Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Happy Endings, And Other Lies ❯ Happy Endings: 2 ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Chapter Two

 

I awaken to sore muscles and bone pain. Daily painkillers as prescribed by my doctor. Shower, carefully drying before applying the necessary knee brace and baggy uniform to hide it. Growing light, prepare breakfast. Wake up sister, notice parents waving as they exit the house for their jobs. That’s more of them than I’ve seen in the last three days.

Komachi perks up for breakfast and gains energy, rushing through her bathroom routine and I leave for the bus because I can’t bike to school or walk that far. She meets up with a friend and walks to school, of course. It must be nice to be young, healthy, happy. I have no idea, myself.

The morning bus is full of both students and adults heading to their dreadful day jobs, all misery and pain in their own little worlds. The students are loud, talking to each other about how much fun they have. I am jealous of their happiness. I am the epitome of envy. And I have to use my mental discipline from various bad self-help books to push that way, to let go of the envy, to be a good Buddhist in this cycle of pain. My life is not their life. My pain is just transitory, a thing in this life. When I die it will be over. And it won’t be over until I die. I will accept this pain as the cost of my own choice, at the foolish waste I made of my fragile human body versus a speeding car. It is my fault.

By the time we arrived at school and I winced down the steps, suppressing the pain and hobbling inside for school shoes and a seat where the pain was reduced to a distraction from my ever-so-important education I could finally return to the solitude life had become.

Classes were boring. The riajus did their thing, as usual. I read Orwell’s 1984 but found it painful. Not as interesting as Brave New World. It’s good to be a Beta. That whole Riaju mantra was amusing while observing the Alpha bitch and the king of smarm and their peons fawning over them. A reddish haired girl noticed me and looked sad, then went back to her happy real life conversations about inane things without meaning or substance. Lunch ended with me halfway through Brave New World. I could see where it was going. The metaphor that only brain damaged people could be happy in a world with other people. And people with fully operating brains would fight for dominance and destroy themselves infighting and escalating to war for control. It was a good metaphor for the Military Industrial Complex and the Cold War. Better living through Chemistry to appease the stupefied masses. One of my pain pills was called Soma. Probably not ironic, either.

I returned to 1984 after classes ended, seating myself in the club room with the fake-name princess. She sipped tea, reading some modern feminist nonsense about self-determination in post-modern Japan. If Feminism worked then Christmas Cake wouldn’t be so furious all the time. Duh!

I am surrounded by idiots. I really am.

The door slammed open.

“Yahallo!” announced a cheerful riajuu girl, bouncing, literally, into the room. She probably needed a larger and more supportive bra, based on the evidence presented. I have a sister. I get to hear the complaints.

“Is this the Service Club?” she asked the princess, who looked disturbed by the same bouncing and noise. The brightly dyed hair of the girl swiveled to notice me. I was careful to betray nothing in my expression.

“Welcome,” I said, since fake name hadn’t.

“Yes, this is the Service Club. What do you want assistance with?” she finally said, glaring at me for daring to interrupt her highness.

“I want to learn how to cook,” said the girl.

“Have you considered the Home Economics class and the Baking Club?” suggested the princess. “Or is there something more specific?”

“Umm, like cookies. I want to bake cookies,” she squirmed. Hachiman kinda wished he had popcorn at that moment. It sort of cried out for that.

“Well, we can help with that. Or I can, anyway. Hachiman can you cook?” she asked me, finally.

“Yes. And bake too. I am preparing for a cursed life, after all,” I answered flatly. “Any particular kind of cookies, Miss?” I asked the riaju girl.

“Umm. Sugar cookies are fine. Maybe decorated?” she asked, uncertain. I nodded.

“Does our club have the ability access the Home Economics kitchens? And ingredients?” I asked princess fake-name.

“Of course. I’ll make some calls.” She spent a few minutes on the phone while the riajuu girl fidgeted, glancing between the girl and I with whole pages of unsaid questions not coming out of her mouth. I think it’s the quietest I’ve yet seen her.

“Hey, Miss. What’s your name?” I asked her. She frowned.

“I’m in your class, dummy.”

“I’ve seen you. I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Yuigahama Yui,” she said. I stared. Another one with a fake name. I looked over at Yukinoshita Yukino and wondered if they just used really powerful drugs at the local hospital during Delivery. Was there an investigation? Are the husbands not allowed to object to the name?

