Episode 2 of Luckiest Loser

A Sticky Situation

I stood as still as a statue, maybe I thought if I didn't move nobody would see me. Such a stupid idea really. Of course everyone could see me regardless of what I did or didn't do. A wave of uneasiness came over me and I balled my hands into tight fists.

I felt chucks of the cake slide off of my head, smothering my lanky hair with frosting, as various chunks of the once whole fruitcake fell to the floor.

Slowly I turned around, deciding it would be wiser to confront the cause of this mishap than standing with my feet rooted to the floor like an old stubborn tree, and yell at whoever it was until my voice went hoarse. My dark glare was met with seven pairs of confused eyes staring curiously at me as their owners stood in the doorway with blank expressions. I stiffened again.

Oh shit. There was a whole posse of them. Haruhi was behind them looking extremely annoyed with a vein throbbing on her temple.

"This is why you should knock first!"

She was always so blunt.

Then, as if having a decadent strawberry fruitcake on my head wasn't enough to embarrass the crap out of me, all of the teenage boys were handsomer than the devil himself. I cringed inwardly. I was never too good around boys normally, especially good looking ones. My words were stuck in my throat now as I felt my cheeks turn bright red. I looked down at the floor, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

The awkward silence seemed to roar in my ears.

Ranka-san got up and walked hurriedly over to us and grabbed the blonde-haired teenager, who was staring blankly at me in the doorway with huge violet eyes, by the shoulder before hastily shoving him to the side like he was a rag doll.

The blonde teenager stumbled a bit before landing facedown on the floor in the kitchen with a loud thud. I thought I could hear his pride breaking into little pieces like shattering glass for a brief moment as he looked up with an indignant face at Ranka-san as if he was about to cry. I felt a little bad for him. My sympathy only went so far when I remembered that he was the one who had burst through the door and was the cause for the sticky mess all over my head.

Ranka-san than put on a concerned face. "Are you alright, Nodoka-chan? Sometimes that big bug can be so annoying!"

Bug? I looked around Ranka-san to see the blonde now crouching in the corner looking quite gloomy. Ranka-san did have a way in shaming people. I felt a rush of gratitude towards him.

He turned his attention to his shorthaired daughter, Haruhi. "I hope he didn't do anything to you either?"

Haruhi ignored her father's doting, one could tell she was quite used to him fussing over her.

Ranka-san then busied himself with talking to the other teenage boys cheerily and in an almost flirtatious manner. I could tell from the way that they were dressed that they were accustomed to money, lots of it. Perhaps these were Haruhi's classmates from her high school? I heard from Ranka-san on occasion that it was a school for the exceedingly wealthy, but who they were and their relationship to Haruhi was the least of my concerns right now.

"I didn't expect to see you here Nodoka." Haruhi said passively. Maybe she was trying to make the best out of his humiliating situation while Ranka-san kept her friends occupied by ushering them away from the crime scene.

"Uh…hi Haruhi." I said weakly, unsure of what to do or say than utter that meaningless greeting. My mortification increased with every passing second. I hated looking like an idiot.

"Do you want to use our bathroom to clean up?" She asked before glancing over her shoulder coldly at the blonde who was still sulking in the corner…cultivating mushrooms. "Don't do that here! Grow mushrooms somewhere else!"

To be honest, I just wanted to get the hell out of here. "I'll be fine…" I sounded dizzy. "I'm going to go back to the bakery. Sorry for causing trouble." I brushed past her and exited her apartment; I heard her footsteps behind me so I picked up my pace.

"Haruhi, who was that?" I heard an unfamiliar male voice ask as I ran down the stairs and hit the pavement running without looking back.

…

I felt like my legs were going to turn into jelly and give out from under me when I finally stopped running. My calves and thighs ached like they did after a long fitness run in PE. I hunched over as I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath. With each gulp of air my throat burned, but the burning sensation went away after a few moments of deep inhaling and exhaling. I wiped the beads of sweat from my forehead, which probably wasn't the best thing to do seeing as how in doing do I merely smeared the icing that was already there.

I opened the door to the bakery, hoping to make it past my two co-workers without them seeing me looking like a mess.

