[oneshot] Kimi ni Todoke (part one of three)
Title: Kimi ni Todoke
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: Yamashi (main), also OhgoJima and (hinted) UmiChii as side pairings
Genre: Fluff
Rating: G
Summary: AU. Shida Mirai enters university not expecting to fall in love, but in the end she does anyway.
Notes: Finally finished this after ages of deliberation. It ended up too long, so splitting into three parts.
Kind of inspired by the Kimi ni Todoke (Reaching You) manga.
Comments only enabled at Part Three.
~
Yamada Ryosuke squints behind his glasses at the white board filled with numbers standing outside Tokyo University.
“8302,” he chants his entrance exam number, hoping to find it on the board of successful entrants.
“Help me find mine too,” his friend pipes up from next to him, “I’m 2975.”
Yamada pauses in his tiptoeing and turns to glare at his childhood friend, Chinen Yuri.
“If you haven’t noticed,” he huffs, “I’m short. It’s hard enough finding my own name.”
“I’m short too,” Chinen retorts, “Shorter than you. So by default that makes you taller, and thus you have to look for both the numbers.”
Yamada groans, but eventually after a long while of wobbly tiptoeing and painful toes, he shrieks in jubilation.
“We’re in! We’re both in!”
Chinen whoops, jumping up and down happily as he waves his arms in the air like a maniac.
Yamada swears he hears a girl mutter ‘Idiots’, but when he turned around he saw nobody looking at him and at Chinen’s victory dance.
Ah well, he thinks, dismissing it to the back of his mind. I got in, that’s what’s important now.
~
Mirai watches Suzuka make her way back to where she is hanging around at the edge of the crowd outside Tokyo University.
“There were two idiots just now,” Suzuka hisses through gritted teeth, “jumping up and down like squirrels high on helium or something, I swear. One even looked like a squirrel.”
Giggling, Mirai pats Suzuka’s head comfortingly.
“Forget them. Did we make it?”
Suzuka pauses, then nods. Mirai feels her knees sag in relief and she throws herself at Suzuka in a hug.
“We did it!” she cheers, and Suzuka grins.
“Yeah.”
~
“I wonder how many people from our high school made it into Toudai,” Yamada muses over a cup of tea later on.
Chinen grabs another gyoza off the plate and chews it thoughtfully.
“Nishiuchi of Class C made it in as well,” he mumbles between bites. “I remember seeing her jumping up and down and screaming. And I think Yuto-kun got in.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Chinen chews in silence, before his eyes snap open as he remembers something.
“We’re supposed to be staying in the student hostel,” he says, “and we’re rooming in pairs. We’re in a mixed dorm, too.”
“As long as I don’t have to room with a weirdo I’m fine,” Yamada sighs, draining his cup of tea.
~
“…You have got to be kidding me.”
The boy in front of him - supposedly his roommate - is a cheerful-looking guy with great hair and a charming smile.
Just like that guy from high school who had attracted all the girls and thus left the rest of the boys with pathetic shreds of love lives.
“My name is Kamiki Ryunosuke,” the boy says cheerily, extending a hand to him, “You must be Yamada-san. We’re going to be roommates! Nice to meet you!”
Yeah, Yamada thinks, definitely the Mr Perfect type.
Sighing, he shakes the proffered hand, while silently sending Save me! messages to Chinen, standing behind Kamiki at the door of the next room, with his eyes.
Chinen unlocks his door and flounces in, obviously happy about his new roommate, their old classmate Nakajima Yuto.
Kamiki blinks.
“…Yamada-san? You look ill.”
“It’s nothing.”
Reluctantly, Yamada pushes open the door to their dorm room, resigning himself to a sad dorm life.
~
The two boys who had been acting like idiots that day, Suzuka whispers to her, are now in their Psychology class. She points in their general direction, and Mirai sees a short guy, an even shorter guy, a tall guy and another one next to the short one with nice hair.
“Which ones did you see?” she hisses to Suzuka, who points at the lecturer, shaking her head.
A minute or so later a folded note is thrown onto her desk.
The short one with the brown hair and the chibi.
The two in the middle?
Yeah.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mirai glances at the two of them.
The one with brown hair looks quite cute, a voice in her brain pipes up of its own volition.
Mirai buries her face in her arms and hopes Suzuka hadn’t seen her face briefly burn red.
~
“What club activity are you going to join?” Suzuka asks curiously after their first day of university ends.
