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It was nearly four in the morning.
The silence in the dorm was absolute, broken only by the constant hum of water filters and the distant bubbling of ornamental tanks. It was a dead hour, where the air pressure felt heavier, almost mimicking the crushing gravity of the sea floor.
Azul sighed. A dense, frustrated exhale.
In front of him, a glass bowl held a mass of pale violet goo. Under the kitchen lights, it looked less like food and more like a failed alchemy experiment.
"It’s not right." He muttered to himself, sinking a metal spoon into the mix. The consistency was too liquid. It lacked that elastic resistance, that comforting viscosity of the candied anemones he used to eat as a child.
The surface ingredients were... disappointing. Human gelatin had no body. The seaweed from Sam’s shop, while high quality, lost its saline essence once dried. Everything was too airy, too light, too dry.
Azul took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He’d tried this recipe four times in the last few hours. He wanted that specific flavor. He needed it. A pang of nostalgia had settled in his stomach, refusing to let him sleep.
"Oven temperature is useless if the base doesn’t set." He scolded himself, sliding his glasses back on. "Maybe if I increase the agar-agar ratio..."
"Ne... Jade, told you I smelled something sweet. My nose never fails."
Azul stiffened, spinning around as he tried to hide the disastrous bowl behind his back.
Floyd strolled into the kitchen, eyes half-lidded with sleep and hair defying gravity in every direction. Behind him, Jade walked with his usual perfect posture, though his pajama shirt was slightly unbuttoned—a telltale sign he’d been dragged out of bed by force.
"Azul?" Jade arched a brow, a mix of surprise and amusement on his face. "My, my. We didn’t expect to find you here at this hour. Floyd insisted he was dying of starvation and forced me to accompany him."
"I’m hungry." Floyd whined, stretching his arms and yawning, showing off his sharp teeth. "Jade’s mean and won’t cook for me. But you’re making something, right, Azul? What is it? Gimme."
Before Azul could formulate a dignified excuse, Floyd was already in his personal space, peering over his shoulder.
"Eew..." Floyd crinkled his nose. "Looks lumpy... Is it snail slime?"
"It is Abyssal Coral Mousse!" Azul defended, offended, pivoting to shield his creation. "Or at least, it’s trying to be... Surface emulsifiers are pathetic. They can’t achieve the correct texture."
Jade approached, his steps silent on the cold tiles. He picked up a clean spoon from the counter and scooped a tiny portion of the violet mass.
Azul held his breath, bracing for the critique. Jade closed his eyes, analyzing the taste.
"The flavor profile is... nostalgic." Jade conceded, opening his eyes. "It has the right brine notes, but the texture is... disappointing. It dissolves too fast on the tongue. It lacks... resistance."
"Exactly!" Azul exclaimed, feeling validated. "It falls apart. It’s like eating air. It’s frustrating."
Floyd, who never waited for permission, stuck a finger directly into the bowl, scooping up a huge glob and shoving it into his mouth.
"Mmm... tastes like home." Floyd said, sucking his finger with a gross squelching sound. "But it’s boring. Needs punch. Needs something that goes squish when you bite it."
"That is what I’m saying." Azul sighed, his shoulders dropping. "I’ve been trying for hours. I think I’ll just give up. Without the right ingredients, it’s impossible."
Floyd let out a little laugh, that vibrating sound that always preceded chaos.
"Nah, Azul gives up too fast. If you don’t have the ingredients, invent them. Jade, pass me the tapioca flour and that sticky stuff we bought the other day."
"The cornstarch?" Jade asked.
"Yeah, that. And get the dried shrimp."
"Shrimp?" Azul blinked, alarmed. "Floyd, this is a dessert. You cannot put shrimp in it."
"Course I can!" Floyd was already ripping open cupboards, pulling out jars and bags with renewed energy. The sleep had vanished from his eyes. "If you grind 'em way, way down, only the salty bit is left. It’ll give it that ocean taste your sad seaweed is missing. Jade, move it! Help Azul beat that mix!"
Jade smiled—that specific smile that promised nothing good—and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.
"A fascinating proposal. Besides." Jade looked toward the pantry with a peculiar glint in his eyes. "I believe I have some gelatinous mushrooms I collected in the damp woods yesterday. They have a texture quite similar to jellyfish if simmered slowly..."
"No mushrooms!" Azul and Floyd shouted in unison.
"Floyd makes messes, but you’re trying to poison us." Azul added, regaining a shred of his authority as he straightened his vest.
"How short-sighted." Jade sighed, but obeyed, grabbing a whisk. "Very well. What is the plan, Chef Floyd?"
What followed was a controlled disaster. More or less.
