Yep, it's that time of the year again: an extremely late batch of Valentine's chapters!

I've got four chapters planned for it this time, the last of which will be the compilation and the only one actually dealing with the actual chocolates/gifts. The other three – this one included – are more like Valentine's shenanigans.
So yeah, unless if I end up posting more of these chapters in one month because one's too short on its own, this batch is going to be over after the next Valentine's event has already ended. Sorry about that, but I like my backlogs to keep these updates monthly.

With that out of the way, here's the chapter: I hope you enjoy it!


Gudako shuffled closer to the corner, her back pressed against the wall. She stood there, and listened.

She heard nothing.

Carefully, she peeked past it, only seeing an empty hallway. Not too unusual a sight during Valentine's day, especially considering Semiramis had recruited everyone she could to work on producing more chocolate. Indeed, she could hear nothing but the nervous beating of her own heart.

She seemed to truly be utterly alone now. No one in sight, even her regular stalkers must've been hard at work making chocolates.

And yet, despite not seeing anybody, she had this feeling-

"Found you, Master~!"

"Gyaaaaaahhh!" Gudako couldn't help but let out a terrified scream when she felt a hand pat her back, jumping away from it and out into the hallway, executing a perfect 180 degrees pirouette in mid-air and landing on the balls of her feet with legs bent, ready to sprint away even though it wouldn't help against a Servant.

"Wow, couldn't you at least try to be surprised a bit cuter? You are looking for a certain person hoping to impress, no?" BB only let her annoyance show for a moment, before resuming her malicious grinning.

"… How do you know about that?" Gudako asked, but she wasn't really surprised the AI had found out. Honestly, it was precisely because of situations like this that she'd turned and ran upon seeing BB in the distance, but it seems she'd been spotted after all.

"Hey now, no need for that look! If you must know, I just happened to see you wandering the halls with what looked like handmade chocolates in your hands, and drew my own conclusions! Though I must say, that chocolate you're trying to hide behind your back? It looks a lot nicer than what you gave me. Must be the best out of all you've made, am I right?"

Gudako knew there was no point in denying, distracting or fleeing again: the Moon Cancer already knew everything she needed to, and this conversation with Gudako was just toying with her before she got to whatever she had planned. The young Master was by now familiar enough with BB's 'support' of her and Amakusa – even though Gudako had no intention of actually asking him out or anything, these chocolates were just to show how much his help and friendship meant to her – to know that whenever she showed up talking about Gudako's crush, bad things were going to happen.

And so, Gudako figured she had nothing to lose by telling the truth: "That's right, these are the best chocolates I made."

"So they are! Wooow, if I was a teensy bit more possessive, I'd be jealous!" Gudako tensed. Was that what this was about? Was BB going to broadcast Gudako had made 'special' chocolates over Chaldea's intercom, causing at least half of the Servants to rush her to find out if it's true and for who?
Even for her, that just seemed too cruel.

Almost as if reading her mind, BB followed it up by saying: "Luckily for you, I'm your extremely supportive kouhai! So don't worry, your secret's safe with me!"

Oh no, Gudako recognized that 'supportive kouhai' line.

"And so…"

She was going to die (of embarrassment if not from the danger), wasn't she?

"… Let me help you with this~!"


Gudako wasn't surprised things had turned out like this, really.

"Master!" She could hear Amakusa's voice coming from way too close. She could feel the air he breathed out brush against the hair on her shoulder, and unless there was someone else in here with them, it were his legs straddling her thighs. She lightly shifted in an attempt to angle a bit away from him, but of course all this succeeded at was planting more of her elbow into the chocolate… stomach acid? This stuff thankfully didn't burn like actual acid, but this was still a stomach after all, so what else was she supposed to call it?

"Master, please, don't move any more: your clothes are already starting to turn into chocolate, so if any of your skin touches this liquid…!" As expected of a Servant, Amakusa had amazing eyesight to be able to tell that much when they were stuck in a dark cramped space where everything was chocolate.

And true, Gudako wouldn't have been capable of even imagining this exact predicament – risking being turned into chocolate inside of a chocogolem's stomach wasn't exactly a situation one could ever expect – but she'd damn well known something of this magnitude was going to go wrong the moment BB had showed up.

"Could it be you're moving stiffly due to the after-effects of the petrification? Don't worry, once we get out of here, I'm sure Da Vinci and the other Casters will be able to help you."

She honestly didn't even have the energy to feel distressed by the prospect of turning into chocolate anymore: all that was left within her was exasperation, and the musings of whether a magically-enhanced computer antivirus would be able to help get back at BB for this.

