Boy Bait (I Don't Really Need It)
Today was auspicious: the teacher adviser to the library committee had finally gotten after the students who kept skipping out on their desk hours, leaving Saori and Minako to handle the library by themselves during club hours. While it was nice, it did leave a problem. "Well, what now?" Saori asked, not sure. Minako managed a busy school life somehow, but Saori always stuck with the library committee or went home.
"Hmm," Minako said, tilting her head to the side. It was a cute motion, especially when she lit up with an idea. "Oh, got it! Why don't you come with me to the Cooking Club? I've had a recipe I've been wanting to try out."
"That could be nice," Saori said. She usually cooked for herself, by herself. But cooking with others, especially Minako, could be fun.
She took her hand and started off down the hall. "Great, let's go grab Fuuka and head to the home ec room!"
"Are you sure it's going to be all right for me to just drop in?" she asked. Thankfully, Minako went at an easy pace to keep up with this time.
"Sure, it'll be great since it's an unofficial club and it's only ever me and her. I'd like to see it get more members so we can come out as official in March."
"I'd be happy to help out with that," Saori said. This year had been made immensely better by meeting Minako, so making more friends should make her senior year even better.
Luckily, they found Minako's friend not far from the Home Ec room. Saori recognized her then, as the small quiet girl in her homeroom class. They'd not talked to each other much, but knowing Fuuka by name made things easier. And she was happy to have a third member to the Cooking Club. "I'm still not very good, but I'm getting better," Fuuka said. "Minako's great at cooking, so you can ask her if you have any questions."
"I know some cooking," she said. "Although, I haven't tried anything difficult to make. But it'd be nice to learn some more recipes that are just for fun."
Minako smiled at that and pulled the door open for them. "Well that's good, because I found this fun recipe online that we should have the ingredients for. We're going to make some boy bait today!"
"What?" the other two asked. Fuuka had her hand over her mouth while Saori was a little confused. Was she just being silly like she was some days? She couldn't mean to actually bait a boy… could she? What did that make them?
Thankfully, she was laughing. "It's just a goofy name. The other name on the page was even worse, or funnier depending on how you view it."
"What was the other name?" Saori asked, following her into the home ec room.
Setting her schoolbag on an open table, Minako opened it up to find the recipe. "I am not kidding when I say that the other name was elf droppings. The recipe itself looks appetizing, so I figured I'd rather go with the more appealing name."
"Oh, I don't blame you there," Saori said, smiling at it.
"I've seen names like that before on recipes," Fuuka said, setting down her schoolbag as well. "Like witch's snot cookies. It always bewildered me why they'd pick a gross name like that for something you eat. So what do we need?"
There were just four ingredients to the boy bait: sugar, corn syrup, peanut butter, and crispy rice cereal that Minako somehow knew was already in the home ec pantry. It sounded rather sweet; Minako explained it as an American recipe, which made sense. However, that also meant that they had to deal with figuring out the metric versions of the measurements.
"It is a confusing conversion," Fuuka said, going for her phone. "But I've got a program here that should do it. I can handle the measuring then."
"Good, and I'll handle heating up the syrup and sugar," Minako said, leaving the recipe with her and going for a pan. "That's the potential tricky step." Then she whispered by Saori, "Keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get distracted. She's getting better, but still."
"Oh, okay," Saori said, going over to the counter where the recipe was to read it. "Hmm, you need wax paper too, let me get that spread out."
Even if they were classmates, Saori wasn't sure what to talk about with Fuuka. And while Fuuka tried to bring up some topics, she didn't seem that sure of conversations either. That changed once Minako was done with the syrup mix and could talk with them. She never seemed to have a problem talking with others. Early on in the school year, Saori had started watching her to figure out how she did it. it hadn't taken long for her observations to be about more than just being social. Minako was a kind and loyal person, willing to listen to anything Saori had to say.
"These do look, um, kind of like droppings," Fuuka said as they each had a spoon with which to place portions on the wax paper to cool.
"We're dropping them, so they are droppings," Saori said, smiling even though it was a simple joke.
"That is true!" Minako said while Fuuka laughed and then got embarrassed about it. "These won't be the healthiest things, but who cares? I didn't learn cooking just to feed myself; I learned it so I can treat myself too."
"That's a good way to think about it," Saori said. "I learned to help my mom out with meals, and then to support myself when I was learning overseas. But I haven't learned much in the way of treating myself."
"Well you should because you deserve it," she said, reaching over to pat her back.
"Maybe not that many sweets, but a few would be good," she said, trying not to show how happy she was in case that made Fuuka uncomfortable.
"Sweets are a hard thing to get right," Fuuka said. "Though, I would like to be able to make some as treats for me and my friends. Actually, I got started with this cooking club because I wanted to be more helpful around the dorm Minako and I live in. I didn't really have that many friends before this year, but then Minako started talking to me one day. Before long, I got invited to the dorm because my home life was, well, stifling, I guess you could say. But all my dorm mates are great people. For some reason, we've gotten really close to each other quickly. It's kind of like a family there, making it a bit sad that it's January and the seniors are going to move out shortly."
"Yeah, we're going to have to put together a going-away party for them," Minako said.
"But that's wonderful that you could make a family like that," Saori said.
"Well then you should join us in March!" Minako suggested with a big grin.
Saori laughed at the idea. "Maybe. Do you think it'd be okay?"