They would tease me endlessly if they saw the wreck I was.

The inside of the bakery was cramped and more like a lounge with comfy sofas and chairs scattered about with coffee tables. There was an array of fresh cakes, breads, cookies and pastries on display in glass cases against either wall. Large fruit loaves and croissants and freshly baked were placed in woven baskets near the cash register. The smells of all the delicious and fresh treats were overwhelming, but I could resist the temptation well. Years of experience were on my side after all.

However, it should've been obvious by now that sometimes fate liked to make me miserable. I had a bad feeling in my gut that my day wasn't over yet.

"What happened to you?" Arisa, a thin girl with short brown hair, asked as she lazily sat on the counter by the register with her eyebrows raised. I could tell she was biting her tongue to keep from laughing her ass off at me.

"I don't want to talk about it," I answered dully as I headed straight for the back where I always kept a spare change of clothes just incase I got covered in flour while baking. In the back of my head I vaguely wondered where my other co-worker, otherwise known as my wonderful cousin Mamoru, was currently lurking. He probably got bored and left, not that I cared right now. I just didn't want any else to see me. Arisa was probably giggling like a mad homicidal schoolgirl in the other room by now.

First things first though, I thought as I pushed the mental image of Arisa rolling on the floor laughing out of my mind. I went over to the sink near the stoves in the rear of the store and dunked my head under the streaming water to wash the remnants of the unfortunate strawberry fruitcake out of my hair before washing my face. The lukewarm water felt good as I splashed it against my skin especially considering the fact that I just had sprinted a whole mile from Haruhi's apartment to the bakery. It was like dunking your head in the pool on a terribly hot day.

Then, I entered the office in the back of the bakery where my parents kept their financial records, catering schedule, along with other records and found my spare change of clothes in a plastic bag behind their desk.

I decided to change in there too just because I didn't want to give the whole world a peep show. Although, it wasn't like there was anything to see. I was flatter than a board, but I didn't dislike being that way no matter how much it added to my plainness.

I pulled the nice clean gray T-shirt on over my head, but I decided to leave my shorts on because they weren't dripping in cake and icing. Then I grabbed an apron off the hook outside the office once I was all squeaky clean and put it in. I fumbled with the strings as I tied to around my back. I was relived to not be stick and gross anymore.

I shoved the navy colored shirt into the plastic bag so I could take it home later to wash it before returning to where Arisa was at the front of the bakery.

She had her elbows propped on the counter now and was idly flipping through the pages of some fashion magazine. When I reentered, I saw her brown eyes peer at me from behind the cover of the magazine.

"What?" I demanded hotly.

"Oh, nothing." She said airily, "I was just thinking about how ridiculous you looked covered in cake that's all."

I glared daggers at her, why was everyone so keen on pushing my buttons today? Didn't they have their own lives to worry about? Or was I just some hilarious phenomenon everyone liked to poke fun at?

"Thanks, I love making a fool out of myself for your amusement." I scoffed darkly, furrowing my brows.

"I have to admit, without you my life would be so dreary." She said grinning.

"I guess that's all am good for, eh? Making people feel better about themselves."

She put her magazine aside and gave me a stern look. "Oh come on, Nodoka. You just let everything get to you, you need to relax. You're way too stressed out and you're only a teenager. Seriously, you need to quit taking everything so personal. It's not like the whole world is out to get you."

"I know that. You try having the parents that I have and then we'll see how normal you are after a week or so. They'll drive you nuts. Then there's my sister who is always so perfect and stuff all the-"

"I've heard that story a thousand times. You've been a little edgy since that Kei incident a month ago. You're nothing like your old self."

I gritted my teeth at the name. "Don't use that name around me."

"Sensitive?"

"More like pissed."

"Then take some time off from work and chill. When was the last time you hung out with friends and did normal teenage girl things?"

"You know I can't with my parents breathing down my neck every second of my life."

"Excuses, excuses." Arisa interrupted while shaking her head at me. "You just can't let them get to you. Oh well, I'm guessing Haruhi didn't like the fruitcake considering that you were wearing it when you came barging in here."

