A/N: Kutau. Possibly the least appreciated out of Amuto, Rimahiko and itself. But hey, if Ikudase/Takuto can have its chapter then so could they. Right? Right?

~*~

Ramen Overdose

Another couple of bowls were placed in front of them after a long line of bowls. It was filled to the brim with ramen and soup and egg. The chef smiled at the couple, wondering why they hesitated and even looked a little queasy. There was a blonde girl with pigtails that he swore he saw before but couldn't think of where, and an auburn-haired kid who didn't look like he was the world's greatest thinker. He didn't seem stupid of course, except that he wasn't concerned with all those big questions like what the meaning of life is or how the universe was created. He left all that existential angst to others and thought about his immediate friends and family.

If truth be told, what he was thinking right now was: Oh man, when will this end?

"How much ramen have we eaten today?" asked Utau, leaning away from the fresh bowl. She seriously could not believe that she was shying away from a chance of winning, of beating this kid and rubbing it in his face that she was better than him, that she could remain unaffected by him or his annoyingly animated self. But she was.

"Well, we've been put in four fics today and they all involved ramen," said Kukai, his bowl remaining just as untouched as hers.

"But how many bowls?" she moaned, swallowing as she looked at the food. It was a crime to waste food but if she ate any more she would either put on weight or explode. The singer wasn't actually sure which option she would prefer.

"Twenty-seven," replied Kukai weakly, before adding, "Each."

"Oh lord, I remember," she said, clutching at her stomach. "Eight in the first. Six in the second. Seven in the third and we just polished off five, right?"

"I can't move, my stomach hurts so badly," he whined, "and I have soccer practice soon, too!"

"Why do they give us so much to eat?" wondered the stuffed girl. "And why is it always ramen? We're always at a ramen stand eating ramen. Do we never do anything else?"

"Well, we had a concert and a soccer game yesterday," Kukai said, trying to comfort himself just as much as her.

"Yeah, and we had three other fics with ramen in it," she reminded him bitterly.

"I remember an interesting one where we had a fight over your obsession with Ikuto," he mused. "I think we managed to exercise enough to digest the ramen from the two fics before it and eat the ramen from both fics after."

"Oh yeah, the generic angst. But there's just so much of this generic fluff," she complained again. "Have you realised how much we've almost-confessed over ramen? And you proposed over ramen a few times, too."

"Yeah, it's embarrassing how so many events centre around ramen," he agreed.

"And we always, always go eat ramen for our dates. And have you noticed that we really only ever get one date in a fic before general angstiness gets in our way? And that's with the very few Kutau fics that aren't one-shots," she sighed. "It's always Rimahiko or Amuto. Are we not interesting?"

"I thought you didn't want so much ramen?" he asked, confused.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Well, if there are more Kutau stories, you can be sure that there will be more ramen scenes," he explained, prodding the food with his chopsticks. "And ramen jokes, references to ramen at all major events, ramen anniversaries, kids with a love of ramen, ramen lives, ramen heads, ramen soccer balls..." he shuddered from the very thought.

"Ramen concerts, ramen deaths," finished Utau with a sigh. "Yeah, I know, it's absolutely insane."

"We're drowning in ramen," he said gloomily. "We're going to bloat right up, like balloons."

"Excuse me, who's going to bloat up?" demanded the girl furiously, the sudden switch in mood almost frightening Kukai. She managed to swing her ramen-filled self around to face Kukai, her arms crossed.

"You were the one complaining about it several fics ago!" he defended himself. "You're always saying that you'll get fat and ugly and everything, so I thought..."

"Look, saying it yourself is one thing, but having some brain-dead guy say it about you is a completely different matter," she said in a dangerously low voice. "I don't care what the heck you think of me, but if you say that kind of thing one more time, I'll kill you and feed you to the fish."

"What fish?" he asked, blinking in a puzzled manner. "I didn't know you had fish."

Utau let her head drop into her hands at the sheer hopelessness of the situation. They were pairing her up with some kid younger than her (granted, it was only by a year) who didn't seem to have two brain cells to rub together. "Look," she said tiredly, "just because I have to eat with you in ramen world, doesn't mean I have to like you, got that?"

"Yes ma'am!" he replied cheerfully.

She stared at him suspiciously, eyes narrowed, before asking slowly, "Are you making fun of me?"

"What? No!" he replied hastily, "why would you think that?"

"Then what's with the way-too-cooperative-attitude?" she challenged.

He shrugged, raising his chopsticks once more in preparation for the rapidly cooling bowl of ramen. "I felt like it."

Utau shook her head, lifting her own chopsticks. "You are so weird; they should keep you in a zoo." For one fleeting moment, she wondered if, perhaps, bulimia nervosa would solve her problems. Then she realised that that would be stupid and a weak way out. Even anorexia was more bad-ass than bulimia.

