A Firefly's Glow

Chapter Thirteen: Part One

I bemusedly peered at Mikan with one of my eyebrows arched on my forehead. “What are you doing?”

Mikan was slouched over a tabletop with her cheek resting against the wood. Her nose was almost touching the glass plate that sat before her.

I glimpsed at the slice of cake that sat upon her plate, although it didn’t look anything like a normal, frosted cake.

The dark frosting was coated in streaks of darker speckles, as if it had been dropped on ash. It drooped to one side like abnormal jelly.

“What is that?” I asked, squinting my eyes at the charred frosting. “Is it edible?”

“Yes, it is!” Mikan grunted, swinging her head upright. “But I don’t think the customers think so.”

“Well, what is it?”

Mikan hastily stood up, shoving the chair she sat on away from the table in screeches. “It’s my Chunky, Chunky Choco Cake!”

So it is cake, I silently pondered, knitting my eyebrows below my forehead.

“I put it up on the ‘special’ menu for the past two days,” Mikan grumbled, folding her arms and glaring at the pile of frosted soot. “But no one has ordered it yet.”

“Maybe,” a slightly sarcastic voice sounded from behind the counter. Amanatsu whipped the rag he hung over his shoulders and scraped the top of the counter. “It’s because you’re selling that cake for six-hundred yen ($6) a slice.”

“It’s really good cake!” Mikan insisted, shooting a sharp glare towards her brother. “It’s worth six-hundred yen!”

I didn’t dare say a word aloud of my thoughts, but I did ponder about how a six-hundred yen cake slice would make sense. Even if the cake was good cake, I wasn’t sure I’d put down six-hundred yen for one slice.

Especially when the cake looked like it was part of a rotting zombie.

“Amanatsu,” Mikan crooned through gritted teeth. “Give me a tray.”

“Don’t you have two feet that aren’t broken—“

“GIVE ME A TRAY!!”

At the sound of Mikan’s ear-piercing roar, Amanatsu quickly whipped a tray off the countertop and shoved it towards Mikan in less than two seconds.

She poured the charred slice of soot onto the tray and whipped a fork out of her apron. As she pried the slice into smaller chunks, she growled, “I’m going to hand out some samples!”

“Uh oh,” was what Amanatsu and I murmured in exact unison.

Why we muttered this in exact unison was because first of all, we both know that Mikan “handing out” samples means Mikan forcing samples down innocent humans’ throats—even if she kills them in the process. (She’s never killed anyone . . . yet.)

And we knew that we’d be on full employee mode by the time Mikan returned because handing out samples was one of her crazed ideas. And her ideas—as crazy or as ridiculous or as scary as they were—never failed.

“Hey, one of the customers is requesting a second glass of water,” a drowsy voice murmured as Sora wobbled towards us with the back of her wrist stroking her eyes.

Mikan slowly turned her gaze around towards the poor, unfortunate, blonde-haired misfit that had stepped into such a dangerous position to be at such a dangerous time.

“Sora,” Mikan chuckled with a sly smile rising across her face.

Sora’s eyes trailed from Mikan’s peculiarly enthusiastic smile to the tray that she clutched into her hands and she stumbled backwards.