Disclaimer: I own nothing!
Thanks to you if you read the first part and reviewed, because you're awesome and you made my day! I decided to continue this one-shot just a bit further, with more fluff than anything else. It's already pre-written, so I'll be posting this second part today, and the third and fourth sometime later.
Please read and review!
Every morning, Kinnosuke arrived at exactly nine in the morning to prepare for the day.
"Always be prepared!" Aihara had once said to him. And Kinnosuke had taken those words, folded them close to his heart, and followed them like a law. His kitchens were always spotlessly clean. His knives were always in the correct order. His refrigerators were always stocked with the freshest ingredients, locally sourced from farms surrounding Tokyo.
So it was no different on this day, of all days. He got up, made a quick breakfast of a convenience store bento (his considerable culinary talents not fully functioning early in the morning), and hopped on to the 8:30 bus. He would wind his way slowly through the early morning traffic rush until finally, the bus chugged up to his stop and he hopped off a block away from Aihara.
Aihara was his pride and joy. It was an emblem of everything he had ever thought he needed, and it had instead given him what he truly required.
There weren't many people dawdling about outside of Aihara. Most everyone was rushing through the streets at the normal Tokyo pace, which meant a single minded surging forward that stopped for nothing and no one. The hustle and bustle merely slipped around Kinnosuke, who was whistling a tune as he fished out his keys and slipped in through the glass doors.
He surveyed the empty restaurant in front him. He knew every table intimately, could draw a blueprint of the place in his sleep. Carefully making sure that all was in its proper place, he reminded himself to commend Kotoko-chan on a job well done.
Then, like every morning, he made a beeline for the curtains that separated the dining floor from his domain, the kitchens.
Except this morning was slightly different.
Unlike yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that, Kinnosuke was not the only person in the restaurant. Instead, there was the merry clanging of pots and pans in his most sacred space.
Kinnosuke burst through the curtains in a flurry of fear and anger, before his eyes took note of the peculiar scene in front of him, freezing him in his place.
"Oh! Good morning, Kin-chan!" Kotoko said merrily. "I'm sorry, I'm probably disturbing you, but I thought I would borrow… oops!"
Kinnosuke winced as he spotted a pot (a 100, 000 yen pot he managed to snag on sale last Christmas) bubbling over what used to be his spotless stove top.
"Kotoko-chan," he said weakly. "Good morning."
It wasn't until much later that Kinnosuke realized what had possessed Kotoko to barge into his sacred domain and ruin his carefully ordered kitchen.
After rescuing his pot, and wincing at the mess he found inside his pot, Kinnosuke had rounded on Kotoko like a parent would an unruly child.
"Kotoko-chan! What did you think you were doing?"
Kotoko laughed nervously. "…cooking?" she offered.
"NO! No, this is not cooking. Kotoko-chan, this is called poisoning someone," Kinnosuke declared.
"Kin-chan! Surely I wasn't that bad!" At Kinnosuke's grimace, Kotoko relented. "Well, fine, maybe I'm not gifted in the kitchen like you are, but I manage to scrap together three meals a day without your help."
"If you call convenience store bentos 'scrapping together a meal'," Kin-chan sneered.
"I have it in on good authority that you, Oh Almight Chef, eat convenience store bentos as well!" Kotoko-chan said triumphantly. "And there's nothing wrong with them. I'm sure at least half of Tokyo's population survives on them too."
"The point is," Kinnosuke stressed, "This isn't cooking. This is… this is destruction, not creation. And you still haven't told me what you're doing in my kitchen at nine in the morning!"
At this, Kotoko turned a bit pale. She ignored Kinnosuke and returned back to her cutting board, which was strewn with roughly hewn carrots.
"Kotoko-chan."
Kotoko lifted a cutting knife and brought it down upon a carrot with a loud thump.
"Kotoko-chan, you can't ignore me for forever."
Kotoko stared at the carrot, puzzled. Why was it that he could cut his carrots into perfectly proportioned slices, and she lacked the motor skills to do the same? It wasn't fair! She had always envied him of his seeming talent to excel at everything he set his mind to. She smiled. Apparently, this talent also extended to making her fall in love with him again.
Not that she ever fell out of love in the first place, but he didn't need to know that.
Humming a cheery tune, Kotoko determinedly raised the knife again and was about to bring it down on the carrot when a rough hand caught her elbow.
"Stop! Please, stop! My poor knife can't take any more careless wielding!" Kinnosuke quickly snatched his knife out of her hands, inspected the damage on the blade, and gave a sigh of relief.
"Kin-no-su-ke!" Kotoko said, tapping her foot.
"Until you tell me why you suddenly decided to invade–", at her glare, Kinnosuke quickly reworded it, "-bless my kitchen with your presence, I won't return it to you."
"Fine," Kotoko said moodily. She sighed. "How about this? If you help me make an o-bento, I will tell you why I'm here. Deal?"
Kinnosuke eyed her hand reluctantly. "Deal," he agreed, shaking on it.
"Good. Now, knife," Kotoko said, hand held palm up.
Once the knife was back in her grasp, Kotoko whirled around and eyed the carrots.
Kinnosuke groaned.
It was hard to get Kinnosuke into character this time! Hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know what you think.
