Her Mysterious Smile

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld chuckled. "Don't worry about it. A loud day at your place is still nothing compared to a quiet day at mine." The clinic was at best a bit noisy and at worst a center of barely controlled chaos, and when it was the latter he was usually required to also be in the middle of it.

As he talked, he couldn't help but glance at Toushikyo and Maya. Something made him feel a bit awkward, and at first he thought it was just that it was weird to be here but not to hang out with them. But while he couldn't hear what they were talking about, the way they talked struck him. Especially that Toushikyo was actually talking, and not simply listening and occasionally giving short comments.

An epiphany suddenly hit him, one that he couldn't outright say was correct, but also one that he couldn't disprove, either. And now he was intensely curious. But Maya definitely wasn't going to open up to him, and Kyo was tight-lipped no matter what.

Of course, he could probably get some information from a third party.

He turned back to Akizetsumei. "Say, why don't I help you with dinner?" It gave them an excuse to go into another room, and also would let him guide her into making something a little less bizarre, with luck.

[Nayt]

"Eh? Oh. Um. Sure," Akizetsumei shrugged her shoulders.

So she started towards the kitchen door, leading Eld along the way. They had to pass by Maya and Toushikyo along the way, and though Akizets wasn't intentionally listening in on them, Eld would probably be able to fairly easily.

"Don't get me wrong," Maya began, "I really enjoyed the book-- it's just . . that ending . . ."

Toushikyo nodded. "I wasn't pleased with it, as well."

"It's just-- did she really have to die?" Maya then reasoned: "After all that? I really think she deserved to have a second chance."

It seemed they were discussing a book in great detail. Having not read it, Eld probably wouldn't understand much of the conversation henceforth.

Akizets stopped at the door as soon as she had a second thought.

"You don't gotta, though," she said as she turned from the kitchen door, "It'd be super rude of me to ask. Not, um, very hostess of me?"

[Zach Kaiser]

"It's fine, it's fine," Eld assured her. "I like cooking."

Maya and Kyo's conversation was fairly innocuous; it was simply about books. But...well, hadn't that been how things had started between them back then? He'd started to chat about books with her, and she started to come over and hang out with just him instead of with the group, and then one day...

Realizing he was spacing out, he brought himself back to the present. "Besides," he added, lowering his voice, "I don't want to intrude on their conversation." Whatever book they were talking about was one he hadn't read, so he'd only be a distraction for that reason--and possibly others.

[Nayt]

"Well . . . okay, I guess," Akizetsumei replied meekly.

She didn't really know what to do in this sort of situation. Technically she was the hostess here, right? Which meant that she was supposed to do things for Eld and not the other way around! She'd just have to make sure that he didn't do too much to aid in the process of making food. She was all for him hanging out in the kitchen with her, though. She enjoyed his company quite a lot.

Without further pause, Akizets pushed the door open and held it for Eld to follow her in.

The Terra family kitchen was fairly organized, albeit a bit bare. It maintained much of the same decor as the rest of the house before it--wooden interior, built on the idea of darker-- probably stained --wood. There was a large chest-sized freezer in one corner, and a long stretch of countertop ran across one edge of the room. A range was set at the far end of the room.

Akizets made for the freezer, opened it, and started to shuffle through what she had to work with. She doesn't seem to realize it, but when she bent over, Akizets had bent over with her whole body, accidentally-- probably --drawing attention to her backside.

[Zach Kaiser]

The kitchen was...well, it was a kitchen. Not too different from the at his place, though bigger. The Tsukimono's kept a lot more food around, though, as they had to feed long-term patients as well as themselves. Alas that also meant that except for special occasions meals were comparatively sparse to, say, meals at the Vaerbond place.

Briefly he wondered if he could convince his parents to let him make better meals for the family now that Etsu was there. While he understood the need for it, forcing her to eat as little as they did would be a bit unfair.

While he was intent on helping Akizetsumei, he stayed out of the way for the moment; he didn't know where anything was, after all.

