Disclaimer: All characters belong to Square-Enix and Tetsuya Nomura.
Dedicated to my friend Dagas! Merry Christmas hun!
A Matter of Right and Wrong
"Uh-huh. Sure…" laughed the young silver-haired boy. His best friend sat across from him half-buried in the sand while he stood at the water's edge, the seawater rushing up around his ankles and feet.
"You can too! My mom says so all the time!" the brown-haired boy retorted in a high squeaky voice.
Honestly, who was he fooling? He was a whole year older than him and of course much smarter, so automatically he was right.
"You're just saying that 'cause you're a big chicken," he said with a smirk on his face.
"Am not!" Sora yelled, throwing a handful of sand at him.
"Are too! You're a big baby chicken!"
"Am not! You're the chicken!"
He snorted and laughed. "Oh yeah?"
"Yeah!" Sora exclaimed, kicking sand into the air as he jumped to his feet.
"Well, why am I a chicken?"
"Well…" thought his friend. "Uh…"
"Uh-huh. That's what I thought."
"But you're still a chicken! You just don't want to lose to me!"
Oh, it was on now.
"Really? There's only one way to solve this you know," he said, sidling up to Sora, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
"…How?"
"We do it! I'll prove you wrong then!"
Sora thought about this for a second. It marveled him that his friend had to give it even a second's thought. He'd do it in a heartbeat.
"All right," sighed Sora.
"Great!" he exclaimed, grabbing his friend's hand. "Let's go to your house, okay?"
"Why?"
"You said earlier that you had some there, right?
"Yeah, but they're Mom's—"
"Oh, your mom won't miss a few, right?"
"…I guess not, but—"
"Good! Let's go!" he cheered, running down the beach and back to their homes, his friend in tow.
The pile sitting on Sora's kitchen counter wasn't a mere plate's worth in size. He didn't even think he's seen so many in his whole life, and he's been alive for a whole eight years now and he thought he'd seen everything. His young eyes gazed in wonder upon a luscious and highly appetizing mountain filled with sweet cookie goodness.
"Wow…" he said breathlessly.
"Cool huh?" his friend said cockily, a broad grin on his face.
"Your mom made that many?" he asked incredulously.
"Yep! I think she said they're for relatives though. I don't think we should…"
"Hey, like I said, she won't miss a few right?" he said, hands propped on his hips. His friend pouted and reluctantly shook his head. "Besides if your mom is right, then we would be able to only eat a couple before we get sick!"
"But I've never eaten more than three at a time."
He laughed. "Well of course! I betcha your mom was the one who gave you that many, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, there you go! Come on," he said, hopping up on a stool. He wasn't about to lose to his friend with this one. He called him a chicken of all things! Even after he'd called him one first too. The nerve. "We've got some eating to do."
"But why these ones? Doesn't your mom have any?"
"Not yet. Mom doesn't like to make them until the day before Christmas. Now hurry up! I betcha I can eat more than you!"
Not backing down from the challenge, Sora climbed up on another stool and sat ready to take him on. He had to grin—it was too easy to goad his friend into a contest. "Oh yeah?" said the seven-year old. "I betcha I can eat ten!"
"Well I can eat eleven!" he retorted.
"I can eat twelve!"
"Thirteen!"
"Fourteen!"
"You're on!" he shouted, grabbing a cookie. Likewise, his younger opponent grabbed for one just after he did, both of them stuffing the frosted sugar cookie into their mouths. And so, the cycle repeated itself again and again until they were on their fourth cookie. It was the moment of truth.
And nothing happened to them.
"Well, I guess you were wrong, huh? Looks like you can eat more than three without getting sick," he said, looking at Sora's surprised face.
"…And to think, all these years she only gave me three…"
Picking up another cookie, he handed it off to his friend, and said, "Let's see if you can make it past four."
And the contest continued. However, on their sixth cookie, frosting and chocolate lining their mouths, the two of them consented to a time out to grab a glass of milk, to which they consumed half of it in one go, and proceeded on to the next cookie.
It was around their eighth one that their stomachs began to feel a bit…off, but neither said anything. For all he knew, it could have been the milk they just drank. Nonetheless, he wasn't going to admit that he wasn't feeling well. He had to make it to fourteen!
All in all, the contest took about twenty minutes, discluding the time it took to get the glasses out of the cupboard without the use of a stepping stool, getting the milk, pouring it out into the glasses and spilling some, wiping up the spill, and then drinking it. The time following those twenty minutes, however, were spent intermittently in the bathroom and laying on Sora's bed with an upset stomach.
Neither of them had made it to fourteen. He was on his twelfth and Sora on his eleventh when they both admitted to feeling like they were going to be sick.
Actually, no verbal exchange happened to convey this. They both figured it out on the way to the bathroom when they started to fight over who got to the toilet first.
"I…uh…guess I was wrong," he groaned later, his eyes fixed on Sora's ceiling. "You're not that much of a chicken."
"Well, you're not either," said his equally sick friend. "You ate more than I did, didn't you? So you won, huh?"
"Yeah, but I was wrong about the getting sick part."
Sora laughed softly. "Yeah. I guess Mom was right after all."
"…I'm never eating another cookie ever again."
"Me neither."
"Ugh…" they both groaned in pain.