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February 13th. Valentine’s Eve.
Eleven years of straddling her ass onto various assigned seatings within the schoolgrounds, plus a year or four spent in preschool, and never once had Tsuguko Sasaki understood all the fuzz this seemingly indifferent day had.
Youthful legends and heart-throbbing tales suggest that one day, once love has found its way to the girl, once that “special one” were to appear, eventually, this day that was no different from any others shall become someone’s special day.
Six years ago, a red-haired dumbass whose only constant was her tendency to lounge forward or run away barged into her life, stirred everything up…..quite a bit, lead her to places she otherwise wouldn’t have had and introduced some much needed turbulence (though, sometimes just a *bit* too much) into her life. Some intense shit as well, and yet, she still remains the same.
Oh, the perks of being a remainder……….
At least, that would’ve been the case, until her eighteenth birthday from last year.
All of a sudden, her five-year streak of getting locked with said dummy came to an end, just like that. One sleepless night with some intense sobbing and being all ruffled later, it became apparent enough that she *wouldn’t* bode very well if Ikuyo Kita were to disappear like that. Fate shall become just one of the deciding factors, and even then, a hell lot must be done just for that distance between them to remain as is.
Sasaki’s by no means one who is adamant and ignorant to changes, of course. Between having spent the last decade or so of her life looking over the highly volatile Japanese musical scene and immersing into the culture where deaths by drive-by homicide isn’t even out of place, spending years noticing the changes within those who surrounds her and gazing towards that…….highly erratic gay mess, a sufficient amount of statistics has been gathered for her to know that, eventually, things will change.
By that point, years into this hopeless romance in which she wouldn’t expect much if at all, she’s no stranger to love or the unwanted loss from an object of interest. And yet, it wasn’t the plethora of infinitely more fucked up bullshits or the sorrowing shitfuckeries that will scar others for life that pushed her into the worst fit of bawling her eyes out up to that point, but getting separated from her dear friend for three hours. Stupid as it might be, that was the point where it becomes painfully clear that her ass oughta be moving so that her student life wouldn’t end up in immeasurable regrets.
Ten months later, and nothing much has been done. Yes, she’s gotten much closer to Gotoh and her entourage of highly eccentric acquaintances. Yes, she’s supported Kita to the best of her capabilities, just as always, and she’d made damn sure that this girl wouldn’t pull up some random regrettable bullshits that will haunt her for the years following the further developments of her frontal cortex.
And yet, nothing else has changed.
Their final tests have been taken, and all that can be done now is to idly wait for the results. Gone are the self-studying sessions and the immense dread looming over the student body for the past six-or-so weeks. What remains are third-years bidding farewell to their highschool days, their student life, their innocence and the folks they soon won’t call “classmates”.
“.........some more days remain until this all ends…..”
Enough time has passed for Sasaki to unironically, deadass seriously consider making something to give Kita for Valentine’s a try. Even just for shitposting’s sake, actually making chocolates as a gift for others on Valentine’s Day is almost perfectly synonymous with “being utterly down horrendous”. Such allegations would wind up being even MORE embarrassing when they were, indeed, factual statements, because dear GOD she totally just likes Kita a normal amount, alright.
Either way, too much of her world has been twisted into completely unrecognizable fragments solely thanks to Kita and none other than Kita’s work. If Kita being Kita can and have been responsible for 100% of her loss of composure, introspectiveness and every other trademarked stuffs that made Tsuguko Sasaki THE Tsuguko Sasaki, another one wouldn’t hurt that much
Alas, the last few weeks of a 6-year timeframe aren’t the times when one can bargain.
Swallowing the few remaining bits of her rationality that has yet to become Kita-colored and throwing them all away into Kita’s crutches might as well be the best thing she could do right now. At least that would mean she has done something, because her carefree yet incredibly considerate ass has refrained from giving Kita literally fucking anything for the five previous Valentines, despite herself getting comparatively head over heels over Kita since, like, three months after they first met. It’s not even out of fear or anything, just that she….doesn’t want to do anything for whatever reason? Yes, giving Kita some trendy shits for her birthdays is something that she HAS to do, and yet just, you know, giving Kita SOMETHING for the sappiest day of the year is, for no particular reason whatsoever, out of the question?????? That, or she’s just….way less prepared to come to terms with everything than she should have, an unreasonable weakness that she knew too well after half a decade coping with.
