Me and Ai

Chapter 80: Merry Christmas

I start cutting some vegetables and putting them on stand by. I then start seasoning the salmon steaks and marinating them. Suddenly, someone grabbed my hands and pulled them up.

"You're not wearing an apron again." Ai said as he held my hands up from behind me.

"B-but you know I'm not used to wearing one." I said. He really startled me!

"That's not a valid reason."

He turns me around and places an apron over me. He then pulls me closer and ties the ribbon at the back of the apron.

"Your clothes will get stained if you don't wear an apron and it's also for your safety while cooking. What if you spill soup on yourself?"

"Ah! I haven't started the preparations for the soup yet!"

Ai then takes the spare apron and puts it on himself. "Then let me help you here in the kitchen. I can start on the soup while you're doing the salmon."

"But—"

He kisses my forehead and says with a smile, "Just let me help you, okay?"

He proceeds to start working on the soup without giving me a chance to reply. As I look at him while he works, I chuckled a little to myself and continued doing the salmon steaks. This situation is quite enjoyable. The apron doesn't look bad on Ai. Haha.

Ai finishes the soup after a while.

"Kaori."

"Yes?"

"Could you taste the soup? I think it's good already but want to know what you think."

I went over to Ai and taste the soup he made.

"You did really well! It tastes great! I think it tastes better than what I would have made. Thank you for making the soup, Ai."

He smiles.

"Is there anything else I could help you with?"

"Hmm...not really. I'm almost done."

"What are you making now?"

"The cookies. I already made the dough so I'm just cutting them with the cookie cutters then I'll put them in the oven. When they're done, I'll just have to decorate the cookies with the icing I made. I'll be done after that since I only need to wait for the turkey to cook."

"I'll help you with that then. What shapes are you using?"

"I'm using the circle, heart, and Christmas tree shapes."

He started cutting out the shapes with me and it made us finish faster. After the cookies were done, we started to decorate them together. Ai's designs were really cute especially the ones he made on the heart shaped cookies. There were quite a lot of cookies to decorate so we took quite a while to finish.

"Kaori."

"Yeah?" I look up at Ai.

He suddenly puts some red icing on my cheek.

"H-hey! What did you do that for?!"

"It's cute. I drew a heart."

"Eh?!" I went over to the nearest mirror and checked. He really did draw on my cheek! I hate to admit it but the heart that he drew is cute...

I went back to the kitchen and grabbed the yellow icing. I drew a little star beside his mouth.

"What did you draw?" Ai asks.

"A little yellow star."

He goes over to the mirror and sees the star I drew on his face. He comes back to the kitchen.