Chapter 1: It starts with a Bento?

Shana was in a murderous mood

She was sick and tired of it.

He always ate from her bento, just because she could cook well, and Shana— she couldn't even boil rice without boiling the whole kitchen.

All she could give him was some lemon bread.

But this holiday she would do it, she would cook, and she would find something she could make well and then she would present her bento to Yuji.

So she worked and worked and worked.

The kitchen had quite a few funerals before the awaited day finally came.

Shana managed to finally make something without burning down the kitchen, but she couldn't present it to Yuji, or anyone for that matter. It wasn't burnt to a crisp or completely under cooked, but that didn't mean it was actually edible.

Well, it was, if you wanted your tongue to die a slow and painful death.

The rice was always too sticky from being overcooked, or hard from not being cooked enough, so rice balls were out of the question. Her tamagoyaki was usually a huge mess, either she with too much milk added to the omelet or it'd just turn out a burnt scramble, actually having something to roll seemed like a faraway dream to her. Her shogayaki always had an odd after taste from being marinated too long, her attempt at shaping apple pieces turned out a bit too mutilated to eat.

But it got better.

After a lot of work, she could cook a lot of things without any harm to the much-relived kitchen.

She could roll her omelets, even if they didn't have the usual soft slippery texture, she perfected her shogayaki, so her pork slices weren't too tough, and had a subtle taste of ginger and her rice had no major defects.

Finally, it was the first day of school; she had skipped morning training with Yuji this morning to make the bento.

She filled a little less than half the bento with rice, topped with coriander leaves and sprinkled lightly with salt and pepper, the rest of the bento was occupied by shogayaki and five painstakingly rolled tamagoyaki, as well as some simple straight sliced apple pieces and some large red cherries. The four parts of the bento were kept separate by lettuce.

Shana made sure she was the first to school and alone in the locker room. She left the bento in his locker, she didn't want to give it to him, or for him to know that she had made it, yet , what if he didn't like it?

Shana wasn't used to these problems, she would usually have killed or destroyed the cause long before it could cause trouble, and then left that to that, but then this wasn't exactly something you could kill, though she sometimes wished she could. She was not going to take the lives of the ones that caused this, they were innocent despite the fact they were causing her such a headache. She did not kill innocents on whim…

She sighed as she walked to class at least she would see him enjoy it.

Unfortunately for her, during break she was called by a teacher for God knows what, and she was fuming the rest of the day, much to the teachers' chagrin, she was certainly making things very difficult for them, much to the amusement of the other students.

By the end of the day though, her anger had run out of fuel, she was left plain depressed.

Alestor was wise enough to keep his head out of the matter. She was about to start walking home when she heard someone call her name. She turned around annoyed that was delayed before walking home. Yuji wouldn't be coming with her anyway. He had some sort of club activity that he was always tired from later when they were training. That annoyed her even more.

She reverted her attention back to the present and more specifically the person in front of her.

"What is it?" she asked rather tiredly, Yuji noticed immediately.

"What's wrong Shana? You sound tired."

"I'm fine, now tell me what you wanted."

"Let me walk you home."

Surprised, Shana focused her attention on Yuji "You have club;" she stated, it wasn't a question.

"Doesn't matter. I'll walk you home anyway." Yuji sighed as she turned and started to walk. She was such a difficult girl to even talk to, but Yuji was helplessly trapped into her destiny, or at least he hoped he was.

They walked in a companionable silence.

"Shana-" she looked at him, with those eyes of hers that were huge endless pools of deep red fire. He sighed mentally and plucked up his courage once again.

"I wanted to thank you. For the Bento." He flattered at the end, unsure of how to continue.

"Humph. I knew I shouldn't have bothered." She muttered, but he could hear her, and she knew it. Shana sounded hurt, Yuji cursed. Now he'd gone and upset her, she probably thought he didn't like it. He had a hard time suppressing a groan and hurried to mollify her.

"Well-" she looked at him again, he took a deep breath, meditation methods he thought to himself, glad that he remembered those lessons with Shana...

