The Reservation (Nanami Kento || JJK)

Dumpling Soup

This chapter has smut, but I will mark the start and end of it with asterisks [***] if you wish to skip. 

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The next time Nanami came by was a full five days later after the balcony apology. He didn't let himself in, opting to knock at my door at an early six o'clock time.

I dropped my spoon in my bowl of dumpling soup, going to answer it with a quizzical expression since I didn't know who would be knocking at this hour.

Nanami stood on the other side in his suit, tie, and suspenders with the handle of his cursed tool peeking out of his collar. In one hand he held a bouquet of yellow and white daisies, and in the other he held a bag of fresh bakery bread.

"Nanami," I said, wide eyed and startled.

"Is now a bad time?"

Hardly. I wasn't in work out clothes for once, and I had just finished eating. The real shock was how he arrived. "You knocked," I said obtusely.

"I did."

"Did you lose your key?"

"No, but considering the hour, I didn't want to walk in and startle you."

It seemed so logical. So polite. But my stomach twisted, because ever since our little spat, this felt like we'd just taken several steps backward in our relationship. We'd gone from casual friends back to polite, professional acquaintances with shared trauma.

Swallowing thickly, I tried to move past it and pointed to his bag of bread and flowers. "What's all this?"

"For you. I said I wanted to help with groceries since I'm eating all your food. I've got bread and a few vegetables that I notice you cook with the most. The flowers were on sale at the market too."

Just sale flowers. Nothing special. If I didn't know any better, I would guess that he was still trying to make things up to me, but it also felt like he was trying to put up barriers again. If he kept things professional, then he could protect himself from my explosive emotions.

I hated what I did... I probably seemed so desperate.

Wordlessly letting him in, I accepted the sale flowers and groceries without complaint. I didn't tease him even a little bit, even if in the past I would have insisted he didn't need to do all this. That I was happy to cook for him without payment.

But if he wanted to be professional about all this and not get closer to me... Who was I to stop him?

He hung up his suit jacket and left his cursed tool at the door. Pocketing his glasses, he went to the table when I shooed him out of the kitchen.

With a ladle, I prepared him a bowl of dumpling soup, then set it at the table across from my place. Before returning to join him, I dunked the sale flowers in a pitcher unceremoniously, trying hard not to read too much into the gesture.

By the time I returned, he had already polished off his first bowl, so I ladled him a second serving before he could ask.

"Thank you," he murmured after I sat back down.