Note: Thanks for mentioning the problems with the line breaks. I originally had it set to be about 5 *'s in a row, but FF appears to dislike that, so I'll change it to *Break* instead.
I also noticed, looking back, that I accidently switched to third person at the end of last chapter. It's one of my worst habits, switching views accidently.
Disclaimer: I have never and most likely will never own anything to do with this.
A Competition
I yawned, opening my eyes and being greeted by another dreary dark day. More snow… gah… whatever. At least it's fun to watch it snow. Oh, well. Ah, that's right… the competition is a barely a day away, and Shin and I have been getting up earlier to practice all day, except for the few times we end up busy doing other things…
Anyway, I guess I should head over to Shin's. Hey, a little more practice never hurt anyone, right? And in any case, it's always fun spending time with the handsome young cat. Oh… hmm, I wonder if we should tell our friends about our relationship after the competition…? I'll suggest it to him, I suppose. I get up, grumbling, and get all my winter clothes on. Hey, never know when it might start snowing while I'm walking, right?
I make sure to tape a note to the doorknob to my room saying I left to go to Shin's, and started walking along the road to Shin's house, occasionally shivering and rubbing my hands together.
It was a quick walk (usually it'd take longer, but I was positively rushing to get out of the cold) and it was lightly snowing by the time I arrived at Shin's home. I rang the doorbell, and a few seconds later Amaki-san answered it, letting me in.
"I assume you are here to cook with Shin-kun?" Amaki-san queried, looking faintly amused.
I coughed slightly, and shivered. "Yes, I am. Is he in the kitchen?"
"No," Amaki-san said, smiling a little, "He just woke up. I left him in the dining room eating breakfast." After he sad this, I was mildly embarrassed, having forgotten to, y'know, eat breakfast and all.
"Alright then. Do, uh…"
"I don't think Shin-kun will mind if you go into the kitchen before him," Amaki-san said cheerfully. I grinned slightly, relieved. Then again, you'd think I'd be able to go into the kitchen without permission, but, well, I'm kinda not. (Apparently I don't have proper respect for fancy cooking devices or something. I don't really understand it…)
Well, I thought, rubbing my hands, I'll go in and wait for Shin then. I made sure to take off my baggy overcoat first, though, one of the first lessons being that long sleeves are dangerous in the kitchen. Well, here's hoping Shin will finish soon and we can start.
*Break*
Approximately three or four hours later, I remembered the request I wanted to make, and turned to Shin with the intent to ask. "Hey, uh, Shin?" Shin turned curiously from the frosting he was working on. "I wanted to ask… after the competition, should we reveal our relationship to everyone?"
Shin regarded me for a moment. "Yes," He said finally. "It would be nice, to let them know their two friends love each other." I grinned at his choice of wording. Love, I thought. Yes, I love him. And he loves me. I smiled again, Shin looking at me as if I was acting odd. "Is something wrong?"
"No," I responded, slightly giddy. "I love you too, Shin." He smiled back at me, blushing slightly, and we shared a quick kiss.
*Break*
The next day the competition was on, and I awoke at 8am, as has been my habit for the last few days. I got all my morning stuff done, and then prepared to head over towards Shin's home, so we can head out to the bus stop to catch a bus to Kazenari, as planned.
I couldn't help but wonder who the other teams are going to be… most likely, I've never met most of 'em. But, who knows? I doubt Amaki-san was the only one in Minasato to see the posters… hmm, whatever. Shin's house is coming up now, so I'll stop thinking about it.
Shin was waiting outside, and he looked as if he was fairly cold. I immediately moved over right next to him. "Ready to go?" I said, smiling slightly nervously. Shin nodded, equally as uneasy, and made sure to stick very close to my side (For warmth, y'know?). The walk to the bus stop was fairly… boring. There really wasn't much to see on either side of the road, and nobody else seemed to be walking the same way, so Shin and I started quietly chatting, making sure we both knew what we were making.
It took us another twenty or so minutes to reach the bus stop, but when we did we weren't the only ones there. Already waiting at the bus stop was Kyouji sitting down, and listening to Torahiko joking and telling stories, and chatting.
Were they both also participating? I thought Torahiko-kun was more of a solid meaty meal kind of guy… didn't even think about Kyouji being able to cook sweets as well… huh.
"Torahiko-kun and Kyouji-san, what are you two doing here?" I politely inquire, subtly separating myself from Shin.
Torahiko turns to me and grins. "Hiroyuki!" He exclaims cheerfully. "We're here for that cook off, with the sweets and all. Me 'n' Kyouji are entering together!"
"Ah, so are we," I acknowledged. "Would it be too hard, for me to ask what you're cooking?" I joke.
Torahiko just laughs and shakes his head, starting another story. Shin and I settle down on the bench to wait, close to each other.
*Break*
Once we arrived, our two differing pairs separated, and we headed off to this stadium place. When we arrived, we saw there were a lot of people here, maybe twenty-six pairs. We separated again into our workplaces, and set about cooking. We were making a simple sponge lemon sponge cake, and so we got all our stuff ready.
The actual cooking passed in a blur. By the time we were done there was about two minutes remaining for the rest of the contestants to finish up their sweets. I glanced around, looking at what people made. It seemed like a majority of the competitors just made biscuits, or cupcakes. I spotted Torahiko and Kyouji over in the distance. They'd made what looked like some sort of cake, as well.
We were all asked to move our dishes to the front of the room, in our designated location to await a score. After we did that, we all moved around the location, and Shin and I ended up moving towards the other Minasato pair, determined to ask what exactly they had made.
"Hey, Torahiko-kun and Kyouji-san, how do you think you went?"
Kyouji considered a moment, and spoke up. "I'm fairly certain we did well. We made a strawberry cake." Torahiko put in, "I think we did excellent. You?"
Shin glanced over at me. "Not very bad. We ended up finishing baking a few minutes before the time was up." We were interrupted by a panel of judges entering the room, and tasting them all. A few minutes later of hopeful staring at the judges, they all conferred and rated each baked good out of the total number of pairs, which ended up being twenty-eight.
Immediately we both teams separated and headed to our baked dish, to see what we got. I later found out the other Minasato pair got 7th place, and we got… 2nd place. Out of twenty-eight contestants we got 2nd? Both Shin and I were ecstatic about it (Or, well, I was excited about it, and Shin was just fairly happy).
We didn't manage to catch up to Torahiko and Kyouji that day, turns out they left to go get some stuff from Kazenari itself after being excited for their score, so Shin and I left to go back to the bus stop together. When we sat down, I made sure to give Shin a nice kiss, before settling down to wait for the bus, again.
*Break*
When we arrived back at Minasato, we both headed our differing ways, Shin back to his home, and me to my grandparents. Before we separated, we also decided to meet out tomorrow with our friends at Raimon, again.
As I happily flopped onto my bed, after changing of course, all I could think about was that 2nd place message on our cake, and how much I loved Shin.
AN: I wanted this to be a bit longer, but this seemed the best place to leave it. Oh well, hope you enjoyed.