Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Thank you.
Author's Note: Please review! This one didn't come out the way I expected….hopefully the next one will be better. Sorry…
Smoke driftedly lazily upwards toward the ceiling as Ayu-nee hummed and diced her white radishes into little neat rows. Suchini, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, they all lay in little surrendered rows just three-fourths of an inch apart from each other.
Cooking, was an art. Not a hobby, not an "enjoyment", but an art. Ayu-nee sliced away.
"Oi! Ayu-nee!" Sounds of running feet and not-so distant yells reached her ever- perked ears as she paused in the perfect division of a shitake mushroom. Wiping her hands on her lap and putting the knife down on the wood counter, she turned and poked her head out of the rice paper screened door.
"Eeee…Heisuke-san. What are you doing?" The huffing and puffing team taichou was holding onto the side of the slender wooden pillar holding up the building the kitchen was in as he fought to get his breath back.
"Ayu-nee! It's Tetsu-kun! Hijikata-san sent him off on a shopping trip to pick up supplies with Sanosuke and somehow they ended up at the local tavern with some of the other shinsengumi members, and it seems they wanted to see if the little puppy-kun could hold his sake, but you see Hijikata-san is going to have all our hides when he finds out, especially since we can't seem to get him off the roof---"
Without allowing Heisuke to run out of lung capacity, Ayu-nee immediately took him by the arm and ordered him to take her to the young page. However, even impending doom by the devil himself wasn't enough tostop Heisuke from noticing that dinner had been left half finished.
"Anon…Ayu-nee, will dinner be okay if we leave it like that?" Ayu-nee frowned knowing that she was already running late and she'd still needed to finish chopping at least half these vegetables…
And so Hajime Saitou, feared and mysterious hitokiri of the Shinsengumi found himself dragged out from within a shadowed alcove between the buildings and stuff into the kitchen with the wave of a kitchen knife, and tossed a flowered purple apron. He was good at hiding, but no one in the shinsengumi could escape the powerful eye of Ayu-nee the kunoichi.
Saitou frowned as he starred at the carrots looking up at him. The carrots starred back. He was poked at the vegetable gently, half-expecting it to jump out of the way and when it didn't he gave a slightly disappointed lowering of his eyebrows. Had she wanted them all to be sliced or diced? Were the radishes supposed to go into separate platters? Saitou knew enough about culinary aspects to know women were quite picky about things like that.
He was still trying to figure out what Yamazaki had specifically meant when she said "take care of these carrots and radishes" when the short 2nd team captain popped his head in, sweat covering his practice uniform. He'd been in charge of practices for the lower level shinsengumi this afternoon.
"Ah, Saitou-san. Fancy finding you here in the kitchen of all places. Kondou-san wants you in his study right away. Something about an emergency." Saitou nodded, half-relieved and handed the kitchen knife off to the smaller captain. Shinpachi looked at him confused.
"Take care of the carrots and radishes until Ayu-nee comes back."
Saitou left for the vice-chief's study, unaware that he still wore a colourful pastel apron. Shinpachi looked down at the cutting board and shrugged. If Ayu-nee was busy today, he could easily make dinner…
Later that night, Ayu-nee went on a huge temper rant about "irregularly shaped vegetables" and "destruction of a fine art of cooking". However, the man she was misdirecting her anger at had been sent on a mission to Osaka and wouldn't return for a month. Shinpachi of course, had decided that however insulted he was by everyone's reactions to his fine meal, for the sake of his own hide, he'd best keep quiet about who really cooked the dinner that night.
Saitou was a little bewildered though when his secret coded correspondences with Kondou included a side note regretfully informing him that he was forever banned from the kitchen areas. An additional note came from Okita who added that he thought Hajime should wear violet more often.