So many people associate the end of summer with melancholy, the feeling that something had ended, but for Sayaka, it had always been the opposite. She always wanted to make her girlfriend, Kyouko, as happy as possible during that time, since her birthday was in mid-October.
They had been dating for five years, and for each one, Sayaka had brought something new to the table in terms of birthday parties. One year, she'd arranged for a hot air balloon ride over the city; another time, she'd taken Kyouko on a scenic train ride followed by a surprise party on a boat.
Kyouko acted like these things didn't matter to her, but Sayaka knew the truth. It did matter, and it wouldn't have been the same if anyone else had done it. She may have acted as though she hadn't a care in the world, but Sayaka saw the way Kyouko smiled when she did something special for her - whether it was Kyouko's birthday or not. The fact that her girlfriend cared enough to go the extra mile meant more to her than she would ever let on.
But Sayaka had a comfort zone, and she hadn't allowed herself to leave it, even for Kyouko's birthday.
Sayaka couldn't bake.
This wasn't to say she hadn't tried - she had, much to the frustration of everyone who was supposed to eat whatever she made, because none of it was edible. Cookies always ended up burnt to the pan, brownies were always too runny, and cakes, well... the one time she'd tried to bake Kyouko a birthday cake (the second year they were dating), it had collapsed while still in the oven.
But this year, she decided, she would finally master it. Baking would not be such a mystery to her anymore, and what better time to finally succeed at making a cake than the birthday of the woman she loved?
The idea was perfect.
Sayaka decided to get supplies while Kyouko was out; she'd find some way to get her out of the house while the cake was actually being baked, but she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.
She'd printed a recipe the morning before, had read over it a few times - just to be sure - and finally, when she was convinced that she knew what she was doing, she drove to the grocery store to pick up supplies.
Luckily, everything was in the same aisle, since it was all classified as "baking goods". Sayaka started by getting the simple ingredients - flour, cocoa powder, sugar, and baking soda. They already had salt, oil, and vanilla at home...
It sometimes amazed Sayaka that she'd ever gotten to the point where the little apartment, only 700 square feet, was home to her. But the answer, she realized, was in Kyouko. If Kyouko lived anywhere - Even if she was one of those weirdos who hide out in department stores, Sayaka thought, suppressing a laugh, - that was home. Kyouko was the one who cheered her up when her ideas slipped through the cracks at work, who believed that Sayaka was the most important person in her life. And of course, the feeling was mutual.
Sayaka had spaced out, staring at the shopping list in her hand. Now she did a double-take, really looking at one of the ingredients for the first time.
"Wait - is this recipe actually telling me to put vinegar in a cake?"
It was outrageous - but Sayaka wouldn't have any of it.
Forget it, she thought. There is no way I am putting vinegar in a birthday cake. Especially not this one.
Feeling rebellious, she grabbed a pencil out of her purse and crossed out any references to vinegar in the recipe.
After the shopping was done, Sayaka drove back to the apartment, determined to get this one right. Even if she never baked anything of quality again, this cake would come out perfect.
She was putting the baking supplies away when she heard the apartment door open.
"Sayaka?"
She hurriedly put the sugar away and stepped out of the kitchen.
"Hey, how was your day?"
Kyouko yawned. "Pretty good, actually. Yours?"
"Same. Where'd you go?"
"The supermarket."
Sayaka froze.
Oblivious, her girlfriend continued, "I saw you there, actually... I was going to come join you, but you were muttering to yourself about vinegar, so I decided not to bother you. What were you getting there, anyway?"
"Oh, you know..." Sayaka said nervously. "Stuff for this week, like your apples and a frozen pizza." This was true. She'd at least remembered to pick up meals for the coming week, which now worked well as a cover story.
"Really? I got meals for this week, too, but mine were all frozen, so I guess we can save 'em."
Sayaka breathed a sigh of relief. Kyouko's birthday surprise remained a surprise, but of course, the hardest part was still to come.
She woke up the next morning with Kyouko snoring softly next to her. She still had to get her out of the house for the day, but as for how to do that...
Struck by the most obvious solution, she tiptoed out of bed and into the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her. Quickly, Sayaka dialed Mami's number on her cell phone, opening the curtains as she did so.
After a few rings, a sleepy voice answered, "Hello?"
"Hi," Sayaka whispered. "Listen, you know what today is, right?"
"Of course," Mami replied, sounding much more awake. "We do something every year, how could I forget?"
"Well, this year's going to be a little different. You see, I'm planning something special for the two of us tonight, but I need all day to prepare, so do you think you, Madoka, and Homura could..."
"Of course! We'll see to it that you don't spoil the surprise, while Kyouko can have fun in the meantime. What are you going to do, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Well..." Sayaka hesitated, not wanting to be shot down in her attempt to try to excel at something she had only failed at before.
"Sayaka," Mami teased, "You're not baking a cake, are you?"
