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It starts like this.
“Hello? President?”
“Aoi,” Teru chirps, “Come over.”
“What?” Aoi’s voice says. Teru isn’t sure why he’s surprised. He’s dragged Aoi along on impromptu outings before, and it’s not like he hasn’t been at his house before. “Now?”
“Yes, now.”
“Why? Did something happen?”
“Yes. It’s very important,” Teru answers. It’s not a full lie— this is important, even if nothing has happened. “So come quickly. Is Akane-san with you?”
“I’m with Ao-chan right now,” Aoi confirms slowly, clearly suspicious. “Why?” His voice sharpens. “What do you want?”
“Calm down. I just need her help,” Teru says. “So bring her with you.”
“Is this about a rumor?” Aoi presses.
Teru wishes he wouldn’t ask so many questions. It’s starting to get a little annoying. “Yes, it’s a rumor, so come over,” he says. “You have my address. See you soon!”
“What—”
Teru hangs up, cutting off Aoi’s next round of questioning, and waits.
Ten minutes later, he hears impatient knocking at the door. He walks up and swings it open with his most welcoming smile. “Hello, Akane-san, Aoi. Welcome.”
“Hello, Minamoto-san,” Akane greets him, then freezes.
Aoi’s expression shifts from worried to scandalized. “President. What are you wearing?”
“Isn’t it cute?” Teru asks.
Beside Aoi, Akane’s eyes scan Teru’s hoodie, expression blank for a beat as she takes it in. The next moment her entire face twists, brows furrowing and nose scrunching up. Teru really doesn’t see how this reaction is at all warranted. It’s not even bad.
“No. Those colors don’t even go together,” Aoi says in stunned reply, which is entirely unnecessary.
“It’s not that bad,” Teru says.
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s tacky,” Akane chimes in sweetly. She’s been getting more blunt around him— taking a leave from her perfectly-crafted persona— and, to reciprocate their unspoken agreement, he’s become less shameless. It proves both a blessing and a curse. A curse, in this case.
“How about you both come inside?” Teru offers, equally sweet.
Aoi’s eyes flit between them. He clears his throat. “Uh. Yeah, okay.”
They step inside, take off their shoes, and follow Teru to the dining room.
“Kou isn’t home,” Teru says as they sit, “and Tiara is out with him. I don’t have any jobs today either, so we have the house all to ourselves!”
“Will this take the whole day?” Aoi asks, ever the impatient one.
“You mentioned a rumor, Minamoto-san,” Akane adds, blinking. “What rumor is that?”
“The rumor,” Teru explains, “is that I can’t bake.”
A beat.
“Minamoto-san, that’s not a rumor,” Akane says.
“That’s just fact,” Aoi agrees.
He sighs at them with his most forlorn expression. “So mean, both of you.”
Neither of them are swayed.
“If that’s all you wanted us here for, President, then I’m leaving,” Aoi says blankly, standing. He turns to Akane and offers her a hand. “Ao-chan, let’s go.”
“That’s actually not all.” Teru smiles. “I want you both to help me.”
“Help?” Akane cocks her head. “With?”
“Baking, of course.”
Aoi pales. Frantically, he grabs Akane’s hand— his hand slips from hers the first time, much to Teru’s amusement, and he needs to make a second attempt before his grip holds— and starts tugging her with him towards the door.
Teru circles around to stand in the way, smile darkening. “What’s wrong, Aoi?”
“I don’t want to die in a house fire,” Aoi hisses, trying to maneuver around him, which does not seem easy to do with another person in tow. “Ao-chan! We have to get out of here!”
“Is it really that bad?” Akane asks. She allows herself to be tugged along, eyebrows raising.
“Yes,” Aoi says, sidestepping.
“No,” Teru says, blocking the way.
“Don’t trust him, Ao-chan, he’s insane.”
“Always so dramatic, Aoi.”
“Nene-chan did tell me about your younger brother, Minamoto-san,” Akane muses before Aoi devolves the conversation further with his snippy comments. “She said he’s a good baker.”
“He is. Kou is the one who cooks,” Teru says proudly.
“Because he’s the only one who can.”
“Aoi,” Teru warns pleasantly.
Aoi stops talking.
“Why not ask your younger brother to help?” Akane questions.
“He’s tried to!” Teru chirps. “But I can’t really keep up. I’m not the best at making food.”
Aoi snorts.
Teru rounds on him wordlessly and he raises his hands up, taking a couple steps back with an anxious laugh. “What? I didn’t say anything! Ha. Ha ha. Right, Ao-chan? I didn’t say anything!”
“Akane-kun, maybe you’re bringing this on yourself,” Akane tells him.