"Yea, I bet they don't have that in your fashion magazines. I doubt fruitcake is in style this season or any other season." I retorted while rubbing my neck sheepishly. My nerves were still tingling, but I was much calmer then I had been a few minutes ago. I understood that in her own quirky way Arisa had been trying to help me, but I wasn't in the mood to be consoled in her brutally harsh manner. I was stubbornly set in my ways right now.

She smirked wryly at my joke. "Well, if you aren't doing to do anything you can decorate the Yamazaki's cake they ordered for their daughter's birthday." Arisa said as she picked her magazine back up and began reading it once more.

"Like you're doing anything." I shot back, feeling a twinge of annoyance at how nonchalant she was acting.

"I'm not the baker, I just work the register."

"Why the hell did my parents hire you?"

"Because my mom is good friends with yours."

Slacker.

Freeloader.

She hardly even works.

She just sits around all day looking pretty. Did I envy her for it? Maybe a little.

Lucky for her it was a slow day. We were usually swamped at this time of day and she would be hiding in the back doing her nails while either me or Mamoru –when he was here- would be forced to serve the hungry masses.

That reminded me. Where was my cousin?

"Did Mamoru go somewhere?" I asked while running a hand through my damp hair.

"I don't know. As soon as you left you just took off."

"You just let him take off without asking him where he was going." I blinked dumbly at her. I sighed irritably as I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and tied it with a plain old rubber band.

Arisa shrugged, this conversation was clearly not interesting enough to keep her attention.

I grumbled a little bit more as I began preparing the icing for the decorating the ice cream cake that the Yamazaki's had ordered. It had been placed on the tabletop behind the register in the same kind of white box that Haruhi's fruitcake had been in. I stared at it for a moment, feeling apprehensive. I wanted nothing more than to chuck it at the window in frustration, but I restrained myself now matter how appealing the thought was.

I filled four different tubes with the four different colors of icing: red, pink, green and yellow. They had wanted the cake to be covered in red and yellow flowers with green leaves plus Happy 10th Birthday Seiko written in pretty pink letters. I fought my inner desire to mindlessly squirt the icing all over the cake.

I felt destructive.

As I began squeezing the tube filled with the sickly sweet smelling red icing I grew less concerned about what had transpired at Haruhi's apartment. Baking or just working in the bakery had that affect on me. It was almost therapeutic or maybe it was because it was one of the few things that I took pride in knowing I was good at it. I felt my tensed muscles relax and my tight jaw loosen so my lips weren't pursed together so tightly anymore.

I felt…

Euphoric.

I loved being in my element and I had almost completely forgotten about the fruitcake incident.

While I was finishing the red flowers around the circumference of the cake I heard Arisa fawning over something. Nothing surprising there, she was always going on about something or other.

"Oh, wow! They're a handsome bunch aren't they? Isn't that your friend, Haruhi, with them?" She asked nudging me in my rib and pointing to a group of people outside the bakery window.

"Who?" What now?

Arisa nudged me sharply again as she gazed dreamily out the window.

My eyes reluctantly followed Arisa's eager love struck gawk to the front door as I silently condemned her one-track mind. It was either fashion or boys. Talk about shallower than a puddle on a sunny day.

I was so surprised when I saw them standing outside that I accidentally squeezed the tube too hard and all the icing spurted out all over the cake, ruining it. I'm sure my eyes were wider than saucers at this point, my heartbeat increased dramatically as I gawked stupidly with my mouth hanging open.

This is just too much.

Someone, anyone…please just kill me.

XXXXXX

Musical Inspiration- This is Love by Utada Hikaru (the singer who sings both of the Kingdom Heart's theme songs)

Dc-chan: SQUEEEE! –hugs everyone- I'm glad you like it so far and especially that you like Nodoka. To be honest, I had originally planned for her to be a somewhat shy, reserved and well mannered, but she's turned into just the opposite. It's strange how some things change from the conception of the story to the execution.

I have up to chapter 7 planned out so updates may be quick or erratic depending on my mood and how much free time I have. P:

So now, REVIEW LIKE THE WIND! It's the same deal as last time. Review and I give Hunny-senpai cake and Kyoya's bodyguards won't come after you.

Peace out.

P: