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Mei has never burnt any of her cooking.
Well, at least not in recent memory. The last time she had truly burnt a dish was during her first week in St. Freya, when Kiana distracted her too long from the stove to realize that the soup she was making was blackening. After some scolding and boundaries set in the kitchen for everyone’s safety, it was safe to say that Mei had never made that same mistake again.
Yet the putrid smell hitting her nose and the tears springing into the corners of her eyes from the smoke in the room is evidently from the pan she set on the stove just an hour ago herself.
Mei coughs into the sleeve of her arm and bats the air with a floppy newspaper with the other, taking the pan off of the angry red coil. The contents of the pan are charred and shapeless, retaining nothing of the formed hashbrowns that she had shredded herself that morning.
It makes her sigh. Defeated, Mei cleans up her kitchen with no more qualms or disbelief. She can already hear her friends teasing her for burning something as easy as breakfast hashbrowns. For certain, Bronya would make a jab at her about missing the eggs. Kiana would most likely try to cheer her up by reminding her that she would have done a more egregious job with the cooking. And Hua would just smile politely, soothing her with the notion that even the simplest things can turn flawed from time to time.
Hua.
The thought of her knocks the breath out of Mei’s lungs further than the smoke in the air, and for a moment she stares at the pan that she’s washing with some more consideration. They’ll be seeing Kiana again on the moon for a nice dinner, as they always have, but this will be the first time that Hua has elected to join them since her long travels abroad.
In truth, she has no idea why that gives her so much pause. They’ve always been good friends, albeit with the distance considerably greater between them than with Kiana or Bronya, and their respect for one another has never dipped down after what they’ve been through together in the past few years. It’s a group setting too, and there shouldn’t be any part of seeing Hua for dinner that should be making her feel so… disoriented.
Mei purses her lips and continues to dry the pan with a towel, her mind flipping through a thousand recipe cards in her head for something that isn’t burnt hash browns for lunch. She decides on some pancakes, something slightly sweet and savory to calm her mind.
The device in her kitchen rings and vibrates the countertop it’s on while she sorts through the miscellaneous mixing bowls under her counter. Mei nearly knocks her head trying to look up, and she hobbles to the flashing tablet with the bowl situated at her hip.
“Kiana,” she greets immediately, and Kiana’s bright face is close to the screen as she smiles widely at Mei’s slightly disheveled form while she fuses with the tablet to let it sit upright.
“Whoa! Kitchen troubles without me? That’s a first,” Kiana exclaims, and she grins widely when Mei shifts her eyes away in embarrassment.
“I just overcooked a batch,” Mei explains, giving nothing further to fuel Kiana’s flame. She places the bowl on the countertop and begins to make her pancake mix while Kiana watches. She’s a little grateful for the distance between them in this instance, knowing that Kiana would have stuck her fingers in the batter at least a few times by now. That doesn’t necessarily negate her excitement for their dinner plans though.
It’s Kiana who reads her mind about it. “Are you excited for tonight?” she asks, and her eyes sparkle and give away her own feelings on the matter.
“From the amount of texts you sent the group chat, I can guess that you are,” Mei teases. She enjoys the way Kiana sticks out her tongue at her in defiance. She laughs, her hands working like magic to find a suitable pan and spatula.
“There’s nothing to do up here without you! Of course I’m excited,” Kiana says, half-mumbling. She leans against the plush chair that she’s sitting on and munches on a bag of chips, eyes squinting down at Mei through the screen while she works. Mei doesn’t necessarily try to meet her eyes, because she has a feeling that she knows when Kaslana mischief is about to happen.
“I’m extra excited this time though,” Kiana says again.
“Really?” Mei answers, and she flicks her eyes over at Kiana briefly in genuine surprise. The soft sizzle of the pan calms her soul, and she pats the pancake gently with a spatula to give it a nice and even coat.
“Well, Hua’s coming this time,” Kiana says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Mei finds genuine excitement and joy in her words. As well as something close to contemplation.
“You must be really excited to catch up with her,” Mei tells her with a bright smile, and one pancake goes onto a plate next to her. “All of the postcards she sends with Senti makes it seem like she has a lot to share.”
“It does!” Kiana exclaims, and Mei breathes out a laugh in the way Kiana sits up from her chair slightly to exaggerate her hand motions. “Can you believe she was smiling in, like, half of them?!”
Another pancake lightly sizzles in the pan. Mei contemplates making fluffy souffle pancakes tomorrow morning.
“She deserves it,” Mei admits, eyes focusing hard on the small holes in her pancakes, “after what she’s been through, I’m happy that she found a way to make peace with it.”
Kiana’s silence momentarily brings her out of her pancake zone. Mei looks up to find Kiana staring at her, head cocked slightly with a slight squint. It’s safe to say that Mei had no idea what Kiana is trying to draw out from her.
“What is it?” Mei ventures to say, and Kiana blurts out her words just as it escapes her.
“I love you,” Kiana says, and the sudden affection makes Mei chuckle a little.
She smiles just a little wider at Kiana’s silliness. “I love you too,” Mei answers, though her smile wobbles slightly in slight suspicion.
“Which is why,” Kiana continues, and she sits up further in her seat, “I’m making you sit next to Hua for dinner.”
Stunned, confused, and most of all, bewildered, Mei lowers her spatula and gives Kiana an odd look. “What?” she says, because she thinks that’s the only way to communicate how she’s thinking.
Kiana shrugs, then puts more potato chips in her mouth. Mei suspects the chips are a gift from Bronya. “I don’t know,” Kiana says, and she sounds somewhat proud of it. That only further escalates Mei’s confusion. “I just think it’s a good idea, y’know?”
“Can I…” Mei swallows her words and tries to digest it, letting it move around in her mouth and her head until she finds a clearer way to explain herself. Her hands move on their own to continue making her pancakes, and she’s grateful for the innate reflex that’s aiding her, despite the fact it wasn’t quite as present just an hour ago.
“Can I ask… why, you think so?” Mei settles on saying, and it comes out so clipped and uncertain she wonders if Kiana is doing this just to fluster her.
Kiana blinks at her rather slowly, as if to say, do I really have to spell that out for you?
Mei doesn’t back down, however, and so Kiana says, “You’ve just been a little… spooked around her.”
“Spooked?” Mei echoes.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kiana says, bobbing her head. She looks at a far corner to think as she bobs her head in thought. “You know that game Bronya likes to play a lot? There’s like that one enemy that runs away if you have a mushroom in your hotbar?”
