Cookie Flavored Romance by Sakura Dragon
Not Just Another Weekend
I do not own Inuyasha. Rumiko Takahashi does (lucky girl).
This story was writen for Aubrey Simone's '50 First Lines' Challenge. My theme was 'dessert' and the prompt was 'aphasia'. I hope that I used both to her satisfaction.
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‘Just one drink,’ Hiroto begged, and Kagome finally relented.
‘Fine. After we’re done setting up the shop for tomorrow, I’ll go clubbing with you guys,’ she said, making the other girl smile in gratitude.
‘Great. I’ll help you choose something to wear,’ her friend chirped before returning to the shop.
Kagome hated clubbing, especially on a Saturday and knew she would regret this in the morning. It never was just one drink and she knew she’d be out until very late, but she couldn’t in all fairness let Hiroto be a third wheel to their two mutual friends, Sango and Miroku. The two were very much in love with each other, a fact evident to anyone, but were reluctant to admit their feelings and weren’t a couple yet. And trying to get them together was, quite frankly, more of an uphill struggle and a bother sometimes than it seemed worthy. Sango Taijiya had been Kagome’s best friend since childhood and they had been classmates from kindergarten until the end of high school.
Their fiery and belligerent tempers had given them a strong reputation among the boys at school and in the neighborhood. Sango’s nickname had been ‘the demon slayer’ because of her last name and Kagome had gotten the nickname ‘the miko’ because her grandfather was a priest and she lived in a shrine. It had turned out to be an appropriate one when she’d started showing signs of holy powers after she turned fifteen. Sango was Kagome’s business partner and also worked as a waitress in the café with Hiroto.
The shop, called ‘Shikon Kisaten’ belonged to Kagome and Sango and they were very proud of it. It occupied half of the ground floor of a two-story house in Shinjuku, dwarfed by the tall office buildings that crowded the area. The other half of the ground floor was taken up by the modern kitchen storage space and huge freezer necessary for the preparation of the cookies and cupcakes that they sold. Kagome lived upstairs, with Sango and her brother Kohaku.
When Kagome had graduated from university with a degree in Japanese history three years before, she had felt completely lost and without any direction in life. She had wanted to move from the family shrine and start her own business. She had always been talented at baking but it never occurred to her to open a café until she saw the ‘For Sale’ notice on the door of her favorite bakery in Shinjuku. She had some of the money needed to buy it and was about to get a loan for the rest when Sango, whose father had died earlier that spring, decided to sell her house and invest some of the money in Kagome’s idea.
The building had been perfect. Since it had been a bakery before, the space was already arranged to suit Kagome’s needs, with a fully equipped kitchen, a glass counter and tables. Sango’s business degree had come in handy and the little shop was thriving after two years. Of course her grandfather had been completely against her leaving since he had high hopes of her taking over the shrine, but she had had her mother’s support and understanding.
Although a café like theirs was somewhat unusual inJapan, it was popular with the large number of foreigners who lived and worked in the area and even the Japanese locals. She knew for a fact that her grandfather, despite all of his grumbling whenever she mentioned the subject, was secretly proud of her achievement and recommended the shop to anyone who visited the shrine.
The shop was open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. everyday. Ten tables were arranged around the café, but Kagome only had Sango and Hiroto as waitresses since most of their loyal customers bought their coffee and cupcakes on their way to and from work. Besides their confections, they also sold coffee, many flavors of tea from green and black to fruit infusions, and fresh orange juice. A large part of their business came from special orders for events.
Miroku Houshi had come into the picture when they had opened the café and hired him to be in charge of the counter. He had some reiki as well, though nowhere near as strong as Kagome’s. The young man was however anything but a saint. He was cursed, in his own words, with ‘wondering hands’ and a wandering mind on top of that. The fact that he loved Sango with everything he had didn’t prevent him from putting the moves on any pretty girl that walked into the shop. Miroku was, to put it simply, the greatest lecher Kagome had ever met.
Hiroto was a youkai and she was very beautiful. She was almost six feet tall, five inches over Kagome’s petite form, and very well proportioned. She had rich, cooper hair with red and brown highlights and emerald eyes. Hiroto was an earth elemental, with a very warm and friendly personality. She was very calm, always kept her head in a crisis and never got angry about anything. One of her responsibilities was caring for the plants in the café, which owing to her element, were healthy, luxurious and full of flowers. Hiroto hid her demon markings with magic. Kagome had seen them once and knew they were a tiny green shoot with two leaves on her forehead and brown dots across her right shoulder and in a line a short way down her arm.
