AN: Sometimes you just want to write a silly, light oneshot and not explain anything at all. I hope everyone has half as much fun reading this as I did writing it!
Cooking Lessons with Mouri Ran
Characters: Mouri Ran, Hattori Heiji, Sera Masumi
"Honestly, I don't know how I let ya talk me into this, Neechan."
"Oh? Weren't you the one to ask me to help you, Hattori-kun?" Turning on her heel, Mouri Ran glanced behind her, a curious expression on her face. "I thought you said that you wanted to surprise Kazuha-chan."
"I did say that, but I didn't know it would involve cookin'." Folding his arms in front of his chest, Hattori Heiji let out a long sigh, his gaze sliding to the side. "An' what's this tomboy detective doin' here anyways? I thought I was the one ya were gonna teach today."
"I heard about it from Ran-chan, and thought it sounded interesting!" Clearly full of anticipation, Sera Masumi could only beam. "Besides, I didn't get many chances to talk to you the last time we met, Hattori-kun, so I thought I would take this chance to get to know you a little better. Am I bothering you?"
"...no, not really." Heiji said after a moment, frowning slightly. Wasn't this the same girl who had been snooping around Kudo Shinichi before? Was she really here just to learn how to cook?
"It's fine, right?" Ran asked, glancing between the two of them, a smile on her face. "The more the merrier!"
"...well, I guess." Heiji admitted, heaving a sigh, finally flashing a grin of his own. "So? What are we goin' ta make anyways?"
"I thought we'd start off with something basic." Ran told them. "In other words, curry!"
"Curry, huh..." Trailing off a little, for a moment, Heiji averted his gaze, his thoughts almost seeming to drift elsewhere.
"Is there something wrong with curry, Hattori-kun?" Ran asked, tilting her head.
"Ah, no!" Quickly shaking his head, Heiji let out a somewhat nervous sounding laugh. Given the way his hand strayed up behind his neck, a nervous habit that she had come to know well, he wasn't really fooling anyone. "Curry's fine, Neechan! I love curry!"
"Could it be that you had trouble making it before?" Sera asked, peering over towards him with curiosity. "I can understand, I can understand! No one in my family is really all that good at cooking either."
"Hattori-kun's mother is a great cook, though." Ran chimed in, glancing between them, slightly pursing her lips together. For just a second, she almost felt something akin to regret for taking on this job, but how hard could it be to teach the two of them to cook anyways? The dish wasn't that hard, and Heiji seemed to know a lot of rough basics about cooking to begin with, even if he'd never actually done it himself before.
Even if there were a few hiccups here and there, she was sure that things would work out well!
"Heh, really?" Sera asked, blinking a little. "That's the exact opposite of my mom, then."
"Heh, yer mom's bad at cookin'?" Heiji asked. "But ya don't have ta worry, Neechan. I might have had a little trouble makin' curry in the past, but that's almost ancient history by now!"
...well, it had actually been just last year, but she didn't need to know that.
"Don't worry about it, Hattori-kun. After all, learning is the reason you're both here, right?" Ran asked. "I'm sure you'll both do fine. You both at least know how to prepare rice, right?"
"That much I know." Heiji said, nodding his head. "I don't know about this tomboy neechan over here, though."
"I can at least make rice. Using a rice cooker, at least. Pot rice... is a bit much for me." Sera told her, pausing for a moment. "Though I do sometimes forget about it, and it ends up burnt."
"Ah that happens, that happens." Heiji said, nodding his head. "Ya let yerself get distracted an' the next thing ya, ya smell that awful burnt smell! It clings to things too, that smell."
"Well, don't worry, I'll make sure we don't burn the rice. And there's nothing wrong with using a rice cooker for it, Sera-chan, so don't worry." Ran said, once more glancing between the two of them, once again feeling a slight edge of nervousness. Well, even if they were easily distracted, as long as she was here watching over them, nothing could go seriously wrong, right?
"Then, we're countin' on ya, Neechan!" Heiji said, grinning from ear to ear. "What should we do first?"
"Then could you wash the rice, Hattori-kun?" Ran asked.
"Eh? You're supposed to wash rice?" Sera asked, visibly startled by this information. "I'm guessing you don't use soap to do it, though."