“Am I the mushroom?” Mei asks, incredulous. She tries to avoid thinking about the metaphor too much.
“No, Mei,” Kiana says patiently. “Hua is.”
“Oh. Of course,” Mei replies, nodding along to it as if it makes perfect sense, when it in fact does not.
But Kiana seems satisfied with the way she reacts, so Kiana nods along as well, smiling to herself in complete satisfaction. The way she looks is a little ridiculous, but it does its job well in calming Mei’s nerves.
So much so that it almost doesn’t register in her mind when Kiana says, “I know it’s a little weird pretending you don’t know as much about Hua as you actually do, but hey— if you smooth past that sooner or later, I think you and Hua would get along just fine.”
At that, Mei blinks.
She flips another pancake.
And suddenly it makes a little more sense than a few minutes ago when she was burning her hash browns.
“Maybe you’re right,” she acquiesces, and it’s not a question of “maybe” that turns in her mind over and over like a smooth stone between the fingers.
She spent months in the Elysian Realm getting to know Fu Hua, the young flame chaser who had so much nuance to the way she shifted her eyes from corner to corner or spoke so softly like she was speaking to the ground, to the point that seeing Fu Hua, the one with over 50,000 miles of experience that can be written from pen to paper against her younger charge, is nothing short of, well— disorienting.
It’s not that Mei can’t differentiate between the two, either. She knows their differences and intricacies more than the back of her hand, but it’s just knowing more than one that derails any normalcy she may have in her interactions with Hua.
It’s hard, as Kiana seems to imagine, to greet a woman like you don’t know every hairline crack in her armor. Or most importantly, that Mei wishes to mend them.
Somehow the latter frightens her more, as much as she tries not to think of it.
“Mei?” Kiana calls, and the concern laced in her tone brings Mei back. Thankfully with no food burnt on her stove again.
After a quick apology, Mei turns off the stove and shows off the stack of pancakes to an enthused Kiana, before setting it back down for some light decorating. As she does, Kiana continues on her quest of rambling on.
“I can sit down next to you while she’s on your other side if that’ll help calm your nerves,” Kiana muses, and she lays back down on her chair to think about it deeper. She taps her chin in a rhythm. “I think I can write down some convo grease on my palm while I wait for you to get here. How do you feel about playing 20 questions with the class monitor?”
It makes Mei bark out a laugh. “I don’t know how Hua would feel being called that after you graduated,” Mei says, and Kiana just hums in mild consideration. “Or playing an icebreaker meant for strangers with someone you’ve been friends with for years.”
Kiana smiles. Mei notices the irony from the sardonic quirk of Kiana’s lips. Shedoesn’t comment on it while she puts on her finishing touches: a few blueberries, to the top of the pancake stack.
“What are you making tonight for dinner?” Kiana asks her, and she’s grateful for the sudden shift in conversation.
Mei considers that with a light hum. “I haven’t thought too hard about it,” she admits. Usually, Kiana requests something for her to make before she makes the trip. That, or she settles on some household favorites. She patiently waits for Kiana to pipe in with something that she’s been craving.
Kiana loves to keep surprising her though. “Make something Hua would like,” she suggests. It’s a suggestion that Mei deeply considers. It’s definitely not an idea too far out for her to try. “I think it’ll make you two a little more comfortable if you ask me.”
Mei huffs lightly, leaning against the countertop on her palms. “I think so too,” Mei thinks. She wonders a little about that, riffling through every kind of food that she’d seen Hua eat in St. Freya and while they were together. Though Hua had never been one to vocalize her love for certain foods, it isn’t impossible to make at least an educated guess.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to ask and get a little more brownie points for certain things.
“What’s Hua’s favorite dish?” Mei asks, and she’s already reaching for the apron to try out an experimental batch before she knows it.
Kiana opens her mouth excitedly, then closes and opens it like a fish that can’t settle on something to say. “I… don’t actually know,” Kiana says, but she sounds far too cheery to get Mei too down in the dumps about it. “But hey— if it’s coming from you, I think it’ll end up being her favorite anyway!”
It makes Mei laugh and blush, and they talk about anything and everything else that they’ve missed between now and their last call. Talking to Kiana had always soothed any sort of bothersome nerves in her body, and it does the trick now too.
Though, the fact that she can’t place Hua’s favorite food, and neither can Kiana, continues to bother her in the slightest, most subtlest ways. Like a hairline crack in a steaming hot bowl.
Their reunion is nothing to write home about, Mei settles. She hugs Kiana and Bronya and lets them talk excitedly about some video game that’s coming out soon, smiling as she places down the dishes she made on the table that Kiana had set for them.
She catches Hua looking at her while Kiana and Bronya continue talking rapidly with video game jargon that she would never understand even if she studied it as a class in St. Freya, and from the way that her eyes twinkle, Hua seems to think the same.
They share shy smiles, and something steams in Mei’s stomach.
It reminds her of the dumplings she made just a few hours before, curated for Hua because of the times she’d poked her head into the kitchen to see Hua peacefully pinching the sides together with soft music playing through the radio. That, and the times she’d seen Hua try to calmly (and sometimes fail to) help Kiana try to make them.
It makes Mei want to walk over to Hua and crack a joke about how clumsy Kiana can be with cooking, but every word dries on her tongue the longer Hua stands there, arms crossed and watching Kiana and Bronya as if she’s at least trying to make sense of their words. It makes a line form near the side of her lip, and Mei finds it every little bit endearing as she did on the Hua that couldn’t understand what Elysia and—
She closes her eyes, just briefly, but when she opens it, Hua is still standing there. And she’s looking at Mei.
“How have you been?” Hua speaks, and it’s gentle and a little stiff but Mei knows she’s just embarrassed trying to strike up a conversation.
“Doing well,” Mei says genuinely. “I hope it’s been that way for you.”
“It has,” Hua says, the ghost of a smile finding its way on her lips.
It suits her, Mei decides. It suits her when she smiles. When she’s happy.
Mei opens her mouth to say something else, anything else to keep that smile on shy Hua’s face, but Kiana calls them over to settle a debate between her and a slightly seething Bronya.
The night goes much more smoothly than she could ever imagine, and Mei wonders why she had ever been so nervous. Dumplings are served, as are a few other dishes that Hua had brought along with her, Mei feeds Kiana as she speaks with her mouth a little full, Hua tells them of their adventures and Mei hangs onto every word, and it’s nearly time to go before anyone knows it.