Kagome envied her for this serenity of character. Her own emotions were so erratic that she could be laughing one moment, in a deep depression or even fuming with anger the next. She always panicked and lost her head in an emergency. She knew that Hiroto’s father was a very important man but she didn’t know what he did exactly.
Kagome glanced up at the huge clock above the door that led to the front. Less than an hour until they closed the shop and had their customary staff meeting. She sighed and continued cutting up fondant shapes for the special order due on Monday.
‘So, going out tonight, huh?’ her decorator Bankotsu asked, from further along the table. He was the fourth and last member of her staff and was currently helping her by kneading the fondant into whatever color she needed.
‘Apparently. Want to come along?’
‘Not a chance. I’m playing video games with my bro.’
Bankotsu’s ‘bro’ was his younger sibling, Jakotsu. In contrast with his brother’s manly appearance (the long black braid only adding to the general hotness), Jak was very feminine and fashion conscious. He was an interior decorator. Both siblings had a very good eye and wild inventiveness when it came to decorations and sometimes Kagome believed she didn’t pay Bankotsu enough for his genius.
‘Your loss,’ she joked, wishing she didn’t have to go.
Soon Hiroto, Sango and Miroku came into the kitchen, carrying trays of the few unsold cupcakes and cookies and told Kagome that the café was closed and everything was ready for the night.
The meeting was a simple one. They talked over the next day’s menu and then prepared the cookie dough, since it needed to chill in the freezer overnight.
Their menu was very varied. They had a lot of flavors of cookies and cupcakes. Aside from the usual chocolate, vanilla, lemon, red velvet, orange and so forth, the shop also sold a variety of more traditionally Japanese flavors like green tea powder, mugwort, mocha and red bean paste. They also had special seasonal recipes. Fresh fruit and berries like peaches, pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries or blueberries went into their cupcakes in summer, pumpkin and pecans in autumn. They made gingerbread sweets in winter and used sakura blossom tea all through the cherry blooming season in spring. These cupcakes had a surprising taste because the tea was salty.
Their usual decorations included seasonal flowers and fruit made from buttercream, modeling chocolate or royal icing and swirls of colored frosting. A week before any major event they used decorations that celebrated the occasion: peach blossoms and hina dolls for Hinamatsuri, carp streamers for Boy’s Day, stars and colored tanzaku with generic well wishes written on then in Bankotsu’s flowing script for Tanabata or impossibly realistic fireworks to celebrate the Sumida River Fireworks Festival were just a few of the special decorations they used. They even celebrated the more Western holidays like Halloween and Christmas.
By eight, the men had left and the girls were clustered upstairs laughing andtrying to decide what to wear, critically observed by Sango’s demonic firecat Kirara. She looked like a little kitten with black ears and black stripes on her paws and two fluffy tails. She had belonged to Sango’s family since before the Sengoku Jidai and despite her usual small size, could turn to quite an impressive one if the situation called for it. The girls and Kohaku all spoiled Kirara rotten and the firecat didn’t seem to mind at all.
Hiroto had brought her outfit and make-up case with her that morning, since the outing had already been decided upon since Wednesday. Soon they were all in front of the mirror.
‘I’m really not sure that this works on me,’ Kagome said, tilting her head to the side. She was wearing one of her friend’s dresses, a short and clingy black one that accented her hourglass shape.
‘Don’t be silly. You look fabulous. I’ll fix your hair,’ Hiroto said, running her hands through her silky black curls and pulling part of it up into a ponytail.
They giggled and joked as they got ready. Hiroto had changed into a cream babydoll top with blue flowers and ruffled brown skirt and Sango wore a burgundy red dress, even shorter than Kagome’s. They arranged their hair and done their make-up. Kagome looked at herself in the mirror. The eyeshadow brought out her sapphire eyes and she had insisted on wearing a pink lipstick instead of the intense red one that her friends thought would look better on her. She didn’t usually wear make-up and felt odd. She looked quite unlike herself.
They were all ready before Miroku came to pick them up shortly before ten. They left Kohaku watching a horror movie with Kirara curled up in his lap and walked to the club. It was a new one that had opened only a few streets away from the shop. As Kagome had expected, inside was packed and they found it very difficult to get a table. They found one in the end near the dance floor.