"I'm sure the others will be happy for more friendly faces around," Fuuka said. "And if you're a friend of Minako, then you're sure to be friends with everybody there."
"We're way more than friends, honestly," she said.
"Minako!" Saori said, embarrassed but happy. She got a towel nearby and smacked her with it for fun.
Fortunately, Fuuka laughed at their antics. "So that's how it is? That's great! You're a lucky girl Saori."
"I know, I'm glad for it," Saori said.
"I'm glad for every day I get with everybody, but very much grateful for time with Saori," Minako said sweetly. "Looks like this is the last to the batch. We've got plenty of time to chat with this one."
"Great!" Fuuka said. "Actually, I was wondering just now. Minako, if you've got Saori, why did you want to make something called boy bait?"
"Shh!" she said, putting a finger to her lips. She then looked around, exaggerating her caution. Leaning over the counter, she said in a loud whisper, "I've got plans, see? But they need a lot of prep work and I need to bribe the boys in my homeroom into doing it for me. I hope this stuff is enough to lure them into my trap."
Saori leaned in, finding the conspiracy fun. "Is this about making the teachers happy so that they might make finals easier?"
"At least not dropping surprise questions on us like last semester," Minako said. "Plus, they're our teachers and they have to put up with everybody. It's no wonder some of them get irritated. Or weird, but that's their own personalities. So we do something nice, and they might do something nice in return."
"That sounds like a good plan," Fuuka said. "Although not worth acting like you're up to something troublesome."
Minako pouted. "Aw, but it's more fun!"
"Maybe we can get our homeroom to do something nice too," Saori said. "I wouldn't want to make the teachers think we're up to trouble. Although, it might be fun to think of it like a prank." The latter was more like Minako, something Saori would have never considered before meeting her.
"Yeah! Let's figure this out. If you need some muscle, you can take some of the boy bait to get the guys to do things."
While the plot to be nice to the teachers took up much of the club time, they also discussed gathering enough people to make the cooking club official. Soari wanted to see that happen now; she wanted more fun like that in her life. Fuuka excused herself early to go make a flier at the dorm to pull in new members, leaving Minako and Saori behind to clean up the home ec room.
There was something that Saori wanted to mention while they were alone. "You seem really happy today, Minako."
"Yeah, I'm glad we got this chance to have you try out another club," she said. "It's another thing we can have fun with. I thought about inviting you earlier, but we kept having to be on duty at the library."
She nodded. "If we're in another club, the committee should let us take days off library duty. But I'm more happy you're happy. You've been quieter than normal lately."
"It's January, that's all," Minako said, but then she stopped.
"Um, I hope I didn't remind you of something bad, sorry," she said, feeling bad about it.
She shook her head. "Don't worry about it." Then she tilted her head again and smiled. "Hey, Saori? If I told you that I'm really a hundred years old, would you believe me?"
"Huh?" That couldn't be possible; maybe she was joking. But she asked if she would believe it.
"Well I'm not quite a hundred yet," Minako said, tapping her fingers in counting. "But I'm up there over fifty."
Saori figured she might like a joke for that. "Then you look really great for your age."
She laughed, the last bit of dismal mood lifting from her. "Thanks! The story is, at one time during a January that's very close but feels very far, the world nearly came to an end. We were facing a monumental threat that only gave us one chance to survive. And, I sacrificed myself to take that chance, so that the world could live on. So that you could make something good of your life."
"You'd do that for everyone?" she asked, feeling strange in hearing this. Like it really was something that could have been even as farfetched as it seemed. "Actually, you would. I know you would."
"But a bunch of people worked hard to make it so that I didn't have to remain sacrificed permanently," Minako said. "It took them a really long time to do it. When I came back, just as I am now, they were all much older. But I had a choice to make, whether to come back to these years without the threat that nearly ended the world, or to continue my life in that future time. Not all of my friends were there; some had not survived that long. So, I decided to come back now to a peaceful high school life."
"Of course, that's why we're here now," Saori said.
She then turned with a playful look on her face. "Nice story, huh? I could write a book about it if I change everyone's names."
"Is it really the truth?" she asked. "It would be a great story, but I feel like I know it's true."
"Well I hope you don't remember any of that time," Minako said. "But I might talk with you about it; it still gives me nightmares sometimes." Then she came over and took her arm. "I've been wanting to tell you this for a while, even if I don't tell the others. And, I want you to know that I really do treasure every day I get to be with you. I thought about you a lot when I was the seal and hoped you were doing well. This time, I'll make sure your life goes well from now on. That'll make me happy."
Feeling her face get warm at that, Saori felt a momentary doubt in doing this. But she believed Minako. If she did spent fifty or even a hundred years apart from everyone, Saori hoped she would get a chance to enjoy life now. "Minako… I don't know how I could mean so much to you, but you've helped me so much already. I'm having fun in life now. So, I want to keep having fun with you."
"Yes, we'll make a fun life together."
A/N: Written for a Yuletide exchange. And the recipe is real (as are the witch snot cookies!); here it is if you want to try.
Boy bait/ elf droppings, makes three dozen
half a cup of sugar
half a cup of light corn syrup
one cup peanut butter
two cups crisp rice cereal
Combine sugar and syrup in medium saucepan; cook over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, add peanut butter, stirring until mixture is smooth. Stir in cereal. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto wax paper. Let cool completely, store in airtight container.