In the middle of a dense cloud of white flour, a young man angrily stared at a bowl of cake batter in front of him. All around his apartment were stray ingredients. Butter was stuck to the walls, strawberries were littered all over the floor, cream seemed to have been thrown across the apartment in clumps, and there were broken eggs splattered everywhere. The man's right eye twitched. If something didn't start going his way in the next few minutes, bodies would hit the floor.
Fed up with his futile attempts, he pulled out his phone and angrily punched in a friends number. "Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up."
"Hello?" A feminine voice said curiously.
"Kimiko. I'm about ready to kill something."
"Why? What's going on?"
"I'm..." He paused then spat out, "baking."
For a few seconds she didn't say anything but then said, "I'm on my way."
She was there the moment the line went dead. But she wasn't ready for the pure carnage around her... if massacring flour and sugar could count as carnage. She regarded the young man shaking in frustration, she took a step towards him when a sneeze stopped her. She looked down at a small white kitten tripping over itself and continually sneezing away the film of flour that covered its nose. Carefully Kimiko kneeled down and picked it up, realising that the kitten wasn't white, but a dark brown and covered head to tail with flour.
"Keisuke..." Kimiko asked as she stood. "What's going on?"
With a sneer he looked at her over his shoulder and pointed an accusatory finger at a cookbook to his right. "We are going to make this fucking cake if it kills me."
Kimiko didn't really know how to respond to that so she just stood there blinking in confusion. As far as she knew Keisuke had never really attempted to cook anything more difficult than stir-fry, let alone bake. So she didn't understand why he was so determined. But by the looks of his apartment he wasn't going to let a cake win without a fight.
"What are you standing around for!" Keisuke shouted. "Move move move!"
Being thoroughly startled, Kimiko almost dropped the little kitten in her arms. She frantically looked around for someplace to put it when Keisuke leaned over and pointed to his head. Taking that as an invitation, she placed the kitten atop his skull and he immediately stood up straight and turned back to the bowl in front of him.
"Let's fucking do this."
---
As Kimiko talked Keisuke through the recipe she was absolutely appalled by how little the young Sarutobi knew about cooking. She was almost left speechless by his naive words.
"What do you mean, don't let any eggshell into the mixture. I get eggshells in my eggs all the time and it doesn't bother me."
"... sift. How the hell do I sift flour. Why do I need to sift it. Why is that a thing."
"Seriously? I need to follow the steps? I've just been throwing all the ingredients into one big bowl and hoping it turns out okay."
"Don't mix wet ingredients with dry ingredients? Then how the fuck is it all supposed to come together?"
"WHY ARE THERE SO MANY FUCKING INSTRUCTIONS. WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT. THIS ISN'T BRAIN SURGERY. IT'S A FUCKING CAKE."
Then a few bad batches and an entire cake on the ceiling later and Keisuke and Kimiko managed to bake up a nice-ish looking dessert. But them came the icing. That was a whole other monster for Keisuke. Then came decorating. Kimiko had to stop him from punching holes in the wall when that didn't go as easily as expected either. In the end, the cake turned out alright. A vanilla-chocolate marble cake with whipped cream frosting and decorated with strawberries.
Now that they were finally done, Kimiko decided to ask, "What brought this all on anyways?"
Keisuke, thoroughly exhausted from his spouts of anger, took a bit longer than usual to answer. "It's Mamoru's birthday tomorrow. This is his favourite cake. Thought I'd try to make it." He panted a little. "Didn't think it'd be this hard..."
"It's for Mamoru...?" Kimiko asked, a little shocked. "Does that mean you two are...?"
Instead of answering, Keisuke nodded groggily.
Extremely pleased by her two babies reconciling their friendship, Kimiko threw herself into his arms and kissed him lightly on the lips. She didn't even mean to, it just happened. And Keisuke was just too tired to really resist.
"Is it done?" He asked. "Completely? Like... can I go give it to him?"
Kimiko nodded so Keisuke quickly grabbed for the cake before vanishing into thin air and reappearing outside Mamoru's window. It was midday, he was probably getting ready to pick up his siblings from the bus stop. Or, hopefully, he was already enroute. With that in mind Keisuke quickly slipped into Mamoru's room, placed the cake on his nightstand with a note, and slipped back out again. He wasn't in the mood to explain himself.
By the time Keisuke got back to his apartment, Kimiko was already gone. Keisuke thanked his lucky stars for that. He just wanted to smoke a cigarette and take a shower. But first he leaned his back against the counter and slid down to the floor. Maybe a nap wouldn't be bad either. Almost immediately he drifted off. Not even bothering to clean up the icing dripping from his hair.
His last thought before he completely blacked out was what he wrote on Mamoru's card. A simple phrase that surely summed up his frustration with his cake. Happy Fucking Birthday.
END
Just a birthday post for Mamoru. If you want to say something buddy, go for it.
