WONDERLAND

twelve. "yesterday's love."

"So, how was it, boy wonder?" Mahiru asks when Eishi comes out of the kitchen.

His excitement seems to diluted slightly, but there's wonder on the edge of his shoulder and amazement in his eyes. She supposed it made sense, but the starlight wonder had been something Mahiru never indulged in, so she doesn't much care.

"Well, you're staying here for the next to weeks, make yourself comfortable. I'm heading out."

"Where are you going?"

"My house."

"You have a house?"

"Where don't I have a house, Eishi?"

They stare at each other, and there's annoyance strumming in her veins. Mahiru clenches her fist and closes her eyes, a hand already coming up to rub at her temple. "Spit it out," she says, a bit tiredly. "I have clients to handle after this."

The silence is suffocating. It's like speaking with her father— The forbidding study, the heavy silence, waiting for him to snap, waiting for him to collapse. The tight-sprung wire.

"Let me cook for you," he blurts out.

Mahiru gives him an annoyed stare, frustrated— Why couldn't he get it?

"No, cook with me," he says firmly. "You should relax. Cooking is a good way to relax."

"What the fuck, are you considering to switch career and become a therapist?" Three clients— People to yell at, mountains of paperwork to do—

With surprising strength, he grabs her wrist. "Listen to me, Mahiru. I'm trying to help."

Before she can protest — or go through the catalogue of a billion things she can say to ward him off, he shoves an apron into her arms and breezes past her towards the kitchen. Not the steel compound kept under lock and key that's the only modern furnace in Amami's house, but the charming little rustic kitchen that's mostly only for show.

Mahiru offers it a glare as she puts it on and produces a velvet scrunch to tie her hair with.

She shuffles into the kitchen to see him prepping some vegetables— Knowing him, he's probably been caught by the aesthetics of the countryside and been transported by his overactive imagination to the French countrysides and the redbrick villages. And the one classic middle-class food? Ratatouille.

Rolling her eyes, she snatches one of the washed carrots from the bowl and takes out a chopping board before dubiously beginning to cut it into pieces. She's chopping something else when she realizes he's staring at her.

It isn't full blown staring, but the sort of soft straying of eyes that Eishi does when he's curious.

"What?" she asks without looking at him, moving her arm as he reaches for the pile of carrots she's chopped.

He pauses. "Oh, uh, you look nice in the apron, and uh—"

Mahiru sighs. "I always look nice."

He laughs, something that startles her. A soft, gentle sound and the open mouth as he laughed— The dip of pale lashes against pale skin as his eyes close, forming crescent moons. Mahiru almost forgets to cast the judgement look when he opens his eyes again. "It's nice," he says finally. "To be able to cook with you again."

And that's like a cold bucket of water, splashed down her spine. Too comfortable, Mahiru got too comfortable with the rhythm and peace of life. She shouldn't have called him— Not with all that they shared: the petals of apple flowers, the tulip suns amidst the passion flowers, the curl of sunlight through half-drawn curtains and the soft skin, tangled limbs. It's too easy to fall back into the rhythm. The wound wasn't deep enough to ward her off, just like how all of the scrapes and bruises made her want to try to fall again, again and again.

Mahiru casts another look at his frame: gentle and glowing in the late afternoon sun, the golden threads etched into the svelte wrist, the light emanating from pale skin. And she pulls away. Like the sun from the ocean, the mist from the water. Her expression darkens like thundering waves before smoothing over. Smooth like marble. Cold like ice.

Eishi doesn't notice.

x

Despite her best attempts to ward him off, she did ask him to come here in the first place. And right now, Mahiru needs him to charm Amami more than she needs her pride. Amami seems taken with him— So taken that she might actually bring out all of the damn recipes she has hidden in the iron storage vault in the basement.

"The countryside's nice, isn't it?"

She allows him a murmured assent. "Which one did you need to go to again?" Mahiru asks as she casts her gaze at the two farms side by side. Damn. Why couldn't they just hang their door number on their fences like people did in Canada?

Eishi gives her a nervous look. Mahiru's mouth drops open in offence. "You just yanked me out on a two hour drive and you forget the address?" Dimly, she knows that she shouldn't be angry considering technically, he was helping her. But Mahiru didn't run her business based on honesty.

"Well," she drawls. "Figure it out. Call the number, don't leave me hanging there."

Eshi looks despaired. Right, social interaction wasn't a forte.

Mahiru rolls her eyes and gets out of the car. Ten minutes later, she carries twice the amount of things that Eishi ordered.

She gives him a look of unspeakable fury and drives them back to Fukue without a second word. From then on, the week is filled with Amami screaming in the kitchen, Eishi scrambling around, Amami's students screaming. At least three people who've showed up demanding to be let in—

"What do you mean you won't let me in? Let me tell you I'm the heir of—"

"Oh, hi, my name's Mahiru Tetsuya and I'm pleased to inform you if you don't leave the premise within the next fifty seconds my grandmother will filing a lawsuit against you. And I will be backing her with a team of the best lawyers money can and can't buy. You are familiar with my family, correct? Tetsuya Corporations?"

She gets tired of kicking them out after two days and seeks then to lock herself in the largest guest bedroom in the house. It's the one of the second floor, with a view of the heinously large backyard. It's the one furthest from the kitchen and the loud jazz music both her and Eishi enjoys. Mahiru makes it her fortress— Two laptops set up beside each other, a cordless printer on the other end and a pile of paper shoved behind it.

Her phones are never gone from her ear for too long— "I understand, but the TC's image is—"

"—Shimizu, I need you to set a date for the HR to conduct all of the internal reviews—"

"Also, send me that report from last year regarding—"

"We're hoping to finalize a date to officially announce our collaboration in the campaign—"

"I swear to God, it better be in my inbox with in the next hour or you're fired, got it?"

Mahiru never liked the PR part of the whole work, and by the time she's worked a kink out of her shoulder that been there for half the work, living off of caffeine and whatever plate Amami was kind enough to leave outside the door as well as maybe eight hours of sleep. She realizes she got herself sucked into it.

And maybe that's why she doesn't hear the hyena-like laughter, Amami's delight at another victim to torture. Clanging in the rustic kitchen ripped out of an Ikea catalogue and the cautiously snooping footsteps—

Her door swings open with a squeal and Mahiru turns and comes face to face with Rindou.