Chapter Text
Yukari was fed up. Tomorrow was the first round of midterm exams since SEES had begun operating in earnest, and she didn’t feel prepared at all. She certainly hadn’t expected it to be easy to balance their activities with school, not when she was determined to stay in the kyūdō club and keep up at least the appearance of having a social life. Yukari couldn’t do it all without sweating about it, not like Mitsuru could. Ugh, now wasn’t the time to get worked up about her, either.
She was already worked up about Junpei and Kotone. Yukari had been studying with them in the second floor common area. Cramming might have been a better word for what those two were doing, though, or, really, probably just goofing off. For whatever reason, they both seemed completely allergic to the idea of actually studying, which was fine, whatever, but they kept trying to drag Yukari down with them.
And she needed to maintain good grades. Great ones. She needed to prove she could do it, without extra school, without tutors, without any kind of assistance. Yukari could stand on her own two feet. She had been for years. As long as she could keep doing it, every decision she’d made since she’d left her mother was easy to justify.
Kotone and Junpei didn’t seem to possess any such impulses themselves, though, and eventually the distractions became enough for her to pack up and leave. Just a quick trip downstairs to grab herself a box of her favorite chocolate-coated biscuit sticks from the kitchen and then she’d be in her room for the rest of the night, where she probably should have been to begin with.
She didn’t expect to run into Sanada in the kitchen, surrounded by chicken breasts and what looked like only-recently-chopped broccoli florets and at least an entire carton of eggs. It wasn’t a very big kitchen, but he sure was taking up the entire space. “Hey Senpai,” she said in as casual a tone as she could muster, given her mood and how much she didn’t actually want to talk to him. Her curiosity won out, though. “Isn’t it kind of late for dinner? And isn’t that… a lot? Of food?” She opened the cabinet by the door to look for her snack.
Sanada snorted jovially. “Very observant, Takeba. I’m actually meal prepping for the week. It’s a pain, but it’ll get me back in shape that much faster.”
Did they really only have the strawberry flavor? Damn. It really wasn’t her night. She sighed and closed the cabinet. “Oh, I see. Yeah, lots of proteins here. What’s your plan for all that stuff?”
Sanada scratched the back of his head self-consciously. “Well, I was planning to just boil it all. Then portion it out, you know.”
“Ehh…” Yukari really wanted to study. She felt like she needed to. But this was very sad. She wouldn’t make that food for her worst enemy. She wouldn’t even make it for Mitsuru (mean thought, don’t think stuff like that). “Senpai, you can’t do that.”
He frowned. “Why not? It’s the fastest way to cook this much food, and-”
“But it’ll be soooo gross. You do have to eat the food later, y’know?”
“I eat this all the time. It’s not… pleasant, but it gets the job done.”
Now Yukari was the one frowning. “Okay, this is too sad.” She pushed her way into the kitchen and set the oven to preheat, and then moved to the refrigerator.
“What are you doing?” Sanada asked.
“I’m helping. Go ahead and heat the water, you can still boil your eggs.” She found the tub of red miso she was looking for towards the back of the shelf and pulled it out, then closed the fridge and began rummaging through the cabinet where they kept spices and bottled sauces. “Do we have mirin?”
“We have, uh, rice vinegar.”
Yukari shot him a flat look. “Those are not substitutes for each other, Senpai.” She found the mirin eventually, and a cooking sake that was actually significantly nicer than what she could usually afford. She shuddered at the thought that Sanada apparently used the kitchen regularly but didn’t know his way around any of the stuff that Yukari considered essential for preparing food. Everyone had their own way of doing things, of course. But maybe she could change his. “Okay,” she said when she had everything laid out in front of her.
“So what are we doing?” Sanada asked. Yukari glanced at him. He had his arms folded and he was regarding her with that bemused little smirk he usually reserved for Kotone and Junpei, but it wasn’t lost on her that he had said we instead of you that time.
“We’re just going to make a simple dipping sauce for your chicken, and we’re going to pan-fry it instead of boiling it. The texture will be better, the taste will be better, and it won’t lose any nutritional value,” She said. “Same thing with the broccoli – we can roast it in just a little bit of oil with some salt and pepper and I promise the taste and texture will be a million times better when you’re reheating it.”
“You make a pretty hard sell, Takeba.” His eyes glittered. “I’d be a fool to turn this offer down. Let’s do it.”
Yukari smiled, and it wasn’t even a fake one. “Alright. Um. So this really is super easy. I always start with just one cup of the miso, one cup of mirin, half a cup of sake, and a couple tablespoons of sugar. Then we’ll add water at the end to make it saucier.” She measured out the ingredients into a saucepan as she spoke, and then began to whisk her concoction together. “You can use this same recipe as a marinade, too, but you’d wanna leave it, like, overnight, or all day or something. We don’t have time to do that right now.”
“I see,” Sanada said. He was watching her movements with the same sharp gaze he adopted in Tartarus. Focused, studious.
“And if you do marinate things with this, just keep in mind that basically everything in this sauce burns really easily, so pat it dry really thoroughly before you cook it.”
“Won’t that just eliminate the flavor?”
“No, when it marinates for that long the chicken will absorb the flavor pretty well, I think.”
“You think?”
