With Valentine's Day fast approaching, Yumi has to overcome her greatest challenge yet before the holiday.
February 9. Though the holiday was still five days out, Yumi was well on her way to completing Valentine's Day prep. She had to be given she was planning to put her creation in the mail. If she waited until next week, it might not make it until the 14th had passed.
That said, whether or not the date would pass was hardly the issue at the moment; rather, it was if she'd have anything to put in the mail at all by the end of the day. Her numerous failures up to this point were self-evident thanks to the scorched, untempered chocolate splattered around the kitchen and across her hair, face, and formerly white apron, eyes spared only by virtue of her goggles taking an inch-thick layer of the sweet substance in their place.
She turned off the gas after yet another mishap, slumping over in front of the sink. This was turning out to be a disaster, and a disaster entirely of her own making. After all, she'd had the hubris to send her grandmother out of the house for the day so that she could go it alone. Despite knowing her well-documented limitations in the kitchen, Yumi was absolutely sure she could make Valentine's chocolate all on her own this year.
Cleaning herself up as best she could in the running water, she heard a knock at the front of the house. She shook the water from her goggles, drying them with a towel as she went to the door. Was her grandmother home already?
Even before opening the door, she could tell who'd shown up just by silhouettes. "Kazuhiko!" she shouted, jumping out to hug him.
"Hey," he said, patting Yumi on the head as she and Hideo exchanged a thumbs up. "Saw your grandma out there earlier. Said you might be struggling, so we came to see what was going on."
"You met her in town?" she asked, pulling away before flicking away some chocolate she'd accidentally smeared on his jacket.
"Yeah," he nodded. "Really putting that old guy through his paces with all the shopping," he laughed. Yumi had asked Rio to see if Fukuro the butler could drive her grandmother into the city to run some errands today as a favor, one he was initially happy to do for her. One had to wonder if he was regretting that from the sound of things in the trenches.
"I'm just surprised you shop at the same store as old ladies," she joked, leading the two inside.
Kazuhiko shrugged. "Hey, sometimes you've got to go to a department store. Not that I actually found anything worth buying." He and Hideo both took a seat on the couch, Yumi having led them away from the site of carnage just a room over in the hopes they wouldn't notice.
"What are you buying there?" she asked.
"Valentine's gift for Kenji," he replied. "We broke up and all, but it still seemed kind of nice. Not super sure if you're supposed to give gifts on Valentine's or White Day if you're two guys, but whatever. Who cares about holiday tradition?"
Yumi giggled, flopping into a chair across from the two. "I have the same problem this year," she said. "No one really tells you what Valentine's Day is supposed to be like when you're gay, so I guess you just do whatever you want."
Hideo gave a wide shrug, not having much to contribute to all of this. Being someone decidedly single with no plans or desire to change that left them a bit out of the loop with all the romance discussion. "Ah, don't be like that," Kazuhiko said, bumping fists with his friend. "You're probably getting a bunch of friend chocolate this year. All the rewards with none of the responsibility."
His head snapped back to Yumi. "Oh, right. We were supposed to come help you." Both eyed her up and down, then looked to each other. "Kind of seems like you need it."
"No, it's okay," Yumi said, trying to deflect. "I'll figure it out. I don't want to bother you."
"We're already here, though," he said. "What, you're kicking us out?"
"No, I just-"
He nodded, both he and Hideo jumping up. "Then we better get to work." Looks like they were going to help whether she wanted it or not. "So what were you-" Kazuhiko finally noticed the kitchen, exclaiming, "Holy crap!" after the full scope of the disaster made itself apparent.
"I'll figure it out!" Yumi whined, cheeks flushing now that others had seen her shame.
"What the hell did you do?" Kazuhiko asked, Hideo instinctively pulling on the strings of their hoodie before moving in to better inspect the damage.
"I'm just having some problems getting things to melt right," Yumi said, pouting.
