Yours to Hold (An OHSHC fanfic) [Completed]

Chapter Seven

It didn’t surprise me much when Uncle declared the cookies weren’t to his taste. Instead of just throwing them away, however, I came up with a better idea.

“Senpai...these are a little sweet.”

I glanced at the sheepish first year and lowered my kendo sword. I noticed almost right away that it seemed each of the other club members had only taken one cookie each, despite the fact I’d told them I wanted to get rid of them. A sigh escaped my lips before I painted on a smile and looked to the kohai who’d spoken.

“It’s fine, you don’t have to eat it,” I told them. “Uncle didn’t like them either, so I hoped you guys would finish them off.”

For some reason, tears welled up on the kohai’s eyes. In my mind I went over what I’d said, there was nothing wrong in that sentence, was there?

“I’ll eat them all, senpai!” he declared, shoving the rest of the cookie in his mouth.

“Wait, didn’t you just say you didn’t like it?” I questioned, unable to keep the confusion, and slight irritation, from my face.

“Nwo ai nwever saih thah.”

I simply stared at the kid who was trying to talk with his mouth chalk full of cookies. Realization flashed across his face and it turned bright red. He then looked to be struggling for a moment as he obviously tried to swallow everything in his mouth. A second later he gave me a big grin as he was successful in the attempt.

“I said, no, I never said that,” he informed me cheerily. In return I studied him suspiciously, rather certain that he was lying. “After all, senpai is a wonderful cook! I would never hurt senpai’s feelings by saying otherwise!”

Ah, so that was it.

“It’d hurt my feelings more if you said they were good when they weren’t,” I told the kid simply.

His grin turned into a panicked expression as my words sunk in. Apparently the kid had no clue what to say to that. Just as I was about to let him off the hook something caught his attention over my shoulder.

“Mori-senpai!”

What?

“Mori-senpai, Morioka-senpai brought cookies!”

I turned away from them as Mori approached, hiding the fact that my face had flushed red. Mori had been there when I cooked them, surely he would be able to recognize not only the cookies, but the basket as well.

“If you don’t need anything else, I’m going back to practicing,” I grumbled.

Not much to my surprise, the kid didn’t continue to bug me. Instead, despite my attempts at tuning him out, I heard as he enthusiastically handed the cookies off to Mori using the excuse that he’d already eaten too many sweets today. Without waiting for any response from Mori, he took off to join his friends on the other side of the practice room.

Unable to help myself, I peeked behind me to see what Mori’s reaction to all of this was. I instantly regretted the action when I found my eyes meeting Mori’s. He had a cookie held in one hand, the basket settled in the other, and his kendo sword balanced against the wall behind him. Immediately straightening back around, I brought my sword down in a swift motion. It didn’t matter what he thought about those being the cookies from yesterday, I decided sullenly.

Despite my decision, I continued to think over what his reaction would be.

Perhaps he would simply think that I was being nice to the club members and bringing in the cookies I’d made yesterday. Sure, that move was out of character for me, but it wasn’t an impossibility. Instead of coming off as pathetic as my bringing them actually was, it would just come off as a strange, but kind move.