The usually immaculate kitchen turned into a battlefield of textures. Floyd was a whirlwind. He didn’t measure anything. He threw handfuls of flour into the air (dusting Azul’s silver hair in the process), poured coconut milk by eye (Floyd called it "chef’s instinct"), and tasted the raw batter every thirty seconds, sometimes shoving a spoonful at Jade or Azul without warning.
"Floyd, that’s too much tapioca! It’s going to be hard as a rock!" Azul shrieked, trying to rescue the bowl.
"Shut up, Azul! It’s gotta be chewy!" Floyd shot back, bumping him with his hip. "Jade, cut that finer... Finer! Like you want it to disappear!"
"Understood." Jade handled the knife with terrifying speed, turning the dried shrimp into a dust so fine it was barely visible.
Azul tried to maintain order. He tried to wipe up spills as they happened. He tried to conduct the orchestra. But it was useless. The twins' energy was a riptide, dragging him along. Floyd hummed an out-of-tune song while mixing with his hands, ignoring the spoons entirely. Jade added spices with surgical precision right in the middle of the chaos.
And Azul... Azul found himself stopping the calculations.
He stopped worrying about exact measurements. He stopped thinking about whether the result would be edible. He simply let himself be carried by the current of being there, at 4 AM, with the only two people on the surface who understood why a texture could be important enough to lose sleep over.
"Ready for the oven." Floyd announced finally, licking a bit of batter off his cheek.
They shoved the tray in. And waited.
The three of them sat on the kitchen floor, backs against the cold cabinets, ignoring the perfectly functional chairs two feet away.
"You two made a disaster." Azul muttered, eyeing the flour scattered across the floor.
"We three made a disaster." Jade corrected softly, flour in his hair. "You knocked over the sugar when Floyd startled you."
"I do not get startled." Azul huffed, crossing his arms, though his shoulders bumped Floyd’s on his right and Jade’s on his left. The contact was warm. Solid.
"Aha~ Azul was shaking." Floyd teased, dropping his head onto Azul’s shoulder. "He was scared it’d turn out ugly. But it smells good now."
And it did smell good. A sweet, dense, slightly salty aroma filled the kitchen. It didn’t smell like flowers or vanilla like human desserts.
For twenty minutes, they just stayed there. The twins with their heads resting on each of Azul’s shoulders.
When the timer beeped, Floyd jumped up to grab the tray.
The result... well, it wouldn’t win any Magicam beauty contests. They were small, irregular cakes, dark violet, with a lumpy, strange surface.
"They look horrible." Azul ruled.
"They look delicious." Floyd countered, burning his fingers as he grabbed a hot one. He tore it in half, and the inside stretched—gelatinous and moist.
Floyd blew on it a little and, without warning, shoved half of it into Azul’s mouth.
"Mmph!" Azul protested, but the taste shut him up.
He chewed. And his eyes widened.
It wasn’t perfect. Tapioca wasn’t anemone. Dried shrimp wasn’t stellar plankton. But the texture... it offered resistance. It had that characteristic bounce. It was sweet, but the salty aftertaste flooded the palate at the end, evoking cold water, safe darkness, the silence of the abyss.
"Well?" Jade asked, tasting his own portion with a look of contained satisfaction. "I believe Floyd’s suggestion regarding the tapioca was accurate, painful as it is to admit."
Azul swallowed, feeling the warmth of the cake slide down his throat, undoing the knot of anxiety he’d held all night.
"It is... acceptable." Azul said, trying to keep his composure, though a small, genuine, private smile curved his lips. "It lacks a bit of acidity, but... the texture is correct."
"It’s great!" Floyd stuffed the rest of the cake into his mouth, happy. "Tastes like when we went to Grandma’s house and she gave us those old candies!"
They stood there, eating directly from the hot tray in the middle of the messy kitchen.
Jade wiped a smudge of flour from Azul’s cheek with his thumb, a gesture as casual as it was intimate. Floyd, mouth full, draped an arm over both their shoulders, pulling them into an awkward, sticky hug.
"Next time." Floyd said. "We put dried octopus tentacles in. It’ll be better."
"Don’t you dare." Azul replied, but he didn’t pull away from the hug.
It definitely wasn’t a dish from the deep sea. It was an imitation—a relatively good one. But eating it there, surrounded by the body heat of the twins, with Jade commenting on the chemical properties of starch and Floyd laughing at his own jokes, Azul thought that maybe this flavor was better. Much sweeter.
"Thanks." Azul murmured, so low it almost got lost under the noise of Floyd chewing.
The twins stopped for a second. They looked at each other over Azul’s head, and then smiled.
"You’re welcome, Azul." Jade said softly.
"Pay us in coffee tomorrow. The expensive kind." Floyd added.
"Deal."