“Right. Yuigahama-san. Have you had problems cooking before?” I asked her.

“Umm, well, everything burns. At first its not hot enough and I put the food in and it just kinda sits there and I turn up the heat and then its burned as soon as I look back. Ovens are sort of just as bad,” she admitted.

“Cooking is about technique and timing and understanding ingredients and heat. Pans don’t heat up instantly, but they get hot eventually. Especially if you turn up the temperature. Never cook above Medium heat, and lower is often best for MANY things. Except eggs, oddly enough. Ovens also take around 10 minutes to heat up properly, and baking times are based on cooking your food with that as the starting temperature, which is why you wait to put it in. You also have to smell the food when it gets near the end of the cooking time. You can smell when it is going to start burning and pull it out then to prevent that. It takes experience to get good at that,” I explained.

“That’s the most words I’ve ever heard out of you, Hikki,” admitted the girl. I glared. I really hope she was paying attention to what I just said.

Yukinoshita-hime finally finished her calls and gathered her things.

“Come along. I’ve secured the kitchen for this project today.” I gathered things and limped along behind them. The kitchens were cleaned well and Yukinoshita-hime found the ingredients needed. I noticed she opted for shortening rather than butter, but it would have to do. I removed my jacket, rolled up my sleeves and limped over to the sink, washing my hands thoroughly with cold water, because I wanted my hands cold to do this right. Yukino noticed and nodded silent approval.

“And that’s how you prepare the dough. Normally we would let this rest overnight in the fridge so it would harden the shortening and prevent chemical changes to the dough which would make the cookies too soft when they bake, but time is short, so using cold hands and a chilled cookie sheet over ice water,” I said, pointing to the second sheet with cold water and ice cubes beneath it,” we can form cookies and chill them before baking. If you get this step wrong the cookies are too soft and can’t really be decorated. It will make a mess.” I rapidly formed cookies, adding sprinkles to them and some faces on them.

“This is oddly girly skill you possess, Hikkigaya-san,” complained Yukinoshita-hime.

“I have a sister,” I answered flatly.

“So do I,” she responded, every bit as dry in tone. “She isn’t cute.”

“Sorry. Mine is,” I responded. My leg hurt. I was trying to block out the pain with meditation.

“Okay. Now the hardest part is waiting until the oven reaches full temperature. Don’t skip this step or the cookies won’t be done when you expect, and they’ll have lost moisture into the dough, ruining them. Sugar cookies are sort of advanced baking, from the chemical side of things. They aren’t forgiving.” Yukinoshita sniffed in disagreement.

The oven beeped. I carefully lifted the sheet clear of the water bath, making sure none of the water got around the edges. I wiped the bottom down with a towel so it wouldn’t create a steam bath inside the oven, which would AGAIN ruin the cookies.

“Okay, so here we go.” I lifted the pan, opened the oven door, and slid the pan onto the middle rack. I shut the door. “Now, set a timer for 11 minutes on your cellphone.” I did the same. Yuigahama found the clock app and set the time.

“So now we prepare the icing.” Yukinoshita observed as I explained powdered sugar icing, color and flavor techniques, and the more advanced egg white icings, cream icings, fudge icings, and several other kinds, with and without butter, with and without heat required. By the time we’d colored some icing pink using a small drop of red food coloring dye the timer went off on my phone. The smell wasn’t quite right.

“Come over here. What do you smell?” I asked the girl. She sniffed near the oven vent. I cracked open the oven door. “Look inside? Smell again.” I checked with my own eyes and nose. “This needs two more minutes.” I shut the oven door and added two minutes to the time.

“It looked really close, just not brown enough on the edges,” I said. I set out a cooling rack on the countertop. “Even though it only really needs one minute to finish, it takes another minute for the oven to get hot enough again because we opened the door. So that’s why two minutes. You have to remember the time it takes for stuff to happen. And next time we make a batch we’ll set it for 12 minutes and it will be perfect.” The timer beeped. I used hot pads to remove the cookies, which were properly done now and removed them very carefully onto the cooling rack, a fine grid of stainless steel wire.

“There. Now we let it cool for ten minutes.” Yuigahama took her own sheet of cookies from the water cooling bath and lifted it up, wet to place in the oven.

“Dry that off first!” I warned her. She frowned, but did it. Then into the oven.

“Timer?” I asked. She flipped back over to the timer app and set it to 12 minutes while I watched, before switching to the camera app, photographing the cookies I’d made, and then to lines where she posted that to her feed. Riajuus! I sighed. I hope her friends like her efforts.

