Chapter 20: Mashiro Shiina #0

Mashiro Shiina looked at Shouko Nishimiya. The woman smiled at her and held up a baumkuchen cake. Without saying much else, she divided the cake in half and gave her half the portion. Mashiro Shiina observed her while she started to eat in silence.

"Is there something wrong?"

Mashiro Shiina looked at the person who had asked this question. He was tall, had sharp looking eyes and he stood before in an intimidating manner.

"I want her baumkuchen cake." Mashiro Shiina said, pointing to Shouko Nishimiya.

"What happened to the one you had?" the stranger asked.

"I ate it."

"Clearly not" He pointed at the piece of cake on her plate. "You still have half a portion left."

Mashiro Shiina used both her hands to guard the plate. "This is her cake." She said referring to the other woman.

The person looked at her, mumbled something underneath his breath about troublesome women and then asked a simple question. "What is your name?"

"Mashiro Shiina." She replied.

"Well, Shiina-san, my name is Hachiman Hikigaya. And I kinda want to ask you a simple thing."

"Okay."

"Did you take this piece of cake from, Nishimiya-san?" Hachiman Hikigaya asked.

"No, she gave it to me." Mashiro Shiina said.

"Oh, she did." He looked at the other women who had been looking into their conversation. He didn't say much to her, just gave her a thumbs up. Shouko smiled and used her hands to communicate. Hachiman also tried to use the same form of communication. But he was rather poor at it. He wondered if a smile would do the job.

He smiled and Shouko Nishimiya blushed. Well, guess that worked, he thought.

Now onto more troublesome matters.

"Shiina-san-"

"That woman used sign language." She said in a plain voice.

"Ah, yes, she is-"

"Rather good at it." She supplied.

Not quite how he would have put it, but well it was somewhat progress. He shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. This wasn't how he wanted this conversation to go, but he had little to no control on it now. And he wasn't above using this to his advantage.

"So Shiina-san, I hope you understand about the cake."

"No."

Hachiman Hikigaya felt a nerve tick on his forehead. He shouldn't be angry, he really shouldn't be getting angry with her. Have patience, have patience, where the hell is that idiot Sorata, he thought to himself. He clearly wasn't equipped to deal with a woman like her.

"But, Nishimiya-san already gave you half of her cake."

"I want the other half." Mashiro Shiina said. There was no shame, no tantrum, no nothing. Just the same plain voice, with its deadpan delivery – she was literally the definition of a broken record.

"Well," Hachiman tried. "You can't always get what you want."

"Why is that?" Mashiro Shiina asked.

"That's life." He said with a sigh.

All this talk over a piece of cake, what was his life coming to. The service club really shouldn't have hosted this New Year's Eve event. It brought out a ton of people and they didn't have the manpower to handle even half of them.

"I want her cake." Mashiro Shiina said

Hachiman sighed. Shouko Nishimiya carried on, finishing her cake.

"You can't have cake."

"Then I will use plan 'C'."

"What's plan 'C'?" He asked, amusedly.

"I annihilate Shouko Nishimiya."

Wow, that's dark. Hachiman didn't know whether she was being serious or not. He got nothing out of her voice. It was the same delivery, no inflections, no deep or low tones. She was slowly becoming a mystery and not the ones he liked to handle in the service club.

Meanwhile Shouko Nishimiya had finished her food and she looked at the cake left on Mashiro Shiina's plate. It was left untouched. She frowned a bit and pointed at the cake. Mashiro Shiina quickly covered her cake with her palm and brought it to her lips.

"This is mine." Mashiro said.

"Actually, like you said, this is hers." Hachiman said.

"She gave it to me. It's mine now." She slowly brought the cake to her mouth and started nibbling at it like a rabbit. Hachiman found this a little cute. However, when Shouko Nishimiya smiled at her, Mashiro stopped eating and folded her palm and fingers to resemble that of a claw.

"Plan 'C'" Mashiro Shiina said.

Shouko Nishimiya looked at her like she was funny. She thought, she was trying to use sign language to communicate with her. However what she was trying to say, she couldn't really understand.

Meanwhile, Hachiman Hikigaya was on the borderline of panicking. Maybe he was looking too much into it, maybe it's because he was overworked and underfed with all the New Year's Celebration arrangement, but he was really starting to think that Mashiro Shiina could hurt Shouko Nishimiya.

He couldn't have that on his conscience.

So, he searched the crowd for a person who could keep a watch on her and stop her from doing something stupid.

"Hey Mochi, come over here for a second."

Mordred Pendragon blushed and raced to his side and picked him off the ground, grabbing his shirt collar. "Okay, that's it, you die!"

"C'mon it's Christmas!" He replied weakly, feet dangling in the air.

"That was last week."

"Oh, well, um, a belated Merry Christmas to you, Mordred."

"That's your highness, you weakling." Mordred Pendragon said. She really would have punched him to next week. But she kinda found the nickname he gave her really sweet. Not that she was ever going to say that to him. No, never. "Okay, what do you want?" she asked instead.

"I want you to look after these two." Hachiman said, pointing at Mashiro Shiina and Shouko Nishimiya.

"Why? Are they in any kind of danger?" Now she was excited. All this talk of happiness and merriness had her bored out of her mind. She was looking for a fight. "Can I bust open a few heads?"

"You can bust open her head, if she tries anything funny." Hachiman said, pointing specifically at Mashiro Shiina.

Mordred didn't get it. "You serious? She looks harmless."

"Don't trust her looks. She was talking about annihilating Nishimiya over a piece of cake." Hachiman explained. "That's Marie Antoinette level of evil." Then just out of curiosity he asked. "She isn't a heroic spirit or anything right? I mean you have to admit the fatelore can be…" he trailed off.

"No she isn't." Even Mordred sounded unsure. "At least, I don't think so."

Hachiman took advantage of the uncertainty as he had lulled Mordred into a false sense of security. In the next second he made a run for it. "Okay, so look after these guys for me, will ya. I have some other things to do. Thank ya, love ya, bye bye."

Hachiman ran for his life, but Mordred didn't follow him. She was blushing a little at his last parting words. With a huff she sat down beside the blonde haired Mashiro Shiina and snatched the remaining cake from her plate and shoved it into her mouth.

"What is up with that jerk!?" Mordred complained while eating the cake. "Saying stuff like that."

Mashiro Shiina looked at her apathetically. "Mordred no baka."

A/N: Happy New Year Everyone! It's not yet midnight, but I wanted to wish you in advance. Thank you for all the love and support you gave this fic. It really motivated me to keep on writing.

Starting tomorrow I will work on a new fic: Infinite x Service. It will be like this, but different to an extent. Please give it a shot as well.

With that said here is the voter list which NateCunnigham sent me through PM.

Option 1: Aki Adagaki (Masamune-kun no Revenge)

Option 2: Yoshino Koiwai (Masamune-kun no Revenge)

Option 3: Mai Sakurajima (Rascals Don't Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai)

Option 4: Asuna Yuuki (Sword Art Online)

Option 5: Mirai Kuriyama (Beyond the Boundary)

Please pick any of the above options or suggest a character in the review section.

You can also send me a voter list.

Hope everyone enjoyed reading this chapter.

Leave lots and lots of review, follow and fave.

Won't betray your dreams.