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Iroha opens her apartment door to see Kaguya and Mami standing in her kitchen, an array of baking ingredients spread out on the counter behind them. For some inexplicable reason, Roka is being displayed on a giant, crappy bedsheet taped to the wall and Kaguya’s camera is pointed at the kitchen, with a little red light that signals that she’s live.
“Iroha!” Kaguya calls happily, looking at the entrance. She’s wearing her cat-ear headphones and yelling at a volume that’s two levels louder than normal–which is already plenty loud. Iroha winces as she toes off her shoes. “Now we can begin! Today we’re baking chocolate chip cookies but with a twist! I’m deaf!”
“I’m blind!” Mami hollers and Iroha notices now the giant blackout goggles strapped to her face.
“I’m stuck in the Arctic,” Roka says, pointing to a crappy paper snowflake that’s been affixed to her wall with Scotch tape. The three of them turn to Iroha expectantly but Iroha has already been a part of one too many highlight reels courtesy of Kaguya’s growing stardom. She has no intentions to grace the FYP of her Instagram again.
“And I’m leaving,” Iroha says, beelining for the exit. Kaguya yelps in protest, racing across the kitchen to stop her.
“Irohaaaaaa, please.” She grabs Iroha’s palms and Iroha tries her best not to flinch at the sudden warmth. She doesn’t know if it’s the fact that she’s near the oven or just Kaguya, but her skin burns at the contact. “It’s a four-person challenge and there’s only three of us. We need you. Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase.”
She makes her eyes big and wide and sad and Iroha is hit with that inexplicable pull in her chest that always happens whenever Kaguya asks her for something. Against her better instincts, she feels her mouth moving on its own.
“Fine,” she huffs, letting go of the doorknob. “But only because I like chocolate chip cookies.”
“Yippee!” Kaguya cheers, all traces of sadness gone, and eagerly corrals her back into the kitchen.
“Wait,” Iroha says, glancing around the kitchen. “Mami is blind, Kaguya is deaf–which isn’t that much different from normal.”
“What?” Kaguya hollers, tilting her head sideways.
“See,” Iroha says, pointing. “Roka is stuck in the Arctic… I guess. Then what am I?”
“Mute,” Roka says as Mami snaps a roll of duct tape menacingly.
“Where are you, Iroha?” Mami sing-songs before walking in the complete opposite direction and banging into the oven.
“What?!” Iroha yelps. “How come I’m mute?”
“Should’ve come earlier,” Roka says, flipping a page in the paperback–yes, paperback–that’s open on her lap.
“You’re not even trying!” Iroha protests. A paper snowflake rips off the wall and flutters to the ground as if to prove her point.
“Brrrr,” Roka says unconvincingly. All the yelling has pointed Mami finally in the right direction and Iroha finds herself backed against the counter as she draws closer with a roll of silver duct tape.
“Found you!”
“That’s my nose!”
Cooking with a deaf Kaguya, a blind Mami and a useless Roka isn’t as bad as Iroha was expecting. It is ten times worse.
Mami, miraculously, manages to land an egg in the bowl on her third try. Kaguya, clueless to this, tries to add another two eggs to the mixture and Iroha can only watch in mute horror as the abomination unfolds in front of her. She tries to stop Kaguya when she’s a foot from the bowl but Kaguya just cocks her head at her and eventually decides that Iroha desperately tugging at her arm is a sign that she wants her apron. Kaguya pauses to untie her apron and loop it around Iroha’s neck and the resulting catatonic shock that Iroha goes into gives Kaguya enough leeway to step around her and crack an additional two eggs into their batter.
It is a miracle that they somehow get the cookies in and out of the oven without any first-degree burns. When it comes time to open the oven, she leads Mami by the hand out of the kitchen and makes her sit down in the living room. Each time that Mami tries to get up, Iroha forces her back down until she finally gets the message. She turns the television on and leaves it running so at least she has something to listen to besides Roka’s dry laughter crackling from the computer.
Kaguya is just as bad, practically running at the oven with a pair of mitts, Yachiyo’s music filtering out of her crappy headphones because she’s got the volume cranked up to the max. Iroha tries to remind herself that Kaguya has, on multiple occasions, managed to navigate the kitchen and emerge with a surprisingly delicious meal, but her enthusiasm is concerning. She’s a little too eager to grab the 400 degree metal tray and Iroha can’t trust her not to forget basic safety precautions in her excitement. When Iroha blocks her from the oven like a goalie in the last hockey period for the fifth time in a row, Kaguya finally gives up, surrendering the oven mitts and sitting sullenly on a nearby stool.
Two hours after their awful experiment started, Iroha pulls their Frankenstein monster of a pastry out of the oven and sets them on the stovetop to cool. She rips the tape off her mouth immediately after–although it takes a few tries with the oven mitts still on and she knows she’s going to find this clip plastered all over social media tomorrow, probably overlaid on some trashy pop song.
“We are never doing this again,” she spits out and Roka doesn’t even bother trying to hide her laughter, bending over to clutch her stomach as she chuckles. “You think it’s funny now but you try stepping in Hell’s Kitchen and seeing how you like it!”
“Are we done?” Mami hollers from the living room upon hearing her. “Can someone help me take this off?”
Kaguya, having finally shucked her cat headphones off, stares up at her, eyes wide.
“Huhhhhh,” she drawls, meandering towards the oven. “Don’t say anything until you’ve tried it!”
She reaches for the tray and then yelps when it burns her skin. Iroha’s eye twitches viciously in response. Kaguya tries again, this time dodging the tray as she picks up just the cookie and holds it out to Iroha.
“Say ahhhhh,” she says and Iroha, against her better instincts and the obvious red glare of the camera as it’s pointed straight at her, opens her mouth. Kaguya pops the cookie into her mouth and Iroha closes her eyes and chews.
A fiasco where Mami grabbed the salt container instead of the sugar leaves a burning aftertaste on Iroha’s tongue but at least the store-bought chocolate is good, melting in her mouth.
Iroha can count on one hand the number of warm meals she had before Kaguya arrived, subsisting on cup ramen and reheated leftovers from work. Now, Kaguya standing in her kitchen with a fresh–albeit absurd–meal is practically a given after school.
“Well, what do you think?” Kaguya asks, peering expectantly up at her.
Iroha can’t tell if it’s the aftermath of the oven or the heat of Kaguya’s gaze, but she feels warm all over, the chocolate settling in the pit of her stomach. It tastes sweet, she thinks.
“Too salty.”
“Hey!”