Cold hands
Chapter 10: omake Cold Hands
Kanda Yuu hates today.
Maybe this needs a bit of analysis.
Kanda hates a lot of things, on the top of his extensive list; sickly sweet stuff that melts in his mouth, women that seem to follow him around, annoying short people and… Pink.
This all leads to the one day that he hates the most.
St. Valentines.
His relationship with Valentine's Day was always bitter, prissy, and foul; despite the irony that it should be sweet, cute and beautiful, with love gushing from two idiotic lovers. The Japanese male would rather just pretend the whole concept didn't exist. He knew that anything deliberately planned for Valentine's Day would automatically fall apart in some kind of stupidly spectacular way. It didn't help that in Japan you had white Valentines' which was just as bad.
Then again, it might just be the way his life had panned out.
He just hates today.
--
Ingredients:1/2 lb. white chocolate, finely chopped
2 tsp matcha powder
1 Tbsp milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
*green tea powder for coating
Preparation:Finely chop white chocolate and put them in a medium bowl.
Put 2 tsp of green tea powder in a small bowl. Warm milk in microwave and pour over green tea powder. Stir well.
Put heavy cream in a small pan. Heat the cream on medium heat and stop the heat before cream starts to boil. Stir in the milk mixture.
Pour the hot cream over white chocolate.
Melt the chocolate, stirring well.
Cool the chocolate mixture for about one hour in the room temperature.
Scoop the chocolate into about 1 1/2 inch balls and place them on a sheet of aluminum foil.
Cool them in the refrigerator for about one hour, or until firm.
Round chocolate balls by hands and coat with green tea powder on a tray.
Cool green tea chocolate balls until firm.
*Makes 12 balls
She squinted at the recipe.
Maybe she should have listened to the cook's advice when he said it was too complex for an amateur. She sighed, sending grains of matcha powder to god-knows-where. She remembered Fou's words of the… Belentine's tradition to make chocolates… so she wanted to make it, and she wanted to meet… Yuu. She heard that Yuu had silky dark hair and she really hoped that she would meet her today.
The girl decided that boiling the water would take too much time, and since all of it would all mix together anyway, she dumped them all into the bowl and into the microwave… for 20 minutes.
Bad move.
She opened the oven and the pungent smell of burnt chocolate and heavy cream hit her like a ton of bricks.
Oh.
The young girl would probably have spoken a string of colorful language if she knew any. She gaped at the burnt chocolate mixture with her large brown eyes.
Again, Bad move.
Too bad she didn't know that burnt chocolate was poisonous.
--
She woke up in a dark room with two beds side by side. She sat up, glancing round the room. From the bed on the right, she saw Glass cabinets and wooden cupboards to the left wall. From behind her head was a large machine thing wired up with many wires. The vibrant colors of the wires contrasted the dusty colors of the rest of the room.
"Awake?"
Her head whipped round to the source of the voice and it turned out to be a Asian boy with a horizontal scar across his nose. He was the one people called… Alma.
"uh… did you put me here?"
Alma shook his head, smiling.
"Yuu did. You know burnt chocolate's poisonous?"
Oh. Opps.
"Where's 'Yuu'?"
His smile widened. The boy seemed to enjoy talking.
He ranted on about who 'Yuu' was but her eyes just wandered off, glancing to and fro.
"… he such a scowling idiot but…"
He?
A loud thud of a boot connecting with Alma's head brought her back to earth.
"…eh? The idiot's awake?"
The young Japanese male had found the idiot girl on the kitchen floor, eyes glazed over.
He almost laughed at the sight.
Hey but this was Yuu, laughing wasn't in his dictionary… was it? He merely rolled his eyes and brought her up to his room, making an excuse to Alma that he didn't want the kitchen to be closed because of a idiot that cant temper chocolate.
Though it might be closed anyway. He thought as he relayed the disastrous state of the kitchen.
"Are you Yuu?"
The idiot girl had stood up looking at him with those doe like eyes. Her auburn hair was slightly tangled. A smudge of chocolate was on her flushed cheek, staining her prefect porcelain skin… wait. WHAT?
"You've got chocolate on your cheek, idiot."
She flushed further and turned round, scrubbing her cheek furiously. After a second or two, she peeked round, a question in her round eyes.
He rolled his eyes and turned on his heel, and sprinted out.
The typical Kanda, but of course, the little girl didn't know that and raced on behind him. Lenny-san had always said that she was a fast runner but she could hardly catch up with the boy.
She lost him in a room full of holes filled with some bubbling liquid. She had never been here. Kneeling down beside one, she peered into the hole.
White wisps of smoke surrounding the hole was disturbed by the girl's movement and moved up and out. The clear liquid disorientated the image but there was no mistaking it. It was a girl. She had long white hair which flowed round her small curled body. She seemed so lonely and fragile, if only she could touch…
"OI!"
The brown haired girl jerked back, falling on to her back.
"Omph…!"
She opened her eyes, only to see the Japanese male standing over her, frowning. His dark hair obscured his face so half of it was in shadow, giving Kanda a almost comical look.
"Pfft…"
She curled up in a ball, hoping to mask up her laughter. He frowned further, if possible, and roughly pulled her shoulder, forcing her to stand up. Grabbing her wrists, he held her arms up, and then twirled her round in a ballerina fashion. Satisfied that she had no injuries, he let her go.
Of course, the girl didn't know that, and this just made her crack up even more.
She skipped away, laughing.
"You're funny… See ya Yuu!"
As he watched her retreating figure, he frowned.
He didn't know her name.
--
A few hours later
He met the idiot girl again. Bumped into her.
Well, more like smashed into him in the corridor.
Shit, he was still weak from the sycro… and his arm fell off.
"Oh…*INSERT STRING OF CURSES OF CHOICE*"
The girl gave a little squeak, and then saw the boy crumple to the floor, holding his arm… or at least where it was.
All Kanda felt was an excruciating pain, which seemed to hurt more every time blood pulsed through him.
He felt a different sensation.
Through the white pain, a single stroke.
--
The girl didn't know what to do, and she did what Fou had told her before. Gently, she stroked his hair from his sweating forehead. Putting down the small pink box on to the floor, she wrapped her arms round his lithe body, cradling him gently, careful not to cause anymore pain for the boy.
Finally, the boy stopped shaking and his breathing steadied.
She smiled, happy that she had done at least one thing correct. As Kanda looked up, the girl planted a small kiss on to the top of his forehead, smiling softly. She put the pink box into his hand and wrapped his finger round the box so that he held the box containing the single green tea truffle that had come out of the ingredients for 12. At that moment, he wasn't haunted by any woman-like ghost, but saw an angel. The girl bent down to his ear and whispered,
"Happy Valentines', Yuu."