Hideo held up a pot, a thick layer of blackened chocolate burned to the bottom. "Wait, did you try to heat this directly?" Kazuhiko asked.
"I guess," she said, not entirely sure what that meant.
He looked to Hideo, both realizing exactly how much help was going to be required here. "Yeah, don't do that," he said. "Chocolate doesn't like it when you try to melt it that way. You've got to heat it indirectly, like in a bowl over some hot water."
"Huh," Yumi said, genuinely hearing about this for the first time. "I guess there's a lot I don't know about making chocolate."
"You might want to let us handle this one," he said. "Or, well, let Hideo. They're all crafty and stuff."
"Nope," Yumi told him, turning up her nose. "I have to do it myself."
"Why?" he asked. "You like ruining pots?"
"Because!" she insisted, taking the pot from Hideo and going to the sink. "It's Valentine's Day chocolate," she added, filling the pot partway with hot water and jabbing at the carbonized sugars with a dirty butter knife. "It's not special if someone else does it all for me."
"Ah, right," he conceded, leaning against the counter. "Guess that kind of makes sense. Still, you can at least let us help, right?" He ripped a handful of paper towels from a holder on the wall, wetting them and scrubbing at some of the still-wet chocolate stuck to the stove.
"I mean...I guess," Yumi said, still reluctant to accept any assistance. "I just wanted to try and figure it out on my own." Sighing, she admitted, "But I guess not wasting all the chocolate is important, too."
"We keep telling you that you don't have to do everything alone," Kazuhiko said, Hideo nudging her on the back as they dumped some soiled cooking implements into the sink and helped with cleanup. "None of us get why, but you keep doing this thing where you try to do it all yourself and don't let anyone in on what's bothering you, but you don't have to. We've always got your back."
"I know, I know." The knife cracked through the chocolate, allowing her to pry it off the bottom of the pot in pieces. "It just makes me...nervous, I guess. I don't want to have to rely on everyone. I want to be able to do things on my own."
Kazuhiko scoffed, picking some of the larger pieces of burned chocolate out of the sink with his spent paper towels after Yumi dumped them out. "What's the point of all that?" he asked, tossing the wad into the trashcan. "So what if you can do it on your own? It's easier if you've got people to help, right? I get wanting to be tough, but you've got a ton of people you can rely on. You don't have to keep trying to take it all yourself."
"You make it sound so simple," she said, mindlessly scrubbing around the circumference of the pot with some steel wool, already having dislodged whatever stuck on bits of chocolate still remained.
"That's because it is simple," he said, pointing a finger at Yumi. "Why do you think it's so hard?"
This gave her pause. It was a question she'd had to consider many times, only now realizing she'd never shared it with anyone. Not without breaking down crying, at least. "I guess…" she began, swallowing hard. "It's...like…"
Both her friends stopped what they were doing, waiting for her to speak. "I don't want to be a burden," she said. "And I don't want to have to be dragged along by everyone. Everyone already helps me so much and does so many things for me. I hate having to ask for more."
"But we're offering," Kazuhiko said, Hideo nodding in agreement. "And it's not like you don't do anything for anyone else. Hell, last week you stopped me from buying those really awful pants, remember?"
She stifled a laugh, remembering the text Kazuhiko had randomly sent her of him wearing some absolutely disgusting forest green parachute pants he found at the store. "I mean, those were terrible, but I don't know if that's the same as how everyone else helps me."
"Point is," he said, putting her in an affectionate headlock, "everybody thinks you're great and we're ready to take on anything you throw at us."
"I give up!" she said, slapping at his arm. "Fine, you can help!" All of these antics were really helping to raise her mood after so many failures, the burden she carried getting just a little bit lighter.
"That's more like it!" he said, releasing Yumi and pointing a set of finger guns to Hideo. "We set up to get this chocolate going?" They mirrored his action, then swept an arm across the meticulously arranged double boiler setup on the stove, the separated chocolate pieces on a cutting board, and a set of spoons and spatulas to use during the job itself.