Despite the heat and the deafening level of noise in the place, Kagome was enjoying herself very much in the company of her friends. The three girls all danced around Miroku, who was very pleased to be in the middle and divided his time among them, paying special attention to Sango.
A slow song began playing and Kagome turned around to head back to their table. Standing in front of her, almost within touching distance, was a tall, handsome man. He was wearing jeans and a navy button-down shirt that emphasized the paleness of his skin. His long, silver hair was hanging loose down his back. He had a dark blue crescent on his forehead and maroon stripes on his cheeks. Their eyes connected and Kagome felt an electric shock run down her spine when she saw the smoldering look in his amber eyes. Her heart began to beat faster.
In a few steps he covered the distance between them and placed his hands on her lower back, pulling her against him as they began moving together to the slow rhythm. Kagome laced her fingers behind his neck and had a sensory overload from the softness of his hair. Their eyes never left each other and they danced in silence. She could feel his powerful youki rubbing gently against her holy powers, like he was caressing her very soul.
As the dance was ending, he leaned even closer to her and his lips brushed softly against hers. Kagome’s breath caught in her throat and she felt like her knees were going to give out from under her. The kiss lasted a few second more and then the dance was over. He pulled away from her and disappeared into the crowd. She felt lightheaded and stared in a daze after him until she was joined by her friends.
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When Kagome’s alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. she groaned and wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. But she had to get up and get ready to open the café at seven. A hot shower and a cup of strong coffee woke her up completely. She headed downstairs into the kitchen, tied her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck, put on an apron and a white bonnet and began mixing the cupcake dough since those took twice as long to bake as the cookies and had to be cooked, cooled and decorated by the time they opened.
As she combined the ingredients, she ticked of the finished batches on the list pined to the shelf above the table and scribbled the supplies that they were running short on in the margins. She got the first pans into the oven and was taking the bowls of cookie dough out of the freezer when she heard the first sounds of Sango stirring upstairs. She began thinking of the previous night as she absently scooped up dough and formed it into shapes on the baking paper.
After her dance with the stranger it had been a fairly uneventful evening except for the usual fight between Sango and Miroku when he had tried to grope a waitress. He was going to have a pretty bump on the back of his head from the metal ashtray he’d been hit with by his lady love. She wondered how he was still alive after so many head injuries. To make matters worse, the waitress had slapped him hard and his behavior had almost had them thrown out of the club.
She hadn’t seen the silver haired man at all after their dance. They hadn’t spoken at all during their time together so she didn’t even know his name. The only thing she knew for certain was that he was a powerful youkai and Hiroto had confirmed as much. She blushed as she remembered their close contact and his lips softly brushing against hers before he left.
They hadn’t stayed long after that and got back home around one in the morning. Miroku had insisted on walking them home and had gotten slapped again when he tried to kiss Sango goodnight. It was funny to see how he never learned his lesson. Sometimes Kagome had the disturbing feeling that he liked it. She really wanted to ask Sango about it, but was afraid of the answer.
Sango came down, clutching a large mug of coffee and began helping her. Bankotsu came in at half past six and began decorating, wanting to know all the juicy details about their night out. Shortly before seven, Miroku and Hiroto came and they opened the café as usual. As the first customers entered, it promised to be an uneventful Sunday.
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‘I’m going to go bake more cookies,” Kagome informed Miroku after noon. He nodded and continued serving the customers.
The kitchen was empty when she entered it. Bankotsu must have gone out for a smoke. She checked the oven timers and arranged some of the decorated cupcakes, each covered in exquisite flowers of colored frosting, on a small tray from the table and walked with it across the floor to the shop door. Even if it was already mid September, they hadn’t switched to the seasonal harvest fruits and autumn leaves decorations but Bankotsu had replaced the summery sunflowers and lilies with dahlias and chrysanthemums. These along with roses, orchids and daisies made of colored buttercream were very popular.
She smiled and began humming to herself. Despite her bad morning, it was a good day. The café was full, everyone praised Bankotsu’s decorating genius, business was booming, she had made good progress on the special orders, the kitchen was spotless and in order. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?
She was nearly at the door when she felt the obstacle a second before her foot caught in a discarded rolling pin that had somehow rolled onto the floor. She stumbled forward and the tray flew out of her hand and landed with a loud clang on the tiles. She cursed under her breath in a way that would have made her mother and grandfather blush and began to pick herself off the floor. Her palms burned where she had used them to break her fall.