Goodbyes are bitter, no matter how accustomed Mei is to them. She finds it especially hard saying goodbye to Hua, who after so long seems to find her footing with them once again. Mei can’t ever truly express how grateful she is for that.
Farewells are shared all around, drawn out and slow despite no alcohol being present at the table, just so they all stayed a little while longer, and Mei is at Hua’s side to say goodbye before she knows it.
They hug, albeit swifter than with Kiana, and the question that’s been itching on Mei’s skin throughout the night begins to make itself present once again.
“Did you like the food I made tonight?” Mei asks, and though she means it as something amicable, Hua catches the way she holds her breath.
“It was perfect. I know it’s not something I should be saying, but I missed being here with Kiana just as much as I missed your cooking,” Hua teases, and the smile reappears on her face. Mei knows that behind the rare joke, her food’s compliment is genuine— Hua never really had a knack for lying— but still. It’s not out of malice, or out of indifference to Mei’s cooking, but Mei can tell from the way Hua stances herself that they weren’t her favorite.
She can’t shake it when Hua bids her another goodbye before turning away. It’s something so miniscule to even think about that she feels silly for standing there and pondering it, but she can’t seem to make it go away. It’s like an itch, she supposes. Unnecessary and miniscule, but it’ll continue to be present.
When Mei is left with Kiana, Kiana only says, “Maybe you could try something sweet?”
Sometimes she wonders if Kiana’s Herrscher powers granted her the gift for mind reading. Though she doubts that the musing on her face is something too hard to discern.
It isn’t uncommon for friends to stop by at her place once in a while. It never bothers her, and most times she finds joy in knowing that many of her colleagues and friends find her as a source of homely comfort.
It’s why she simply smiles when she finds Bronya knocking at her door during one late afternoon, her eyes staring down at the game she’s grinding on her phone.
“I thought you were going out with Seele today,” Mei says kindly, but she ushers Bronya inside all the same.
“Bronya will go out later,” Bronya says flatly, suggesting it's the most obvious thing in the world, but Mei only nods appreciatively.
“Well, thank you for coming by. I was starting to miss you,” Mei replies genuinely, and Bronya’s eyes flicker up briefly at her words. It’s Bronya’s equivalent of earnest agreement. Between work and more work, it was beginning to become hard in finding time for her friends and her leisure activities.
Bronya sits herself on a chair in Mei’s kitchen, and Mei takes that as a sign. “Are you hungry?” she asks, and Bronya pauses her game to regard the conversation. “I know it’s a little early for dinner, but I can fix you up something quick if you’re feeling peckish. Maybe I can pack you some leftovers, for Seele.”
Bronya shifts, almost uncomfortably, but she sighs outwardly in relief in the end. “Bronya would appreciate it,” she says softly, and the warmth grows in Mei’s chest at being able to help out a friend.
Mei clasps her hands and she’s already making her way around the kitchen island to find something to make. “That sounds great! Is there something that you’ve been craving?”
Bronya tilts her head slightly to consider it. “Bronya does not know,” she admits.
Humming, Mei looks around her kitchen to gather some ideas. A light bulb goes off above her head, and she asks, “How do you feel about a dessert? We can indulge in sweets before dinner once in a while.”
Bronya blinks at that, though Mei doesn’t feel as if it’s anything bad. “Can Mei make pryaniki?”
“Of course,” Mei says blithely, and the idea of making it doesn’t sound half bad. The last time she ate a pyranik was in St. Freya, right after their midterms and Bronya had made a splash with her performance. It was quite good with a cup of tea, that much she could remember.
She conjures the recipe from the depths of her memory, and she’s already setting off to make it while Bronya resumes her game on her phone. It’s easy to keep a steady conversation with her like this though. She asks about Seele, about Bronya’s gaming progress, about Bronya’s whereabouts these days, and everything that she hadn’t asked since their last meeting together. Though her kitchen is much quieter than with the addition of Kiana into their trio, Mei finds herself at ease.
With the sugar, eggs, flour, honey, and other miscellaneous ingredients out on her counter, Mei finally considers the portions that she has to make. “I’ll make a batch for you and I to share,” she suggests out loud, tapping her chin with an index finger, “and I could make another one for you to take home to share with Seele. How does that sound?”
“Bronya thinks that is a good idea,” Bronya says, and she sounds proud and a little… smug? “But Mei should make at least three batches of pryaniki to share proportionately.”
“Three?” Mei echoes, and she scrunches her brow in thought. “If you’re that hungry, I can make you something else to pair with it,” she ends up bargaining. She worries that that much sugar may not be good for Bronya in the long run.
But instead of responding, Bronya smirks, and she looks down at her phone and begins to use her thumbs rapidly. She wonders if Bronya is playing her game again, but the patterns of her thumbs are unlike any game that she’s seen her play before. If anything, it seems like she’s texting.
Before she could ask, there’s a gentle knock at her door, and Mei can see a little bit of familiar hair poking through the cracks.
As if against her will, Hua peeks through the door, eyes flitting around and refusing to land on Mei for longer than half a second. Mei’s eyes never leave her.
Bronya breaks through the icy atmosphere for them. “Bronya has left the door open for Hua,” she deadpans. “Bronya has invited Hua for tea time, if Mei does not think it’s an intrusion.”
“Oh!” Mei says, and she’s embarrassed at how high her voice sounds. She clears her throat briefly, and finally, finally, Hua looks at her long enough for their eyes to hold for a long, deep breath. “Of course she can stay. Please. Please, come in. I was just about to make a quick snack.”
Hua looks as if she wants to protest, but something in the way Mei looks at her seems to hold her hostage, and she closes her mouth and levels her shoulders and takes off her shoes before entering deeper within Mei’s home.
“Do you want some pryaniki?” Mei asks, and she tries (and perhaps fails a little) in acting more cordial than awkward. “I could make you something else if it’s not something you’d like.”
“I couldn’t bother you,” Hua says, her voice tight. It seems like they’re both losing their silent war in being less stiff with one another. “A pyranik sounds good to have.”
At that, Mei perks up. She nods at Hua and Bronya, excusing herself to make the food in front of them and letting them converse as she readies her ingredients. Hua eyes her unsurely, perhaps bothered by letting her bake alone, but it’s something that Mei is grateful for. She needed the time alone to think, especially to analyze how Hua had answered her.
Did “sounds good to have” mean that it’s a food that Hua really likes, or is it just something that she tolerates? Could it be her favorite food, or is it a food that she isn’t fond of but didn’t want to be rude and turn down?