"Looks like we're ready to-" Hideo tapped the bottom of their phone on the counter, showing it to Kazuhiko. "Oh, right. Yeah, do you have your molds or anything? Where's all that stuff?"
Yumi got a far off look in her eye, letting out a quiet, "Oh."
"Oh?"
"Uh…" She scratched her head, explaining, "Well, I was going to buy some molds...but then I thought maybe I could make them. You know, so they're unique. Maybe even some that look like Duel Monsters. But then I sat down to make some, but I realized I didn't know how, so I looked it up on my phone, but it seemed kind of hard and there was a lot of stuff I needed to get for it, and then Kyoko texted me this funny video of a Russian cat pretending to be a lion, and then I watched a bunch of other videos, and I think I forgot about the molds."
They all stood in stunned, embarrassed silence for what felt like exactly forty-seven years, Yumi finally bowing down deeply and saying, "I am very sorry."
Kazuhiko groaned, taking out his comb and running it through his hair. "Okay, let's try to figure something out." As he pondered what could be done, Hideo took a more proactive approached and opened some cabinets up, searching through them until finding the large cast iron takoyaki pan the Takanos always used. "Oh, that might work," Kazuhiko said.
"It'll definitely work!" Yumi said as she began to hop. "Like little chocolate takoyakis! That's even better than any of my ideas! Chocoyaki!"
"Crisis averted," Kazuhiko nodded. "Okay, let's get this going. Miss Yumi, where's your cooking oil? We've got to lube this thing up or the chocolate's going to stick."
"Got it," she said, crouching down and digging through the lower cabinets for a bottle of light yellow oil. Meanwhile, Hideo filled the boiler pot with water from the tap while Kazuhiko shoveled a majority of the broken up chocolate pieces into a glass bowl.
In no time at all, the double boiler was assembled and the takoyaki pan was greased down. Yumi triumphantly turned on the gas as high as it would go, Hideo quickly turning it down to a more reasonable setting. "Oh, so you don't go that hot," she said.
"Did you look up anything about chocolate before you started all of this?" Kazuhiko asked.
"I didn't think it would be this hard," Yumi whined, lightly kicking one of the cabinet doors with a tiny grunt. "But it's fine now, right? What do I do from here?"
"Let's see," he said, looking to Hideo for guidance. Hideo nodded in turn, picking up a rubber spatula and handing it to Yumi. "Ah, right. Yeah, just stir it around a little. The water's going to get hotter, which heats the bowl up and melts the chocolate. Once it's all melted, we do the rest."
"What's the rest?" she asked, stirring like he instructed. To her great delight, the little brown bricks were starting to soften and smear against the glass.
"You've got to temper it," he told her. "That's…" He paused for a moment. "What's tempering again?" Hideo typed out a quick explanation for him that he could read off. "Right. It's lowering the chocolate temperature so that it starts crystallizing. When it does that, it'll snap and get glossy after it cools instead of just crumbling."
"That's why it does that?" Yumi asked. "Untempered chocolate is gross, then. Are we going to need a thermometer, or something?"
He shook his head. "Nah, Hideo showed me this cool trick one time. You put unmelted chocolate into the melted stuff and it cools it down like that. Once that stuff melts, you're basically done."
"You two know a lot about chocolate and cooking," she said, almost feeling jealous.
"Hey, our adventures aren't all getting into jams and hunting for treasure," he replied, crossing his arms and trying to act cool.
"You hunt for treasure when I'm not there?" Yumi said, actually feeling jealous this time.
"No, that was a joke," he admitted. "But we do stuff like this sometimes. It's kind of fun."
"Yeah!" Yumi grew quiet, stirring the chocolate around. "I hope this turns out okay," she said suddenly, nervousness creeping in despite how well things had turned around.
