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As usual, Shinjiro made himself scarce around the same time Gekkoukan let out, unwilling to linger when the others would start trickling into the lobby any minute now.
Most days, it wasn’t until evening that the dorm really started to fill up, but those quiet afternoon hours bothered him more than the lively nights. When everyone was downstairs, chatting a bit but generally minding their own business, he could blend into the background. When it was only him, Koro-chan, and one or two of the underclassmen, the silence became unbearably awkward.
So he holed himself up in his old room with the latest edition of the only decent cooking periodical around, gave it a few hours for clubs to start letting out, and then emerged with the intent of lurking in the corner for the rest of the night.
His plans were interrupted the instant he stepped into the lobby.
In the time he’d been upstairs, the kitchen had transformed into a warzone. Sundry dishes and implements were scattered haphazardly about, far too numerous and varied for Shinjiro to even guess at their collective purpose. The ingredients present, on the other hand, were telling: a few boxes of sweet rice flour, a tin of cornstarch, a bag of sugar, a handful of scattered adzuki beans, and a truly staggering number of strawberries.
As he stared, dumbfounded, Yamagishi took a handful of what looked like homemade red bean paste from an enormous bowl in front of her and began to form it fastidiously into a ball.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the counter, Minato was surrounded by hulled strawberries and tufts of trimmed leaves. His fingers, apron, and utensils were splattered with pinkish-red juice, but he seemed to have paused his ruthless slaughter to doze off over the cutting board, fingers still wrapped listlessly around a familiar fruit knife.
Shinjiro breathed in through his nose, slow and deep.
“…What exactly are you doing?”
Yamagishi jumped a little and whirled around. Minato just flicked a sidelong glance in his direction, barely reacting to the sight of his ugly mug—predictable, given his usual restraint—but Yamagishi, bafflingly, brightened.
“Oh, good afternoon, Senpai! Sorry for the mess.” Despite the calamity around her, she seemed to be in high spirits. “I’m making strawberry daifuku!”
Fears confirmed, Shinjiro twisted very slowly towards Minato, shooting him a look which he hoped conveyed the general gist of “Are you just gonna let this happen?”
Minato met his stare with a slow, soporific blink.
“I’m supervising,” he offered.
Raising an eyebrow, Shinjiro dragged his eyes down from Minato’s chin, which was propped up on the heel of his juice-stained palm, down the slumped line of his back to his limply dangling feet.
“Looks more like you’re nodding off,” he said dubiously.
“I can do two things.”
Before Shinjiro could contradict him, Yamagishi cheerfully cut back in, “They’re for Yukari-chan’s birthday. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at traditional confections, so I thought this was the perfect time to make her something nice—something a little more personal than a cake, you know?”
That answered… some of his questions. Huffing out a sigh in place of a growl, Shinjiro surveyed the kitchen again. Yamagishi had already handled the majority of the prep work, from the looks of it, whereas Minato was visibly removed from the whole process and seemed to have let even his single task fall to the wayside in favor of a nap.
“You just gonna let her do all the work by herself?” Shinjiro demanded, knowing their illustrious leader would catch the double meaning. “You’re really gonna subject Takeba to a Yamagishi special? On her birthday?”
Judging by the slow raise of Minato’s eyebrows, he had indeed caught the subtext, but Fuuka piped up from behind them before he could respond. “Oh, I asked him not to intervene too much. I want to make these myself, from the heart. You know—to show Yukari-chan that I really care.”
With an expression that said “Well, there you have it,” Minato tilted his head towards Fuuka, who had returned to her task with renewed vigor.
And—yeah, okay, but it was Takeba’s birthday, not Yamagishi’s, and the birthday girl’s health and safety should have been paramount. Shinjiro attempted to convey this via a series of increasingly frantic silent gestures behind Yamagishi’s turned back.
With a very eloquent tilt of his head, Minato suggested that Shinjiro wasn’t giving Yamagishi enough credit, which was so ridiculous that Shinjiro nearly barked out a laugh. Yamagishi didn’t need any more credit; she needed a full-time personal cooking mentor and possibly an exorcist to purge whatever evil spirits she always seemed to channel when she switched on the stove.
No such person was present, though—it was just Shinjiro. Shinjiro, Yamagishi herself, and Minato, who had diligently returned himself to beheading strawberries and seemed quite disinterested in branching out beyond that.
Closing his eyes, Shinjiro pressed both palms into his forehead and kneaded slowly, trying to soothe the headache before it could inevitably worsen into something closer to a migraine.