A short time later the cookies were done and she carefully removed them and placed them one by one onto the cooling rack. I put my first batch onto a plate where I could begin decorating them. Yukinoshita-hime looked on, keeping any objections to herself. We were out of dough so the oven was shut off.

“Decorating is mostly a matter of preference and care,” I said. I smoothed icing onto half the cookies and sprinkled them with red sugar and candy eyes and mouths so they were little faces. Yukinoshita-hime looked at the cookies, then at me, and made a face of disgust. Yuigahama was oblivious to her peer’s expression. She decorated the other half of the cookies herself. Her own batch of cookies was cool enough so she ate one and seemed pleased, before beginning the decoration process. By the end she had three plates of cookies ready for delivery.

“That was nice. Thank you for your help,” she said, bowing before exiting the kitchens with the cookies carefully stacked in a paper bag. I began cleaning up.

“So you’re not completely hopeless in the kitchen, even if you are a siscon,” pronounced the princess. I shook my head and scrubbed the cookie sheets clean under hot water and dish soap. I dried them, the princess looking on, doing nothing but observe. Ingredients. Where should they go? The princess pointed and I found the cupboards, returning them to storage. I wiped down the countertops and hung up the wet towel on a rack, looking around. A brief sweep to remove flour from the floor and it was adequately cleaned like we’d found it.

“So that’s a second customer helped by the club,” I said at last. “See you tomorrow.”

I headed home, suffering the commuter bus with all its stop. This time a drunk salaryman was hogging the disabled seat. I didn’t bother arguing with him. A bit early for drunken salarymen, but whatever.

Home found Komachi cooking stir fry veggies, tonkatsu with sauce, rice, and green tea. We enjoyed our meal together.

“Niisan. Why do you smell like cookies?” she asked me after a long pause.

“Club. Some girl wanted help learning how to bake. I taught her.”

“Did you bring any home?” she asked hopefully.

“Sorry no. She didn’t share.” Komachi frowned at this news.

“Rude.”

“Thoughtless. Oh well. I’m going to soak in the tub,” I said, heading to the bathroom. I undressed, removing my leg brace, checking for any new blisters or bruises. Some new ones. I washed myself before sinking into the tub to absorb the heat and relax all this pain bound up in me. After a few minutes I was much more comfortable. A bit later I returned to the pains of modern life, to dry off and dress and begin my day’s homework assignments. No time for gaming or online nonsense. I put a couple hours into the cram school section of math. I wouldn’t be able to marry into a household that would care for me. I was a cripple. I was worthless. I would have to care for myself, always. I can’t rely on anyone. Even cute little sister was going to get married and move away. It was just reality.

Knowing as I do that any job I would do had better not exacerbate my injuries, this limited my options a great deal. Nothing standing, so counters were out. No bending or lifting, so no warehouses. I had better plan for a desk job, and something which played to my strengths.

I eventually grew very tired and crawled into bed.

I awoke in the night in pain, as usual. I found my Soma pills and went to the kitchen for water to wash it down.

“Hachiman?” said mother’s voice.

“Yeah.” I filled the glass and took the pill, washing it down.

“Still hurts?” she asked.

“Every day, every night.”

“I thought those books on pain management were supposed to help you?” she asked.

“They do, but they’re just meditation. They don’t actually make the pain go away. They just teach you to accept that it’s there and try to work around it.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I’m going to bed,” Mom finally said. She sounded heartbroken. I couldn’t change that. The soma started working so I went to bed myself.

++++++++++

 

The following day I went through morning routine, cooked some breakfast and packed lunches for me and Komachi, parents long gone to work.

At school I finally got to my antagonist’s seat and was resting my head when a flurry of girly smells assaulted me from my pain mantras.

“Hikki! These are for you!” said Yuigahama in her usual loud way.

“Ah… thanks,” I said, trying to be nice. It was a small bag of the cookies we’d baked together the day before. I looked past her and found each of her riajuu friends had a similar bag, which they were examining and eating in typical happiness. She grinned at me and bounced over to them, all sorts of female energy. I momentarily wondered what Yukinoshita-hime would make of this scene, then dismissed it again as a pang of pain shot through my leg and spine. Sometimes the leg pains made my back hurt too.