"It'll be fine," Kazuhiko reassured her, Hideo patting her on the top of her head right after. "By the way, why'd you decide to make some? Is it just for everyone or are you giving it to someone in particular this year?"
"I guess if they turn out well enough and there's plenty, I'd give some to everyone I can think of," she answered. A tiny smile crept onto her lips then as she added, "But I just really wanted to make something for Sakuya at least."
The mood seemed to shift after she said this, Kazuhiko grumbling to himself as Hideo withdrew a bit. "If you say so."
"What?" Yumi asked.
"You know what I think," he said, scowling. "I don't know what Ishikawa's deal is now. Has she even said anything to you? She's ignoring everyone else."
"It's a little...complicated," Yumi told him.
"Yeah, 'it's complicated' is a great relationship status," he scoffed.
"Don't be like that," she sighed. "Sakuya just has a lot of stuff on her mind right now and she's not really able to talk to everyone."
"If you say so," he relented, though it was no secret at this point both he and Hideo were equal parts concerned and irritated by Sakuya's ghosting. "I'm just saying. If you're looking for somebody to give relationship chocolate to, you've got Suzy Q out there."
Yumi covered her mouth as she snorted. "Be serious!"
"What?" he shrugged, a mischievous glint in his eye. "You're all over each other whenever I see you together. You don't think you have a chance?"
"Nope," Yumi said with confidence. "She's not really into girls."
"Seriously?" he asked. "Damn, didn't expect that."
She nodded. "Yeah, I was surprised. She said that sometimes she is, sometimes she isn't, and she isn't right now."
"What, did you get rejected when you found all this out?" he laughed.
Yumi pursed her lips. "I'm not actually sure," she said. "I think I might have asked her out by accident once, but it was all so casual I don't know if I got rejected or not. Not formally rejected, I mean."
"How do you ask someone out by accident?" he shouted, waving his arms above his head.
"I don't know!" she shouted back, Hideo taking to the chocolate as the two of them carried on. "I said she had pretty eyes one day and asked if we could go do some stuff after school because I wanted to hang out and she didn't have club stuff but Ami was off doing cosplay stuff and wouldn't be there with us, and I guess she thought I was asking for a date!"
"That was totally asking for a date!"
"But I didn't mean to!" She puffed out her cheeks, stating decisively, "When I ask a girl out, I mean it! I'm a professional!"
"Professional my ass!" he countered. "You're just a child! You can't even comprehend the kind of power you wield! That hubris of yours will be your downfall!"
Yumi stuck out her tongue. "You're only a couple years older than me! And it's my birthday in a couple of weeks, so you'll be even less older than me!"
"And a child you'll still remain!" he said, arms crossed as he looked down his nose at her.
The two of them were prepared to continue this exchange and shirk their duties to the chocolate, but Hideo swiftly put an end to their bit with a bonk to the head for each of them. They gestured to the chocolate, raising the spatula to show it drip off back into the bowl. It was melted now.
"We were about to notice," Kazuhiko huffed, Yumi scurrying in front of him to take the seed chocolate and dump it into the rest.
"I'll do the rest," Yumi said, taking the spatula back and stirring to melt the chocolate just added. "And once this is all melted, we can pour it into the molds?" Hideo nodded, turning off the gas and keeping a close eye on the chocolate to ensure it didn't overheat.
It didn't take long before the seed chocolate had melted, Yumi moving the bowl off the water. On Hideo's urging, they tested a small amount of the chocolate by dipping the end of a knife into it and cooling it in the freezer. A few minutes later, it came out hardened and shiny. Finally, they were ready.
"Take it slow," Kazuhiko told her, holding the pan still as Yumi did her best to pour a pool of chocolate into each half-sphere with minimal spillage. For safety, she was filling them to just under the rim, Hideo directing her to pour it over the spatula as they held it to keep it from splattering.
