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Laios was surprised when Marcille pulled him aside and asked him to help her prepare Falin's birthday cake. She didn't ask for his help with anything else, after all. It seemed like she had everything figured out, and didn't want him to interfere with whatever plans she had made, which was fine by him. It was unexpected, then, that she wanted him to be involved with something she could easily do herself. Marcille's cooking wasn't great, but she was a pretty good baker, after all. The more he thought about it, though, the more the idea made sense. The cake was the one thing they should really coordinate on to make sure that it was something Falin would like. It was nice of Marcille to suggest working on it together. With newfound enthusiasm for the idea, he nodded eagerly and agreed. To avoid the possibility of him getting lost on his way to Marcille's house, they decided that Marcille would come over instead, and bring all the materials Laios didn't already have in the fridge. Saturday, the day before Falin's birthday, seemed like the perfect date. Marcille didn't have classes on the weekends, while Falin would be out working all day.
Punctual as ever, Marcille came knocking at noon sharp, and stomped inside the instant Laios opened the door for her, nearly knocking him over in the process. Breathing heavily, she put her backpack down on the kitchen table. Laios waddled over to help her, quietly wondering what she could possibly have in there that she was so desperate to take out as soon as possible. It wasn't as if there were that many ingredients involved in making a cake, and he couldn't think of any that would be particularly heavy. His eyes grew wide as Marcille started taking everything out of her backpack. Laios was under the impression that they would be making cake entirely from scratch, but it seemed that he was mistaken about that. The actual cake part, at the very least, was already taken care of. One by one, Marcille set three layers of round chocolate sponge cake on the table, each about an inch thick. Either she bought it ready, or she made it in advance. Either way, it was probably a wise choice to get the most time consuming part out of the way early. Laios nodded respectfully.
"Give me a bowl," Marcille said, her voice coming out slightly strained since she had a hair pin in her mouth while she styled her hair into a high ponytail. Laios was always impressed by the way she took care of her hair, brushing it and styling it differently every time, sometimes changing hairstyles multiple times a day. Usually, it wasn't something that he would notice. He hardly paid attention to the appearances of other people. When it came to Marcille's hair, though, even he had to notice the differences sometimes. Most of the time, it was a matter of seeing her and feeling that something was off, only to realise that she had changed her hairstyle since he last saw her.
It was impressive that she could maintain it this well even though it was so long, and presumably annoying to deal with. Laios himself didn't so much as brush his hair. It didn't seem worth the effort when combing through it with his fingers while he brushed his teeth worked just fine. But Marcille brushed her hair every day, multiple times a day, and didn't seem to mind. She claimed that it felt nice. Laios was glad that he didn't have to deal with any of it. The less he understood Marcille's passion for it, the more he admired it. If he tried to do what Marcille was doing right now, seemingly without even thinking about it, it would have been a disaster. Keeping the hair in place with one hand, twisting it into a knot, tying the ribbon around it with the other hand, and finishing by tying it into a bow with both hands, all without looking at it... it was excruciating to watch. Marcille took the hair pin out of her mouth and used it to pin her fringe back. Now her long hair wouldn't get in the way. Good thinking. It always sucked to find hair in your food.
He handed her a bowl, and she nodded approvingly. "Perfect! I'll make the cream in this one. Chocolate cream!" she chirped, tapping the bowl with her finger before setting it down on the counter. That sounded good, Laios thought. Falin liked chocolate cake, and it seemed like this one was going to be all chocolate. It would be a good idea to balance it out with some vanilla, but Marcille probably already thought of that. Laios moved out of the way while Marcille scoured the kitchen for ingredients. Heavy cream, sugar, and cocoa powder. Thankfully, they seemed to have everything she needed. Humming to herself, Marcille put her hand on her hip and tapped her foot. "Do you have vanilla extract? No?" she let out a sigh when Laios shook his head and shrugged helplessly. "Yeah, I figured. I brought my own," she said, approaching her backpack again. She pulled out a small bottle that, even though it was closed, still smelled distinctly of vanilla.
Subconsciously, he took a step closer and pointed at the bottle. "You're gonna use it to moisten the cake, right? I know that's something you have to do, or the cake will turn out really dry and hard to eat. It'd probably still taste kind of good, but it wouldn't be fun to eat. Do you want me to do that?" he offered enthusiastically, but Marcille closed her hand around the bottle and shook her head. Laios' expression fell instantly. "Yeah, it's probably better if you do it. I'd probably add too much, and that'd make it taste bitter, right?" He scratched the back of his head, turning toward the bowl. "Oh! Do you want me to whip the cream instead while you do that?"
Marcille swatted his hand away from the bowl and grabbed him by the wrist. "No, no, no! I'll do it! Me! Myself! Don't touch that!" she insisted, shaking her head. Laios frowned.