“…Right,” he said despairingly. “Let’s see what we’ve got here, then.”
With growing dread, he dragged his feet into the kitchen; at his approach, Yamagishi offered him a bashful smile and taunted him by holding the bowl out to him. It was full of lumpy red bean paste which didn’t look particularly appetizing, though it was very nearly the correct color and consistency.
Scraping a tiny dollop of paste from the surface, Shinjiro popped it warily into his mouth. Only his iron will prevented him from wincing. The taste could’ve been worse, but the texture was somehow both grainy and gelatinous, and his mouth was left coated with an unpleasant astringency long after he’d swallowed.
“…That’s definitely red bean paste,” was the best he could think to say. It took effort to restrain a lecture on how she’d clearly soaked the beans improperly and boiled them too long, but there was no point in giving pointers now; what’s done is done, and all.
Instead, he gingerly set the chopsticks back down on the counter and gathered everything he had that could pass for diplomacy. “Yamagishi, I’m gonna be honest. I really think you should bite the bullet and just use store bought. I’m sure Takeba will still appreciate all your hard work.” And she’d certainly appreciate the food much more if it had actual, competently-made koshian in it, instead of this… vague approximation.
Shinjiro had said much, much worse to many different people over the years without feeling even a twinge—yet, when Yamagishi’s shoulders slumped and her head tipped down in shame, guilt nibbled at the edges of his dust-covered conscience.
“…You’re right,” she admitted, unbearably downtrodden. “I know she probably doesn’t actually care; it just… felt more special this way.” Eyes fluttering shut, she wrung her hands fretfully. “But I guess it’s better for them to be edible than heartfelt.”
“No reason they can’t be both,” Shinjiro said quickly. He had to wipe that look off her face right now, or else even he would be tempted to bend in the face of her obvious dejection. And Takeba’s tastebuds depended on him standing his ground. “It’s not like we’re harvesting the beans ourselves either way, right?”
That, somehow, just made her droop further towards the floor, shoulders sagging. Blindsided by a horrible vision of Yamagishi trying to plant a field of adzuki beans out back, Shinjiro grasped for anything else to take her mind off of her failure.
“Yamagishi,” was all he could come up with.
She turned, blinking owlishly up at him through lashes dusted with cornstarch, and the last vestiges of Shinjiro’s resolve crumbled to nothing.
“You head to the store; Arisato and I will use the rest of this up,” he muttered, already shuffling defeatedly towards the abandoned bowl. “No sense letting it go to waste.”
It actually made all the sense in the world, but she perked up at his words as if he’d just handed her the key to the city, so he couldn’t find it in himself to regret his decision. Even when he glanced at the homemade filling and immediately felt its phantom grit against his teeth.
“Are you sure?” Yamagishi asked, hesitant despite clearly being over the moon. “I wouldn’t want to take up too much of your time… I mean, do you really think you ought to make them if Yukari-chan might not even like them…?”
No, not really, but he could just foist them on Arisato as punishment for letting things get this out of hand to begin with.
“I just said so, didn’t I?” Shinjiro said gruffly, crossing his arms and avoiding eye contact. “Don’t worry about it. Just go grab some red bean paste and hurry back.”
A brief pause followed his words. Not brief enough, though, because dread had begun to curdle in Shinjiro’s stomach by the time Fuuka cleared her throat.
“Actually, Senpai…” She looked bashfully down at her feet, then back up at Shinjiro, eyes shining with hope like the headlights of a car hurtling the wrong way down the road. “If I get some more adzuki beans, then maybe… I still want to do the work of course, but… if you could… walk me through making another batch…”
For her sake as much as his, Shinjiro threw up a hand, forestalling any further babbling. A long, tense moment passed in stony silence.
Then he deflated all at once, scrubbing a frustrated hand through his bangs. No point posturing. He’d been outmatched from the start.
“Fine.”
He was immediately rewarded, and simultaneously punished, with a smile packed with enough gratitude to burn his eyes right out of his skull. “Thank you so much, Shinjiro-senpai! I owe you one—really! And—and I’ll get some premade red bean paste as well, so you won’t have to help me again if I mess up the second batch, too—”
“Don’t mention it,” Shinjiro interrupted hastily, desperate to bring the conversation to an end before he could somehow find himself on the hook for anything else. “Now hurry up before Takeba’s club gets out. You want them to be ready when she gets back, don’t you?”
