Beauty vs the Beast (Katsuki Bakugo fanfic)

20:「 Red like Apples 」

The morning of Carine's day off consisted of Akiza sending her out to buy groceries. It was a warm day with the sun shining brightly above her.

She wore her long hair in braids, and her attire was made up of a short, casual dress with sandals.

With a brown bag in hand, Carine walked along the pavement to the nearest market. Her eyes looked down at the sidewalk as she moved, but she knew of her arrival beforehand, thanks to the jingling of the bell that accompanied the door.

A pair of clean, white sneakers caught Carine's eye. She raised her gaze to see who they belonged to, only to come face to face with a familiar spiky haired blonde.

His calm face immediately turned into a scowl after he recognized who was in front of him. "What the hell are you doing here!?" he asked sourly, remembering the day before. She was the last person he wanted to see.

"To buy apples," Carine replied in an unconcerned manner. "What about you?"

Bakugo turned his head to the side with an irritated twitch in his eyebrow. "To buy apples..."

"Really? I'll join you then!" Carine insisted.

"Do whatever you want. Just don't bother me," Bakugo said as he opened the door and went inside the store. Carine followed behind him to the produce section.

There were a variety of colored apples stacked alongside each other, but the red ones were by far her favorite. The same seemed to apply to Bakugo, who stood beside her in front of the red apples.

Carine took an apple from the cart and examined it. "Does this one look ripe to you?" she asked Bakugo, whose scarlet eyes flickered over to the apple in her hand.

"No," he asserted firmly. "It has to be the right shade of red or it's not ripe enough. The majority of it needs to be firm, especially towards the stem." Bakugo picked up another apple from the cart and held it between his thumb and index finger; he squeezed the apple gently.

"If you squeeze it and it doesn't squish, then it's a good apple, but If there are spots that are rotten, dark brown, or too soft, the apple's already gone bad." he stated.

Carine looked at Bakugo as he examined the apple, amazed at his unexpected skill for grocery shopping. Bakugo, however, stopped what he was doing and shifted his eyes over to Carine.

"What the hell are you looking at?" he yelled, his facing turning an unruly shade of red.

Carine blinked and looked at the fruit he was holding. "That apple you picked out...it's perfect," she remarked.

There was an undeniable truth to her words: the apple in his hand was a perfect hue of red, with no cuts or bruises on the exterior, and seemed firm under Bakugo's grasp.

"Of course it is. It's not that hard!" he retorted; the red on his face didn't appear to be fading anytime soon. Quickly, he picked out a few more.

With his advice, Carine managed to fill up her bag with ripe apples. Bakugo walked away from the cart of apples and slung his bag over his shoulder, looking back at Carine.

"Are you finished yet? I haven't got all day, you know!" he snapped.

"Yeah, I'm finished!" Carine replied as she walked up next to him with her own bag. The two of them walked alongside each other to the register, where a middle-aged man stood.

Although it was Bakugo who seemed like he was in a hurry, he had let Carine go in front of him.Carine put her bag of apples on top of the counter, and the man checked them out for her.