Then something collided heavily with the chocogolem the AI had stuffed them into – a surprisingly reckless move considering Amakusa still had a class advantage over her – causing the insides to shake as well. And with a yelp, Gudako learned there was still some other feeling besides exasperation left: embarrassment.

Because she was pretty sure that was Amakusa's face that had just crashed into her chest.

Of course he straightened and removed himself right away with an apology, and while Gudako couldn't be sure, by the splash she heard she suspected he had put his hand down on the bottom of the 'stomach' to keep himself upright. Which meant his hand was now going to turn into chocolate as well.

Gudako would've told him that it was fine, that he didn't need to risk himself to save her discomfort, but she was fairly certain the Ruler was about as uncomfortable with this situation as she was, and so she could only do one thing: "I'm sorry about dragging you into this."

"It's not your fault, Master: I highly doubt any of us can fully stop BB when she's got an idea in mind, let alone when she catches you by surprise," Amakusa reassured her, and Gudako could imagine the gentle – if somewhat pained due to the unpleasant circumstances – smile that must have been on his face.

Another crash, but this time Amakusa managed to prevent himself from falling on her again. The stomach chocolate got sloshed around a lot though, and Gudako even got some in her mouth. It taste absolutely delicious, but sadly also meant that she was going to chocolatify from inside-out now.
Perhaps that had been BB's plot all along: to turn Gudako into a life-sized chocolate so she could take a page out of Kiyohime's book and gift herself to Amakusa with a ribbon over her. It seemed extremely unlikely, but you never could be certain with her…

The last collision had managed to form a tiny crack in the chocogolem's surprisingly hard shell, and through it the a bit of light streamed in.
Also streaming in were the sounds of combat outside – presumably Servants trying to get the two of them out of this thing – and the shouting of Edison and Tesla in particular, both who were claiming it was the other's chocogolem worker that had swallowed up their Master and a Servant.

The light was barely visible, but it was still plenty more than what had been there before, and now that everything wasn't complete darkness Gudako could actually make out Amakusa's silhouette in the dark.
Apparently he was indeed straddling her legs and had his hand in the stomach chocolate (Gudako probably needed to find a less icky name for the liquid) to prevent himself from further accidental impropriety. Said hand was slowly being consumed by an unmistakable chocolate brown, and Gudako suspected a similar sight was happening to her mouth, if the numbness was any indication.

And yet, despite the situation being surprisingly dire, Gudako felt her mood better just from finally being able to see the Ruler's handsome face smiling at her.

Then another attack came from outside, and the chocogolem was promptly annihilated – apparently one of the Altria's carrying Excalibur (Morgan) had decided to help out through overkill – causing the two inside to be practically blasted outside by it.

Honestly, it was a small miracle Gudako was fit enough to avoid being dragged away by Nightingale after that mess, with just a dozen of Casters being needed to help un-chocolatify her and Amakusa.


Gudako let out a long, deep-suffering sigh.

As if the entire incident caused by BB – who had gotten away scot-free for now – wasn't enough, Semiramis had been less than happy by all the commotion, damage and delay caused by this 'prank gone wrong'. As such, as soon as she arrived on scene – conveniently right after Gudako and Amakusa had been cured of their chocolaty affliction – she'd banished everyone to work on harvesting chocomandrakes in extra shifts.
Gudako heavily suspected she hadn't actually cared whether any of them were guilty or not, and had simply used it as an excuse to put more people to work.

The young Master was currently busy trying to convince Nero and Elizabeth not to hold a duet, which wasn't doing her mood any favors by this point.

Everything she saw (except for Servants) were chocolates. All she could smells were chocolates. Even the very air she breathed tasted like chocolate (though admittedly, that might have been due to her tongue having briefly been chocolatified). Frankly, she was sick of chocolates, and the next chocolate she got her hands on was going flying off this stupid, gravity-defying, chocolate-producing rock.
Which was problematic, since she hadn't been able to hand Amakusa the chocolates she'd made for him during the commotion. She'd put a lot of effort into them, so she didn't want to throw them away, regardless of how cathartic it would be. As such, she'd just have to try giving them to him at another time.


Naturally, when during the harvesting someone pushed a chocomandrake into Gudako's hands, the first thing she did was chuck it out of the Garden.

Cu (Lancer) just barely managed to grab it, preventing his Master from facing Semiramis' wrath over losing another chocolate. Of course, while he was doing this one of his enchanted earplugs fell out, leaving him exposed to the horror of Nero and Elizabeth's surprise duet (which even the chocomandrakes' cries could no longer completely cancel out).

He ended up with a ruptured eardrum and the sweet gift of unconsciousness, and none of those present could tell whether him being carted off to Nightingale's care was a mercy or just plain cruel.