Mei shakes her head gently as she mixes the dry ingredients. She knows she’s overthinking too much about it.
But she also knows that if she doesn’t think about that, she’ll be thinking about the fact that she can feel Hua’s eyes on her as she mixes, whisks, and glazes the cookies. It burns into her, warming her like the inside of an oven. It’s not quite so hot that she can’t stand it, but its presence is felt, and Mei can feel herself melting.
It makes her nervous, making her hands shake slightly as she mixes and measures her cups. That’s never happened to her before, especially not with a recipe that she’s worked with before.
And even as she begins to place the first batch inside her already pre-heated oven, Mei can’t quite place if those nerves are something good or bad.
It doesn’t take too long to bake the cookies. She spends those fifteen minutes sitting down at the table with Hua and Bronya, giggling lightly as she watches Bronya try to help Hua through the game tutorial on her phone. Though it’s not something she should be laughing too much about, she supposes, because she isn’t one to be good with games either.
Still, she tries to cheer Hua on and give her any pointers that she knows of, and Hua passes through the tutorial level just as her timer dings.
Mei gets up and puts on a fresh pair of oven mitts, then presents the happy pair with a fresh patch of pryaniki. Bronya immediately digs in once the cookies have cooled down enough, and Mei warms at the sight of a slightly smiling Bronya (and in Bronya terms, it would have been the equivalent of a big, toothy grin).
The three of them spend a good chunk of an hour talking about whatever they can, with tea and honey cookies being passed between them. It’s one afternoon that Mei knows she’ll treasure for a long time, and from the way Bronya side-eyes her once in a while when she laughs just a little too hard at Hua’s modest jests, Bronya knows it too. Mei makes a mental note to make another batch of treats for Bronya and Seele in the future.
With all of the dirty dishes stacking up high in her sink, Mei tries to excuse herself from the table to wash them up.
Hua insists on cleaning them with her before she leaves. Bronya has the ghost of a smirk on her lips.
Smiling genuinely at the offer, Mei declines. “Enjoy the rest of the food. You’re a guest here,” she adds.
“And your friend,” Hua says stubbornly. She’s already rising from her seat to help, and Mei can already tell that she’s lost the battle. “We’re almost done eating, anyway. What kind of friend would I be to not make your life a little easier?”
It’s quiet in the air as Mei and Hua wash the dishes, save for the sounds of Bronya’s mobile gaming and the dishes clanging together. Hua dries while she washes, and they’re standing close enough together that their elbows brush briefly with any movement. Still, neither of them make a move to stand farther apart.
It’s silent between them, but Mei loves it all the same. They’re comfortable.
When she hands over another plate, Mei can’t help but ask, “Did you like the food?”
Hua has a look of consideration as her hand works over the surface of the dish with a rag, then she answers, “It’s sweet.”
“Too sweet?” Mei muses.
“The perfect amount,” Hua assures.
And then after a pause, she adds, “Like you.”
Her next meeting with Hua isn’t quite as surprising as it was with Bronya’s little arrangement.
She finds herself with Hua’s number in her contacts after Bronya gives them the little push to start using their messaging apps more, and after some confusion and thumbs in front of cameras, they’ve started to get the hang of it. Most of her messages with Hua consist of daily pictures of new meal recipes or Hua’s reminders for her to stretch and take care of herself (which, naturally, Mei always reciprocates).
It’s after a little pep talk from Kiana and an hour of rewriting the same message over and over before she sends a message to Hua asking her to come over sometime for dinner, just the two of them, to “catch up.”
Though she spends most of her afternoon cleaning up around her space and wincing at her awkward wording when the memory of it comes to mind, she’s utterly relieved to see that Hua immediately accepts, citing that she’d be available the next day.
So relieved, in fact, that she makes the slight mistake in telling Kiana about it when she wakes.
“No way she seems more happy talking to you than me,” Kiana says, half teasing and half offended. She’s leaning her chin on her hand, squinting at Mei through the phone.
Mei hums at that. “How could you tell?” she muses, but she’s too giddy to find it in herself to be more than half absorbed in the conversation. She stirs a pot of mushroom soup while Kiana blabbers on.
“She responded to you like a normal person!” Kiana exclaims. She looks affronted, like she can’t believe it all herself. Kiana’s face is enlarged on the screen while she takes her phone in her hand to thumb around it. “Look— I’ll even send you screenshots from when I was telling her about my new high score last night. Or the day before that, when I asked her how she was doing. She just sends a thumbs up and doesn’t say anything else. Who the heck does that?”
Mei giggles, because she knows exactly the kind of person who would.
“She’s sent me a few thumbs up here and there,” she says. “I think it’s just her way of showing that she cares.”
Kiana scoffs, though it comes off more like a little laugh, and she lets her phone go and leans back against her plush bean bag. “What are you making for her tonight anyway?” she asks, and the familiar mischief in her eye twinkles with newfound vigor.
Mei feels a blush begin to rise on her cheeks. She tries her best to stamp it out, like a kitchen cloth to a stove, but she can still feel the tinge of heat on her skin as she tries to casually say, “I was thinking something savory for her to try this time. Chicken adobo. You had an intense craving for it the night before an exam.”
“Oh, yeah!” Kiana replies thoughtfully, and she nods along as she recalls the memory. The sides of her lips curl up in a smile, and so does Mei’s. “I remember Hua almost caught you cooking after hours.”
Mei chuckles. “To this day, I’m half sure that she saw us and let it slide on purpose.”
“She wouldn’t do that. She’s too… Hua,” Kiana says, though not unkindly.
“That’s exactly why I think she would,” Mei chirps. “She’s disciplined, but she’s kind. Gentle. I… admire her for it.”
“Aw, is someone gushing?” Kiana teases, and the heat on Mei’s face fans high with flames just for a moment.
“I’m just saying that she has a softer heart than you think,” Mei says evenly, but Kiana arches an eyebrow at her, and Mei momentarily forgets that Kiana can always decipher the emotions that she’s feeling from the subtleties on her face.
Mei takes a deep breath and the silence stretches between them. And then she admits, “I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It’s just dinner.”
“And Hua. Dinner with Hua,” Kiana points out. “It’s basically natural for someone to feel nervous before a date, if you ask me.”
“It’s not a date,” Mei says, and she says it with confidence.
Oh, but if she was being honest, she wouldn’t mind if it is. But she locks that burning thought away tight, and pretends to look the other way.