And now that they were out of the living room, he could grill her a bit. "So...has Maya been coming over often lately?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant and not realizing he was staring at her backside as she searched for food.

[Nayt]

"Maya? Oh. Yeah. She's been comin' around a lot," Akizetz replied casually, "Why?"

Akizets found something at the bottom of the freezer that interested her. She leaned forward even more, placing her belly against the edge of the freezer-- causing her to yelp in surprise --and reaching her hands down deep into the device. She pushed her rear up and dug her knees into the side as she tried her best to pull on this icy machination with all of her strength-- except she didn't have much strength to work with, so it was all for naught. All the struggling wound up for nothing, and she had to pull back and put her hands upon her hips in disappointment with the freezer.

"Stupid chicken," she grumbled-- which in itself was high pitched and probably cute by Eld's standards. "Be that way. I don't wanna eat you, anyways."

[Zach Kaiser]

"Just curious." He had a feeling that if he told his suspicions to Akizetsumei, it would end up getting back to Toushikyo, and that would probably be bad. Besides, it was only a hunch right now. But how to find out...?

Maya could have said something to Sarah, but then again Sarah could be a bit dense at times. Em was pretty canny; maybe he'd get her opinion, see if she'd noticed anything lately.

"Here, let me," he instructed as Akizetsumei withdrew from the freezer. He bent down to grab the chicken she'd been trying to lift, not realizing he was giving her a comparable view to what he'd just received.

[Nayt]

She had the odd urge to pinch his behind in the name of mischief, but ultimately decided against it. That'd be pretty rude, right? And weird. A guy once pinched her butt and she thought it was weird and sort of invasive. She wasn't going to subject Eld to that.

Nonetheless, what Akizetsumei had found down there was a couple of chicken breasts. It wouldn't take Eld much effort to rip it out from the bottom of the freezer. He was a lot stronger than her, after all.

"Thanks . . ." she said bashfully, "Y-you didn't have'ta do that, you know?"

Akizets soon bent down next to Eld and peered through the freezer again. She folded her hands behind her back and surveyed what else she had to work with.

"Oh!" she exclaimed whilst bending over.

Akizets reached in and procured many sets of vegetables: freeze dried broccoli, tomatoes, and what looked like asparagus. With these held in her arms, she turned around to face the counter-- where she decided that the pair of bananas sitting there looked pretty appetizing, too.

Once she'd set down the vegetables with the fruit, she looked to Eld cheerily and asked, "What do you think?"

[Zach Kaiser]

Fortunately, Eld was able to remove the chicken breasts with ease, and in the meantime Akizetsumei was busy gathering other food. "They look good," he commented. He was certainly in favor of a well balanced meal, however, he did have a minor concern.

"What are you going to use them for?" He would have been fine just eating them on the side, however he suspected that she had other plans for them. Hopefully, if it was something strange, he could talk her out of it without hurting her feelings.

[Nayt]

"Mix them all up and put them in a pan together?" Akizets replied questioningly.

At least, that's what she had in mind if Eld didn't have any objections. Akizets saw something wrong with this mixture of randomly chosen food stuffs. It was pretty normal for her, in fact. This was just how she cooked, whenever she cooked. Usually she didn't. Usually it was Toushikyo that did the cooking around here, and he made some of the same stuff that Eld liked. Those two boys just had weird tastes, was all. Someday they'd come around to appreciate Akizetsumei's tastes in food. Someday.

If he did have objections, though, then she was at a loss for things to cook! This was amongst the only stuff they had to eat right now, and going much farther than this would have been pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable. After all, they had to make their food supplies last for the next couple of days at least, or else they might be in pretty big trouble. Or very hungry for a few days . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

He resisted the urge to sigh, despite having expected something like that. Akizetsumei's idea of making meals was to throw everything together. If was something like a sandwich it was fine, if rather strange, but in this case he would have to protest.

It wasn't a matter of differing tastes, it was a matter of cooking! Different foods required different things to bring out their flavor, or went better with some foods than others. Even if a person like every individual item in a dish, if they weren't prepared right it wasn't going to be very appeasing.

