{ Open and Shut }
Title: Open and Shut
Fandom: Persona 3
Characters: Shinjiro Aragkai, Fuuka Yamigishi, hints of FMC
Word Count: 1226
Comm & Prompt: 78_tarot : High Priestess
Rating: PG13
"Ah...Oh no!"
A cloud of black smoke wafted up from the stovetop.
Shinjiro covered his face with the palm of his hand. How was it even possible for her to mess up this badly on something that simple? He could have sworn that he was looking at her the whole time, but oh no, leave it to little Miss I'm-Good-with-Anything-That's-Not-Edible to improvise when he strained the pasta. Pulling the cookie sheet out from its nook between mixing bowls, he batted at the air almost like he was swinging his axe in battles.
Take this, Shadows. May you rue the day Shinjiro Aragaki comes for you with one of these. He muttered to himself darkly. Hell, if anyone from Port Island saw him like this, he would be the laughingstock of the entire backalley culture he'd worked to build himself into.
Fuuka, though, did not see the humor.
"Ooh, senpai, I'm so sorry!" Her eyes were shut, either from embarrassment or the smoke. It was a toss-up at this point; the acrid smog drifting up from the stove was enough to make him want to shut it all out, forget that this was happening under his supervision, in a place that used to be solely his domain. "I honestly don't know what happened! I tried to do everything just as you said!"
Shinjiro swatted the air around the smoke detector with renewed vigor. Hell, if this thing went off it would just make tonight perfect. Already they were getting stares from Mitsuru and that brown-haired girl, the two of whom had been having a conversation about Persona tactics while curiously glancing over at what he and Fuuka had been up to in the kitchen. His arms were starting to get tired, but he kept at it.
Persistence, sometimes, was the key.
"Were you stirring it," another fan of the cookie tray punctuated his sentence, "constantly? Because if not," he batted at the smoke again, "that makes this scenario less mysterious."
Fuuka's mouth opened in a mix of epiphany and shock. "I had to stir the sauce constantly? I thought it would be okay to just let it sit for a while and simmer..."
Shinjiro opened the back door and waved the smoke out into the night with the cookie tray, at last starting to notice the density of the black clouds going down. "Does this look fine to you?"
The teal-haired girl mumbled something that sounded like agreement and plopped down miserably into a seat at the counter. This was not uncommon after a cooking mishap, the inevitable self-hatred and soul-searching that would follow as Fuuka pondered what on earth made her fated only to produce ash. Shinjiro, on the other hand, preferred to spend this time more productively, and was already working on scrubbing splashes of half-charred sauce off the cooking range and kitchen walls.
"I just don't get it sometimes. All I want to do is make something that's good, that everyone can eat without wondering if they're going to be okay after. I just want this to work." Fuuka sighed, as though she had put all of her hope into that last word.
"It seems like," Shinjiro threw the paper towel away and pulled a fresh one from the roll, "you're trying too hard. You notice that you don't always do everything the way I tell you to? Like with the sauce, yeah, but earlier when I asked you if you'd added the butter you nearly dumped in olive oil."
"Perhaps olive was a little off," Fuuka admitted, "but oil and butter are both fats, so..."
Shinjiro rolled his eyes. "Tch. Look, cooking is about following a set of rules and sticking to them."
"But our leader adds things to the stuff we make all the time! We even made banana cupcakes once and-"
Waving it off, Shinjiro tried not to give into the urge to glance over to the lounge again. "Yeah, that comes later. First, you need to get good at the basics. Like...scales, right? Or your meditation exercises or whatever," he hastened to add, trying to come up with an adept comparison. "You do it by the book before you improvise on a melody. You probably didn't start off by visualizing fully either."
He wasn't sure what exactly Fuuka did in order to prepare for their missions, but he hoped that the analogy held water. She seemed to get it, slowly nodding.
"That's right. I had to start small and be really careful that I was doing everything exactly as I was supposed to. It's like learning how a new appliance works when all the manuals are in languages you don't understand; you have to make sure that the commands you give the device are having the desired effect before you try more complicated functions out."
Shinjiro blinked. "Uh...yeah."
What the hell did he know about electronics? It wasn't exactly like he was in the loop with this stuff since moving out of the dorm. He was lucky if he could catch his cooking shows on at the restaurants he'd worked part-time at every once in a while.
But Fuuka seemed cheered by this. "I think...I think I understand a little more what I've been doing wrong! I've always thought that there was something inside, some magic voice that you had to listen to all the time about what to do. But, um, it's difficult to explain, but I don't think it's entirely like that now. It's like a marriage of opposites. You have to be grounded in what works, but also be on the look-out for your instincts to tell you what to do next. Is that right, Shinjiro-senpai?"
Her companion waved it off. At this point, he was out of his league. But whatever. As long as the kitchen didn't suffer too much, it was probably the right track.
"Oh!" Fuuka's eyes were wide. "I just realized that there's so much to clean up and..."
She stared. In the time that she had been speaking and mulling her cooking difficulties over, Shinjiro had wiped the sauce stains off almost all the surfaces that they had marred, except for a pesky spot on one of the cabinets that he had to reach for.
"You already did it." She looked downcast. "I'm sorry, I should have helped more than just sat here and talked to myself."
Shinjiro shrugged it off. "You figured something out, right?"
Fuuka nodded. "Yes, I did."
"Then that's enough."
The girl smiled, then went over to the lounge. Shinjiro got the last of the sauce spatters and replaced the much-abused saucepan in the cupboard before looking out across the lounge at the trio of girls talking to themselves by the door.
Closure was hard to come by these days. So, as long as she found it, Shinjiro thought, his eyes drifting to another girl than the one he'd just helped with her cooking, then yeah, that would be enough.