“Exactly right, Akane-san,” Teru agrees, and his prayer beads loose from his wrist.
“Chocolate chip cookies,” Akane notes, picking up the piece of lined paper and scanning through the written recipe. “That should be simple enough…”
Aoi, freed from the prayer beads now that they’ve made it to the kitchen, grumbles as he brushes off his shirt and pants, jerking his hand away when it’s shocked by lingering static. Teru thinks he hears some choice words like asshole and bastard mixed somewhere in there.
“I hope so,” Teru says. “I’ve already tried six times.”
He takes Aoi’s glasses from his pocket and offers them to Aoi on a flat, outstretched palm. Aoi glowers at him as he snatches them back and puts them on.
“Six times?” Akane repeats slowly, amazed.
Teru nods. “But seventh time’s the charm!”
“That’s not how the saying goes,” Akane points out with a sigh. She scans the kitchen and decides, “We need to get everything ready first.”
“What’s the ingredient list?” Aoi asks, peering over her shoulder.
She allows him to read it as she turns to Teru. “Minamoto-san, please get flour, baking soda, brown sugar, white sugar, and salt. Akane-kun can get the rest of the ingredients while I take out bowls.”
“Brown and white sugar?” Teru asks. “They’re both sugar, aren’t they? Why do we need both?”
“It changes the cookie’s texture,” Akane explains to him. Oh, right. Kou had said something like that. He knows a lot about this kind of thing, amazingly, but it tends to go over Teru’s head every time he explains it, and what little he does grasp doesn’t stick in Teru’s brain for long.
“President, please tell me you have more than one egg left,” Aoi says, squinting into the opened refrigerator.
“Oh. Kou did say we had to go grocery shopping,” Teru muses.
Aoi groans. “Seriously?”
“The recipe only needs one egg,” Akane tells them. “We’ll just have to use your last one, Minamoto-san. That means we only have one chance.” She hums a bit. “I hope the seventh time is actually the charm, Minamoto-san.”
“What a snide sense of humor, Akane-san,” Teru comments lightly. “I like it.”
Aoi almost drops the egg in his hands as he whips around with a murderous expression.
“So both white and brown sugar,” Teru confirms, picking up both sacs. He sets them both on the counter, ignoring the glare boring into him. “There!”
“Now salt, baking soda, and flour. Akane-kun,” Akane calls. “Can you also get the butter and chocolate chips?”
“Yes, Ao-chan,” Aoi says immediately. He turns around to rummage inside the refrigerator.
They regroup in front of the counter with all the ingredients and materials laid out. This is already farther than Teru gets on his own, so he’s feeling optimistic.
“First, we need to melt some butter,” Akane instructs.
Easy enough, Teru thinks.
But Aoi snatches the butter away as soon as Teru grabs it. “A whole stick of butter?”
Teru blinks. “If the recipe says ‘some butter’, that means just one stick, right?”
Aoi gapes at him. “Just one stick?”
“It’s only one stick,” Teru repeats, confused. “It doesn’t look like that much.”
“Some butter is not one whole stick. You can’t just pick and choose measurements with baking! And wait a second—” Aoi points at him, sputtering. “Is that a metal bowl?”
“We need a bowl to microwave the butter in,” Teru explains, raising an eyebrow.
Akane eyes him and says, “I think I’m beginning to understand why this is your seventh try, Minamoto-san.”
“Ao-chan! Stop him before he blows us all up! Please!”
“Can you please,” Aoi says, “get it together.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Teru says, and the roll of tape makes a violently loud crrrrrk noise as he pulls out a strip of it. But he does know what Aoi is talking about, because he’s been saying the same thing over and over again ever since the accident happened.
“You don’t use tape for broken glass,” Aoi tells him again, which is easy for him to say when he’s standing six feet off, which is well away from the disaster zone radius. “I mean, it’s better than glue—” he sends a baleful look at the bottle of glue discarded to the side— “but still.”
“I found a broom,” Akane says as she pads back into the room. She stops before she can step in the bulk of the mess, holding a dustpan in one hand and a broom in the other. “I don’t understand how this happened, Minamoto-san. But be careful.”
“I really wish Aoi was as helpful as you, Akane-san,” Teru says, setting down the roll of tape on the counter. He leans over to take both items from her.
“I’m right,” Aoi protests.
Akane crosses her arms. “It’s dangerous to use tape. Don’t you know that? You won’t be able to put it back together anyway, so you should just throw the shards away.”
“Thank you, Ao-chan,” Aoi says, relieved.
Teru hums. “Oh, I see. Thank you, Akane-san. I’ll just throw this out, then.”