"Okay. What do you want me to do? You said that you wanted my help, right?" he pointed out, tilting his head quizzically. "You have to tell me what I can help you with. I don't wanna stand around doing nothing. If we're gonna do it together, then let's do it together," he said emphatically, folding his arms over his chest. He thought that everything would make sense once Marcille was there, but he was even more confused now than he was before. It was obvious that Marcille didn't need his help. He was only going to get in her way, and it wasn't as if he could leave, because they were in his own kitchen. Looking down, hunched over, he shuffled uneasily in place.
"Oh, no, no, no! I need you here!" Marcille assured him, putting both hands on his shoulders. "There's totally something I need your help with, I just, um," she explained frantically, "I just didn't get to it yet!" She fell silent for a moment, her eyes shifting all over the place. Laios waited patiently to hear what she had in mind for him. Finally she snapped her fingers and put up her index finger. "Right! Yeah! How about you sit down," she said, gently guiding him towards the kitchen table, "and uh, you can talk to me while I work on the cake!" Laios cocked his eyebrow dubiously. "Listen, listen! It's important! Really!" Marcille insisted, putting her hands up. "I need somebody to talk to when I'm in the kitchen. Usually, I'd ask Falin, but..." she said, her ears drooping noticeably, " So just talk to me! About anything! Anything at all! I'm all ears, seriously!"
Laios sat down, stroking his chin. He wasn't convinced that it wasn't a trap. There were a lot of things he could talk about for hours, but he suspected that Marcille would stop him if he tried, and then he'd remind her that she told him he could talk about anything, and she would tell him that he should have known she meant anything but that, and he wouldn't feel like talking anymore. She wasn't interested in most of the things he liked, and she couldn't even pretend to be. Conversely, he didn't know anything about the things she liked. He could always tell her about Falin, he supposed. Marcille would definitely be interested in hearing about Falin. But whatever he could tell her about, she would inevitably hear about from Falin herself. Trying to make small talk would bore him before it had a chance to bore Marcille. "Okay. But I don't really have anything to talk about."
Marcille stared at him wide-eyed, her mouth hanging agape. "Huh? Huh?! Seriously? Yeah, you do!" she scoffed, putting her hands on her hips. "Something big happened, right? Right?" Laios tilted his head in confusion. He had no clue what Marcille was talking about. Did something happen that he had no idea about? "Come onnn!" Marcille stomped her foot. "Don't look at me like that! I know you know what I mean! Seriously, what's wrong with you? If I got into a relationship," she said, putting her hand up to her chest, "I wouldn't be able to talk about anything else!"
"Oh. That's what you mean." Laios leaned back in his seat, arms folded over his chest. Everything made more sense, now. She didn't actually need his help with the cake. She just wanted to ask him about Kabru. He knew that she would interrogate him sooner or later, but he wasn't expecting it to happen right now. "Yeah, I guess I could talk about it," he said reluctantly, scratching the back of his head, "but I don't really know what to say." Not for a lack of things to say, far from it. He had a lot of things to say about Kabru, to the point that he didn't know where to start. His feelings were so strong that he couldn't accurately put into words anyway. "I mean, what do you wanna know?"
"Everything!" Marcille exclaimed, unhelpfully, as she mixed everything in the bowl, humming to herself. She was always so full of energy. Laios was glad that at least some of it was directed away from him, but it was still too much. "You never told me anything about him, you know! One day, he just showed up," she went on, pursing her lips, "and it seemed like you've known him forever. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were hiding him from me the entire time! And now you're dating? I couldn't believe it at first! I mean," she said, watching him curiously, "you always told me that you weren't interested in people. I wasn't expecting that at all. What changed?"
"That's not what I said," Laios retorted tiredly, rubbing his temples. Marcille didn't seem to have realised that she asked him multiple questions at once, not making it any easier to figure out where to start. "You asked what type of girls I like, and I said that I don't like any of them," he clarified. There was nothing he hated more than having words put in his mouth. "I mean, it wouldn't matter if I was interested in people or not," he went on, "if they weren't interested in me, right?" That was just how things worked. His feelings didn't matter nearly as much as the feelings of other people, complicated and incomprehensible as they were. "I guess Kabru was interested in me, though," he mused, looking down at his feet, "and that's why things changed. That's about it."
Marcille furrowed her brow, watching him as she continued to fold the cream in the bowl. It must've been almost ready by now. "Hey, don't say it like that," she said, shaking her head lightly. "If it didn't matter, I wouldn't have asked you, right?" she pointed out, her face lighting up noticeably as she put the bowl down on the counter. "I wanted to know how you felt!"