"...No comment."
Unfortunately, Mami took this remark at face value, and continued, "Oh my God! You're not proposing?"
"No! No, not yet! It's..." Sayaka tried to find a way around telling her the truth, but could sense that her friend was hanging on to her every word. "Okay, fine. I'm baking a cake."
"I knew it!"
Just then the bedroom door creaked open, and Kyouko stepped out, yawning and rubbing her eyes.
"Hey, Saya. Who are you talking to?"
"Mami."
"'Bout what?"
"Oh, nothing that you'd be concerned about, ha ha... ha..."
Kyouko had narrowed her eyes. "You're not planning to prank me on my birthday, are you?"
"No, of course not, but..." There was nothing to do but be up front. "Well, I have something planned for just the two of us tonight, but it's kind of a surprise and I need all day to prepare, so I was just asking Mami if you could go out with her and the others to celebrate today, while I get ready -"
"Woah. It's okay, Saya, I was only joking. I'll go out with the others today, but what time do you need me gone by?"
Sayaka mentally checked the recipe. "Um... by noon, and you shouldn't come back until around four." Four hours to bake the cake seemed overly generous, since it only took an hour and a half to bake in the oven, but Sayaka had learned from past mistakes to allow herself a margin for error.
At that point, Mami's voice reentered the conversation. "Wait, you need me by noon? Sayaka, you know it takes me an hour to get there, and it's already 11:30!"
"What? It can't be 11:30 already!" Sayaka checked her phone for the time, but it seemed that the three of them had slept in, for it was indeed half past eleven.
"All right," said Kyouko, gently taking her girlfriend's phone and placing it at her ear, "Mami, I'll meet you, Madoka, and Homura at the halfway point. How does that sound?"
"The halfway point" referred to a little cafe where the five of them often would meet, since Mami, Madoka, and Homura lived on the opposite side of the city.
"Okay, see you soon!" replied Mami, and Kyouko hung up.
"See you later," she said to Sayaka, punctuating the sentence by kissing her on the lips. "My birthday surprise better be all you're making it out to be."
"Oh, it will," Sayaka answered. "If nothing else, I think you'll be impressed."
After Kyouko had left, Sayaka began her first line of defense against accidents - she readied the fire extinguisher. She hoped it would not be necessary to use, but after the "Funfetti Catastrophe", as Madoka always called it, she wasn't taking any chances.
Then she started to prepare her ingredients. According to the recipe, she need to mix her dry ingredients together first, then add the vanilla, oil, and vinegar (though that part of the recipe had been furiously crossed out).
She started by measuring the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, and baking soda, using her palm to flatten the ingredients so they didn't overflow the measuring cups. She dumped all of those components into a large bowl, grabbed a whisk, and started to mix the powder by hand, until she was struck by an idea. Why combine the ingredients by hand, when it would be so much easier - and faster - to use the electric mixer?
At this thought, she found the electric mixer in a cupboard and place the 'stirry things,' as she thought of them, into the bowl.
After plugging the device in, she turned it on, immediately spraying herself - and the entire kitchen - in a cloud of dust from the bowl.
"CRAP!" she yelled, quickly turning the mixer off. Assessing the damage to the kitchen, she wondered whether too much of the powdery mixture had been lost, and prayed that she wouldn't have to start again.
Deciding that surely she couldn't have lost that much, she cleaned up the mess with a wet paper towel, then went back to the mixing bowl. The few seconds that it had immersed the whisks didn't seem to have done it much good, for the flour, sugar, and cocoa powder still seemed to be, for the most part, in separate parts of the bowl.
Sayaka sighed and resigned herself to combining the ingredients by hand, stopping every so often to check the time (although it had barely been fifteen minutes since Kyouko's departure).
Once the dry ingredients had been mixed together, she turned back to the recipe. Now it told her to make three "wells", or holes in the powder. She would pour vinegar, water, and oil into each of these holes, then use an electric mixer to combine everything.
Sayaka paused. She felt almost as though the recipe was mocking her, because she'd had the idea to use the electric mixer earlier, and look how well that had turned out.
Nonetheless, she followed the instructions (omitting the vinegar, of course), and this time, she carefully lowered the stirry things into the cake mix and turned up the power slowly.
Once she felt satisfied that the batter was fully combined (which had quite a bit to do with the fact that her arm was getting tired), Sayaka poured the mixture into a cake pan, then slapped a palm to her forehead as she realized that she had forgotten to preheat the oven.
After 20 minutes of impatiently staring at the oven (it was an old model), waiting for it to reach 350 degrees, Sayaka moved to put the cake inside, but realized...
"Oh, wait! I forgot the vanilla!"
Hurrying now, even though she could put the cake in the oven for an hour and a half, take it out, and still have two hours to spare, Sayaka took the vanilla out of the pantry and added it to the batter. Not wanting to revisit the electric mixer, she took a wooden spoon and swirled it around a bit in the pan.