“It’s literally nothing compared to everything we’ve done together, and yet somehow I’m still fucking flushed thinking about it. Like, really? We’ve been all intimate with eachother, having sleepovers and shared baths, kissing ever so often and got Kita’s hand scrambling all over myself and YET this still renders me a fumbling mess? Seriously? Genuinely what the fuck because how the hell am I supposed to deal with this, lmao. Either way, please let this be something. An agent of change or a parting gift, honestly? Fuck it. Sattsu here, picking a god to pray rn as we speak”
Retrospecting over everything that has led to her being a sullen mess over THAT Kita in private 60% of the time isn’t something reserved for the high-stakes ahh shii that she’s about to face. The decision has been made, but what remains is the “what” and the “how”. More specifically “what kind of shit should I even make so as to not look like the gayest sapphic there was that is still something Kita deserves” and “how do I even pull this shit off anyways”.
Yes, Sasaki’s actually cooking now, alright. but genuinely doing SOMETHING without getting any entertainment out of it would make things horribly awkward for herself. Literally 100% of everything she has been doing was “for the hell of it”, or so she told herself. Now that her purpose and motivation is solely Kita^5, shit’s just fucking embarassing, and the way she got all flustered and keep trying to justify herself like a maiden in love makes things even worse. So, nothing out of the ordinary.
This gift has to be a half-joke, so something that’s completely earnest yet holds the traditional Sasaki-branded shitposting energy. Real tough dilemma here, and she’s not even sure how to even proceed, at least for a short while. After iterating through a list of horrible ideas including and not limited to: mixing some aphrodisiacs into the chocolate and ask her to share the chocolate with Gotoh to have them making out and cut through their back-and-forth mutual pining bullshits (that was a fucking horrible idea through and through), chugging some of her love nectar, blood and hairstrands into the mix (again, what the fuck, that was both extremely unhygienic and a bit too deep into the yandere-ish territories), the best course of action, that is also the most viable one, is to make some 100% dark chocolate that’s bitter like hell, just to see Kita’s reaction after unknowingly having a taste of it.
“Everyone and their mother knows Kita likes sweets, so giving her some tastes of bitterness would serves her right. Her face would look hella funny after doing so, probably”, or so she told herself. So, the taste and type of chocolate has been set.
Next up, there’s the “how”. There are two major obstacles standing between a fumbling Tsuguko Sasaki and her freshly made batch of dark, purely concentrated chocolate: the fact that she hasn’t tried this shit before, and that she doesn’t know jack shit.
This impulsive decision of hers strikes shortly after lunch on Valentine’s Eve, so she has around twelve hours or so to pull it off, effectively leaving her one single shot at this presumably moderately difficult feat that she has yet to attempt. From looking at Kita’s previous experiences with making sweets where the Kita residence’s kitchen got turned into a figurative warzone with batter and cream getting flung pretty much everywhere, which took her some four hours to cook up something that resembles some trendy sweets and even longer to clean up the mess, her lazy ass can’t help but shivered at just the thought.
One quick glance at some fairly well-written guides off the Internet has proven her expectations wrong, though: it turns out that there are various difficulties to chocolate making.
You can DIY fucking everything yourself: getting cocoa butter and chocolate essence, distilling the butter and whip up the chocolate powder, cook up the chocolate from scratch, temper them time and time again while incrementally adding flavours and spice to the mix to your liking, then pouring the melted chocolate into your hand-crafted moulds layer by layer to create some extremely high-effort, complicated honmei chocolate with complex aromas and brave, bold notes.