Though the process itself was fairly quick, all three were abnormally tense given that any failure meant a shameful and arduous trip to the store to find whatever chocolate might be left. Thankfully, that wouldn't be necessary. By the time they finished, all but the last hole was perfectly filled with melted chocolate.
"We actually did it!" Yumi squealed, hopping up and down as Kazuhiko slid the pan into the fridge.
"Good job, team," Kazuhiko said with a nod. "Now we just hang out until that stuff hardens up." He walked to the living room, sitting back on the couch and pulling his cards from the inside of his jacket. "Anyone feel like a duel?"
"I'll get my deck," Yumi said, rushing off to her room as Hideo set a timer for when they would check the chocolate. As the next hour and a half ticked by, the three spent their time playing cards and watching TV, taking it slow and relaxing in a way they really hadn't since summer ended. And on a Thursday, no less.
With everything going on over the last several months, quiet moments like this felt in short supply. Between the danger and conspiracies and even just regular schooling, the "hardship" of getting this chocolate just right and finally overcoming it was just the kind of low-stakes problem they could all appreciate. The noticeable absence of one member of the old group aside, it was shaping up to be a pretty good day.
Around a minute after Yumi finished beating Kazuhiko again, the alarm dinged. "They're ready!" Yumi said, springing up from her seat and dashing to the kitchen.
"We're checking on them," Kazuhiko corrected her. "They might not be totally-"
"They're ready!" Yumi repeated, already having pulled the pan from the fridge and poked at a few of them. They each felt cold and solid, the shallow layer of condensation that had formed on their surfaces evaporating at her touch.
"Yeah, I guess they are ready," he admitted. Hideo grabbed a cutting board, motioning for Yumi to bring the pan over. They placed it on top after she did, Kazuhiko instructing, "Okay, flip it."
In a single, swift motion, they manage to invert the pan against the cutting board, a chorus of soft thunks confirming that things had gone just as planned. Removing the pan, row after row of deep brown half spheres greeted them against the light wood.
"They're cute!" Yumi shouted, picking up two of them and clacking the flat sides together. "Now how do we put them together? They've got to be like takoyaki."
"Easy," Kazuhiko said, motioning for Hideo to grab the bowl from before. They'd sat it beside the sink after pouring the final slot earlier, saving it for this purpose. Though there wasn't enough chocolate left over for a full half sphere, enough remained behind to act as glue to hold two pieces together.
Working as a team, they stretched the small amount of still liquid chocolate as far as it would go, applying a thin coating to one of the half spheres before sticking another to it, each repeating the process until all but the odd piece out were mated together and replaced into the pan.
"Now just stick these back in to let it harden up and we're done," Kazuhiko said, nodding his head at the attractive handiwork the gang had come up with.
"Thanks for all your help," Yumi said to the both of them. "I really would have screwed this up even more if you didn't show up here. Thank you."
"Hey, it's fine," Kazuhiko said, Hideo giving a thumbs up. "We're always here to give you a hand. And it's not like we're doing this for free." He grabbed the remaining chocolate half sphere in hand, adding in as deep and dramatic a voice as possible, "I'll consider this my payment for a job well done," before biting down.
Immediately, he recoiled, putting a hand to his mouth. "What the hell?"
"What's wrong?" Yumi asked, brow furrowing. She took the chocolate from him and looked it over. Aside from the teeth marks left behind just now, it seemed like ordinary chocolate. She tried biting down next, quickly realizing what the problem was as she put as much force as she could muster into her jaw to try and cut through the candy.
Errors had been made. "It's so hard," Yumi said, finally giving up on eating. Through all of this, none of them had spared a thought for what making solid chocolate takoyaki-sized balls might be like to actually eat. If this was how hard it was to get through a single half, what was about to be unleashed in the refrigerator?
"Forget about that," Kazuhiko said, having shaved off enough with his teeth earlier to actually try some. "What happened to the flavor?"