He wondered how she got the way she did. Kyo didn't eat like her and he suspected no one else in her family did either.

"Umm...that maybe not be such a good idea, at least for the bananas. They're sweet, so cooking them like that is going to make them lose their flavor. Asparagus and broccoli don't have much flavor on their own, so it's fine to put with them with the chicken, but the bananas should really be separate."

The tomatoes were trickier though. A pensive look spread across Eld's face. "What to do with the tomatoes, though. Maybe if we dice them, we can put them in the pan, too. Mom always did that for the cheese stuffed chicken, but I think it should work for regular chicken too..."

[Nayt]

Akizets scrunched her nose and chided Eld in a drawn out way, "You're weeeeiiiird."

It actually didn't matter to her either way. Eld's kind of food and her way of mixing food up were just really different. It wasn't too weird, because Toushikyo and her mom cooked that way all the time. Well, her mom tried to cook, and she sort of succeeded some of the time.

"Buuuut okay," she shrugged her shoulders and energetically moved to the oven.

This was experimentation, though. Experimentation was just fine with Akizets. It was sort of like going on an adventure, right? Like exploring something new!

It just had to start with her turning the burner on.

The burner . . .

Wait a second . . .

"How does this thing work again?" she asked frankly, probably not even realizing exactly how silly she must have sounded right about now.

[Zach Kaiser]

It was fortunate that Akizetsumei was busy fiddling with the burner, so that she didn't see his exasperated look. He was beginning to suspect that her offer to cook for him was in spite of never having fixed more than snacks herself.

But if she was willing to learn, he was willing to teach. "Like this..."

[Nayt]

So it was a little weird when Eld tried to teach Akizetsumei how to cook. It wasn't that she minded learning how to cook (which she was really slow to get the hang of), it was just that . . . well, she didn't realize how close she stood by Eld until she was holding a spatula and he was holding her hand to show her the right way to stir their little mixture of veggies and chicken. He was standing very close to her. Distractingly close. Close enough that she couldn't really think about what she was doing, and if he'd have been able to see her face, he'd have seen how red she was, and if he had been able to read her thoughts, he'd have been able to see that she-- if only briefly --she kind of wanted him to wrap his other arm around her belly and hold her close . . .

It wasn't long that she had that thought that Akizets started to giggle and put a little bit of space between she and Eld. It was making her feel weird. Weird in a good way, but weird nonetheless.

Dinner turned out a lot better than expected, if only because Eld was actually a pretty decent cook, which was to be expected, what with him cooking for himself more often than not and all. The less Akizetsumei had to do with the process the better it turned out to be, and all of Akizetsumei's contributions were pretty much guided by Eld. Toushikyo and Maya wound up joining them in dinner, too.

This also led to a very awkward moment in which Akizets suggested that-- after dinner --she and Eld go hang out in her room, after which Toushikyo glared at Eld as if he were ready to behead him right then and there. Needless to say, they did not spend any time alone in Akizetsumei's room.

[Zach Kaiser]

Cooking with Akizetsumei was an interesting experience, to say the least. It was fairly clear that she didn't have much of a grasp on the art other than that it involved heating food up for some of it. Which would have been fine if she weren't content to act like she knew.

But even so, it was fun. He had to reprimand her a few times on safety issues, but otherwise she didn't seem to protest his suggestions much. Though he wasn't sure if he got through to her or if she'd just end up throwing everything in the same pan/bowl/whatever next time anyway.

Dinner itself was a little awkward for him. Kyo, as usual, hardly talked, and Maya still wouldn't say much to him. At Akizetsumei's suggestion that they go to her room, Kyo sent him a glare that would suggested he'd find out firsthand how good he was with a sword if he did.

So they ended up killing time in the living room, trying not to bother Kyo and Maya too much; not long after she left, Eld decided he should get back too. Either he was going to have start coming home much earlier, or really get good at sneaking into his room without waking Etsu.

"Thanks for having me over," he said cheerily. "It was fun. Kyo, if you keep glaring at me you're going to burst a vein."