"Thank you," said Kukai. Utau didn't even deign to respond but dug in to her twenty-eighth bowl full to the brim with ramen. One of these days, they really would die of ramen. It was either that or become ramen. After all, you are what you eat.

After a while, she asked, "How long are you going to spend kicking balls into a net after this?"

"How long are you gonna spend running on a treadmill?" he countered.

"What are you talking about?" she asked indignantly, not quite sure why she felt so offended. It was just that the way he'd said that was rather... irritating. It was as though she reminded him of a hamster or something, running and running and never getting anywhere.

"Come on, everyone knows that you go to a gym after doing this to burn off the calomies," he said smugly.

One of her eyes started twitching. "It's calories, and I do not..."

"Same difference," he said waving it aside before asking, "Don't you feel weird when you run on the treadmill, though? It seems kinda pointless..."

"It is not pointless!" she argued hotly.

"So you do work out at night!"

"I never said that," she snapped.

"But if you didn't think it was pointless then you'd do it," he reasoned, oblivious to the minefield he was standing in.

She paused. "Well, I don't think cancer research is pointless but that doesn't mean that-"

"You're not a scientist."

"I'm not an athlete!"

A third voice broke in. "Just eat the damn ramen already!" It was the chef and shop owner who usually had a policy of not disturbing his customers. Unsurprisingly, this did not seem to be the case for this particular duo. Although he was a patient and tolerant man, it only took so long before he was worn down by whining and moaning and bickering and refusal to eat. What especially grated on his nerves was the fact that these two pups counted 'ramen' as though it were instant noodles. They compared his ramen to the ramen of other stores as if they were the same! And they had the sheer audacity to do so in front of his face. Teenagers these days did not know how to appreciate things anymore.

"Yessir," they said simultaneously and started to slurp it down in earnest. It was either uncertain death by ramen poisoning or the wrath of this chef, and they chose uncertain death. Kukai knew that his legs wouldn't be able to hold him up at the next soccer game on account of him being so full and Utau could literally feel her hair turning into a substance of the edible kind.

They paid him and left, retiring for the day. Kukai went to kick soccer balls into a net and Utau angrily imitated a hamster, her fingers itching every few seconds or so to wrap themselves around a certain boy's throat.

-------

One Month Later...

A scream pierced through the air. Since the screamer had not been holding anything made of glass or other materials capable of shattering and creating a large amount of noise, a few dishes decided to roll off their shelves and crash to the floor to add to the effect. Nagihiko almost swore.

"I just finished cleaning them!" he yelled to the universe in general. He'd known that it was a cruel and unjust place, but this was... sadism. When he remembered that he'd heard somebody screamed, he called out, "What is it?"

Amu hurried down the stairs. "Nagi! Kukai – he – but it – the bed... ramen! Kukai! Ramen!" she said in fragmented hysteria. Wordlessly, she pointed a shaking figure back upstairs to where Kukai's room was.

The purple-haired boy hurried up and flung the door open. It took a moment for him to comprehend the situation. For one thing, he could not see Kukai. What he could see was a large mass of ramen in the middle of the room.

When the realisation hit, his eyes widened in horror. "Oh no," he breathed. "What have they done to you?"

Kukai's body had morphed into what the fanfic authors had been shovelling down his throat twenty-four hours a day. One thing was for sure: it was not the way Kukai would have wanted to go. It was not the way anybody would want to go.

It was all because of those darn authors. He silently vowed that he would exact revenge upon them all – or at least a particularly bad one. And their little dog, too.

--NEWSFLASH--

*Ramen Bites Back!*

It was a tragedy that caused scientists to break down, newspaper reporters to be driven insane, fangirls, fanboys and Sanjou to die of broken hearts and ramen shops the world over to close down. The victim was one male, 14, green-eyed and auburn-haired, and one female idol, 15, violet-eyed and blonde. Their remains were discovered in their respective bedrooms sprawled in the middle of the floor.

And made of ramen.

At first, it was thought that the two teenagers in question had run away together and left the food there as either a message or a joke. Upon further examination, it was discovered that all the cells in these two youths' bodies rapidly self-combusted and changed until all that was left was the Japanese noodle. The experts say that it would have been a relatively painless death, caused by consuming ramen in impossible amounts over a short period of time. The mourning families have refused to comment as to what could have possibly driven them to eat so much. The ramen chefs to have served these two have been arrested for involuntary manslaughter.

A funeral service will be held on Tuesday during which time ramen will be absolutely forbidden.

RIP – Kukai Souma and Utau Hoshina.

~*~

A/N: Honestly though, this chapter wasn't supposed to end this way. It was half as short when I finished it a few weeks ago but then I just looked at it and started adding a few more sentences and it took on a life of its own. It's a little bit... disturbing but maybe people will learn their lesson: don't eat ramen.

Okay, yeah... I love the whole ramen aspect of their relationship and I understand why people use it so much in their stories, but... not for their whole life. Sometimes, it just gets a little too extreme.