"...yeah, you're supposed to wash it." Ran said, slowly nodding her head. "But maybe it's not as common over where you used to live, Sera-chan? And that's right, you mostly just run it under cold water until it runs clean. It's easy."
"Well, to be honest, the first time I did it as a kid, I put dish detergent in there." Heiji admitted- and at the quick way the other two looked at him, he gave them an uneasy smile, holding up his hands. "Of course, that was when I was a kid, a kid. I know better than that now."
"Well, I suppose we do all make mistakes like that when we're young..." Ran said, trailing off a bit, briefly wondering if it was too late to back out now. "Then, we'll start with the rice, and then move on to the vegetables from there. For meat, we'll use the chicken I got at the market. It was on sale."
"Roger~!" Flashing her a quick grin, Heiji grabbed the rice from where Ran had set it out beforehand, before pausing, glancing back at her. "So, how much do ya want anyways, Neechan?"
"Just enough for three people should be fine." Ran said. "Now then, for vegetables, we'll be using carrots, potatoes, and onions. Be careful to cut them all the way through this time, Hattori-kun."
"I know, I know." Heiji grumbled, shooting her a look as he opened up the rice cooker. "I'm not about ta make the same mistake twice, ya know!"
"I was only just making sure." Ran told him, giving him an almost apologetic smile. "Then, Sera-chan, can you cut the onions? I'll leave cutting the carrots and potatoes to you, Hattori-kun."
"Of course!" Rolling up her sleeves, Sera grinned. "Leave it to me!"
"Don't ya connect 'em either, Sera-han." Heiji teased.
"Don't worry! I can at the very least chop an onion." Sera reassured him. "It can't be that hard, right?"
Though her words filled her with a strange sense of apprehension, Ran didn't have time to dwell on it long, catching the sound of the phone ringing in the living room. Since Conan was out at the moment, and her father was downstairs, nobody else was around to answer it, so she gave the pair a properly apologetic smile. "Sorry. I need to go answer that. The two of you go ahead and get started."
"Yeah, go ahead!" Sera said, picking up the onion that Ran had left out on the counter.
Hesitating for a moment longer, Ran hurried into the living room, barely catching the phone before the answering machine did. It was Conan on the other end of the line- informing her that he was planning to stay over at the Professor's that night, and wouldn't need dinner. After a short bit of conversation, Ran said goodbye, and hung up the phone.
When she got back to the kitchen, she fully understood the source of her earlier feeling of apprehension.
"Oh, Ran-chan!" Glancing back at her as she entered, Sera flashed her a smile. "I finished chopping the onion! I'll have you know I only cried a little."
For how proud she looked of herself, it actually took Ran a moment to register what was obviously wrong here. Opening and then closing her mouth, trying to think of the most possible polite way to say it, she found herself preempted by someone who apparently hadn't even considered that.
"Hey, what are ya doin', ya idiot?" Heiji broke in. "Ya didn't even peel it!"
"Eh?" Sera blinked, glancing down at her chopped onion, then back up at him. "...I need to peel it first?"
"Of course ya do!" Heiji said, letting out a long sigh. "If ya don't even know somethin' that basic, why did ya act like ya knew what ya were doin'?"
"Um, Hattori-kun," Ran finally broke in, having drawn her attention away from the sight of Sera's handiwork to focus on that of Heiji's own, almost struggling to keep a smile on her face. "...were you planning to chop those more?"
"Eh?" Now it was Heiji's turn to look surprised, as he glanced down at the contents of his own cutting board. "Chop them again? What do ya mean? Aren't they properly separated this time?"
"They are, but..." Ran trailed off, drawing in and letting out a deep breath. Well... she'd never thought this would have been that easy. "...if you cut them that large, it'll take forever for them soften, not to mention you'd have to cut them up all over again when you actually eat the curry."
His face turning a slight tint of red, Heiji quickly coughed into his hand, trying to cover it up. "R-right. I was actually just about ta do that! I was just jokin' earlier, just jokin'!"
"Doesn't seem like you were joking to me, Hattori-kun." Sera's tone was light, clearly repaying what had been said to her just earlier. "Then what should I do about this onion, Ran-chan?"
"Well, for the moment, let me just get you a fresh one." Ran told her, internally wincing at the waste of an onion. She'd save it, and hopefully would be able to find a use for it later. "It doesn't seem like you cut off the ends either, so we'll just take it from the top. I'll show you the proper technique this time."
