The Undesired Second Chance

Chapter 49: What's the Real Deal

"Look," said Akaiko, gesturing to the price tag, "there's no way we can't buy them. It's a buy-one-get-three deal. You don't see that every day."

Kushina sighed, deftly snatching one of the boxes away from Obito and returning it to the shelf. "If they're on sale to that extent, that probably means they've gone bad." She read the label. "Or haven't been selling well."

Looking over the snack-box again, Akaiko couldn't help but wrinkle her nose at it. Just a bit. Dried fruit, she didn't have a problem with usually. But leaving the peel on, and adding cheese?—those were weird choices in her book. And other's too, if it wasn't selling even with a sale like this.

"I mean, they don't look very good—I'll give you that much." That said, they weren't buying for themselves. "You know Axel has weird taste in food sometimes."

Obito nodded in complete agreement.

All of them knew that, of course, having been sharing dinners with the man once a week for nearly a year. Axel didn't cook a meal from scratch every time, but they'd certainly gotten to try out some new foods: often pretty good, but also often quite strange. Well, at least now they knew why.

Kushina took the box from her, but paused before putting it back on the shelf. "One," she decided. "We'll get one."

"But—"

"There's no point filling his cabinets when we don't even know if he'd like it."

"...That's fair."

As they slowly circled back to the front of the general store to pay, Kushina looked over their grocery list. Some had been marked off and others had been circled for a later shopping trip, but there was still a lot left.

"We'll finish faster if we split this up, ya know," she remarked, jotting down initials beside the remaining items. "Let's speed things up."

Flipping the paper around, Kushina held it out so that everyone could get a look—and she made sure to wait, just a bit, to give them a chance to read and memorize which items they'd be buying. Having guessed the plan as soon as Kushina started annotating her list, Akaiko stepped up and doled out some money to the kids so they could actually make the purchases.

"You have your targets," Kushina said imperiously, folding the list away again with a flick of her wrist.

Kakashi, with the advantage of familiarity, knew a dismissal from her when he heard one. He turned quickly to seek out his assigned groceries—mainly flour, rice, and pasta—with a manner only slightly less professional than he would have for a proper mission. Rin followed his lead, peeling away to find the butcher.

For a moment, Obito seemed torn—wanting to tag along with one of his teammates instead of heading off independently. But, with a sigh, he made himself put the 'mission' first.

"I notice you didn't give me any objectives." Akaiko looked back into the general store, so much quieter than the bustling open-air market, and then led the way toward what she judged to be a medium-background-noise vegetable stall. "Don't trust me to find the good stuff on my own?"

"I'd trust you with a lotta things, Aka-chan, but I've made my thoughts on your ability to stock a pantry very clear."

Akaiko wrinkled her nose. "Oh, no, don't call me that. You sound like one of my more judgmental summons."

"Sakana-chan?"

"Making a pun of 'red' and 'fish' is actually worse," she said, in a level deadpan. Even if it was kind of funny. "You know that, right?"