Suddenly, she had another idea. Sayaka went to the fridge and opened to the produce drawer, coming up with one of Kyouko's apples. Sure her girlfriend wouldn't miss just one, she cored it and began to systematically place the slices onto the cake.
When she put the first one down, she fully expected it to sink into the mix - but instead, the apple slice simply lay there, on top of the batter. Sayaka found this odd; shouldn't the mix be a little less dry? Chalking it up to the absence of vinegar, she shrugged and continued placing the apple slices.
Only after this was done did Sayaka finally - finally - put the cake in the oven. She glanced at the time; it was 1:00. That gave her three hours until Kyouko got back.
She plopped into the comfy armchair by the TV, planning to watch three 30-minute shows (or maybe a short movie) before getting up to take out the cake.
She really had no idea what happened.
One moment she was thinking happily about Kyouko; about how happy she would be when she saw that Sayaka had finally succeeded in baking something - and all for her. The next, she was drifting off into an impromptu nap.
Sayaka woke up to the sound of the apartment door slamming. Groggy, she sat up - surely it couldn't be 4:00 already!
But unfortunately, that was exactly the time that Kyouko walked in the door, saying, "Saya, it smells funny in here - you didn't burn the house down while I was gone, did you?"
Sayaka gasped and jumped out of the armchair. The cake had been in the oven for twice as long as the cooking time! She hurried past Kyouko, who was still standing in the entryway, and remembered to open the oven from the side to avoid getting burned.
It was a good thing she did; smoke came pouring out of the oven, setting off the fire alarm. Kyouko, who still didn't have the slightest idea of what was happening, instantaneously leaped into action, opening the balcony doors and flicking on the kitchen fan. The two women then waved back and forth beneath the alarm, trying to clear the cloud of smoke that surrounded it.
When the obnoxious beeping had finally ceased, Kyouko gave her girlfriend a teasing glare. "Sayaka, what did you do?"
Sayaka looked at the floor in shame. "Well, it was your birthday, and I just thought... you ought to have a cake..."
Kyouko burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, Saya... it's just that... if you wanted a cake, you could have bought one from the store!"
Sayaka frowned. That hadn't been the point. A bit indignant, she responded, "Well, I wanted it to be special for you. A store-bought cake wouldn't have had quite the same meaning as one I made for you from scratch."
This made Kyouko calm down quickly enough. "I know. I really do appreciate the gesture. I'm sorry, Saya. I shouldn't have laughed." She perked up at a new thought. "How about we go see what became of that cake?"
Sayaka nodded, and the two went to investigate the smoldering remains of the confection.
Inside the oven, the cake had turned black, along with the apple slices on top, which had become little more than shriveled pieces of charcoal. Sayaka put on oven mitts, lifted the cake out of the oven, and set it down on the range, which worked as a makeshift cooling rack.
Kyouko eyed the slices and lifted an eyebrow. "What are those?"
Sayaka sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Those are... were apple slices."
She was taken aback when Kyouko suddenly laughed joyously, pulling her in for a tight hug. "See, that's what I love about you! You notice the things that other people do, but you use those things as fodder to make them happy, instead of making fun of them for it!"
Once again, Sayaka gazed at the floor. She could feel the blood rushing to her face, but didn't want her girlfriend to see that.
It was too late. "All these years and I still make you blush? I'll go ahead and take that as a good sign for our relationship."
With that, she pulled Sayaka into a deep kiss, neither girl wanting to let go, until Sayaka remembered something rather important.
"Wait! I forgot to turn the oven off!"
"Yeah, that's sort of important, don't you think?"
After that was done, Kyouko asked, "So how did you manage to burn the cake so badly, anyway?"
Reluctantly, Sayaka answered, "Well, I was sitting in the armchair, thinking about you, and I just sort of drifted off..."
"Thinking about me puts you to sleep? Well, that's not a very nice thing to say!" gasped Kyouko in mock indignation.
Sayaka finally relaxed, though she still felt guilty about the whole thing.
Kyouko added, "At least the cake didn't look edible, though. Remember that time you made cookies with olive oil instead of cooking oil?"
"Of course I remember! You didn't let me live that one down for months!"
The October breeze had started to chill the two, and Sayaka closed the balcony doors.
"Here," Kyouko said. "It's no big deal that the cake didn't work out. How about we watch a movie together instead?"
And that was exactly what they did. By the time the movie ended, popcorn was scattered on the floor and both girls were laughing like there was no tomorrow.
Before Sayaka drifted off to sleep that night, she fingered the ring box that she had hidden between the mattresses. Today wouldn't have been right, not with everything else that had gone on. But maybe tomorrow, she thought, and if not tomorrow, then this week for sure.
With Kyouko sleeping next to her, Sayaka began to think that perhaps Kyouko's birthday surprise hadn't been such a failure, after all.