Mirai thinks for a while, before she catches sight of a lone poster with one loose end fluttering on a pillar.
“Home economics!” she says quickly, “since I’m hopeless at cooking I might as well learn now.”
She notices Suzuka’s nervous grin.
“I won’t be able to protect you from the weird people or perverted boys though,” she says, “I’m planning on joining the Japanese culture club.”
“I’ll be fine, Suzuka-chan,” sighs Mirai, “it’s not like there’ll be many boys, right? It’s cooking and sewing, after all.”
~
“…Yama-chan, why exactly are you joining home economics?”
Yamada winces, rubbing his ears from the ringing echoes of Chinen’s high-pitched screech.
“I…like cooking?”
“You’ll be the only guy there! That’s like, so weird.”
Kamiki pokes his head from over Yamada’s shoulder where he is seated opposite Yuto, having invited himself to their table.
“I’m joining too~”
“Nobody asked you.”
Yuto sighs.
“Be nice to Kamiki-kun, Yama-chan. He’s a nice guy! And your roommate, to boot.”
Chinen nods like a bobblehead. He’s talked to Kamiki, and constantly informs Yamada that Kamiki is in fact very pleasant and easy to get along with, and that Yamada should just forget his grudge against Takahashi-kun from high school and start over.
Start over? Like, try to be friends?
He replies Yuto with a noncommittal grunt.
I’ll try when we start club activities, he decides, fully planning not to go anywhere near Kamiki and therefore avoiding contact with him.
~
Mirai steps into the first home economics session, and the first thing she notices is that there are two boys seated right at the back, and that everybody seems to have found a partner to sit with at their cooking benches already.
Movement catches her eye, and she turns to see a pretty girl waving at her, gesturing to the open seat next to her.
“You can sit here,” she mouths to Mirai, and Mirai smiles back gratefully.
“Thanks,” she whispers, sitting down on the stool gratefully.
“No problem!” smiles her new partner. “My name’s Umika, by the way. Kawashima Umika.”
“I’m Shida Mirai. Nice to meet you!”
Their teacher steps in just then, and they spend the entire session watching her cook and learning safety rules in the kitchen.
Being used to cooking, Mirai moves through the lesson almost robotically, until she realizes that Umika is having trouble learning how to chop vegetables.
“I can’t cook to save my life,” Umika admits sheepishly when she notices Mirai looking at her. “That’s why I figured I’d get better if I joined home economics.”
“I’ll help you get better at this, Umika-chan! It’s a promise!”
Umika beams at Mirai.
“We are going to be such good friends!” she says happily. “And we’ll be cooking buddies!”
~
Mirai finds Umika wandering around the canteen a couple of days later, and drags her to join her and Suzuka at their lunch table. Today, however, she finds the tall guy from their Psychology class sitting opposite Suzuka as well.
“Ah, Mirai-chan!” Suzuka calls, waving at them. “This is Nakajima Yuto-kun, we’re in the same club now.”
Yuto nods a greeting to them, and Mirai introduces Umika as well, before they sit down, opening their bento to eat.
While eating her onigiri, Mirai silently observes Suzuka talking to Yuto, and noices that her childhood friend is somehow more animated that usual, and she thinks she can see a faint veil of pink on Suzuka’s cheeks.
“Are you crushing on Nakajima-kun?” Mirai whispers to Suzuka as they head for their next lecture.
Suzuka shakes her head violently.
“I barely even know him!”
“I don’t blame you,” Mirai giggles. “He’s rather good-looking!”
“Shut up!”
Laughing, Mirai escapes down the corridor, a red-faced Suzuka chasing after her, both ignoring the curious stares directed at them.
~
During the third home economics session, their teacher announces that they will get to try making their own cakes without his explanations, only following a recipe that they can choose from the cookbook library in the next room.
Umika and Mirai almost immediately decide to make brownies, and Umika looks for a good recipe while Mirai starts taking out the equipment.
Mirai lets Umika do more of the food preparation, only stepping in for the chocolate and the mixing. Finally, they pour their batter into a baking pan and pop it into the oven, before sitting down on their stools for a well-needed break.
“Even the batter tastes good already,” Umika marvels. “I can’t wait!”
“Let’s ice these as well,” Mirai decides. “What do you think?”
Umika nods, and she heads off to get icing supplies from their teacher. She comes back a while later with ready-made icing in piping bags in yellow, blue, and purple. Mirai finds a bag of Smarties and some cake sprinkles, and they prepare their workbench for an icing frenzy as they wait for their brownies to be done.