Hideo took a knife and cut off a couple of slivers from the side, both of them sampling it before recoiling at the overwhelming bitterness on their tongues. "This is awful!" Yumi shouted. "What did we do? Did it burn?"
"What chocolate did you use?" Kazuhiko asked, utterly confused as to how all of this went so wrong.
Yumi scurried to the trash and dug through until finding the wrapper, presenting it to her friends. "Is this a bad brand? I got it since it was big, but I didn't try any."
Looking it over for a moment, Kazuhiko and Hideo shot a glance to each other, sighing in unison. "This is 95% chocolate," he said.
"What's the other 5%?" Yumi asked. "Is that stuff bad?"
"No, it's sugar," he explained. "Chocolate needs sugar to be sweet, and the higher the chocolate percentage in something, the less sweet it tastes. So what we've got here is solid balls of almost pure chocolate without any sweetening."
There was silence for a good several seconds, the realization that they'd wasted all of this time and effort finally setting in. "I didn't think it would be this hard!" Yumi said again, hitting herself on the sides of the head.
"Hey, stop that," he said, pushing Yumi's fists away from her head. "It's fine, let's just think of how to fix this."
"It's ruined, though," she said, rapidly losing hope. "We wasted all of that time. And it's barely even edible."
Hideo suggested calling Fukuro to see what the chocolate situation was like out on the frontlines. As good an idea as that was, the situation only grew more dire after executing it. After the call went out, he informed Yumi that virtually every store he and her grandmother had visited today were fully sold out of chocolate. After asking an employee about it, he told her they wouldn't be getting more until early tomorrow.
"But it's going to sell out again as soon as they get it in," Yumi realized.
"That might be true," he agreed. "I could continue looking for you. I'm sure at least one store has more."
Letting out a long sigh, Yumi replied, "No, it's okay. I don't want you to have to do all of that for me. Thanks for everything today." They hung up on each other, Yumi slipping her phone back into the front pocket of her overalls and slumping to the floor. "I'm so stupid."
"You just made a mistake," Kazuhiko said, squatting down and nudging her on the shoulder. "We'll figure something out." He turned to Hideo. "First, let's pry those things apart before they fuse into one." They nodded, taking the would-be chocoyaki apart to spare any more tooth trauma should someone bite one by accident.
"It's hopeless," Yumi said, curling into a ball and flopping down onto her side. "It was doomed from the start."
"You're really taking this hard," Kazuhiko noted, a bit disturbed by how uncharacteristically melancholic Yumi was being over this setback.
"I just wanted it to go well," she sighed again. "I wanted to do something right."
"Where's all of this coming from?" he asked, Hideo sitting down beside both of them.
Yumi didn't answer at first, slowly pulling herself into a sitting position. "I don't know," she admitted. "Everything is kind of okay right now. More okay than before, at least. But now it's just, like…" She fell over again. "I just wish I didn't screw things up this time."
"I guess I understand that," Kazuhiko replied.
"Is this angst?" she asked. "Sometimes I hear people talking about angst when you go through puberty."
"You're going through puberty?"
She kicked him in the shoulder. "I'm almost 13!"
"Like I said before, you're still just a child." This seemed to have snapped Yumi out of her funk, briefly forgetting about the failed chocolate as she hopped up to screech and beat on Kazuhiko's back. "Come on, let's try to think of something. Getting sad's not going to help us."
Now all they had to do was decide what would become of these chocolates. "It would be a waste to just throw them away," Yumi said. "Do we just eat them?"
"How?" Kazuhiko scoffed. "Going to break my teeth." He scratched his chin, suggesting, "Maybe remold it into something easier to eat? What else do you have here?" The three of them began to search for anything that might be a good chocolate template. Unfortunately, nothing else really fit the bill. Tempering wouldn't be as easy this time around, either, making for yet another hurdle.
After several minutes of them all searching for new mold options in the house and solutions online, Yumi finally said, "Maybe I'll just keep it like this."