Fandom: Persona 3
Characters: Shinjiro Aragkai, Fuuka Yamigishi, hints of FMC
Word Count: 1226
Comm & Prompt: 78_tarot : High Priestess
Rating: PG13
"Ah...Oh no!"
A cloud of black smoke wafted up from the stovetop.
Shinjiro covered his face with the palm of his hand. How was it even possible for her to mess up this badly on something that simple? He could have sworn that he was looking at her the whole time, but oh no, leave it to little Miss I'm-Good-with-Anything-That's-Not-Edible to improvise when he strained the pasta. Pulling the cookie sheet out from its nook between mixing bowls, he batted at the air almost like he was swinging his axe in battles.
Take this, Shadows. May you rue the day Shinjiro Aragaki comes for you with one of these. He muttered to himself darkly. Hell, if anyone from Port Island saw him like this, he would be the laughingstock of the entire backalley culture he'd worked to build himself into.
Fuuka, though, did not see the humor.
"Ooh, senpai, I'm so sorry!" Her eyes were shut, either from embarrassment or the smoke. It was a toss-up at this point; the acrid smog drifting up from the stove was enough to make him want to shut it all out, forget that this was happening under his supervision, in a place that used to be solely his domain. "I honestly don't know what happened! I tried to do everything just as you said!"
Shinjiro swatted the air around the smoke detector with renewed vigor. Hell, if this thing went off it would just make tonight perfect. Already they were getting stares from Mitsuru and that brown-haired girl, the two of whom had been having a conversation about Persona tactics while curiously glancing over at what he and Fuuka had been up to in the kitchen. His arms were starting to get tired, but he kept at it.
Persistence, sometimes, was the key.
"Were you stirring it," another fan of the cookie tray punctuated his sentence, "constantly? Because if not," he batted at the smoke again, "that makes this scenario less mysterious."
Fuuka's mouth opened in a mix of epiphany and shock. "I had to stir the sauce constantly? I thought it would be okay to just let it sit for a while and simmer..."
Shinjiro opened the back door and waved the smoke out into the night with the cookie tray, at last starting to notice the density of the black clouds going down. "Does this look fine to you?"
The teal-haired girl mumbled something that sounded like agreement and plopped down miserably into a seat at the counter. This was not uncommon after a cooking mishap, the inevitable self-hatred and soul-searching that would follow as Fuuka pondered what on earth made her fated only to produce ash. Shinjiro, on the other hand, preferred to spend this time more productively, and was already working on scrubbing splashes of half-charred sauce off the cooking range and kitchen walls.
"I just don't get it sometimes. All I want to do is make something that's good, that everyone can eat without wondering if they're going to be okay after. I just want this to work." Fuuka sighed, as though she had put all of her hope into that last word.
"It seems like," Shinjiro threw the paper towel away and pulled a fresh one from the roll, "you're trying too hard. You notice that you don't always do everything the way I tell you to? Like with the sauce, yeah, but earlier when I asked you if you'd added the butter you nearly dumped in olive oil."
"Perhaps olive was a little off," Fuuka admitted, "but oil and butter are both fats, so..."
Shinjiro rolled his eyes. "Tch. Look, cooking is about following a set of rules and sticking to them."
"But our leader adds things to the stuff we make all the time! We even made banana cupcakes once and-"
Waving it off, Shinjiro tried not to give into the urge to glance over to the lounge again. "Yeah, that comes later. First, you need to get good at the basics. Like...scales, right? Or your meditation exercises or whatever," he hastened to add, trying to come up with an adept comparison. "You do it by the book before you improvise on a melody. You probably didn't start off by visualizing fully either."
He wasn't sure what exactly Fuuka did in order to prepare for their missions, but he hoped that the analogy held water. She seemed to get it, slowly nodding.
"That's right. I had to start small and be really careful that I was doing everything exactly as I was supposed to. It's like learning how a new appliance works when all the manuals are in languages you don't understand; you have to make sure that the commands you give the device are having the desired effect before you try more complicated functions out."
Shinjiro blinked. "Uh...yeah."
What the hell did he know about electronics? It wasn't exactly like he was in the loop with this stuff since moving out of the dorm. He was lucky if he could catch his cooking shows on at the restaurants he'd worked part-time at every once in a while.
But Fuuka seemed cheered by this. "I think...I think I understand a little more what I've been doing wrong! I've always thought that there was something inside, some magic voice that you had to listen to all the time about what to do. But, um, it's difficult to explain, but I don't think it's entirely like that now. It's like a marriage of opposites. You have to be grounded in what works, but also be on the look-out for your instincts to tell you what to do next. Is that right, Shinjiro-senpai?"
Her companion waved it off. At this point, he was out of his league. But whatever. As long as the kitchen didn't suffer too much, it was probably the right track.
"Oh!" Fuuka's eyes were wide. "I just realized that there's so much to clean up and..."
She stared. In the time that she had been speaking and mulling her cooking difficulties over, Shinjiro had wiped the sauce stains off almost all the surfaces that they had marred, except for a pesky spot on one of the cabinets that he had to reach for.
"You already did it." She looked downcast. "I'm sorry, I should have helped more than just sat here and talked to myself."
Shinjiro shrugged it off. "You figured something out, right?"
Fuuka nodded. "Yes, I did."
"Then that's enough."
The girl smiled, then went over to the lounge. Shinjiro got the last of the sauce spatters and replaced the much-abused saucepan in the cupboard before looking out across the lounge at the trio of girls talking to themselves by the door.
Closure was hard to come by these days. So, as long as she found it, Shinjiro thought, his eyes drifting to another girl than the one he'd just helped with her cooking, then yeah, that would be enough.