…….or you could
buy some chocolate from the nearest 7-11
melt them using a double boiler so as to not get the chocolate burnt
pour the melted chocolate into the prepared moulds (preferably heart-shaped)
chug it into the freezer for 30 minutes
……and that’s it
“......so that was just Kita being a tryhard scrub, then. lol”
All those years, after twenty-too-many instances of watching Kita struggling with making sweets, fawning at Michelin-starred chefs a tad bit too obsessed with molecular gastronomy cooking up some avant-garde desserts, Sasaki totally thought that making gift chocolate was one hell of a monumental task, a declaration of your unfaltering obsession towards a loved one, a task that would mark her as “fucking gay” if she were to commit to the bit due to the sheer dedication required. Turns out, this time, she was the one tricked by Kita into believing some ridiculous things, instead of the other way around.
“Well played, Ikuyo Kita, well played……….”
From the moment she was made aware of the nonexistent lower bound for the difficulty of making chocolates, the grocery run didn’t even take more than half an hour. Japanese convenience stores are famous for having pretty much everything you’ll ever need for daily life, and when even that is not sufficient, Don Quijote would gladly cover the rest.
All that was needed was just some heart-shaped mould (conveniently placed upfront, because everyone and their mother would be making chocolates tonight) and some pure, 100% dark chocolate. That was it.
She did give the amount of effort she should be putting out quite some thoughts. Fairly important matter, after all. Too little, and that’d become some utter dogshit that Kita certainly doesn’t deserve. Well, it’s not like there’s THAT much room to mess up melting some gift-and-joke dark chocolate, but it’s still the thought that matters. As much as she’d totally love it to constantly make jokes while staying all fun and goofy with that girl, she should be the one to receive whatever faint sense of seriousness she would give out to the world, beyond everyone else. Too much, though, and that would stop being “what a funny joke, armite” and just…..her being really, really down bad. Not that she…….wasn’t like that, rest assured, it’s just that she still couldn’t be fine with……..that being herself. As much as most of her entire being was composed of things that would’ve pissed various others off, to which zero fucks were given, her…..annoyance towards this side of hers, without any ulterior reasoning or motives, just “is”.
Too much thoughts that lead to nowhere wouldn’t do any good, especially during another one of her firsts taken away thanks to Kita, the confusion and ruggedness unique to one’s first time she wouldn’t be able to go through again. Once more, she opened her playlist that used to contain exclusively niche and non-niche rap and hip-hop, listened to a band that she never would have engaged with five years ago, dripping the melted chocolate into those moulds to the sounds of Kita’s voice - no longer disgustingly sweet 100% of the time - singing lyrics she, herself, couldn’t really understand.
“Kita, here’s some chocolate for you”
“Eeeeeh, Sattsu? You? Chocolate? On Valentine’s Day? For ME?”
“Not like that. Figures out I’d want to at least give making chocolates a try. Seen highschoolers doing that in mangas all the time. About damn time for my first attempt, wouldn’t want to become an in-uni hag before my first sweets-making operation”
“So this was…..for me?”
“Of course it is. I’m certainly not you, Kita, who would unironically give out gifts to random acquaintances I barely knew. Don’t really see the appeal in giving them to the girls of my club, and Gotoh is………yeah, you get the idea. Don’t want her to shapeshift or turn to dust again, and my ass wouldn’t be able to withstand her copypasta-worthy responses thinking that she had to turn me down. If she tends to see everything as 0 or 100 normally, when it comes to these romantic shits……No, thanks”
“Aww, and I thought I could get to see Sattsu’s cute embarrassed face again”
“Nah, that wouldn’t happen. I’ll probably fall in love with some random guys, get married, have kids and getting divorced before I’d ever end up confessing to YOU, dummy. Can’t even think about you that way, smh, even when I do enjoy myself some heart-throbbing childhood-friends-to-lovers slow burn”
“So you are saying that you’ve thought about that before, Sattsu?”
“Look, Kita, have you ever noticed my “feelings” during all the times we’ve bathed with eachother? Our sleepovers? Anything that could’ve indicated that I had it bad for you, dear miss love expert Kita Ikuyo?”
