The morning after our shopping trip, I thought I heard the doorbell. I opened the curtains. The sun was blazing brightly to the east.
I typically led a self-indulgent life when I didn’t have plans during longer holidays, so getting up in the morning was always a Herculean task. It felt as if the doorbell had woken me up, but getting out of bed just to check would be such a pain in the butt.
So instead, I ignored it and rolled over in bed.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
“Shut up!” I jumped out of bed angrily.
I wouldn’t be brave enough to complain to their face if it was a door-to-door salesman or something, but I could at least glare sternly at them through the door camera. But when I looked at the screen, someone familiar stared back.
It was Shinohara, so I pressed the call button and said one thing. “Go home.” Then, I hung up without waiting for her answer.
She’d said that she would come again, but she’d put that into action far too fast. I thought she’d at least wait a few days. I checked the time—it was just past 10:00 a.m. Not a bad time for a normal, functioning human being, maybe, but for me? Bad manners.
My charged phone vibrated. Shinohara, of course.
“Ugh, fine…” I trudged over to the door and unlocked it. When I swung the door open, I saw her standing there with a big backpack.
“Do you have anything to say to me?” she demanded.
I took a guess. “Why are you here?”
“Wrong answer! You’re supposed to apologize for making me wait!”
“Oh…” I only half-understood.
My evasive reply elicited a sigh from her. “Oh, fine. Here. You can have this.” She held out a paper bag.
I hesitantly accepted it. Inside was a popular, expensive pastry. “You may enter,” I relented.
“Chaaarge!”
I didn’t feel like stopping her innocently entering my room. Once she was inside my studio apartment, I went into another room and took off my pajamas. Now in my underwear, I picked up the clothes I’d been drying.
“Senpaaai? Where’d you go?” The door opened, and Shinohara busted in. We locked eyes. Silence fell. “S-sorry…”
Anyone would be surprised if they saw their host in underwear out of nowhere. I was just glad that I still had my undies on.
“Yeah, it’s cool,” I replied quickly and picked up my clothes.
Shocked, Shinohara yelled, “Wait, that’s it?! Come on, aren’t you flustered or anything?! A younger girl saw you in your underwear! Say something!”
“Hmm.” I could understand how she felt, but it was no skin off my nose. I might react differently if our roles were reversed, so I was glad that this was how it went down. Still being too sleepy to think helped too. “Man, I’m hungry.”
“O-oh…okay. I can make breakfast, if you don’t mind something simple.”
Grateful for her suggestion, I replied, “Really?! Thank you! I restocked the fridge yesterday, so it should be pretty full!”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” Shinohara slowly, agonizingly shifted her eyes away from me. “Just put on some pants, please!”
Yeah… This is what happens when I’m too sleepy to think.
Her mad blushing gave me the (perhaps mistaken) impression that she was a bit innocent.
✦ ✦ ✦
As we enjoyed a rather late breakfast at the dining table, Shinohara brought up what had happened. “Do you not normally dress from the bottom up? I think that’s how you’re supposed to do it.”
“I don’t really remember. I was sleepy.”
“It hasn’t even been an hour! I know you’re not that forgetful,” she shot back incredulously. Her coat was on a hanger, so she was just wearing a sweater now.
“Maybe that’s how I am.” I brushed her off and sipped the remainder of my consommé soup. A perfect warmth permeated my body. What a comforting flavor. “So good…”
From the bottom of my heart, I truly believed it was delicious. Maybe it tasted so much better than restaurant soup because I knew it was a girl making it for me, but Shinohara’s pure cooking skill was no small part of it.
“What do you usually eat?”
“Convenience store meals. Beef bowls.”
“Eugh, I figured. That’s really unhealthy.”
“Sure, but what am I supposed to do?” I had plenty of time available to cook for myself, but having time and having energy were two very different things. Was this the source of the difference that I’d felt between the two of us yesterday? The thought of it made me mutter, “Maybe I should try cooking.”
University was the best time to throw caution to the wind and try new things, after all.
Shinohara stacked up the used dishes and said, “Oh, good idea. I could teach you!”
“Ooh. How about today, then? Early bird, and so on.” I gulped down the rest of my soup. “Thanks for the food! It was good.”
“It’s nothing. You made it worthwhile, since you clearly enjoyed it so much.”
“I mean, it was delicious.”
With that, I stood up and went to the kitchen. The sink remained as lustrous as it had after she’d cleaned it. For once, I wasn’t bothered by doing the dishes today.
“Do you want me to wash them?” she offered.
“Why? I’m the only one who ate. Pop a cushion down and sit. I’ve got plenty of manga for you to read.”
“I can only read a few pages while you do dishes, though.” That’s what she said, but she still went over to my shelf. I heard some idle commentary from her, such as, “Ooh! I’ve been wanting to read this one!”
After washing the small pile of dishes, I lobbed a question her way. “By the way, why did you even stop by? You’re so at home here that I almost forgot to ask.”
She clapped the book shut and laughed. “Wow, took you long enough!” I realized she’d have continued reading manga indefinitely if I hadn’t asked that question, which elicited a wry grin from me. “I was just checking in on my way home. It’s my last chance to see you this year, after all.”
“Oh, really?”
Most students living alone visit their parents around now. I didn’t know where Shinohara’s family lived, but it seemed like she’d be leaving soon.
“I’ll just visit on New Year’s,” I replied. “Home is close, so I see my family often.”
“Oh, okay. I’m kind of surprised.”
“By what?”
Shinohara didn’t respond. Instead, she took pots and bowls out of the cupboard and fished around my fridge. I wasn’t that interested in the answer either, though, so I just watched on without a care.
“Huh? Wow, you have hollandaise sauce,” she mused. “I thought you didn’t cook. Why do you have this?”
She’d named the sauce, but I certainly didn’t ascribe any meaning to that word. When she handed over the container, I remembered that I’d bought it one day on a whim.
“Ah, right. I bought it a while back because I wanted to try cooking for real. Haven’t opened it yet.”
“This is the industrial kind. Where did you buy it?”
“Online.”
“Figured. It’s a waste in your hands, so I’ll use it today. Can you crack four eggs for me, please?”
“Okay.” I took four eggs out of the fridge.
I tried to crack one with one hand and failed miserably.
“Why are you doing it like that?” Shinohara asked incredulously. “Do it normal.”
“I only messed up once. Check this out. You’re about to witness a winning streak.”
“Okay, I’ll take those.” She snatched the egg out of my hand and cracked them quickly. Two-handed, of course.
Over the next few minutes, she put butter into the microwave, put the hollandaise into a large pot, and did a bunch of other tasks, revealing cooking skills far beyond my own understanding.
Obeying her orders made me feel like a sous-chef. “You’re like a pro.”
As Shinohara deftly prepared the meal, she looked more mature than usual. There was something attractive about people who excelled in areas I sucked at.
“I like cooking, y’know? Oh, get that bacon there for—” In the middle of a request, she abruptly stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well… You don’t know what I’m cooking, do you?”
“It’s tamagoyaki, isn’t it?”
“Someone who’d put this much time into making tamagoyaki would never be able to teach you cooking… I mean, this is clearly too much effort for a dish like that.” Shinohara grumbled to herself for a second. “I was having so much fun that I totally forgot to teach you. I’ll do it another time, so just go relax again, okay?”
“Huh? Why?”