Class began. I studied, took appropriate notes, practiced my citations for a bibliography, as required in Cram School chapter 6 on professional writing standards, and continued through the day. Lunch was bento, alone at a bench in the sun. After was a bathroom and back to class to finish the next chapter of 1984. The bits about the different ministries which were the opposite of what they claimed to be had some decent layers of sarcasm to them which I appreciated.

Afternoon classes were classes. After school it was the long walk and the stair climb to the club room for my daily punishment. The Cake came by to ask how our service had gone, waving the report she’d gotten from Yuigahama.

“He is adequate in this instance,” admitted the princess. I sighed. Faint praise is damning. The sensei waved the paper again, as if that was asking for my opinion.

“Thanks for your help getting the kitchen and ingredients approved, Yukinoshita-hime,” I said. She frowned at the hime. Figures.

“Is that how you see me?” she demanded, showing some anger.

“You look down your nose at everyone. And not just me. I’ve been paying attention. That sort of thing puts people off,” I pointed out. The sensei looked at me, then the girl, then me again, then the girl.

“Well, that’s interesting at least. The girl you helped yesterday says she wants to join your club, which will get your minimum numbers,” Cake announced after a little thought. “I’ve approved her membership.”

I sighed, but accepted this. Maybe the noisy one would pester the princess.

Yuigahama showed up, and proceeded to make lots of small talk, interrupting my reading of 1984, and thankfully disrupting that Feminist tripe Yukinoshita was reading. As if a princess at the top of the food chain would ever want to be anything else. This is how empires fall.

Their conversation went on for the rest of the club time and I was able to return to reading 1984 to its conclusion. So the hero gets tortured until he goes mad. That’s the ending. Depressing read. I bid the girls goodbye for the day and took the slow bus home. This time two Yankees hogged the handicapped bench. They wanted to fight someone so I stood elsewhere and ignored them. Some housewife maced them a bit later and the bus had to be emptied from the stink of the chemicals. This delayed me getting home even later than before. Komachi glared at me when I finally got in the door. I handed her the bus excuse form.

“Really?” she said.

“I was on the other end of the bus. It might even get on the news,” I pointed out, heading for the bathroom. Those chemicals really float around and stink. After a wash I felt far better and returned to the dinner table where Komachi had reheated our dinners. I thanked her and ate before washing up the dishes and heading for my room to study. I traded in 1984 from my bag for Catch 22. This was considerably longer and more confusing, and actually required me to use academic notes on the book to understand what was going on.

My essay on bears was not well received the next day. My biology teacher had handed it over to Cake sensei and she was furious.

“I really thought I was making progress with your attitude, and then you do this,” said snarled, waving it at me. I’d even drawn a decent pencil sketch of a towering bear on it. The contents were all about what I admired about bears standing alone, of their independence and hibernation, and how group animals attacked each other or sacrificed each other to avoid predators. Considering what I’d avoided on the bus the prior day I think I was spot-on with that.

“You see the news yesterday?” I finally asked her. She’d visibly restrained herself from punching me. I was already crippled.

“I was grading papers and dealing with your essay. What news did you mean?” she asked.

“I was on a commuter bus and some Yankees picked a fight with a housewife. She maced them. I got delayed getting home because of that. Still think I’m wrong about herd animals?” I taunted her. She visibly tensed, again.

“Get out of my sight, Hachiman,” she growled.

“Right.”

I returned to the classroom. It was raining outside and my bento was not improved by all the noisy riajuus crammed in here with me, lording it over the peasants. Much like I said in my essay they picked on the boys with their vitachans gaming, stealing one to show it off and making no effort to return it to its owner. Yuigahama was holding her lunch and looked upset, like she was trying to leave with it, and kept being interrupted by her bitchiness, Hair Drills Hime. Do I have a dog in this race? Hmm. Do I have anything to lose by standing up for Yuigahama, who is in our club.

“Eh. C’mon Yui. We have club now,” I said, dragging her away by her sleeve from the riajuus rather than ask permission. She followed and we exited the classroom to find Yukinoshita-hime glaring in the hallway.

“You were late after asking me to lunch,” complained Ice Princess.

“Hahng?” demanded the rude Yankee voice of Hair Drills Hime from behind us.

“What’re you doin to Yui?” she exclaimed and pushed me. I fell in the hallway, hard. Things broke inside me.

“Hikki?” asked Yuigahama. The pain was so intense I passed out.

“Call the ambulance!” someone shouted.

 

+++++++++++