"Thank you!" Flashing her a bright smile, Sera stepped back, as Ran fished out another onion, brushing the one that Sera had butchered to the side of the cutting board. "You're really good at this, Ran-chan!"
Biting back a comment that most of what she'd said thus far was basically common sense, Ran restrained herself. Just because it was common sense for her, there was still a chance that didn't hold true for everyone... even though she got the feeling that Conan probably wouldn't make any of the same mistakes.
...actually from the times he had helped her in the kitchen, she knew he wouldn't.
"Then, you do it like this, Sera-chan." Ran told her, starting by loping off either end of the onion. She didn't get much further than that though, when a loud yelp caused her to drop her knife, grateful that she hadn't been cutting anything at the time.
Otherwise she was pretty sure that she would have done the exact thing that Heiji had just done.
...in hindsight, maybe she should have expected this. His luck was of the notoriously awful sort. She'd just gotten so used to people dropping like flies that she'd nearly forgotten it tended to manifest itself in other ways as well.
"Are you alright, Hattori-kun!?" If she hadn't already dropped what she was doing, she would have done it now, hurrying to his side. "Do we need to call an ambulance!?"
"Ah, no, no." Waving a hand, the one that he hadn't cut, Heiji gave her a somewhat awkward smile, as if he wondering just how ingrained that instinct was in her by now that it was the first thing she had thought of. "It's just a small cut, ya don't need ta make such a big deal out of it."
Her shoulders slumping, Ran let out a long sigh. "Well, at the very least, let's treat it before we continue. I'll go get the first aid kit, so run it under some water until I come back. Sera-chan, sorry, but could see if he bled on any of the vegetables and throw them out if he did?"
"Wouldn't it be fine if we just washed them?" Sera asked.
Stopping in her tracks, Ran turned on her heel, looking her classmate dead in the eye. "...for both of our sakes, I'm going to pretend I never heard that."
If there was one valuable lesson that she had learned in life, it was to listen to her gut. Time after time, she'd found that any time that she didn't, thing usually ended just as she feared. And yet, somehow, every now and again, she forgot the lesson that she had learned.
Today, she thought, was one of them.
At the very least, judging from the way that neither of them could so much as look her in the eye, they were well aware that they had done something wrong. To be frank, something wrong didn't even begin to describe what it was that she was dealing with here. It almost felt like underselling the whole situation.
To be frank, she still didn't know how everything had managed to go so wrong. With her here with them, things shouldn't have gone this badly, and yet...
Drawing in and letting out a long breath, Ran gathered herself up, watching as the two usually boisterous teens flinched as she merely looked in their direction. "You two," she began, watching the pair of them tense up, nearly swallowing in unison. "...from now on, I'll be teaching you to cook separately."
"...ya don't think it might be better ta give up?" Heiji asked, a clear hint of nervousness in his voice, any excuses that he wanted to make dead before he even so much thought as giving voice to them.
"No, I'm not giving up." Determination filling her voice anew, Ran planted her hands on her hips, steel in her gaze. "If anything, today's lesson has proved to me that the two of you desperately need to be coached. You can't become a proper adult if you don't know how to cook!"
"My mom-" Sera spoke up, only to cut herself off when Ran leveled her gaze with her.
"I have half a mind to drag your mom in here to teach her how to cook as well." Ran told her. "As soon as we get done cleaning up this mess, we're sitting down and making a proper schedule for classes. Where's you answer!?"
Briefly exchanging a glance with each other, Sera and Heiji could only accept the fate that they had wrought themselves. Protesting with Ran right now was a fool's errand, and neither of them were nearly that reckless.
"...yes."
"Good." Ran said, nodding her head. "At the very least, we can eat the rice that-" pausing for a moment, her brow furrowed together, almost feeling as if she had forgotten something- before it dawned on her like a pile of bricks.
"...did you remember to set the timer on the rice cooker, Hattori-kun?"
"...ah."
(He'd called it the most disgusting thing he'd ever tasted, but that apparently didn't stop Heiji from eating every bite of it. How he managed to digest something that she was almost certain wasn't fit for human consumption with seemingly no ill effects, Ran didn't know- and to be frank, she honestly didn't want to find out.
Some mysteries weren't meant to be solved.)