“Nope!”
“And, have I ever shown any hint of jealousy, longing or desire when you kept creaming yourself, wanting to become the blue woman’s daughter? Have I ever attempted to do literally anything that wasn’t hardcore wingman for you and Gotoh to get together as soon as possible?”
“.....no”
“Wait, come to think of it: have you given her anything for today?”
“..........no”
“Holy SHIT, not even friendship cookies? Come on, what the hell are you doing?”
“She’s just going to melt, you know?”
“Yes, yes, I know, I know, you’re being considerate, but her NOT getting anything when everyone and their mother does would just make her feel even more left out, wouldn’t her. Besides, haven’t I told you to NOT leave her out during Valentine’s since last year? Come on, Kita, you are way better than this. Like, she’s CLEARLY into you, you dummy”
“..............”
“I get it, you won’t want to bother her during her holiday meltdowns, but please, please, do your thing and confess already. She’s hella into you, alright? Please, you two are pissing me off”
“And I really thought I could’ve made Sattsu all flustered again, just to be scolded”
“I mean, look, we’ve known eachother for, like, a third of our life at this point. If I really wanted to make any move on you, Kita, I would have done so before we even stepped foot into Shuuka High. By the time I’ve become your personal bodypillow for the 40th-something time, if I really wanted you like that, I would’ve taken my shot. That hasn’t happened, so you should figure something out by this point. Your Kuruyo genes are showing, Ikuyo”
“......you’re a meanie, Sattsu”
“Oh, can you give my chocolates a try right here and now, please? Otherwise, I’d be really sad. So sad that I might have to reveal your embarrassing faces to Gotoh and your friends. The clock is ticking, Kita”
“You’re really a meanie, Sattsu”
Kita opened the heart-shaped box and gave an……unimpressed look at the heart-shaped chocolate pieces.
“Come on, don’t you look at me like that. There’s a first time for everything, you know? At least I didn’t paint the kitchen with molten chocolate all over the floor”
“Aren’t you messing with me a little bit too much today, Sattsu?”
“Three minutes ago your schizo ass unironically thought I was about to confess my neverending love to you. Serves you right. Come on, give it a bite, my princess”
Sasaki reached for her pocket to pull out her phone. For whatever reason, she hasn’t pranked Kita with bitter food before, so this is going to be another first. Would be a crime to miss Kita’s reaction this time around.
At around the same time, Kita put one of the six moderately-sized pieces of chocolate into her mouth. They were covered with bits of powdered sugar and coconut meat, so the initial flavour profile is a fatty, slightly sweet one. Kita savoured the taste, gave it some light licks and seemed to be fairly satisfied.
“Mmmmm, you’re really good at this, Sattsu!”
It would’ve been very heartwarming for Sasaki to receive Kita’s compliments on her very first attempt. It actually was. Of course, it took her several tries to get the devilish taste right: a comfortable sweetness for the first thirty seconds or so, before the bitterness kicks in. Kita, while certainly a hungry beast for women, isn’t one to ferociously consume the sweets she got her hands on, and would only lightly tangle the treat so as to savour the taste for as long as possible. Years of highly esoteric, exquisite Kita-knowledge was required to create this Kita-trollege piece of sweet. By now…….
Kita’s indulgence in the flavours and texture of the chocolate came to an abrupt halt as the bitterness arrived in full gear. Her expressions, which was the “naruhodo ne” one until moments ago, shifted into some very….hard to describe un-Kitan faces. Sasaki made sure that the video of Kita’s complete reaction to this masterpiece of sweet has been properly recorded and ended, before bursting into a fit of laughter.
“And you’d be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. Turns out, I am a bit of a meanie, especially regarding you, my beloved Ikuyo Kita. Happy early April Fools. We signed up for the same department of the same university, nah, you were so quick to follow my lead back then, but nothing is certain. Since I can’t even be sure that we’d still be together then, figured I could have it early. Happy Valentine’s btw”.
“Oh, COME ON, Sattsu!!!!!”