered, her voice an octave higher than usual. She squeezed her hand, applying the pressure Diana spoke of, although she was sure it looked more like a nervous tick. “Uh… see you later?”
Diana grinned and gave her a parting wave. She headed back to her station (which was right behind Akko’s, oh man, how was she ever going to focus when she came back?) while Akko made her way to the medics.
As she walked, she looked down at her hand and sighed. Injuring herself wasn’t exactly the greatest first impression. But she had to make sure everything else went well so she wouldn’t be sent home. Because if she got sent home…
Images of blue eyes and sweet smiles filled Akko’s head. Her lips tugged upward, forming their own smile.
Maybe she was hopeless and out of her league, and maybe it was only a matter of time before the judges realized she was no excellent baker and kicked her out. But she did tell Diana she wanted to survive the rest of the competition. And if her mind wasn’t made up before, it certainly was now.
So, what the hell. It couldn’t hurt to try, right? She glanced back down at her hand. Or… maybe it could. But for her own silly and selfish desires, she would do it anyway.