Chapter 18: Agari Himiko, Tsunde Reika
Tsunde looked at the plate of chicken wings in front of her. Oh Tsunde, your lies once again got you in hot waters, she thought. She should've said to her friend 'no I'm not good with spices' instead of 'of course I can handle the Grand Infernal Blazing Wings!'. Thankfully, after asking another friend she came across Agari Himiko, who's a lover of all foods, hot ones included.
Now they're sitting on an empty classroom, sharing a table, with a plate of wings and an assortment of red bottles. Agari picked a bottle and poured two drops into the wings.
"This sauce is rated 1800 SHUs," Agari said. "Hot and smoky. A good start for a warmtongue."
"A warmtongue?"
"Someone who's not yet used to spicy foods. Let's have a bite."
Tsunde nodded and bit into a chicken wing. It was as if someone poured a hot spring, bamboo poles and all, straight into her throat. She murmured in pain.
"Here, eat this honey and peanut butter mixture," Agari said, handing Tsunde a small paper cup. Tsunde eat the mixture, and she could feel the sticky sweet jelly absorbing the heat.
"L-let's move on...I'm definitely still okay with this," Tsunde said.
Agari picked another sauce. "7000 SHUs. Like licking a lit cigar."
Tsunde bit into the 7000-sauced wing and regretted it. It felt like a tiger clawed into her tongue, then buried splinters of wooden sword into her throat. She slammed her fist into her thigh to stifle her own scream.
"Here, drink this lemon syrup," Agari said, handing Tsunde a thermos flask. Tsunde drank the concoction, and she could feel the viscous sour-sweet liquid cooling down her burning throat.
"Haha...ha...I can handle this much. Move on?"
"...yes," Agari said. She hesitated a bit before choosing the next sauce. "15700 SHUs. The sunlight of Italian beaches, all focused into the mouth."
Tsunde took a breath. Even breathing was suffering. "Agari, how hot was Grand Infernal Blazing Wings?"
Agari started coughing. The hot coughing brought up hot phlegm up into her mouth, triggering a storm of coughs. After a few seconds, Agari responded, "T-th-thirty thousand."
Despair settled in Tsunde, a black heavy stone inside her gut while everything above it was a wildfire. "Let's...get to it."
Agari nodded, the sweats on her face almost making her glasses slip out. She bit into the chicken wings.
Tsunde screamed. She breathed in desperation, but it only worsened the heat. It was as if, in the gaps between exhalation and inhalation, the heat, that demon, cut through her with powerful demonic claws. The demon even raided her nose.
"D-drink t-this," Agari said between coughs. She handed Tsunde a cup of cold custard from a local brand. Tsunde drank it, and the cold slurry coated her throat, giving it new life. She also moved it to coat her tongue, and by god it was a bliss.
"Agari...do you usually eat things this hot?"
Agari corrected her glasses, spent few seconds in silence to catch her breath and stop the coughs, then looked at the sauce bottles before saying, "Yes. Of course."
Ah...she's lying, Tsunde thought. She had seen, nay, she had done that sort of lying many times before. "Thanks for helping me, Agari. We never talked before, but I really appreciate your help."
Agari nodded. "Komi's friend is my friend. A-anyway, let's move on to the last one?"
The final sauce destroyed the two of them. Their lips swelled to twice its normal size, their tongues seemingly ballooned into super hot peppers on their own, their throat felt like iron furnaces. Every breath is a heat wave, and all they could smell is pain. Wordlessly, however, they both finished their wings. They also finished the cold custard, the syrup, and the mixture.
Tsunde looked at Agari and smiled. "Now that we're finished, let's get more of these these custard drinks."
Agari returned the smile. "We'll need it."
[break]
"They ended up having such horrible nights," Tadano said.
Komi nodded. "Agari told me of her painful stomachache for the next few days."
"When you're trying to do a hard thing, it's nice to be able to do it with someone else," Tadano said.
Komi was silent for a bit and then her right hand brushed against Tadano's. Tadano looked at her and smiled slightly. He held Komi's hand and the two continued their walk home.
"I remembered a story about Shishima, but it's kinda blurry," Tadano said.
"Is it about him and Tsuzurafuji?"
"The two met?"
Komi nodded. "I heard from Tsuzurafuji that Shishima…"
Author's note: The things used to reduce pain that Agari gave to Tsunde is taken from a video titled "Food Theory: The Hot Ones Challenge EXTREME Edition".