This was happening.

She was actually going to cement the fact that she and Atari were dating.

She couldn't get the fact that she kissed her, and now she was thinking about returning the favor.

Only one problem, though.

She was supposed to be making teriyaki.

This date was supposed to be here. At home.

"Yo."

Was that Vale?

Was Vale calling her?

Taking her phone out of her pocket, she knew.

Yep.

And she'd answered it by accident.

Goddammit.

"You're not supposed to call today. I'm supposed to be preparing for a date here."

"Awww, how cute. Thinking about boinking her?"

What.

"Vale... Are you actually talking about sex?"

"What? Just because you love her so much doesn't mean you'll not want to...y'know..."

"I'm not gonna have sex yet. I don't think she even wants to at this point."

"Well, once you do wanna bang, you know who to call."

"Oh, fuck you, Vale."

"Haha, good luck with your attempt at your at-home first date, lovebirds~"

She hung up.

...what was she supposed to be doing again?

Oh, right, the teriyaki.

She had to follow the recipe, step by step.

This was something the family passed down, after all, so she couldn't make any mistakes.

None at all.

Step one: Season the meat.

Man, Atari's gonna be so impressed with this...

The more... Emotionally-driven thoughts came quickly, and she lost herself in the pleasure of them all...

The smell of something sweet snapped her out of it.

She grabbed the bottle of what she'd just used.

"Wh— Waitaminute, this isn't— FUCK—"

She put in cinnamon.

The recipe called for cumin.

Fuck-up number one.

"Ugh, whatever... She's gonna be here in a half-hour... I can't throw any of this out..."

There wasn't any time to dwell on this. She didn't even have enough time to start over.

Before she knew it, she'd done it again.

Those thoughts had to have made her unconsciously do this.

"Oh, for fuck's sake..."

Fuck-ups number two, three, and four: putting in too much pepper, forgetting the soy sauce, and putting milk in instead when she thought she had it this time.

She had to get this done before Atari came! There wasn't any time to waste! She didn't even care if this ended up being a sad excuse of an attempt to recreate the recipe, it had to be done, fast!

Don't think it, don't think it, don't think it...

Fuck, I wanna kiss her.

She unconsciously put her hand onto the pan with currently nothing in it.

Fuck-up number five: If a pan is hot, please, for the love of God, do not touch it.

She outright screamed bloody murder a string of obscenities as she flung everything into the pan with one hand while desperately trying to treat the burn on the other.

If you have a constantly higher-than-normal body temperature because you have fire and electrical energy, things like this were much worse than it should have been.

But she did it.

It was done.

Now to wait for Atari to come.

"Say, this tastes kinda weird."

It had only been five minutes since she came and she just had to bring it up.

"Look, I was trying and I just kept...y'know...thinking. The thoughts. It always has to be those."

"I understand if you—"

"It's okay if you don't want to eat it, honestly. Tastes horrible anyway."

"What? I wasn't going to say that."

"Maybe you were implying that."

Nothing.

"Were you implying that?"

"Well, at least tell me what you were thinking about."

"Look, that doesn't matter, let's just order something. Save what I made for Hana to have. Besides, she's got a hardier stomach than I do."

"Okay, okay."

Maybe that kiss would wait for some other time.