After school, the two headed to the shopping mall they’d visited on their previous date. It was packed with housewives trying to take advantage of limited-time sales—a veritable battleground of bargains.
Koyuki and Naoya armed themselves with a cart and prepared for battle.
“We should probably buy vegetables first, right?” Koyuki spoke up. She was in charge of pushing the cart, and her excitement for the night's curry put a childish spring in her step.
“Yeah...” Naoya added absentmindedly.
Unlike his love interest, he was somewhere else mentally. So I’m going to confess to her. But how? That incident in the crepe store was still fresh in his mind. He knew that if he came on too strong, he’d just end up pushing her away. He needed to come up with something nicer, something gentler. He’d never confessed to anyone in his life, and he could tell Koyuki was a bit of a romantic. Naoya felt his lack of experience like a knife to his ribs. The more he thought about it, the more he spiralled into useless worrying. Maybe I should wait till the evening when we have a view of the city or something... Or maybe I should give her a present. Would a plushie work? Nah, not the right occasion.
Before he’d realized it, they had reached the vegetable corner.
Koyuki put a finger to her chin and pondered, “So for curry, we’ll probably need onions, carrots, and... potatoes.” With that, she began to search for the ingredients and placed whatever she came across in the cart.
That made Naoya snap back to reality. “Wait.”
“What is it?” Koyuki stopped, a large bag of potatoes in hand.
“Those potatoes are Irish Cobblers. You’ve gotta use May Queens when you’re making curry,” he informed her.
“May Queen?! We’re gonna put a cat in the curry?!”
“That’s Maine Coon. May Queens are a type of potato that don’t fall apart as easily. They’re perfect for curry.”
Koyuki obediently placed the rounder potatoes back and picked up the lengthier, oblong May Queens that were next to them. She was clearly impressed by his breadth of potato knowledge. “Whoa, I didn’t realize there was such a big difference between them. Is that something your mom taught you?”
“Maybe... I might’ve looked it up myself, though,” he replied. There was a pause in their conversation as they added garlic and ginger to the cart—used to add depth to the curry as well as to mask the smell of meat in it—before he continued, “I learned most of what I know just from trial and error.”
“I guess experience is the most important thing, after all,” Koyuki noted.
“Exactly. That’s why you shouldn’t worry about the ash cookies from the other day—that was something to learn from,” he reaffirmed.
Koyuki’s shoulders dropped at having been reminded of her failure. “Still, if you mess up, it’s just a waste of ingredients. I’d hate that.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll eat anything you make. Literally anything.”
“O-Okay then...” she faltered, but his statement actually seemed to boost her confidence. “If you end up dying prematurely because of my food, then I’m sorry, but it’s all in the name of improving my cooking abilities.”
“Got it. Let’s see what you’ve got today, then.”
“Hahaha, I’m already a pro when it comes to peeling vegetables,” she boasted.
They bantered back and forth while they added the rest of their ingredients to the cart. They selected meat, roux, and fukujinzuke—pickled vegetables in a sweet soy sauce mixture—for good measure.
“We missing anything?” Naoya asked.
“Hm... Ah!” Koyuki exclaimed, then immediately grew sheepish. “Um, Mom and Dad said I could buy some candy if I wanted...”
“Oh. Sure then. We’ll go get whatever you want.”
“Okay! Let’s go!” Koyuki exclaimed, all smiles as she rushed over to the candy section with Naoya in tow. She quickly found what she was searching for: a box of sweets that Naoya remembered eating a lot as a kid. “These, these! The animal biscuits! I love how they draw the rabbits and the bears on them! They’re so cute! Oh, but I do feel a bit bad when I eat them... But then they’re so delicious that I can’t stop. And—are you okay, Sasahara?”
“N-Nah, it’s nothing. Nothing at all,” he replied as nonchalantly as possible.
“If you want something too, just tell me, okay?”
Somehow, Naoya managed to make it through the shopping trip without dying from cuteness overload.