“I’ve literally been saying the same thing! Of course you listen to Ao-chan and not me,” Aoi accuses sourly. “Bastard.”
“Akane-san is more trustworthy than you,” Teru says pleasantly as he starts to sweep.
“How did you even break a mirror when we’re here to help you bake?” Aoi asks incredulously. “How do you even do that? Where did the mirror come from?”
Teru doesn’t actually know that either. He doesn’t know how most of his baking accidents happen until they’ve already happened. He remembers attempting to crack an egg and his elbow hitting the frame of the small mirror, sending it crashing to the floor and spreading glass shards everywhere. He swears the thing wasn’t there before. It’s a wonder none of them have been cut, though.
Rather than admit to any of that, he puts on a sunny smile and asks, “You don’t have a mirror in your kitchen, Aoi?”
“Who puts a mirror in their kitchen?” Aoi retorts. “You don’t have one, do you, Ao-chan?”
“No,” she admits. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“There!” Aoi points at him. “So you’re the weird one, President!”
“Oh? How odd, Aoi. You’re speaking very rudely for someone who hasn’t lifted a finger to help,” Teru says, and hooks the prayer beads around his wrist with a finger.
Aoi’s eyes catch the movement and stills, letting out a nervous laugh. “Uh— what? What was I saying?”
“Don’t make a bigger mess than there already is,” Akane tells them, holding out the trash can, and Teru has to give up on the threat to resume cleaning up glass shards. She seems to decide that’s enough helping on her part, because she retreats to stand next to Aoi again to watch. “At least you got the egg yolk in the bowl, Minamoto-san.”
“He’s going to knock over the whole bowl next,” Aoi grumbles, and Akane giggles. He shudders when Teru gives him a look. “Fine! Fine. Pass me the bowl. I’ll mix it.”
“What next?” Teru asks once he dumps what is hopefully the last of the glass shards into the trash. “Things are going well, don’t you think?”
“I can’t really tell if that’s a genuine question,” Akane replies cheerfully, “but to answer your first one, we should wash some dishes now that we don’t need them anymore. You can wash dishes, right, Minamoto-san?”
“Kou puts me on dishwashing duty when I try to help him with dinner,” Teru answers, picking up the dish towel.
“Then we can wash dishes until Akane-kun finishes mixing.” Akane takes station at the sink. “I’ll wash, and you can dry and put things away, since you know where everything goes.”
Teru agrees, and they get to work. He can’t help but smile. This is actually going a lot better than usual.
“Okay, done,” Aoi announces after a while. He catches Teru’s curious expression and sighs, adjusting the bowl for him to see better. “See the texture? You don’t want the dough to be too wet or too dry. It’s not too sticky and it’s easy to handle, so it’s done.” He prods at the dough experimentally. “I hope.”
“Huh,” Teru says. “So it’s just a feeling.”
Aoi shrugs. “I guess. I don’t know about trusting your feelings in particular, though, President.”
“Chocolate chips!” Akane chirps, holding up the bag. “Akane-kun, how much?”
“Oh! Right,” Aoi says, turning to the recipe. “Uh… three quarters of a cup.”
Teru picks up the measurement spoon.
Aoi gives him a cautious look.
“Well, well,” Akane says placatingly. “It should be fine, right? Minamoto-san, you can scoop the cup in the bag.”
He does. He tilts his head at the chocolate chips gathered in the measurement spoon. “Is this good enough?”
“That should be fine,” Akane agrees. “Now pour them into the bowl.”
Teru moves the spoon to position it over the bowl, and, in a chorus of clatter, chocolate chips fall just shy of the bowl’s edge and scatter all over the counter.
Teru glances up from the mess to find two equally blank faces, both seemingly stunned speechless. Ah.
Wordlessly, he looks back down, picks up one of the chips closest to him, and pops it in his mouth.
Akane considers for a moment before she silently follows suit.
Aoi looks between them, both quietly eating chocolate chips off the counter, and puts his head in his hands.
“Now we wait,” Akane instructs once the oven door is closed. She finds the nearest chair and sinks into it, closing her eyes.
“Finally,” Aoi groans.
“Yay!” Teru chirps.
“Don’t ‘yay’ us, that was awful,” Aoi bemoans. “It’s a miracle we got anything in that oven.”
“It tasted good!”
Akane blinks her eyes open and makes a face. “It tasted…”
“Good,” Teru insists happily.
The dough hadn’t tasted all that bad to him. In any case, this is nowhere near as disastrous as his previous failed attempts. No smoke or fire, minimal damage, he hasn’t lost anything (nothing significant enough to notice right away, at least), and no injuries besides a small cut here and there (no one knows how he got them, because they appeared before the mirror accident and they haven’t handled anything remotely sharp besides then). He might even go as far as to say that he’s getting better at this. It makes him feel a bit giddy.