"I guess." Laios closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. "Uhhh... we met in that art class Falin signed me up for. The live drawing class. Kabru talked to me after class, and he was really nice," he went on, scrunching up his face as he tried to remember all of the important things that happened. "We went to the zoo, and he took me to the art gallery, and that was pretty cool, I guess." He paused for a moment, deep in thought. "I wasn't really good at drawing in class," he confessed. "I guess it's hard to draw with charcoal when you're not used to it, and I didn't have enough time to figure it out, so uh, I started drawing Kabru after class, too, and that was much easier. I don't know if I'm good at drawing people," he mused, "but I like drawing Kabru. And then, I guess, he slept over one time, but he left after breakfast... But the next time he slept over, he uh, he stuck around for the rest of the day, since he didn't have work... I think that's when you met him for the first time."
"Huh? Was it?" Marcille absent-mindedly bit her fingernail. "So you really didn't know him for that long, and he was already acting like he lived there! Seriously..."
"I mean, I wanted him to feel at home," Laios said, folding his arms behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling. "He came every week, and sometimes he'd come on the weekends too, and you know, it was really nice to know that I was always gonna see him in class. So when he didn't show up that time," he said, frowning, "it was pretty scary. I thought something happened to him. And I mean, I guess it kind of did," he mused, "but it wasn't as serious as I thought. He just got sick. I didn't want him to be alone, so I brought him here, and then I confessed before he went back home, and he didn't reject me," he explained hurriedly, "so we've been together since. I guess that's it."
He wasn't looking at Marcille while he spoke, letting his eyes wander around the kitchen instead. He only looked at her now that he was done, and was surprised by her expression. He couldn't make sense of it at all. He answered the questions she asked him, and yet she didn't seem pleased, grimacing as she leaned her cheek into the palm of her hand. "I can't believe it! Is that really everything you have to say about that? You barely told me anything!" she scoffed angrily as she spread the cream on the bottom layer of the cake. "That's it? Really?"
Laios knitted his eyebrows. "You asked me to tell you how it happened, so I told you."
"That's not what I meant! I mean, did you hear yourself? You told me that you confessed, and that's supposed to be enough? I can't do anything with that! I can't imagine it at all!" Marcille argued, coating the cake in a thick layer of cream all the while. "Can't you set the scene for me? Tell me what made you want to confess! Describe how you did it! Tell me the words you used, or at least," she went on, her voice raising, "tell me how you felt about it! Were you nervous? Was your heart pounding, your body trembling, your head spinning, your hands shaking as they reached for his? Did you wonder if he would say yes? Did you? What did you feel when he said yes? Did either of you cry? Tell me!" she demanded, slamming her fist down on the table.
Laios closed his eyes and rubbed his temples again. How annoying. She would never be satisfied with what he had to say, right? Usually, the problem was that he talked too much, but now, just this once, when he wanted to keep things to himself, she was trying to drag information out of him. "Look, I can't tell you any of that," he said slowly, patiently. "Honestly, I wouldn't even know how." Describing emotions was hard, and largely pointless. He wasn't feeling any of them anymore, and he would rather keep them to himself anyway. Besides that, there were some things he didn't want to share out of respect for Kabru. If he told Marcille why and how he confessed, he would have to explain so many other things that he doubted Kabru wanted her to know about, and it didn't feel right. "I didn't even tell Falin about most of that stuff. I just told her that we're dating. That's the only thing that matters, right?" he said hesitantly, looking up at Marcille.
She wasn't looking at him, her gaze focused on the cake instead. It was almost ready, at least as far as stacking went. She put the final layer of cake on top of the cream and twisted it into place. Only then did she glance at him and let out a sigh. "Sorry. You're right. I'm being nosy, right?"
Laios' shoulders drooped. "Not really. I mean, you're just curious."
Marcille sighed again. "It's not your fault or anything. I shouldn't have listened to Kabru. I swear, he got my hopes up! He said you're a true romantic. I should've known he was messing with me."
"Kabru said that?" Laios' eyes grew wide in surprise.
"Yeah! Now that I think about it, that's obviously a joke! I mean," Marcille said, covering her mouth with her hand as she laughed, "I'm supposed to believe that you brought him flowers?"
"Oh, that!" Laios sighed with relief. "Yeah, I did that. He really liked it, so I did it again, too."
"...Huh?" Marcille blinked rapidly. "You did... what? Huh?"
"I wanted him to have something nice," Laios explained patiently, subconsciously breaking into a smile, "so I bought a rose and gave it to him when he was at work. It wilted pretty quickly, though. Next time, I gave him a whole bouquet. That was the day after I confessed..."
Marcille took a deep breath. "Why didn't you mention that sooner?!!!"