Kiana searches for something in her eyes. She finds what she’s looking for eventually, and she shrugs and doesn’t give it away. “I think you’ll do just fine,” she says, and Mei finds comfort in the genuine way she says it. “Make her some good food, serve some tea, chat it up— and then bam, time flies.”
Mei giggles. “Thank you,” she says softly, and Kiana’s smile turns warm. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Give yourself some more credit,” Kiana replies with a little laugh. “I should probably let you get back to it though, huh?”
“Thank you,” Mei repeats, smiling at Kiana and hoping that she understands the gravity of her words. “Not just for supporting me tonight, I mean.”
“Anything for you! I mean it. Do whatever makes you happy, okay? Tell me all about your date tonight,” Kiana says. She’s waving through the phone now, and Mei knows that as her cue to end their little call.
And before Mei could clarify once more that it is in fact not a date, Kiana’s gone and Mei is left standing in her kitchen with a pot of mushroom soup for lunch and some chicken defrosting on the counter.
And with that, Mei sets off to get ready for tonight.
It takes about two hours for her to deep clean her entire apartment (which she convinces herself is not out of potential embarrassment with having Hua over and simply because she needed to do some spring cleaning, in the middle of the winter), and by the time she’s done cleaning, her pot of chicken adobo is simmering. Her apartment smells of savory food, and Mei is satisfied with the way she sets the table— not too casual, and yet not too formal. The perfect setting for two friends meeting up for dinner alone.
As Mei straightens out the napkins on the table, she remembers that her dish must be paired with some cooked rice, and she had forgotten to cook any.
However, there’s that familiar, gentle knock at her door and Mei abandons the idea.
She flurries to the door in a blink, and standing there is Hua in her large gray coat, holding a small dish with aluminum foil on top. She looks rather awkward standing there, and Mei wonders how Hua had ever gone from scaring everyone during checkers at game night to looking much, much smaller than Mei could have ever remembered.
But she looks cute that way, she thinks, and she bats the thought away as soon as it comes.
“I’m sorry about this,” Hua blurts out. For a moment, Mei is confused, until Hua holds up her covered dish as Mei brings her inside. “We were craving fried rice this morning. I thought you might want some.”
Mei blinks. That’s a perfect, happy coincidence, she thinks. “I’m glad you did. It would pair well with the food I made,” she says, and the ghost of Kiana saying it pairs well like the two of you in her ear comes down so incessantly that her eye almost twitches.
Mei is briefly distracted by the way Hua smiles at her. It makes her paranoid for a moment, wondering if she had accidentally said such a thought out loud, but Hua just shakes her head and takes off her shoes and brings her dish to the table that Mei points out.
She pulls out a chair for Hua to sit in, and though she seems a little surprised, Hua thanks her quietly. Then Hua passes her some napkins from her side of the table before Mei gets the chance to ask for it, and Mei wonders why she ever felt nervous for a night like this— this is the most comfortable she’s felt in weeks.
The entire night strikes Mei as something close to a date, but she doesn’t dare let her mind linger on it like a droplet of water in hot oil.
Mei tries a spoonful of Hua’s fried rice, and the savory texture and taste hits her tongue. It pairs well with the meat, and her mouth begins to water at the thought of more. She can’t help but compliment Hua for her cooking.
“Thank you,” Hua says, and Mei frowns at the tone she brings. It sounds like Hua doesn’t quite believe her in saying that it’s good. “It’s a family recipe. Senti has begged me to give her the recipe, but I’m not one to share.”
Mei laughs at her good-natured teasing. “I’d have to ask you to make some more soon. I’m not sure your fried rice can last long in my house.”
Hua hums at that, fitting more food into her mouth and swallowing before answering. “I could say the same about anything you make,” she admits.
Despite herself, Mei can’t help but smile. There’s a warm glow that emits from her chest, and she wonders if Hua’s clear enjoyment for her food has anything to do with it.
And just like that, her mind landslides.
She thinks of cooking for Hua more and more often, packing her lunches into boxes and adding little sticky notes to the sides of them. She thinks of Hua smiling down at her plate as she chews and tells Mei about anything and everything, and Mei—
Well, now Mei knows exactly what they mean by finding the heart through the stomach, because all she can ever think about is keeping Hua well fed and happy just like this.
“If you want, I could make something you’d really like,” Mei blurts out, and Hua’s eyes jump over to her in surprise. Mei twiddles with the corner of a napkin as she continues, “Maybe you have a favorite food I can attempt to make for you?” Maybe it’s the one she’s eating, she thinks, she hopes.
Hua looks at her. Mei doesn’t know what to make of the expression on her face.
And then Hua swallows her food, and she looks at the corner of the room as if in thought. Then she muses, “I don’t think I have a favorite food. If anything, I think your—”
“Sorry,” Mei says, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to— I wasn’t trying to pry.”
Hua frowns. “I didn’t think you were prying.”
“I’m still sorry,” Mei says genuinely. She’s still playing with the corner of the napkin, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Hua’s thumb mirroring her with her own napkin. “I hope I didn’t make you feel uncomfortable.”
There’s a silence that stretches between them, and Mei tenses.
Hua says, “You’ve never made me feel uncomfortable. I think… I feel quite the opposite with you.”
“Ah,” Mei answers, because she doesn’t know how to answer any other way.
There’s another pause between them. It’s awkward and tense and Mei is beginning to sweat under the collar, but then Hua asks, “Have you been worried about that this whole time?”
Mei just looks at her, asking silently for a clarification.
“Making me uncomfortable,” Hua clarifies. Something in her eyes soften as she watches Mei, and she continues, “I’ve noticed that you never speak to me first. Or ask me things. I thought you wanted to keep a respectable distance from me and I had no problem with it. But recently, I just wondered if…”
“It’s nothing you did,” Mei says quickly. “I do want to know you.” More than you know.
But how could she continue explaining herself, or defend her actions by saying that after everything she’s seen from the Elysian Realm, from seeing the things Hua could have done and wanted to have done, she didn’t know how to move around a conversation with her, even if every part of her body begged her to?
This Hua is all that matters to her. She wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize what they had, even if she wants nothing more than to continue knowing the rest of her. It’s a tightrope to walk on.
“What’s your favorite color?” Hua suddenly asks.
Mei gives her an odd look, and Hua just gives her a small smile before she begins to slowly eat some more.
“You said you wanted to know me,” Hua explains. “And I want to know more about you. This is where people start, from my understanding.”
Mei nearly laughs. For everything they’ve been through, it’s an odd place to start— but a needed one.