Suddenly, Mirai smells something burning.
Quickly, she checks their oven, and breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that their brownies are fine.
A shriek of horror and a panicked flurry of moment tell her whose cake is burning, and she turns her head to see the two boys frantically yanking their butter cake out of the oven, the top of it already a rather burnt-looking dark brown.
“Oh man,” the one with the dyed brown hair groans. “We put it on the wrong shelf.”
“We did?” the one with the nice black hair asks, peering at the oven.
“Yeah. It was supposed to be on the middle shelf.”
Mirai spies their teacher walking over to the pair.
“Yamada-kun, clean it up,” he says. “Please remember to put your baked goods on the correct rack next time, and follow instructions.”
“Yes, sensei.”
Umika takes their brownies out of the oven as Mirai watches the boys dejectedly clear up their burnt cake.
“…Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Umika asks curiously, startling Mirai.
“Let’s give them some of our iced brownies!”
Umika nods, and Mirai smiles.
“Well then, let’s get to work!”
She grabs a large knife, cuts the cake neatly into twenty-four pieces, and lifts them out one by one for Umika to start icing. Within ten minutes, they are done with the icing, and Mirai smiles as she puts on the Smarties and sprinkles for a final touch.
“Done!” Umika says happily. “And they smell so good, too!”
Mirai can feel a pair of gazes staring at them and their brownies, and she knows without turning that it is probably the boys. Washing a serving plate from the drawer, she lifts off four brownies and heads for their bench, Umika in tow.
“Here,” she tells them. “You can have some, if you’d like.”
The eyes of the black-haired boy light up, and the brown-haired one rolls his eyes, holding him back.
“Don’t be such a pig,” he says dryly. “Thank them first!”
“Ah, right.”
The black-haired boy raises his head to look at them.
“Thanks for these! One day we’ll make some to repay you guys back.”
“Yeah, thanks so much,” the brown-haired boy adds. “I’m Yamada Ryosuke, by the way, and this weirdo is Kamiki.”
“I’m not a weirdo, hey!”
Mirai hides a grin, while Umika outright giggles.
“I’m Shida Mirai, and this is Kawashima Umika. Nice to meet you!”
Yamada smiles, and Mirai feels her heart skip a beat.
Not a crush, she tells herself firmly.
He’s cute though, isn’t he? a treacherous part of her mind pipes up, just like that time in the classroom.
She ignores this voice and concentrates on laughing herself silly as Kamiki demolishes the brownies.
~
The next day, Yamada and Kamiki show up at their table with a bag of cookies.
“Thanks for yesterday,” Yamada says, holding out the cookies. “We still fail at cooking, so we bought you some cookies to make up for it.”
Yuto is at their table again today, and he looks up at the arrival of Kamiki and Yamada.
“Ah, Yamada! Good to see you’re getting along well with Kamiki now.”
Yamada snorts.
“It turns out Mr Perfect is pretty much Mr Fail,” he says, looking rather victorious as Kamiki looks insulted. “Anyway, I didn’t know you know Kawashima and Shida.”
“Yeah,” Kamiki chimes in. “We might as well drag in Chinen-kun now, and we’ll have our full gang!”
Suzuka looks from the boys to Mirai and Umika, clearly confused.
“Mirai-chan,” she says. “I think introductions are in order?”
Mirai blinks.
“Oh! Um…this is Yamada-kun and that’s Kamiki-kun, and they’re the only two guys in our club.”
“The only two boys in home economics, eh?” Suzuka asks, grinning. “Nice to meet you, I’m Ohgo Suzuka.”
They nod in greeting, and Yamada and Kamiki seat themselves beside Yuto, before digging out their lunches.
“Itadakimasu~”
~
By the tenth session of home economics, Mirai and Umika decide that Yamada and Kamiki are extremely hopeless at home economics.
“You know what?” she says, staring with undisguised horror at their mutilated bits of raw chicken. “I think Umika and I will split up and work with you guys individually. We’ll probably prevent further food casualties that way.”
Kamiki agrees immediately, looking sadly at their chicken.
“I’ll work with Kawashima,” he says. “Yamada-kun can work with Shida.”
“Deal.”
They swap partners from the eleventh session onwards, and Mirai finds herself extremely tempted to find a wall to bang her head into, while teaching Yamada how to peel prawns.
~
Part Two is this way.