The Plan Devised in Aoi's Absence

4 : Sous Chef

Nene was sprawled over the bed as Akane was sitting beside it, the two of them scrolling past various bento recipes on the internet.

Nene gushed at the designs of all of the side dishes. "The little faces on everything are so cute! This is adorable! Now I want a lunch like this..."

"Try not to think about what you want right now and imagine what he'd like," Akane reminded her sternly. "We're supposed to be practicing as a gift."

Nene gasped, "Right, right! Um...."

She started scrolling faster through the list, this time with a more serious expression. However, as time passed and she kept scrolling, her eyebrows furrowed—whether this was due to the eyestrain or the frustration, Akane couldn't quite tell.

"You okay there?"

"I don't know..." Nene grumbled, "I don't know what Senpai would like. Would hearts be too much...? What if he's allergic to gluten?"

Well, of course she wouldn't know. Akane chose not to tell her that, opting to offer, "Why don't we improvise for today, then? Don't think about his preferences or his allergies, let's just design a bento and see where it goes."

"Ookay..." Nene looked at Akane doubtfully, but stood up to lead him to the kitchen anyway.

Even though he knew her mother was going to be supervising them from the living room, Akane was surprised to see that Nene knew what she was doing in the kitchen–she wasn't a klutz by any means at school, but she'd never seemed so... aware of her surroundings before.

As he was awkwardly watching her do all the work of setting the cooking environment up, He pointed this observation out to her, to which she pouted at him for.

"I can cook a little, y'know. What else am I supposed to do with the vegetables I grow at the gardening club?"

"Oh, yeah, you're in that club."

"You just never noticed because Aoi's in it, too, didn't you?"

He wasn't going to answer nor deny that question. Nene reacted to this with a dirty look before taking out a knife from the block and handing it over to him.

"Can you cut the carrots while I prepare the rice?"

Akane, relieved by being given something to do, took the knife gratefully. Unlike Nene, however, he didn't have any kind of kitchen experience, so he wasn't quite sure where to begin once he pulled out a carrot and set it down onto the cutting mat. How thin should he be cutting these? Is he supposed to keep the leaf part? After glancing over at Nene, who was busying herself with washing rice under the sink tap, he decided to just go with his instinct.

He tilted his wrist upwards and downwards, moving on to perform the next slice as soon as he heard the satisfactory thud of the knife against the wooden mat. As Akane continued to do this, his hand started to move faster towards the next slice as he was finding more confidence in the art of repeatedly chopping vegetables. This wasn't so bad–if making lunchboxes was just comprised of cutting vegetables and cooking them in pans, maybe he could develop a knack for it. In fact, why not make something like this for Aoi?

His mind wandered as his movements became robotic, imagining a scenario where he placed a set of lovingly-cut bunny apples into a delicately designed lunchbox, leaving it at Aoi's table before he set off to Student Council, for her to come across later and smile lovingly at, probably thinking 'what a typical Akane thing to do–

"Ah," Akane hissed before he realized why he was doing so, the sharp pain only coming in after he could feel the blood on the tip of his finger coming into contact with the cold air of the room. He quickly drew his hand back from the cutting mat before it touched the carrot - but, well, it touched the knife first.