Instead, she finds a smile plastered on her face, and the tension in her shoulders begins to melt away into nothing.
They spend the rest of their night going back and forth, asking about family and ambition and everything in between. Mei is just sorry that she forgets to ask Hua about her favorite food again by the end of the night, and by the time she remembers, they’re cleaning up and humming to the radio in the corner of her kitchen. Though Mei tries to insist she goes, Hua stays long enough to clean up the table and do the dishes.
The radio channel specializes in jazz, and it’s one of the many things that Mei finds out she shares in common interest with Hua tonight.
As Hua is putting on her jacket to leave, she freezes. Mei turns to look at her in confusion.
“I almost forgot,” she says sheepishly, and she comes up to Mei with her hands fiddling with something in one of her jacket pockets. “Will you give me your hand?”
Mei, though confused, complies with the request.
Hua slips something in between her fingers, then bends down to brush Mei’s knuckle with her lips gently. It’s so gentle that Mei doesn’t even know if it’s an accident or not.
Hua’s back straightens when she finishes, and she refuses to look Mei in the eyes as she scratches the side of her cheek. She leaves, almost hurriedly, and Mei is so dumbstruck that she doesn’t turn her palm over to look at what’s between her fingers until minutes after Hua has left.
She finds a small note, in the end, and she unfurls it to find Hua’s handwriting outlining the recipe for her fried rice.
She’s so stunned that she forgets to, at the very least, ask Hua how she liked her cooking tonight.
Mei pulls out all the stops for this one. Bronya and Kiana think she’s lost it at this point, but Mei has never been one to concern herself with it.
She has friends coming over for a little get together that night (and of course she has Kiana on a video call the whole time she’s preparing, all the while Kiana does her part by spamming everyone else in their contacts not to forget), so of course Mei tries her best to please. It’s not just friends either— she has associates she’s invited, older folks and young, bright minds that Mei has had the pleasure to meet over the course of the last few years.
And, Hua.
So when she makes dozens and dozens of dishes and appetizers, five course meals and beyond, with dishes piling high for her to clean right before her guests arrive, it’s not motivated by anything else besides making sure everyone, including Hua, is well fed.
Of course it’s not partly motivated by the fact that every time she turns on the oven or puts oil on her pan, she thinks of Hua’s big smile as she bites into what could be her favorite food. Or when she changes out of her shirt to rid herself of the lingering smell of smoke, her mind wanders to the thought of Hua wrinkling her nose and begging her to change out.
It makes her feel as if she’s cooking and running around her kitchen under a fever. Time flies by so quickly that her counters are full and the guests are over before she knows it.
She greets each person with a warm smile, though it strains when she catches Hua’s eye as she enters with Senti and Bronya.
It’s odd to feel so much for one person, especially when she knows she could never write out exactly how that feels.
“Hi,” she says, a breathy word that nearly catches in her chest when Hua’s smile widens just slightly, just enough to make Mei feel like a giddy teenager even for the few seconds they chat in front of the doorway.
Throughout the night, she watches with bated breath out of the corner of her eye whenever Hua takes a bite out of the different kinds of foods. Though Hua’s approval is not something that she needs, it’s something that she can’t stop herself from craving.
Hua’s expression never changes throughout, even as she bites into something quite sour, or very spicy, or a little sweet. She just seems at peace as she speaks to the company she keeps around, a small smile never leaving her face, and it never curls too far upwards or downwards throughout the night.
It makes Mei deflate, more and more, each time.
For a moment she considers just marching up to Hua and asking her to write down her favorite food and its recipe on the palm of her hand in permanent ink. It’s a childish way to think, but she so very much wants to make something good for the goodest person she knows. To make one of the best people she knows happy, to make enough pancakes for Hua so that she can feel how many times her heart has flipped, for Hua to know that Mei wants to know her, to be known by her, to be loved and to love her as she is, and—
There’s a crash somewhere in the other room, and Mei lifts her head quick enough to see someone ambling towards her with a red face. Senti had gotten into a little kerfuffle with one of the guests, resulting in one of the picture frames on her wall, the one of her, Kiana, and Bronya in St. Freya, to break.
“Oh, please don’t worry about it,” Mei tells the tattletale, and she relays the message to the perpetrators as well. She means it honestly; there’s no need to worry about something that has already happened, and it’s not like someone had burnt down the picture either. She could easily replace the frame come morning.
Still, she can feel Hua’s eyes on her even after the entire situation resolves. When she turns to look, perhaps to crack a small, weak joke or to reassure her friend, Hua is no longer there.
The gettogether goes on without any more incidents. She’s relieved, to say the least, but she’s still a little on edge.
Mei finds Senti downing some punch in the corner of the room, and she’s at least happy to see that Hua’s friend is intact. “Excuse me,” Mei says gently, and Senti looks at her like she already knows what she’s about to ask. “Do you know where—?”
“I dunno,” Senti says, and though it’s a little brash, she’s genuine. Senti shrugs, but she half-heartedly points somewhere over her shoulder. “The old timer was looking for something in your cupboards the last time I saw her.”
“My—?” Mei blinks away her surprise. “Thank you,” she chooses to say instead, and Senti waves her off.
Did Hua get bored of being here? Did she look around to find her belongings to hurry back home?
It’s a stupid thing to think, and she knows better than to assume such things of someone like Hua, but the anxiety gets the best of her. Coupled with the fact that Hua didn’t seem quite so impressed with the food, Mei fears the worst.
It takes about five minutes of wandering her own home to find her, hunched over on the kitchen counter among all the buzz and laughter, in the act of meticulously gluing the picture frame together with slightly shaking hands and glasses perched on her nose. Hua is squinting against the harsh light right above her, but her eyes never leave the wooden pieces and her hands don’t drop the tweezer that holds them.
Suddenly a thousand recipe cards can’t write down how much she loves her, and the stories of how much she has loved her in this lifetime.
This time, Mei opts for something a little more run of the mill. Or plain, as Kiana would say (and had said to her).
It’s not that she has lost the drive to cook anything more lavish than it, but it’s just a kind of craving that’s been scratching the back of her mind. For something homey, she supposes.
Kiana isn’t quite on board with the idea, especially not when the idea of plain mac and cheese will be brought to her instead of “literally anything else” on Mei’s newest expedition to the moon, but she acquiesces in the end. There’s nothing that she can do that can sway her friend anyway.
