Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Dark Sarcasm ❯ Cookies ( Chapter 2 )

There is something genuinely terrible about teenagers. Despite being one myself, they strive so very hard to gain the attention and acceptance of their peers, who are arbitrarily assigned to the same room they share for their education. They all learn the same things together, and somehow this is supposed to make them equals and thus closer together? Yet, all I could see was cliques, a few loners like Saki, and obvious grudges being played out through shunning or mean looks or jealousy. The glasses girl in the protagonist seat, surrounded by friends was pretty looking, but I’d spotted several Red Flags which kept me away, even if I’d be foolish enough to suffer rejection again. Once is enough thank you, world. The nerds close to me were rich enough to have personal game consoles, but exhibited poor judgement in bringing them to school, causing one of the idiot soccer players with the hairband to snatch the obviously expensive device from the owners hand and show it off to the crowd of loud idiots. That group was all Red Flags, jocks and gyaru.

I watched this while enjoying music through my headphones. I’d been working my way backwards by the decade and was currently listening for the first album of the Rolling Stones, who were famous for their giant rock concerts and looking like strung out heroin addicts. Their first album, however, was Black Southern Baptist Spiritual Music, made for church singing. And they’d done reasonably faithful transition from this into the degenerate wailing rock and roll they become famous for later. I suspect, as I often do, that Heroin is the common factor. Human degeneracy is everywhere. Even in this classroom. The lad with the stolen console was holding back tears until Saki stormed over and picked it up off Miura’s desk without a word and returned it to the kid with equal contempt. I nodded to her. I kinda like Saki. She’s got a good form, and shows responsibility. Secretly would make a good mother, I think. I should talk to her more.

The album ended and I looked at my phone, considering options. The 1930’s and 40’s were full of Jazz, and its an important musical genre, even today, though many consider it “old people’s music”. Despite this, the techniques of improvisation within a framework eventually gave us guitar solos and drum solos and even keyboard solos in Top 40 American/British rock music, the kind that fills stadiums and dominates the airwaves. And they have their origin in roadhouse blues and even older Jazz shows, going back to the beginning of the 20th century. Am I in the mood to continue this project? Yes, yes I am. I selected some Jazz hits, starting with Take 5 by Dave Brubeck, which was 1940’s Jazz, but a great example of syncopation and timing, and went from there. It isn’t a long album, but it’s complicated and energetic. I enjoyed it, considering all of its passion until lunch break ended.

I finished my can of Coffee Boss, which very carefully did NOT have a likeness of William Faulkner as its sales logo. They’d gone to court over it. It’s slightly different, so his heirs lost their suit in the Japanese courts. Should have bribed the judge more than the manufacturer did. I had discovered the long-standing practice of bribery in Japan during my middle school years, in the events around Her. The truth, and why revenge is out of the reach of the poor but abuse is casually heaped upon them by the rich. It helps the people strive, or is the primary driver of the very high Japanese suicide rate. Its one or the other.

When class ended one of the gyaru went to speak to sensei in the hall, and I headed for my new club, to read a book, write my daily essay on the futility of choice, and bask in the hatred of some porcelain doll with terrible manners.

Naturally, she had words for me.

“I see you’ve returned, Hikigaya,” she complained. “Wasn’t our simulation yesterday sufficient for you to learn your lesson?”

“I looked you up because you acted like I should know who you are. Daughter of a Diet representative, of the upper house no less. You act like royalty, looking down your nose at lesser beings. Its disgraceful,” I challenged. She hmmphed and then looked down her nose at me, and then realized what she was doing.

“I looked you up too, but I didn’t find anything but your home address,” she complained.

“Yes, being a commoner with a home is sufficient for most people,” I replied sarcastically.

“I also see that you’re top of the year for Japanese, but middle for Math and Sciences. You should study more,” she chastised me after mentioning my accomplishment like it was nothing. Typical. Tear down the competition, eh.

“Try harder with your reading and writing and you’ll give me a challenge,” I responded with a smirk. She recoiled. My smirks were ugly, like the smile of a deep-sea predator, and tended to make my eyes close further.

The door knocked twice and then slammed open. I turned to regard the doorway and found Sensei beaming like she’d found a gold nugget in a stream, and the gyaru from my classroom. Let’s see. It was Yuigahama. I am particular about using proper names. Nicknaming people is intellectual laziness, and would betray me I was sure. She had bottled strawberry-pink hair, smelled of some kind of fruity perfume, and had fully developed breasts and thighs. She was ready for marriage if I’m any judge, and in an earlier decade of Japan’s history would be raising kids about now, some doctor’s wife. Why does she need Service?