That got Fuuka moving. “Right, right!” Scrambling over to the coffee table, she snatched up a notepad and began jotting down a shopping list. Why she felt the need to write it down when it only contained two items—beans and bean paste—was beyond Shinjiro, but whatever. No skin off his back.
With one final “Thank you again, Senpai,” she swung an oversized raincoat over her shoulders and hustled out into the rain, running her fingers absently over the shopping list as she went.
After her exit, the lounge lapsed into a brief quiet. Shinji was still staring silently at the door, despairing over the hole he’d dug himself into, when Minato muttered, “I offered to walk her through it,” from behind him.
With a start, Shinjiro turned to shoot him an incredulous look. It was the first time he’d ever heard their unflappable leader sound peevish. Though his expression was as bland as ever, Minato truly sounded offended that Fuuka had discounted his ability to teach her how to make red bean paste.
“Do you even know how?” Shinjiro asked.
Minato hummed noncommittally. “I could have figured it out.”
“Yeah, sure,” Shinjiro snorted, reaching for a fistful of red bean paste now that the tension had broken. “Don’t think you’re off the hook for this, by the way. Yamagishi’s got the excuse of just being too much of an optimist, but your cynical ass should’ve known this was a disaster waiting to happen.”
With a shrug, Minato rounded the counter and draped himself over the edge of the sink, awkwardly using his elbow to pump soap into his palm. “I figured I’d help her make a second batch and eat the duds myself.”
Shinjiro shook his head, a bit impressed despite his better judgment. “Well, if nothing else, you’ve got guts. And an iron stomach.”
“The trick,” Minato responded drily, “is to stare at the wall until your tongue stops registering the taste.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll just stick to not eating anything Yamagishi touches, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
Rolling his eyes, Shinjiro began to form his first ball of red bean paste, the motions so practiced as to become rote. As he rolled it between his palms, he idly wondered aloud, “How come I didn’t know it was Takeba’s birthday, anyway? You’re all so chummy, I’d think you’d be shouting it from the rooftops.”
“‘Cause it’s not her birthday.”
Shinjiro paused with his hands still closed around the half-rolled, lumpy sphere, clammy and rough like wet sand against his palms. Slowly, his eyes slid shut, and he took a very measured breath in, then let it out a bit at a time. He did not clench his fists, because that would be a waste of perfectly good—or at least marginally palatable—red bean paste.
Once he’d composed himself, he leveled Minato with the sort of withering look that sent even Shadows skittering out of his view with their tails between their legs. “What do you mean,” he said through his teeth.
As always, their fearless leader barely reacted to his hostility. “Her birthday’s not until the nineteenth. But by the time I told Fuuka that, she’d already bought the strawberries and soaked the beans, so I figured we might as well use them before they go bad.” With a languid shrug, Minato ambled up to Shinjiro’s side and grabbed a chunk of red bean paste for himself, rolling it idly between his palms. “Told her to think of it as a test run.”
Shinjiro gazed out at the mess they’d made of the kitchen, rice flour and adzuki beans and strawberries with their leaves snipped off scattered haphazardly across every counter.
“Helluva expensive test run,” he said.
Minato dismissed him with a careless flop of his hand. “Pretty sure the Kirijo group foots the bill on all our groceries. I don’t think this’ll put them under.”
Unable to argue with that, Shinjiro sighed heavily, wondered how the hell this was his life now, and set his perfect sphere of red bean paste down on the counter.
Though Minato still looked a bit like he ought to be in bed, once he applied himself to the task, he was as efficient as he was in the field, and the two of them worked through the whole bowl of filling in no time. Shinjiro then deputized Minato to fold the paste around the strawberries as he threw together some hasty mochi.
(He still wasn’t sure where Minato fell on the Yamagishi-to-Shinjiro cooking spectrum, but if he hadn’t seen fit to intervene while Fuuka was demolishing those poor beans, then he couldn’t possibly be trustworthy enough to handle mochi.)
They worked in silence, but it was comfortable; almost companionable. It was oddly reminiscent of their Tartarus runs, Shinjiro found himself thinking as he gingerly folded the dough. Quiet, but not because either of them felt like he couldn’t speak; just because neither felt as if they must.
It was… kind of nice.
Maybe the next hour of micromanaging Yamagishi’s culinary catastrophes wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
As they folded the mochi around the paste-covered strawberries, though, something occurred to Shinjiro, and he abruptly went still, fingers stiffening on the half-formed sweet.