And so Mei spends her early afternoon perfecting the best mac and cheese that she can make. She mixes many different kinds of cheese, cooks, bakes, and even tries a combination. The result turns out more delicious than she could have ever imagined coming from something as easy to make as this, but she’s proud of it. Even Durandal seems interested in trying when she shares a picture of it to almost everyone in her contacts.
The mac and cheese will be accompanying her to the moon soon, and though Bronya and the others can’t make it, she’s still excited to see Kiana and spend time with her. It’s been long overdue since the last time they saw each other, she decides.
But, unfortunately for her, she didn’t have quite the best luck in the department.
Her morning starts with burnt toast, and it’s all the omen that she needs to know about the rest of her day: there’s an emergency at work, which she’s forced to take care of, and then the specific brand of cheese she needs to recreate her mac and cheese recipe is out of stock at her local grocery store, so she hitchhikes to another store a few blocks away, only for them to turn her away because it was closing early.
The cherry on top is when Kiana calls her just as she’s packing up, sounding stuffy and sneezing all the way through her words as she explains that she somehow caught the flu. On the moon.
Mei tells her to take care and that she’ll be sending chicken noodle soup and some more comfort foods sometime that week, and Kiana bids her goodbye to take a nap. It leaves Mei to collapse against her wall in exasperation.
At the very least, that leaves her with a free schedule for the rest of her afternoon.
She thinks of catching up on a show first, the one that Bronya introduced to her a while back. She could indulge and order some food for herself tonight while she watches instead of picking out a pot from the kitchen.
It’s not the route that she ends up taking, though. Mei takes a deep breath and finds herself in Hua’s messages before she knows what she’s doing, and her thumbs type out a quick hello and a suggestion to spend the rest of the night out.
It doesn’t take long for Hua to respond back, with a new record of four seconds between Mei’s message and hers.
There’s no one home, if you would like to come over, Hua’s text reads.
Mei’s face burns at the accidental implication, and Hua seems to realize it herself when the three dots appear and disappear so rapidly that Mei wonders if she’s having a stroke.
Mei stares at her messages until Hua responds again, this time with: As in, I would much rather spend a night home with you, rather than out. If that’s okay.
It’s more than okay. It’s the kind of response that Mei was kinda hoping for, anyway. They share their homebody tendencies in that regard.
It doesn’t take long for Mei to get ready, as she’d already been in the process of doing so before Kiana had shared the bad news. Except this time her heart beats just a little bit faster while she puts on her coat, and her stomach flutters with nerves when her phone vibrates and Hua texts her back with a smiley face in response to her “on my way!” text.
She’s been to Hua’s home a few times already. Though often it was in a group, or with Senti somewhere making ruckus in the house. It’s a little odd to be greeted into a place that feels as if time stands still, but Hua’s small, warm smile and the jazz radio that plays faintly somewhere in the room disarms her long enough to stifle the restlessness.
“I’m sorry,” Hua immediately says, and Mei tilts her head in confusion. Hua shifts her weight from foot to foot, and she wrings her hands like she doesn’t know what to do with them. It seems like Mei isn’t the only one to feel a little… off balance.
“I was going to make something for you to eat, but I didn’t know exactly what to make for you, and by the time I had a few ideas, you told me you were just a few minutes away,” Hua admits as she winces at the admission.
Mei just laughs. It’s something so small to be nervous about, but it’s something that would have been so easily her if their places were reversed. “We could make something together,” Mei suggests, and Hua’s shoulders visibly drop. “Have you eaten?”
Hua shakes her head, and she’s ushering Mei to the kitchen as she talks. “It’s too late for lunch. Too early for dinner,” she says thoughtfully. “Have you?”
“If we get started now, it’ll be just in time to eat for dinner,” Mei suggests, glancing at the clock perched on Hua’s wall.
Hua hums in consideration. “What were you thinking of making?”
Even Mei surprises herself with how quickly she responds with “Macaroni and cheese.”
Hua stares at her, as if waiting for a punchline to land. And then her lips curl a little in a smile, and she breathes out a giggle so sweet that Mei’s already as addicted to it as a kid to candy.
“I had a little… fixation on mac and cheese this past week,” Mei admits.
“Surprising choice, but I can’t say I want to reject the idea,” Hua muses, and her eyes dart around her kitchen, probably to take inventory of the ingredients she has. “It’s been a while since I’ve had it. Did you try any good recipes during your fixation?”
“Yes” is what she should have said.
Instead, Mei says, “Not anything that sticks out. Would you like to try attempting some with me?” and she abandons the perfected recipe in her mind altogether.
Hua seems a little hesitant, but she accepts when Mei silently pleads with her with her eyes. “I can’t promise that it’ll be any good,” she warns, but Mei is already waving it off.
They bustle around the kitchen to find the ingredients they need, as well as the bowls and spatulas and whatever things they can find in Hua’s slightly messy (and Mei has no doubt it’s due to one messy roommate) area. There’s a pile of dry macaroni and several kinds of cheeses scattered around the counters, though they’ve worked out a system to get what they need without too much fuss.
Hua puts on an apron when they begin to boil a medium sized pot, their alleged first attempt at mac and cheese, and Mei bites her tongue to keep from saying that she looked cute in it.
Cooking with Hua is a more peaceful endeavor than cleaning with her or occupying the same space with her. That’s not to say that she didn’t enjoy doing those things with Hua; she loved any time that she gets to spend with her, but she loves getting to do something as rewarding as cooking with her even more.
It’s the soft music that plays while Hua mumbles under her breath about different cheese and macaroni ratios that she could attempt, and the way that Hua tucks her hair behind her ear whenever she stares at the pan through the transparent glass of her oven, that begins the thawing of Mei’s amenability.
There’s so much mac and cheese in Hua’s kitchen that it starts to become a little ridiculous, but she’d make it over and over and over again to hear Hua laugh so freely at the sight of it all. A few bowls are even burnt, and pots have to be scrubbed over and over again for them to continue making them long into the night.
By then, it doesn’t become a contest to keep making the mac and cheese tastier. By then, they’re just using mac and cheese as an excuse to laugh together, to converse like lifelong friends, and for Mei to be suddenly tugging on a messy, cheesy apron, Hua’s hands finding her hips and tugging her close, and their lips locking together like it’s all they’ve been craving.
It’s not wrong to say that she’s felt ravenous all night— though it’s less for anything else spread across the counters and more for Hua’s lips.
At some point, Mei finds herself perched on top of a kitchen counter, her lips still on Hua’s and their soft breaths starting to remind her a little bit of cheese. It’s ridiculous, that much she knows, and she laughs against Hua’s lips but continues kissing her like she’s afraid if she’d stop, she’d never get her fill.