“I got you a client,” Hiratsuka-sensei announced.

“I want to bake cookies… eh? Hikki? What are you doing here?” she complained.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked. “Who is Hikki?” She pointed at me. I sighed. Intellectual laziness? The girl shook off her shock and turned to Yukino.

“I’m Yuigahama Yui,” the girl said, lunging at Yukinoshita who froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. I say proverbial because I’ve never actually seen a deer in Chiba, them being most common in places like Kyoto and Nara Prefecture, though with all the mountains in Japan they are probably in lots of places. Still, the metaphor stands. She froze, and Yuigahama gushed, woman-handled her with lots of loud noises and I waited as the tsunami of gyaru overwhelmed the ice princess.

Sensei sensibly withdrew while Yuigahama explained she wanted help baking cookies and couldn’t ask her friends because they didn’t care, couldn’t bake to save their lives, and it was a personal reason in the first place.

“I see. I will see if I can get the Home Economics classroom key so we can get started,” Yukino offered, escaping the girls effusive… everything. She was so overwhelmingly female, and loud, it probably attacked Yukino’s pride in several ways.

“So Hikki, what are you doing here?” she finally asked me.

I ignored her.

“Hikki?” she asked. I can see this is going to be an escalating trend. I put down my pencil and looked at her.

“Are you speaking to me? Who’s Hikki?” I asked her.

“You. So why are you here?” she asked again.

“I’m in this club,” I said.

“It seems really fun,” she decided. She was the loudest one here, and it wasn’t fun. I raised an eyebrow. I could argue the point, but she was a gyaru and therefore and idiot. Never argue with an idiot. It will make you stupid and they have more experience at it.

Yukino returned and we ventured to the Home Ec room, which consisted of cabinets and islands with countertops and cooking ranges and ovens, sinks and trash cans for scraps and waste. It was clean and tidy. Yukino put on an apron and instructed Yuigahama on how to wear one, and they went searching for ingredients to make cookies. I observed for a few minutes, pondering all the ways this could go wrong. They selected one of the ovens which was more blackened inside than the others. They mixed ingredients though I noticed that Yuigahama seemed a stranger to kitchens in general and looked longingly at the microwave ovens on the wall. The easy answer to latch key kid’s cuisine is a microwave.

Yui managed to distract Yukino during baking so the result was burned charcoal. I cook for my adorable sister Komachi. I also bake her cookies and similar treats after school. This has been curtailed by this very club, and is forcing my sweet sister to go without my preferred company after school. I hope she is okay. I snapped a picture of the burned cookies and sent it to Komachi.

“Bleh! What IS that?” she responded.

“It is supposed to be cookies,” I responded. I got a picture of the girls looking despondent and sent that.

“Hikigaya, photographing fellow students without their permission is prohibited,” warned Yukinoshita.

“School is over. This is club. And my sister wants to know if that charcoal is good for grilling fish,” I lied. It was the kind of thing she would say. Yuigahama was crestfallen.

“Is it really that bad?” she tried to deny, then tasted one. She turned and spat the blackened bits into a sink and drank water out of the faucet to remove the taste from her mouth.

“I think that answers that,” I said.

“I can’t believe she got so much wrong, even as I stood there providing instructions. How is that possible?” Yukino whispered not very quietly. She was in shock. Yuigahama looked ready to cry.

“Who were you going to give this too?” I asked her gently. I can do gentle. I have a sister.

“A boy I like. I couldn’t do this with my friends. They wouldn’t understand,” she complained, crying now.

“A younger me would probably say that any boy would love to get cookies, even these really bad ones, from a pretty girl. A younger me would be pleased a girl cared enough to notice him. There are probably lots of boys at this school who still feel that way. However,” I said with a more ominous tone, “If you are trying to impress a man, burnt cookies are more of a warning that you fail as a homemaker. Take this as a starting point, as a motivation to become a competent cook so you can one day present palatable food to the man you like, because boys don’t suit a gyaru.” She looked shocked over the distinction, and Yukino was making gagging gestures, trying to wash the charcoal out of her own mouth while listening to my terrible motivational speech to this girl. Yui stopped crying and wiped away her smeared mascara and blackened tears.

“That… that… okay. Okay. I can do that.”

“WePipe has lots of cooking videos,” I informed the gyaru. “Watch one, learn to make what’s there and taste test it so you know it is edible. Make notes. Create a binder of recipes you know how to cook properly, and keep learning.”

She seemed to take this to heart and I helped Yukino clean up the mess. She was still kind of out of it, never having failed so hard before. Teaching, it seems, is hard.