"I really, really, liked it I hoped that you could maybe make me some more latter." He looked back into Shana's eyes again, they were completely unreadable, she was just too good at hiding, but he noticed other signals, a very slight twitching of her left hand, good, that meant she was happy, if it had been her right hand then he would have been in a boiling hot soup.

She beamed up at him and grabbed his hand in hers making him blush. "Sure!" she exclaimed and in a quieter voice said, "I'm really, really glad you liked it."

After that, Yuji completely forgot about club, he just stayed with Shana and they simply talked, content in each other's company.

The next day, before going to school, Yuji was struck with a morbid fear, he had said 'more' yesterday, he just hoped that Shana didn't take it to heart, or he would have a lot of trouble finishing it.

He had only just managed to do so the day before, but only by sharing more than necessary, he had had Yoshida's bento to finish too, he didn't want to hurt any of the girls, but to him, Shana's just tasted better, he liked what she had cooked more... The bento his mother had made wasn't even touched by him, it was just passed around; it was finished quickly, thanks to his mothers great cooking.

When he got to his locker he noticed that Shana had left the bento there again, he smiled as the saw that the bento was bigger, but only by a fraction. He only ate from Shana's bento that day, not giving any to anyone else and like the day before, his original bento was passed around, with the same results. However Yoshida was absent, he wondered what was wrong, but he was glad he didn't have her bento to finish too. He was stuffed with just Shana's

On the way home, he noticed Shana observing him; he threw her a questioning look.

"You had trouble finishing today, I'll make less tomorrow."

Yuji was smiling goofily the entire way home.

The next day when Yuji opened his bento, he realized that though the size was the same, Shana had put in less, and she had even added a new dish! He tucked in. Yoshida wasn't there.

The day after that; Yuji met Yoshida at the gates and asked her how she was, since he realised she'd been missing.

"I'm fine. It was just a cold and a slight fever." As if to confirm this, she sneezed.

"Oh no! I'm really sorry! I woke up late and I didn't bring any bento!"

"It's okay. I have other food, I'm guessing you forgot yours too right." She nodded ruefully "It's okay you can have one of my bento." With that he walked of leaving her wondering. Yuji usually had only two bento. His own and the one she gave him, but without the latter, he should only have one.

But he did indeed have two, and he kept his word and gave her one, though she refused at first, he insisted.

She thought that maybe his mother had made him two, but she realized quickly that it was Shana who had made the bento Yuji was eating. It was easy to tell when you looked; it was in the way they smiled at each other. And that was not the only thing that was in their smiles. There was a lot, lot more.

Yoshida bit back a whimper. Who would have known being absent for two days could do this much! But she knew deep down this would have happened anyway, absent or not.

She sighed.

It was time to give up.

Notes:

Tamagoyaki is Japanese rolled omelet.

Shogayaki is Pork slices are marinated in ginger-flavored sauce and stir-fried.

So how was it?

I don't know about the bento thing, that is what it's called in the manga though...

So how was it, I know it's a drabble and bad penmanship but still... Please leave a review if you have time.

Avoid flaming please, my exams have just finished, holiday has started and I don't want anything to spoil my mood :D

Thanks for reading

Some corrections have been made, and a character has been replaced.

Special thanks to Gitah-Muttan who pointed out my mistakes.

Thanks!

The last time I edited this was when a reviewer pointed out I'd switched up my characters, but I'll be honest, I just used find and replace on ms word to replace the names…

This is the first time I've actually looked at it after writing it, and even though I did say it was just a spur of the moment drabble thing, I'm still mortified by the number of typos in there!

Hopefully, I got everything. Also, I do have some experience with cooking, but only a bare minimum, and I took everything from the internet so, if I made mistakes, please do correct me, and tell me if you have any ideas!

Thank you for reading! :D

Edited:

14. 07. 2014

So, this must be my third or fourth revision? I don't know, but I do love reading my stories after months, because I always find something new I can tweak here and there to make it sound better, and embarrassingly, I still find a few typos, probably because I always end up doing this in a hurry, since I'm usually so busy with work.

Never the less, I hope you enjoy reading!

Edited

18.12.14