A kitchen timer goes off, perhaps a remnant of their cooking that they’ve forgotten to dispel, and they unfurl from each other so slowly like they didn't want to let go.
But they’re stiff, Mei can tell.
And they’re just staring at each other.
After a long pause, Hua clears her throat. “I didn’t mean for that.”
“Yes,” Mei agrees, though she doesn’t know if she truly agrees. Hua looks to be just as conflicted.
“I was just— the process— to cook. I mean.”
“The process. Yes,” Mei agrees.
“To cook the mac and cheese,” Hua says.
“Yes,” Mei agrees yet again. There’s a silence that stretches between them, so long and tense and sweltering that Mei feels like she’s being cooked alive, and then—
“I’m sorry if it’s a little forward, but I did like kissing you more than making the mac and cheese,” Mei says in a half-whisper.
Hua sighs, as if in both relief and exasperation, and she’s already beginning to laugh as she answers, “Nobody likes mac and cheese, Mei. At least not me.”
It’s the unsaid truth that blazes Mei’s heart: I just liked making it with you.
“Oh. I guess so,” Mei says thoughtfully, and her body is already gravitating towards Hua. She’s so giddy that she feels like she’s walking on cotton candy. She hooks a hand on Hua’s small waist, and she revels in Hua’s little gasp.
Hua mumbles something, something close to this feels ridiculous, but it feels as if it’s lost to gravity when Hua tugs herself closer to Mei and kisses her just as fervently as Mei wants her to.
She craves so much of Hua that she feels like she’s starving.
She wonders if Hua craves her just as much, because Hua has always been her favorite to crave.
“You made out with Hua,” Kiana says plainly.
“Yes,” Mei agrees once more.
“And you… talked to her about passionately making out with her? Right?”
“Of course I did,” Mei says, slightly offended. “We aren’t teenagers anymore, Kiana. Of course I talked to her about it. We spoke on the phone for two and a half hours.”
“Sooo… what did you two say?” Kiana asks, as if she’s walking around squeaky toys in the kitchen at two in the morning. “About making out super intensely and leaving burnt mac and cheese in her kitchen?”
“We didn’t leave it, Kiana,” Mei says patiently, sighing slightly, “we cleaned it up. I spent all night scrubbing the pan before I left.”
“Okay.” Kiana just stares at her. “And the making out part?”
“What?” Mei asks, her voice a little far away.
“Mei,” Kiana says. She sounds a little amused, and if not a little proud and smug. “What did you talk about during your ‘two and a half hour’ call?”
“Oh,” Mei replies simply. “Well, if you’re asking if we made a fuss about it, of course we didn’t.”
“So you two are just— what— friends who make out after baking together once in a while?” Kiana asks with a snicker.
“Oh, I sure hope not,” Mei says, almost aghast. “She asked me if I could bake with her tomorrow evening— for our first date. Making things with her should be more than a ‘once in a while’ occurrence.”
Mei doesn’t even flinch when Kiana lets out a loud “whoop,” and air pumps her fist. Nor does the little innuendo register her mind until Kiana is cackling, loud enough to be heard from the moon.
Their first date is a success. So is their second, their third, their fourth, and their fifth.
On the sixth date, Hua asks her to come back to her apartment for a quiet night in, and because she had been craving to bake something. And it would be better to do it with you, she adds in her text, and Mei is not one to ever deny such a request.
When she gets there, Hua is already in the process of sorting out the ingredients. There are various powders on the counter, as well as almond paste and sesame seeds and other things, and Mei can’t place a single recipe in her mind with it all.
Mei wipes some stray rice flour off of Hua’s jaw as her girlfriend explains.
“I wanna make wife cakes tonight” she says, and she seems a little embarrassed at admitting it. “Sometimes people call them sweetheart cakes. I think they’re something you’d enjoy trying, at least.”
“And the name doesn't have anything to do with it?” Mei teases, only because she enjoys how Hua flounders.
But Mei isn’t evil, so she kisses the corner of Hua’s lips and asks her what she can do to help.
They get to work in an instant, and they’ve become so attuned to one another in a space like this that they have no problem chatting as they hand each other different ingredients and work around one another.
“Is this your favorite to eat, then?” Mei inquires.
Hua hums thoughtfully at that. “It’s certainly something I crave a few times a year,” she says thoughtfully, handing Mei some coconut oil, “but I wouldn’t say it’s my most favorite thing in the world.”
And that surprises Mei to no end, especially with how highly Hua spoke of it over the phone last night and how wistful she sounded about it.
Hua takes note of her awed silence. She looks up to give Mei an odd look, then asks, “What?” She wipes at something on her cheek, in case it’s what Mei is staring at.
“What is your favorite then?” Mei asks her. Then she backtracks, because she supposes Hua deserves to know the full extent of her question. “It’s been something I’ve been wondering about for a while,” she admits. For a while doesn’t even cover it all.
“Why didn’t you ask me?” Hua asks, slightly baffled.
It makes Mei laugh at her incredulity. She wonders the same thing, sometimes. But she answers, “I just wanted to do something nice for you for a chance. I guess a part of me didn’t want to overstep any boundaries you may have had with me. And…”
Hua’s features soften. “And?” she pries gently.
“I wanted to know more about the things that you enjoy, now, in the present” Mei admits. “I wanted to be part of it.”
Hua breathes out a laugh. “I hope you know that you are part of it,” she says simply, and though it’s a simple truth to wrap her head around, it makes her heart feel warm.
And then Hua laughs again, this time with a more embarrassed cadence, and she scratches at the side of her cheek. “I don’t really have a favorite food,” Hua continues.
Mei’s eyebrows jump up in surprise. She’s never met anyone who didn’t have one. “Really?”
“Yes,” Hua says rather quietly. “I just happen to love anything that you make.”
It makes Mei giggle, her chest glowing with the newfound compliment as she exhales an “Oh,” in response, and she caresses both of Hua’s cheeks in her hands and kisses her long enough to satiate herself for at least the duration needed to bake their cakes.
As it bakes, Mei admits that sweet foods aren’t quite at the top of her list for favorites to eat. She’s not too fond of it, she continues, but Hua insists that she tries at least a little. Just to see.
And then Hua brings some sweetheart cake into Mei’s mouth, a palm underneath her chin to catch any crumbs, and Mei decides that it’s her most favorite thing in the entire world.
At least when Hua makes it.