Chapter 2 ~ Miki
Her face etched in a look of utter concentration, a brown-haired teen made corrections on her music score to change the pitch of the song she was composing. Her older brother, sitting off to the side with a classical guitar, smiled at his younger sibling's antics.
"Miki," he said, chuckling when she jumped and effectively knocked her knees against the table she was seated at, "I won't be able to tell how good it is if you don't let me play it, you know."
"Stuff it, nii-san," Miki growled back playfully, but slid the–still tentative–score across the table towards him. The elder sibling took hold of the manuscript…and frowned at the now-grinning Miki.
"This isn't meant for the guitar," he deadpanned.
"'Course it's not, Saeki," the younger chirped happily in reply. "It's a piano solo."
Saeki took in his younger sister's face for a moment and growled. "Miki…"
The aforementioned teen giggled, snagged her manuscript book, hightailed it out of the music room (as the siblings dubbed it), and ran into the kitchen with a loud "Kaa-san, save me!", leaving a bemused Saeki in the room.
"That girl…will be the death of me," he muttered as he limped out, grabbing his walking cane as he went. He found it a little hard to believe that Miki, for all her composing brilliance, took and passed the idol entrance exams for Saotome Academy – the very same academy he had wanted to enter before his… accident.
He entered the kitchen (their mother shook her head, amused at her children's antics, before she told them she was leaving for groceries and left with an amused smile on her face when neither sibling spoke up about needing anything) and grinned at his younger sister, leaning heavily against his cane.
"Miki~" he sing-songed cheerily.
"Y-Yes?" the younger one answered, hugging her manuscript book to her chest. Saeki couldn't help but smile – silly Miki, what made her think he was going to take her book? Oh no, he was not going to take the book…
"Let's bake something," Saeki said with a grin, and Miki dropped her book in shock.
Yes, he thought to himself, bullying his younger sister is fun.
It helped that he could not bake anything to save his life.
Okay, so the baking started off pretty well. All things considered, Miki was worried that Saeki would add something-or-other that definitely did not go into baked food items.
Like wasabi, for instance. How their parents managed to stomach that with a straight face remained a mystery to the youngest of the Oikawa household. Miki had wisely chose to not eat what she had dubbed as 'Mystery Baked Good 35'.
Yes, there were just that many 'ingredients' her brother had used in their baking sessions; a.k.a. Saeki's experiments and Miki's attempts at salvaging food.
At Saeki's insistence, they were in the process of baking chocolate muffins. She was not that big of a chocolate fan, per se, but if her dearest older brother wanted it…
…wait, was that…?
"O…onii-san, what did you just… put in… the batter?" she asked, blue eyes wide. 'Please let my eyes deceive me, please let my eyes deceive me, please let my eyes—'
"Hmm?" Saeki hummed as he looked at her inquiringly, holding a half-empty small bottle of Tabasco sauce.
"God damn it my eyes did not deceive me!"
Saeki 'tsk'd as he set the bottle down. "Miki, I told you to not curse in my presence," he said, leaning across the counter to tilt his sibling's head up from the chin. "Besides," he continued with a very scary smile, "Experiment a little!"
The younger of the two shuddered. "Nii-san," she said slowly, as if explaining a new concept to a particularly slow child, "Putting Tabasco into chocolate muffin batter is not what I call 'experimenting'!"
Miki watched with a bit of fascinated horror as her brother's smile stretched into a grin. 'Not good,' she decided, trying-and failing rather spectacularly-to get away from her (demented) brother's grasp – how that was possible with him needing a cane to limp around was beyond her.
"Miki~" her brother sing-songed again. "Just for that comment, I'll give you a special tasting of this new recipe." The grin on his face made her whimper and she bolted out of the kitchen and her grinning brother chuckled but did not bother chasing after his hyperactive younger sibling.
In the relative safety of her room a floor above, Miki grabbed her cell phone and flipped it open. Her fingers flew over the keys frantically as she typed out her message to a certain member of the recently-debuted Starish.
'Syo-kun,' it read, 'nii-san's gone insane again! (cry) Help me!'
The reply came less than three minutes later. 'I'm almost afraid to ask,' he wrote back, '…what did he add into the batter this time?'
Miki hid under the covers of her bed as she sent her reply. 'Half of a small bottle of Tabasco sauce,' she wrote. 'We were supposed to be making chocolate muffins, Syo-kun! (cry)'
She was almost certain the elder teen was wincing as he typed the reply he sent her. 'Tabasco sauce in muffins!' he wrote, 'I feel for you. There's a guy here that's exactly like him.'
"Oh dear lord save me," Miki muttered to herself as she stared at her phone screen. "Another one." But as she'd planned on keeping her entrance to Saotome Academy a secret from him…
'Oh dear lord, I hope I don't meet him,' she wrote back, 'I'll flip if I see him in, or anywhere near, a kitchen, I swear.'
'(laugh) Well then, I hope you don't meet him either,' he sent. 'I gotta go. Dance lessons uggghhhh…'
Well, he didn't type in those extra letters, but Miki knew him enough to be able to hear it in her mind. 'Don't strain yourself, ochibi,' she sent back with a smirk, 'Be careful or Imma sic your twin on you, mwahahahaha!'
'You…you…ugggghhhhh.' This time, he did type out the extra letters, much to her amusement. 'Fine. I'll pace myself. See ya.'
With a soft giggle, Miki flipped her phone shut and emerged from the covers. Less than a minute later, there was a knock on her room door.
"Oh Mi~ki~" came the voice of her older brother, "Come and have some muf~fins~"
'…oh dear lord, save me!'
Her new school year was about to start with a stomach ache, it would seem.
Author's Note: Enjoyed the antics of Author No.2? I'm beginning to think it's a good thing this story has three (3) writers because that way the chapters should come out a lot quicker since we're literally dividing the work. Dear Author No.2, whom I shall call 'Miki' in the near future for ease of avoiding confusion, got this out pretty quickly. Please R&R if you have a heart or love Utapri. Oh, and look forward to Author No.3's chapter/character debut.