"Sounds like a bad idea," Kazuhiko said bluntly.
"But what's the other option?" Yumi asked. "I don't think there's anything we can do now. And maybe it could be, like...kind of a joke. Something."
"Don't know if broken teeth are a joke," he said, though he quickly backtracked after considering it for a bit longer. "Then again, I guess if it's Ishikawa…"
"No one's going to break their teeth," she huffed, looking to Hideo to confirm just in case (the chances were low).
"If you say so," he shrugged. As a prank, this was pretty funny, though it was a bit less good as a Valentine's gift. Truth be told, though, he really wished he could see how this went down when these things got to Gunma.
His imagination wasn't too far off the mark from what actually went down the day of, surprisingly enough. The dedicated members of Japan's postal service got the little brown package to Sakuya's school on Valentine's Day exactly. At least that part went well.
It was a bit of a shock for Sakuya herself, not really expecting to receive anything. The same was true for any of her peers who saw her walking across campus with a package like this, murmurs about who would be sending the weird child prodigy gifts on this holiday. Some were jealous, of course, but others were more just confused.
Sakuya ignored them. Even before reading the name on the label, though, she already knew who had sent it. She didn't need any more explanation than that. Locking herself in her dorm, she placed it on her desk to consider whether she should unwrap it.
As usual, she was stressing herself out over this decision. She didn't think she really deserved a gift after all she'd done, but did all her guilt really matter now? It would probably make Yumi feel even worse if she just ignored it. And if it was something perishable, it might start rotting if she just left it alone.
When she thought of it like that, she couldn't ignore it. Gingerly tearing through the paper surrounding the white and red box underneath, she lifted the tiny lid to find a handwritten note. "Sorry, I don't think they came out very well," it read. "I'll keep practicing and maybe have something better next year."
She sighed, letting a smile come naturally with no one around to hide it from. Yumi should know by now she'd enjoy anything she gave her, even if it wasn't very good. Despite saying that, though, she doubted it was as bad as the note warned, especially after seeing how glossy and perfect all nine of the little chocolates in the box were.
If nothing else, the presentation was good. Retrieving one of them from where it sat against crumpled, pink tissue paper, Sakuya quickly moved it to her mouth, attempting to take a bite only to immediately remove it. "What is…" She tried again, teeth clicking against the solid mass.
She wasn't about to lose that easily. Placing the chocolate into the back of mouth, she bit down hard at the edge with her molars until a piece cracked off. No sweets would get the better of her, though she almost wished they did after absorbing the awful taste. She wasn't against dark chocolate, but this was too much even for her.
Well, the note wasn't lying. With what she knew about Yumi and cooking, this shouldn't have been much of a surprise. In both form and flavor, this chocolate was nearly inedible. That was going to make it a lot harder to finish all of them.
As she struggled to scrape chunks off of more of the foul, bitter mess with her teeth, Sakuya began thinking over what she should do for White Day in return. Hopefully something a little easier to enjoy than this.
A proper Valentine's chapter this time. Couldn't really do one in the story last time for obvious reasons, but with the year coming around like this, I figured I was obligated to. And as much as I would like to say I intentionally waited to post this until actual Valentine's Day, I really didn't.
Chocolate is rough. Even if Yumi deserves some of the blame for getting awful eating chocolate, I'd say the biggest failure goes to the other two for being more experienced and not realizing that thick, solid blocks of chocolate are hard. Also, if someone's coming here to tell me you don't actually need to grease the molds when making chocolate, I will tell you, as a cook, that you've already lost whenever you start thinking, "Well, it's not supposed to stick!"
Actually finishing this as I'm preparing to do stuff on the day of, so I don't have a lot of time to ramble like usual. Just be safe out there. Don't swap fluids with anyone who hasn't also been responsible and quarantined/vaccinated.
That's all I have for now. Thanks for reading. Share if you're enjoyed. Always remember to grease your molds or I'll be unhappy.