“Hold the phone.” Just to make sure the absolute seriousness of his words got through Minato’s thick skull, Shinjiro turned on his heel and made direct, deliberate eye contact. “If it’s not even Takeba’s birthday, then I’m putting my foot down. We’re using the store bought stuff. I’m not boiling those beans for hours for a test run.”
With a lackluster shrug, Minato plucked the daifuku from his stiff hand and finished it himself. “Sounds reasonable to me.”
It wasn’t until much later, when Yamagishi had returned and agreed to Shinjiro’s terms, that Minato added, “You know that means you just agreed to help her again when Yukari’s actual birthday rolls around, right?”
Shinjiro, manfully, did not bash his head against the counter. Mostly because that would only further delay them, and the sooner they got these damn sweets made, the sooner he could retreat back upstairs, where he couldn’t get roped into any more of these idiots’ shenanigans.
They didn’t finish a moment too soon. Mere minutes after Yamagishi triumphantly placed the last daifuku onto its platter, the front door swung open and a damp Takeba ducked inside, shaking her umbrella off onto the steps.
“Jeez, of course it starts pouring right after I leave school,” she said as she clomped inside, carefully keeping her wet shoes on the welcome mat so as not to dirty the carpet. Whatever else she might’ve had to say died on her tongue, though, when she glanced over and saw the chaos which had engulfed the kitchen. “Whoa. What’s this?”
Never before had Shinjiro seen timid little Fuuka vibrate with quite so much intensity. “They’re strawberry daifuku! Here, try one!” Snatching up the nearest platter, she darted over to the door and thrust it out before her.
Rearing back as if she were being attacked, Takeba shot the boys a highly alarmed look over Yamagishi’s shoulder. Huffing out an almost-laugh, Minato reassured her with a nod, then jerked his chin towards Shinjiro by way of explanation. For his part, Shinjiro was unprepared for the look of utter relief and gratitude that Takeba immediately turned towards him.
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he grunted some vague acknowledgement, then turned away before anyone could try to actually incorporate him into the conversation. Still, he couldn’t help but lean against the counter and stuff his hands in his pockets, waiting for the moment Takeba cracked and risked a bite.
In the background, Takeba and Yamagishi began to chat, the former’s hands still fluttering uncertainly over the fruits of the latter’s labor. Their faint voices washed over him, though he didn’t bother eavesdropping. Even if he’d wanted to, Minato sauntered up to his side an instant later, catching his attention.
“Thanks for the help, Senpai,” Minato said casually, slumping against the counter right beside him. “She probably won’t get a chance to say it without hurting Fuuka’s feelings, but you know Yukari really appreciates it.”
Though he stood accused of nothing, Shinjiro somehow still felt caught-out. “Yeah, yeah,” he said dismissively, imbuing as much nonchalance as he could possibly muster into his posture. “Whatever.”
Unfortunately, Minato didn’t quite seem willing to let the topic drop so easily. For a long moment afterwards, Shinjiro felt his gaze linger on the side of his face, intent and considering, as if Shinjiro were a particularly flighty Shadow and Minato was sizing him up, trying to figure out how best to approach the ensuing battle.
At length, Shinjiro shot him a sidelong glare. “You need something?”
“She was right about you, I think,” Minato responded without missing a beat, his voice oddly soft; more of a whisper than anything. “You’re very kind.”
Now he really was under fire. “You—the both of you are out of your minds,” he blustered at once, tugging at his beanie in a transparent attempt to cover up the slight reddening of his ears. “And don’t go getting used to it. This is only ‘cause it’s Takeba’s birthday, and that girl puts up with enough of our shit already.”
Amusement tugged at one corner of Minato’s mouth. “You stayed after I told you it wasn’t her birthday, though,” he observed with unconvincing faux disinterest.
Well aware that he was fooling no one, Shinjiro nevertheless glowered fiercely. “Shut up.” He had a reputation to uphold, so he could hardly admit that he actually cared whether Takeba liked her birthday gift or not.
It seemed he didn’t have to say anything, either way; in response to Shinjiro’s glare, Minato’s expression melted into a disgustingly fond little smile that made Shinji’s stomach squirm a little. It was all he could do to scoff and jerk his head aside, staring determinedly at the wall and willing the heat to leave his face.
He should’ve never left his room to begin with. Too much hassle. Too much of a risk.
In his peripherals, though, Takeba’s face lit up as she bit into her first daifuku, and Shinjiro couldn’t help but soften.
Well, it wasn’t like anyone else in this dorm had any dignity. Maybe his reputation could handle a hit or two after all.