The Bakura family is copyright of Kazuki Takahashi.
Criticism and reviews always welcomed and embraced. Hope you enjoy!
Going by the dub canon for the family's nationality.
Knife, Fork, Spoon
The clock clicked seven o'clock on the mantelpiece. Mum usually had dinner finished by then, but Ryou started cooking late. An unforgiving stack of homework kept him at his desk later than usual, and a pounding headache afterwards left him lingering on the couch, staring at the ceiling and wishing the throb away.
It abated early in the evening; Ryou pulled himself off the couch, head from standing so quickly. He focused on the first object that caught his gaze, which proved to be the dining room's table. It was much smaller than the one in the flat, a circle wide enough to tightly accommodate the elbows of three people. Mum's table had been rectangular, crafted from dark oak wood, and it comfortably sat a family of four and a friend.
Even when Father was halfway across the world, over the Atlantic, the Pacific, thousands of miles away and scavenging through the ruins of long-dead societies, Mum set his place at the head of table. When Mum gave him that chore of setting the dinner table as a child, Ryou followed her example. Father wouldn't be back from Mexico in four months, but Mum acted as if he were just a room away; it struck Ryou as odd even as a child to set a place for him, but he was a good boy, and followed by Mum's good example.
Ryou got older, and more curious about the kitchen. Mum invited him into the kitchen with a smile, offering an older apron and asking,
"Do you want to learn how to make the spaghetti sauce?"
So the chores were switched. Ryou followed his mother, obedient, around the kitchen, holding out the spices, stirring the sauces and gravies with the wooden spoon, and watching with quiet interest as she sliced carrots, tomatoes, apples, and all manners of fruits and vegetables, smiling and humming and thoroughly engrossed in the domestic bliss of cooking. Even now Ryou couldn't imitate that sort of cheerfulness, nor her precision with preparing dinner; he avoided the cutting block of knives as he passed the table and into the kitchen.
"Amane, dear, please set the table."
"Right Mum," she chirped from the living room, and left her cartoons on as she busied herself with the cabinet. The silverware and plates clicked together, glasses clanked against one another, and Ryou paused at the stovetop, stained spoon in hand, and watched her balance the tower of plates in her arms. Amane's balanced proved steady, and she grinned with victory as she set down the pile of utensils on the table.
Ryou hesitated over the empty oven, then turned to the refrigerator. It seemed wasteful to cook another batch of spaghetti and sauce when the identical leftovers sat in there. He cooked enough three nights ago to last a few spaghetti dinners. After helping to cook for a dinner table three, rarely four, adjusting it to one, never two, proved more difficult that it should have rightfully been.
The Bakura family was nothing if not traditional. Mum set Father's place, Ryou set Father's plate. And when Mum took the spoon to finish the rest of the spaghetti sauce, Ryou would untie the apron's ribbon and take his traditional spot at the table, at Father's right and just across from his Mum. Amane sat in her seat and smiled as Ryou took his traditional seat as her left. The silverware clattered on the table; Amane's too-short legs swung out underneath it, her feet hitting the underside.
"Amane, sit still," Mum's voice came from the kitchen, and she added half-heartedly, "Ryou, please mind your sister."
The thud ceased and Amane stared up at her brother; Ryou shrugged and bumped his knee against the table, then smiled. Mum sighed from the sink as she strained the spaghetti.
Amane was practical when not traditional. With the spaghetti and sauce bowl heavy in her arms, Mum stopped over the siblings' chairs. Ryou glanced through his bangs at her, curious and stomach growling at the smell of tomatoes and garlic. She did not notice, nor did she notice when Amane's feet tapped the underside of the table.
Three forks, plates, spoons and knives were arranged against three linen napkins across the table that sat a family of four and a friend. It was not until Amane commented on how yummy dinner smelled that Mum placed both the spaghetti and its sauce on the table. Ryou helped Amane with her plate and Mum sunk into her seat, doling out the smallest mound of spaghetti and a sprinkling of sauce. Even that she could not finish; Mum broke her own rule ("You are not to leave the table until you've cleaned your plates, no matter what story your brother's reading to you") and went to bed without a word.
But Ryou could take care of Amane. They ate, Ryou cleaned the dishes and pots and wooden spoon while she snapped off the telly and picked out the book for him to read.
The microwave beeped; Ryou tossed the empty bottle of Advil into the trashcan and pulled the warm Tupperware out. The steam tickled his nose and the plastic sides burned his hands, but he took his place at the circular table. Ryou could be practical, sometimes. The round table had only two places set tonight.
"Mum sets the table 'cause she thinks Papa will be back early," Amane told him with the bluntness of a young girl that night; the pair had curled up on a couch with a book and a box of cookies. "Papa's never early though. She should've realized that by now. Mum can be really silly, huh, Ryou?"
He chuckled, staring at the untouched knife, fork, and spoon besides him. Somehow he couldn't imagine Amane being upset or irritated; bemused, perhaps, Amane was growing to be practical and bemused by the world. She may have teased him, rolled her eyes and say he was just like Mum.
"Sorry Amane," Ryou apologized to the laid-out silverware, and dug into his reheated spaghetti without another word.