“If you say so,” Akane concedes, and closes her eyes again. Neither she nor Aoi seem to have enough energy to celebrate this obvious victory. A shame.
“I think that went well,” Teru says.
“Don’t say that,” Aoi mumbles. He’s at the table, head in arms and glasses askew. He doesn’t even lift his head to look at Teru when he speaks. “You’ll jinx it and the oven is going to explode or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Teru says.
That has happened before, though. Kou was distraught. They had to get a new oven. There were scorch marks in the kitchen for months.
He crosses the kitchen and pokes at Aoi’s lowered head. “How much time is left?”
“I don’t know. How should I know?”
“You’re the Clockkeeper, aren’t you?”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
Akane cuts them off. “Ten minutes.” She holds up both hands for emphasis. “Ten.”
Teru hums.
What to do for ten minutes? Neither Aoi seems partial to making conversation— but when has that stopped him before?
“What were you two up to before I invited you over?” Teru asks, curious.
“‘Invited’ is certainly a choice descriptor,” Akane says with a blank smile.
“We were going to go to the cafe.” Aoi sighs, looking up. “There’s a test coming up.”
“Ohhh,” Teru says, nodding along. “A study date.”
“I don’t know about a date,” Akane replies cheerfully, and Aoi’s head thunks back onto the table. His ears are red, Teru notices with amusement. “You should be studying too, Minamoto-san.”
“Oh, hmm. Maybe,” Teru says. “But I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
Akane gives him a look.
Teru sighs dramatically, slumping. “Studying is just… so much work, you know?”
“President of the student council complains about work,” Aoi says dryly. “Monumental.”
“That’s what vice presidents are for,” Teru shoots back.
“So you are giving more work to me,” Aoi says with a glare. “I knew it.”
In the background, Akane gets up and wanders to the dining room. Aoi stops, eyes following Teru’s until they land on her.
“Ao-chan?” he calls. “Where are you going?”
Akane just hums before disappearing from sight. A moment later, she pops back out, carrying two bags in each hand with a smile. “I wanted to get something productive done today.”
“Helping me bake isn’t productive?” Teru asks, just to be irritating.
“You’re studying too,” Akane says, rather than entertain him. She sits at the table, handing Aoi’s bag over, and opens her own. A stack of papers is set on the table, followed by a pencil case.
Teru sighs again, louder, and joins Aoi in slumping over the table.
Aoi, out of spite, sits up— and pauses.
“Do you smell smoke?”
Teru and Akane freeze.
“They’re burned because they sensed a tainted soul,” Aoi says pointedly, sneering.
“Supernaturals do have evil souls,” Teru agrees as he puts the tray of cookies on the counter.
Aoi’s expression flattens.
“They could be worse,” Akane says, inspecting each cookie carefully. “Not all of them are burnt.”
“They could be worse,” Aoi agrees. Teru isn’t sure if he’s agreeing because he actually thinks so, or because Akane said it. He suspects the latter.
Akane squints as she attempts to scrape a layer of char off one of the cookies with a fork. It crumbles pathetically and she sighs, walking past them to open a window.
“They could be worse,” Teru concludes. He tries to pick up a cookie and jumps when it burns, dropping it. It breaks on impact with the tray. He rubs at his smarting hand, disappointed. “Ow.”
“You’re supposed to wait for them to cool,” Akane says without looking at him.
Teru huffs. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“Didn’t notice,” Aoi chimes in.
“Just say you don’t care about me.”
Aoi rolls his eyes. “Don’t be a baby. Rinse off your hand.”
Unfortunately it’s difficult to argue with that. His hand does feel significantly better after he runs it under cold water.
“Now you can eat it,” Akane tells him after an eternity of waiting.
They’re not all burnt. Out of the dozen cookies, Teru would say about half of them ended up surviving— a new record. He takes one eagerly.
It tastes great.
Aoi raises his eyebrows when Teru grins. “Is it okay?”
“It’s a perfect success,” he says proudly.
“Let’s calm down.”
But they both seem pleasantly surprised upon trying. Aoi doesn’t make any faces uglier than his default one. Akane even smiles.
“That’s actually not the worst,” Aoi admits.
Akane nods. “For a first success, you did very well, Minamoto-san.”
His stomach is bubbling with energy. He hasn’t stopped grinning. He takes another bite of the cookie and his mood soars higher.
“Do you think I should try cooking now?”
Aoi barks a laugh. “Hard pass.”
Akane makes an X with her arms. “Absolutely not, Minamoto-san.”