She froze when she notices a pair of legs in the open door. Kagome looked up, dreading what she would see. The cupcakes hadn’t landed around the tray. They had flown with a devious purpose and had stuck to the otherwise impeccable suit of the tall man that had been just entering the kitchen, smearing him with rainbow-colored frosting. She noticed that he looked somewhat like the handsome stranger who had danced with her the previous night. He was very tall and lean and had the same long silver hair in a ponytail at the top of his head. His face was angular and covered in faint laughter lines. He looked like he was in his early forties, but you never could really tell with youkai. He could be centuries old for all she knew. His honey eyes sparkled and he looked as if he was planning some mischief.
As she watched he reached up and with his long, delicate fingers plucked off a cupcake that was stuck to his cheek, leaving behind a red glob of icing that had been a rose. He gave the cupcake a curious look, as if he’d never seen one before. It was moments like these that Kagome wanted to find that Murphy guy and shove those damned laws down his throat.
She scrambled hurriedly to her feet and picked up a damp towel from the stand near the sink. Obviously the man had come in with a special order and Miroku had sent him into the kitchen.
Kagome really wanted to apologize, but she remained completely speechless in the shock of the moment. Her vocal chords seemed paralyzed and her brain had short-circuited. Hiroto had mentioned a medical term that she knew applied in the situation, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it had been.
Her mouth started working again after a minute or two of awkward silence, during which the man had stares blankly at her as she wiped at the colored frosting and cupcake crumbs on his suit jacket. Sango had come in to investigate the noise and had gone away again carrying two trays of cookies into the shop, after she’d made sure that nobody was injured.
‘I’m terribly sorry about what happened,’ she began to apologize. Luckily, it seemed that the man’s expensive white shirt had escaped her clumsiness. He focused on her and began laughing in a roaring, merry way.
‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ he said, taking off the stained jacket. He looked at it ruefully and then smiled when he saw Kagome’s worried look. ‘Dry-cleaning will take care of it.’
‘How may I help you, sir?’ she asked, remembering her business sense.
‘Oh, yes. I almost forgot. I wanted to order some cupcakes for my granddaughter’s birthday party next week. Where are my manners? My name is Touga Taisho.’
‘Kagome Higurashi. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr.Taisho. How old is your granddaughter?’
‘Her name is Rin and she’s turning six.’
‘How should we decorate the cupcakes? What does Rin like?’
‘She likes flowers and toys. I know she doesn’t like pink, but yellow and orange. She’s a very happy and lively child. Sometimes I think she’s too mature for her age.’
‘And what flavor did you have in mind, Mr. Taisho?’ Kagome asked next, making notes of what he said on a pad.
‘I haven’t really thought about that,’ he frowned. ‘What can you offer me?’
‘I have a list here with the flavors that our shop provides,’ she said, taking a ring with laminated papers from a hook above the table. ‘Please look over it and if you have any questions let me know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to clean up these cupcakes.’
She left him to peruse the selection and began cleaning the mess she’d made in the kitchen. When the baking timers began ringing, Kagome went to the ovens and began pulling out pans of baked cookies and cupcakes. The fresh smell filled the kitchen. Her mind was racing, apparently trying to catch up after the previous blankness.
‘Aphasia,’ she blurted out suddenly, remembering the word Hiroto had told her and almost dropping the cookie she was holding
‘I’m sorry, my dear? What did you say?’ Touga asked, looking up from the list of flavors.
‘Nothing. Sorry,’ Kagome blushed and turned to finish putting the cookies on the cooling rack.
It took him a few more minutes to decide. In the interval, Bankotsu had returned and went back to decorating cookies and cupcakes in silence after asking Kagome what had happened to the tray of cupcakes. She had demurely explained her little accident. He hadn’t said anything, but from his look she knew she was in for a scolding later. Bankotsu really didn’t like to see his efforts go to waste.
After a long discussion about flavor, decorations, icing and setting an appointment for the delivery on the following Saturday at noon, Touga gave Kagome his card, telling her to call at any hour and went away happily, whistling under his breath and carrying his ruined jacket under his arm. When he was out of sight, Kagome sighed and dropped exhausted into a chair.
‘Hard day?’ her decorator asked with a crooked smile.
‘Oh, shut up, Bank,’ she quipped, making him chuckle.
She looked at the gilded card in her hand and felt that her life had just become much more complicated than she was ready for.
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