“Well, I usually use skin-on dark meat, so I’m not entirely sure how it would turn out with these things? But that’s what you make extra sauce for.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sanada watched her bring the sauce to a boil, then turn the heat down low. She had to keep stirring it until it was thickened, and that was going to take a solid twenty minutes, maybe a little longer. In the meantime she directed him to spread the broccoli on a baking sheet and toss it in oil, salt, and pepper. “You could even season it with other stuff if you wanted to.”
“I like the taste of broccoli,” he said.
Yukari shrugged at that. “Suit yourself, Senpai.”
The pot for the eggs began to boil not long after the broccoli went into the oven, and Sanada took care of those himself. They were done shortly before Yukari added water to her saucepan, and it wasn’t long before everything was finished and cooling. Everything except the huge portion of chicken looming on the counter.
Yukari was setting out a frying pan for that when Sanada said, “Say, Takeba, did you… come down here for something in particular?”
Oh. “Damn it,” Yukari hissed. “I’m supposed to be studying.”
“Ah, right. I’m sorry if I’ve kept you. Go on and get out of here, I can handle the rest of this by myself.”
“No, no, I can’t just leave you the rest of the prep and all the mess to clean up,” she insisted. Yukari couldn’t stand being let off the hook. She owned her responsibilities. “I’ll start packing things up and do the dishes while you finish cooking.”
Sanada frowned lightly. “Are you sure? It’s getting kind of late.”
“Sure I’m sure.” She offered him what she hoped looked like an easygoing, reassuring smile. Yukari didn’t think of herself as a dishonest person, or a person who had to fake her good nature, but she did feel a certain uneasiness around the older members of SEES, and around Ikutsuki. Where exactly the lines between Mitsuru, Ikutsuki, and the Kirijo group as a whole were drawn was murky to her. Learning a little more about Sanada and that other boy from the hospital recently had only added more questions to the mix.
She didn’t like how mistrustful she was. It felt bad. But it also felt correct.
There were a few moments of silence between them, and the room filled with the sounds of running water from the sink and the hiss of cooking meat and the purr of the stove’s exhaust fan. Yukari eventually decided to break the silence, more because she felt weird about not talking than because she had anything in particular to say. “Hey Sanada-senpai?”
Their backs were facing each other, but she heard Sanada reply with, “What’s up?”
“Aren’t you worried about exams?”
“Should I be?”
“I just mean, it seems like a weird night to be meal prepping. Don’t you need to study?”
“Oh, well, sure. I stay up until midnight every night, even when we don’t go to Tartarus. So that’s how I’ll fill the time tonight.” The was a pause, and a sizzling sound. “You don’t have to worry about me, Takeba, I score well. You don’t get to know Mitsuru for as long as I have without some of her habits rubbing off on you. By force, sometimes, heh.”
Yukari smiled despite herself. “That sounds like her.” She turned off the faucet and moved to begin drying the dishes she’d washed. “She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she.” It came out kind of flatly. Not a question – there was no doubt that Mitsuru was amazing. Yukari was simply admiring the fact of her existence. Even considering all of her advantages, it was hard to imagine that someone like Mitsuru was real. Yukari supposed they were lucky to have her, to some degree.
“I’m glad someone thinks so.”
“Well doesn’t everyone?”
“Yeah, but most people don’t know her. You do, a little bit.”
Yukari turned to look at him and saw that he was smiling, a little sardonic one, maybe just to himself. She didn’t know what to say to that.
When he was finished he turned to the opposite counter and began portioning the chicken into the dishes Yukari had already put the rest of the food into, ready and waiting to be frozen. “You know, you’re easier to talk to than I thought you were, Takeba.”
“Huh?”
“You’re always off on your own-”
“I am not! I’m in the lounge almost every day!”
Sanada shrugged. “Sure, but you’re always on your phone, or doing your own thing. I know it was a little awkward when it was just the three of us, but even since Junpei and Shiomi joined, you sit back a little bit.”
Shit, had he really noticed that? Maybe she needed to try harder at home, as much as the thought exhausted her. “I guess I’m so busy all the time that I just need some time to myself in the evenings,” she said.
“I wasn’t criticizing you,” he replied. “I only meant that it was nice to get to know you a little better, and to see you be the first one to reach out. But you don’t have to go out of your way, either. I know balancing everything is tough. Especially when you’re first starting out.” Yukari felt a little sick to remember that he’d been doing this since he was in middle school. She wondered how young he had been, specifically. Fourteen years old? Thirteen? It wasn’t so much younger than her, but it sure felt like it.
He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. “Mitsuru and the Chairman are really fired up right now. I am too – we’re making real progress for the first time in years. But you guys can’t burn out.” His gaze flickered down toward his arm, out of its cast but not clear for combat in Tartarus. That little smile curled his lips again, but Yukari couldn’t parse its meaning. Then he looked at her again. “Alright?”
Yukari smiled back, a small one too, and she wasn’t sure herself how sincere it was. “Okay Senpai. I hear you.”
***
A week later, Sanada stopped her in the hallway during lunch, which was annoying because Sanada was enormously popular, especially with his underclassmen. Everyone already knew Yukari lived in the same dorm as him and now that he’d specifically sought her out to chat, who knew how long she'd be fielding questions about it from school friends. But it was fine, because all he’d wanted was to thank her for making him that dipping sauce, and to ask her to write down the recipe for him, and if she had any tips for using it as a marinade.
No one had ever asked her something like that before. It felt kind of good.