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“SO? What about yesterday? Did you send them back?”
“...You mean the flowers?”
“Flowers? What flowers, Urara?”
As I was hesitant to use the school’s kitchen, Aritomo had offered me a place to teach Lady Chouko to cook.
That was how I ended up teaching Lady Chouko to use a kitchen knife in one corner of the cooking studio where Aritomo was learning to cook, but she took the opportunity to talk to me instead.
To be fair, it did seem rather lonely to be cooking all by herself in a place this big. Her teacher was an Italian chef who spoke little Japanese.
The instructor was able to offer words of praise fairly easily but was not as adept at explaining the minute details of cooking.
I wondered why she hadn’t chosen a Japanese teacher, especially since the theme was bento.
But, more importantly, the flowers...
“The flowers Saku sent her!” Aritomo exclaimed. “The delivery person showed up right when we dropped her off! A huge bouquet of yellow lilies!”
I had received flowers. They were from Shinmyou and said “My apologies” on the message card.
“And after he’s the one who hurt you. Then he goes and sends that big bouquet to your tiny house to suffocate you with the smell. It would just make me hate him more,” she huffed.
Tiny house? I guess for the people who attend this school, it is, but I wish she would sugarcoat her thoughts a little more on that subject.
“I put them in a vase for my family to enjoy. The flowers did nothing wrong.”
Even if I did put them in our altar room.
My late grandmother loved such flashy sentiments, so I’m sure she’ll enjoy them.
However, I turned my attention to the silent Lady Chouko in hopes of ending the discussion, just in time to see her cut a carrot clean in half with a loud thud.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose I pressed down a little too hard.”
She cut an extra-large carrot clean in half by pressing just a little too hard? I looked from the carrot to Lady Chouko’s face and could hear Aritomo laughing from behind me.
“Tsukuyomi, you’re pretty strong.”
“You think so?”
She always gave off the air of someone who had never lifted anything heavier than chopsticks, and yet she seemed hale enough to take on any sport.
“Yesterday was incredible. Charging the vice president and knocking him on his— Ahh, waii— Ahh, er... All right, I better get back to practicing,” Aritomo suddenly said, scurrying off to her own area.
“Knoc...knock what? Chouko, what happened yesterday?” I asked, tilting my head.
“Nothing. Now come on, let’s get back to it. What should we do now?” Chouko flashed me her usual smile before asking me about the next steps. She was right of course. Our time was limited; we needed to make the best of it. I explained to her how to peel the carrot while watching carefully to be sure.
To be sure she didn’t injure herself.
✦ ✦ ✦
Shirazu Izayoi’s Sentiments
THE first time I met them in the waiting room of my father’s clinic, I remember being overcome by how lovely the girl sitting quietly in the corner was. With her large eyes, her porcelain skin, and her silky black hair, she was like a beautiful doll.
They were all close in age to me, so I introduced myself, but when I at last reached the girl and told her how pretty I thought she was, she shouted back, “Shut up, creep!” I was quite shocked.
Mitsuru and Ui have always teased me about that day.
But I’m not sure whether one can help telling someone so beautiful that they are, in fact, beautiful.
I talked to Sakutarou about it a long time ago, but he told me with a wry grin that Mitsuru and Ui were “little boys; they wouldn’t understand.”
“Anyway, Chouko is beautiful, it’s true. You weren’t wrong,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder in commiseration. He was only a year older than I, but I felt as if he was the one I could count on above anyone else.
“Oboro’s favorite food?”
“Yes, do you know what it is?”
Aritomo had called me to the cooking studio they were using to ask my advice.
“And bonus points if it’s something Tsukuyomi doesn’t know about.”
I cocked my head to the side. Despite his friendly demeanor, Oboro wasn’t exactly an open book.
He wasn’t the type to assert his likes and dislikes the way Mitsuru or Ui would, so coming up with an answer was difficult... In fact, there was only one thing I could think of.
“I’m not sure what he does like, but I know he doesn’t really care for sweets.”
I’ve never seen him bring sweets for snacks, not even once, since we were kids. In fact, Ui even tried to force him to eat cake and cookies as a sort of joke.
When I told her I had no other preferences to share, she furrowed her brows and spat, “I can’t use that! I got that much in my research. He told interviewers that back when he was a child actor. Aww, come on, Shirazu... Oh well. Fine, go do some spying for me! Go on!” she said, shooing me away like she was disappointed in me.
Even if I wanted to spy for her, Chouko and Tendou were cooking in the kitchen on the opposite side of the room, so I couldn’t really watch them from the shadows or anything.
As I was trying to figure out exactly how I was supposed to go about “spying,” Tendou gave me an elegant smile.
“Thanks for all your help here, Izayoi. Aritomo isn’t giving you a hard time, is she?” she asked.
“Oh, no. I think this is just par for the course for her.”
Par for the course for her being a pain was what I wanted to say, but found I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Do you need something, Shirazu?” Chouko asked, the ice in her voice indicating she wasn’t happy I was interrupting her time with Tendou.
“No, I just wanted to see how you both were doing.”
“As you can see, Chouko is making major improvements,” Tendou said with a note of pride, laying out the results of Chouko’s efforts. Just as she said, Chouko had come a long way from not even being able to hold a knife. I had to admire her progress.
Seeing Tendou’s lovely cheeks blush as she told me how good Chouko’s cooking was made my heart thunder in my chest.
“...Ah, right.”
I floundered uncomfortably for words. I couldn’t seem to think straight when she smiled at me like that.
“Now, Urara, you know that Shirazu is Aritomo’s advisor, so no giving anything away,” Chouko said to Tendou, her words gentle, even as the glare she shot my way was ice-cold.
“Y-Yes, you’re right. You promised to help Chouko, after all,” I said, and I left the studio to get some fresh air.
It was the first time I had ever hesitated to tell someone I thought they were pretty.
As I stood there in soliloquy with myself, my cell phone began to ring. Seeing it was Mikazuki, I answered right away, and he spoke up before I had a chance.
“So?”
“Ui? I don’t know how she’s managing it, but she’s actually teaching Chouko without injury.”
“Haha. She really kept her word. My boy Saku’s over here being a grouch while doing his student council work.”
Because of what happened yesterday, Chouko had no trust left in Sakutarou, so she banned him from coming near them for the foreseeable future. Not only that, but she had charged the rest of us with keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t mess things up again. Today was Ui’s turn, and even though it wasn’t part of the job, he felt the need to keep calling me with a report.
“Grouchy? He didn’t seem so bad yesterday. Did something happen?”
“He’s been cranky ever since all that went down with Chouko. Guy’s a total rain cloud. Even before then, he was totally on edge. You never noticed?”
I was shocked at Ui’s words. Maybe that was how someone as energetic as him saw Saku.
“Well, you and Saku have always been wound way too tight. Better loosen up, or you won’t be able to tell that girl you like how you feel.”
“Urk!” My throat was getting tight, and I ended up making a weird sound.
“What, really? You actually noticed your feelings? But I’d put a cork in it and shove them aside. Don’t tell her unless you want to die,” Ui warned.
“Tell who? I don’t like anyone!” I protested. “And how did we end up on this topic anyway?”
We were supposed to be talking about Sakutarou, so how did we end up fanning out into this nonsense?
Ui continued on, apparently undeterred. “Oh, you haven’t noticed your feelings then? That works just as well. Don’t screw up now. You don’t want to end up like Asahina, do you?”
Laughing, Ui said a quick goodbye and hung up without waiting for me to respond.
Things were getting so out of hand, neither my head nor my heart could keep up. I was so confused and also so jealous of Ui’s ability to flit from one thing to the next like the idiot he was.