Laios covered his head with his arms. "I didn't know that it was important!" After a moment of silence, he withdrew his arms and looked up at Marcille again. She was covering the cake in a thin layer of cream. It didn't seem like she was angry with him, but she probably needed to keep herself busy to calm down. This conversation, Laios thought, was more complicated than it needed to be. "Hey, Marcille," he prompted, "you like Falin the way I like Kabru, right?"
Marcille's expression dropped. All colour drained from her face, only to return brighter and redder than ever. "What?" she exclaimed in a high-pitched voice, avoiding eye contact as she put her hands up, shaking them wildly. "What, what? Where did that come from, huh?"
"You asked me," Laios reminded, "so I figured I could ask you, too."
"No, no, no!" Marcille shook her head. "It's nothing like that! Nothing at all!"
"Huh. Really?" Laios scratched the back of his head. "I guess I got it wrong, then. My bad."
Marcille fell silent for a moment, focusing on the cake. Her cheeks were still flushed, her forehead drenched in sweat, her expression uneasy. She cleared her throat before glancing at him curiously. "What gave you the idea? Where did that come from?" she demanded.
"I dunno. I don't really pay attention most of the time," he explained, running his fingers through his hair, "so I don't really notice stuff that's obvious to other people. I don't know how anyone feels about anything until they tell me, and I never see it coming at all. I guess, since I started dating Kabru," he went on, "I thought that maybe I'd get better at noticing that stuff, just because it happened to me, so I can recognise it better now. Probably not, but, uh," he stammered awkwardly, "I got to thinking that you and Falin have always been close, and you always hang out in her room, and I never asked what you do, but I thought, I guess," he cleared his throat, "it wouldn't be surprising if you were, you know, and I never noticed until just now." He was afraid to look at Marcille's face right now. "I mean, I know that Falin likes you a lot, so I thought..."
Marcille gulped. "Does she?" she said weakly, covering her mouth with her hand.
"Oh, yeah!" Laios' face lit up. "She thinks the world of you. Always did. When I went to school over here, we'd write letters to each other to stay in touch. She wrote more than I did. She really likes writing letters. Anyway, uh," he went on, scratching his cheek, "we kept in touch when she went to school, too. I could tell that she wasn't really happy there. She wasn't happy back home, either. I guess she couldn't find a place for herself anywhere. But one day," he said softly, "I got a letter from her that sounded really different from the others. She wrote that she made a friend. I could tell that made her really happy. She kept writing about that friend, even when I quit school and joined the army. I remember that I always wanted to meet that friend so that I could thank her for taking care of Falin so well. Obviously, that friend was you," he added fondly.
Quietly, Marcille took a seat beside him.
"And then, uh, when we reunited," he recounted, "after I left the army and she quit school, she still mentioned you sometimes. She believed that you'd find each other again."
"Really?" Marcille blurted out, clutching her chest. "I had no idea..."
"Oh, yeah. That's the kind of person Falin is, I guess. I wrote the first letter home, just so she would know where to find me if she needed me, but she was the one who made sure that we stayed in touch. I think she didn't want me to feel alone out there. She believed that we'd meet again one day and pick up where we left off, and that's exactly what happened. She stays in touch with our parents, even though they weren't good to her at all, because she thinks everything's gonna be okay when they see each other again. She wants to go home for Christmas, so I guess we'll see how that goes. And you," he furrowed his brows apologetically and put his hands up, "I swear she would've stayed in touch with you if she could! It was my fault that she didn't! I came out of nowhere, and I needed help, so she didn't think twice before leaving," he admitted, scratching the back of his head. "I'm sure if she had more time she would've figured something out. But she knew that she'd find you again, and look! That's exactly what happened, right? So it's okay. Right?"
Marcille took a deep breath. Her eyes filled with tears. Unsure what to do, Laios patted her on the shoulder, which seemed like the most appropriate place to touch her. Marcille sniffled loudly. "I had," she blurted out, "I had no idea that she thought about me so much!"
"Oh, yeah! All the time. You're really important to her," Laios said gently. "I always thought that she'd be happy if she could just stay by your side." He knew this instinctively. He only fully understood what it meant now that he felt the same way about Kabru.
"Gah!" Marcille hid her face in her hands. "Me too! I feel the same way, too!"
Laios' face lit up. "You do! Can I tell her? She'd be really h-"
"No!" Marcille immediately covered his mouth with both hands, as if he could tell Falin anything right now. "No, no, no! I'll do it! I'll do it! I can do it myself! Stop trying to help me!"
Laios exhaled through his nose, slouching in his seat. "Okay." It wasn't as if he wanted to interfere. He only wanted to help. "Hey, Marcille?"
"What?" Marcille froze in her seat, eyeing him anxiously.
"Thanks," he said sincerely, "for taking care of Falin."
Marcille's lip quivered as she nodded in response.