I N N O C E N C E (Shu Sakamaki)

Chapter 13

Manami awoke laying under her warm blanket. Her head was throbbing and her mouth felt dry. It took her a moment to regain composure, but that proved to be hard as she struggled to sit upright on her bed.

A hand landed on her shoulder, pulling her back into the bed. Next to her, on the bedside, was Shu.

"You drank too much alcohol." He said, passing a glass of hot water to the girl. "You have a temperature."

"Fuck." She said, rubbing her aching forehead. "Not this again."

Shu kept on staring at her, as if demanding her to continue. Manami sighed and talked on.

"Sometimes the taste of the bitterness and its aftertaste," she rubbed her forehead as her eyebrows twisted into a frown, "is exactly what one needs."

"But if I look on the bright side," she lifted her head up and gave Shu the side eye, "I took Reiji's favorite. Poor man is going through a tough time right now..."

She would be right, as nobody in the house knew, that in this current moment, Reiji had been sitting in his study and contemplating if he could find the second bottle on the internet.

"Hmm." Shu hummed, before picking up a tablet and handing it to Manami. "Take this."

"Alright." She said, but before she opened the tablet, she read the title. "Wait, are you giving me medicine against a migraine?"

"Migraine?" He questioned, as Manami looked at him wide eyed.

"You really don't know how to take care of a sick person." She closed her eyes in irritation, before giving him an overwhelmed look. "Have you had any experience that is in any way similar to a human lifestyle?"

"I worked as a cashier." He said, looking to the side as if remembering something. "I did good."

"I highly doubt that..." Manami said but quiet enough for Shu to still hear. "Bring me your medicine kit."

It took him a moment to do what she said, even though it irritated him that he was letting a human girl boss him around. He didn't have much of a choice in this situation, though, as all of the brothers had appointed him to the task.

"Ok, these should be enough." Manami said, placing the boxes of medicine on the side. "Do you know how to cook?"

Shu looked at her with an unimpressed expression, as Manami sighed in response.

"It's okay." She said, inhaling and exhaling to calm herself down. "It will be fine. I'll just give you a recipe and you make it."

"I'm not cooking." He replied in a serious tone as Manami looked at him expectingly.

"Would you rather me be sick?"

Silence.

"You don't have a choice, 'darling.'" She smiled at him sarcastically and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen to write with.

It took her a couple of minutes to scribble out the recipe, as Shu watched her intensely. Manami noticed this, slightly shivering under his gaze.

"Oh," she said, not shifting her attention from the paper, "it's a habit of mine to write this fast. Please excuse me."

Finally, when she was done, she placed a pen to the side and passed the paper onto Shu. "Good luck."

With that, she turned in her bed, burying her face into the pillow.

"He had never set a foot into the kitchen, until today, did he?" She mumbled as she headed the door close.
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Taking a look at the paper, he carefully got out the kitchenware that he presumed were the most appropriate to her descriptions.