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in home economics, she prepares the breading while he prepares the chicken. he seems like he needs the space.
in the week before valentine's, she changes the recipe so her obligation chocolate doesn't taste sweet. he seems like he dislikes the sweetness.
in their classroom before first period, she tips her head and makes sure not to look at him too directly for too long. it's not like she's irritated.
in fact, it's the opposite.
“yoshiki, you free? i wanted to ask something.”
he looks up at her from his seat, expression as pleasant as can be at seven thirty in the morning after biking to school.
spring is coming in, she can tell by the trilling birdsong filtering into the classroom even through the closed windows. there's also the air's chill, already gone warm. now it's going humid, she sees it in the ends of yoshiki's bangs sticking to his face and catching on his lashes.
yuuki places a small bag of cookies on his desk. she would like him to taste test them. that request is understood, and he takes the bag without more than a hum. its plastic crinkles while he undoes the ribbon securing it. nothing like yuuta and hikaru, who just pull it off the plastic, still tied, like rascals.
not like asako, either, who croons over how cutely yuuki tied the ribbon into its securing bow, blinking away crocodile tears as she pulls it loose. (or maybe they're not crocodile tears? they're genuine but not sad. playful. is there a way to describe those? who knows.)
yoshiki untwists the bow, works it loose methodically, then plucks a cookie from the plastic. there is nothing special about it. why does hikaru watch (whenever he's around for this) as if every moment hooks him like a fish reeled in?
hm.
“s'good,” yoshiki says, voice muffled by the cookie as he chews.
yuuki studies his expression. yes, these are good, he means it. yoshiki is an awful liar and part of her had expected him to lie today. she sprinkled a pinch of sugar into the batter last night.
this is no test. her little sisters were clamouring for ‘something kind of sweet but mostly savoury! can ya make that, big sis? betcha can't!’ this left her no choice but to make something very precisely that. just to show them, once again, she can do anything once she decides to do it.
and then she got to thinking. yoshiki's birthday is next month, isn't it? in spring proper.
teaching her sisters a lesson meandered into considering what yoshiki's sugar threshold is. ice pops and soda are outliers—she can't reference those at all!—which means yuuki must experiment. does that make her intentions seem impure? she would just like to know if he would like this batch of cookies well enough to not look like he was one bite away from spitting them out.
it kind of sucks when you can't make something nice for someone you would like to make something nice for.
okay, it totally sucks. so here she is, conducting a little… study.
yoshiki eats his third cookie. he looks perfectly normal. his brow twitches but maybe he bit his cheek?
“you really think so?”
“yeah.” he pauses, looking between her and the cookies. “why? this a bet?”
“no.” yuuki watches him take another cookie, eat it, and is secretly pleased. then she beams because there is no reason to keep her pride secret. “s'just sometimes ya try to lie about liking 'em, so i wanted to be sure.”
amusement plays over yoshiki's voice and in his eyes as though tired, too. “no i don't.”
“yeah you do. ask anyone.”
“okay.” he looks past her shoulder. yuuki knows who he's going to ask before he even opens his mouth.
that makes it funny when yuuta chimes in. “dude, you don't know when you're lyin'?”
yoshiki exclaims, offended. he narrowly avoids choking on his cookie.
“shut up, 'course i know.”
yuuki sees an opportunity. “so you're lying about not lying.”
yoshiki looks at her as if she had knifed him. she pulls a small smile but she feels it widen without her permission when the one he wanted help from doesn't help him at all.
“he's lyin', he does that thing with his face whenever he does.”
“huh?” yoshiki sounds aggravated. hilarious.
hikaru points at yoshiki and, somehow, yuuki finds exactly where he's pointing. it's sort of at yoshiki's entire face but there's a pinch in his brow and a twitch to his mouth that makes him look like a kid caught, well, lying.
“oh,” yuuki says at the same time as asako, who leans over yuuki's shoulder. while asako's giggles fall into her ear, yuuki continues, “yeah, i never noticed the eyebrow thing.”
“crazy obvious, right?”
uh. yuuki can barely tell. she notices now that hikaru has pointed it out, but she thinks it's the kind of thing you catch when you're looking closely… and you're super familiar with what you're looking for in the first place. but maybe that's just her?
one thing is certain: only hikaru is ballsy enough to do yoshiki dirty and, in the same breath, take a cookie from the rumpled plastic, right out of his hand. yoshiki yanks the bag to his chest while hikaru lights up. “woah! tasty!”
yuuki preens. sure, hikaru always says that but he always means it. it's good to know that these improvised cookies go down well even with the sugar demon himself. yuuta clamours for one, just like yuuki's sisters had while the cookies were still baking, and yoshiki tells him to buzz off.
usually, this is the time asako secretly asks for her own set of cookies. yuuki already has some prepared for her (as always). she puffs up with excitement to say as much, but what asako asks is,
“hey, are these your test run for birthday cookies?”
yuuki freezes. how does asako figure her out so easily?
after a glance ensuring that yoshiki is distracted (yuuta and hikaru are one hell of a morning force… sorry, yoshiki), yuuki grins up at asako and lifts a finger to her mouth.
“i will figure out what desserts i can feed him if it's the last thing i do.”
asako bursts into laughter. she wipes a tear with a playful, “c'mon girl, you're saying it like you're about to take out a sworn enemy.”
“damn right i am.” yuuki jerks her thumb over her shoulder, unaware that hikaru has pilfered the cookies from yoshiki. “this boy's the only one who doesn't smile while eating my cookies. i will break him.”
asako covers her mouth. “oh my god.”
hikaru and yuuta help themselves to the last of the cookies while yoshiki drops his chin onto his hand and casts a long-suffering gaze out the window. he's pouting, mouth down-turned, but he doesn't look unhappy.
asako watches all this happen while yuuki talks, none the wiser. “i mean, you know, lovingly.”
asako succumbs to another laughing fit.
now yuuki is sure something is up. she turns in time to see the end of the crime: yuuta and hikaru cleaning their fingers of crumbs. she makes a sound not unlike yoshiki had when he had first been accosted.
is this the phenomenon of what goes around comes around?
she closes her mouth. at least yoshiki got to eat some, and he hadn't made that expression hikaru pointed out while eating them.
technically.
“okay.” she whips her attention away from the crime scene to ask yoshiki, “but you liked them, right?”
“i always like 'em.” yoshiki turns from the window. this time it feels like a smile when he says, “but i would eat these again, yeah.”
“awesome.” yuuki nods, her proud smile returning.
that sounds like operation birthday cookies will not crash and burn this year!
in the evening, she stops by the grocery for ingredients to fine tune her cookie recipe. even though he hasn't said anything, yoshiki seems like he can use some cheering up.