[Hypnosis Mic] Cooking Together

Tempura

“Do you not know Kannonzaka-san's name, or…?” Saburo asked, nodding his head in greeting at the man in question when he saw him. The old guy was seated politely at a table that looked like it’d been cobbled together out of scrap wood.

“Office drone gets to be called his name when he stops acting like every other office drone on the planet,” Dice said, Doppo clearly hearing him if the mumbled apology was anything to go by.

The inside of the shack was warmer, just barely, with tarps over the ground serving as flooring. In lieu of any actual seats or cushions, there were misshapen mats of fur on the ground. How did Dice and Doppo look so calm in this freaking serial killer hideout? The table had a plate of fried, uh, something on it, so Saburo distracted himself by eating.

True to Dice's word, the tempura wasn't awful. It was pretty good, even. Doppo still apologized for it not being good enough.

They ate the rest of it while Dice pestered Saburo with questions about how to best win at digital slot machines. When the programming knowledge flew right over his head, Dice scoffed. “I don't need all that anyways, I got lady luck on my side.”

“You're very smart, Yamada-kun,” Doppo said, stating the obvious. “Do you think you'll go into, ah, computer science?”

Ugh. Stupid, boring, old man questions. What did it matter what his job prospects were? “Dunno,” he answered honestly.

“W-well, you've got lots of time to think about it. You're probably smart enough to do any job you wanted, so you can just focus on being a middle schooler for now… Friends, clubs...”

Friends he didn’t have and clubs he didn’t do. He let out a disinterested hum in response.

Doppo apologized, and apparently he got the message, because he changed the subject. “Did Busujima-san manage to catch anything?”

“A whole ass deer!” Dice responded. “It’s huge! Got giant antlers and everything! He’s outside pulling all the guts out. It’s so gross.” He said it was gross, but he still just laughed.

“Really? I’m going to take a look.” Doppo stepped outside and then turned on a heel and came right back in, all the color gone from his face. “He was, ah, c-cutting the head off.”

Dice keeled over laughing. “I said it was gross and you still went and looked, you masochist!”

Did Dice really hate Doppo? They seemed to get along okay. Well, Dice had brain of a fruit fly, so maybe he just forgot that he hated him.

After calming down a bit (though he didn’t ever actually look calm calm, did he?), Doppo asked, “what is he planning to do with it?”

“Hot pot!” Dice said, the prospect of food distracting him from his mirth at the other’s expense.

“I see…” Doppo glanced around the room. “W-well, um, not to be presumptuous, but should we maybe start to help set up the room for that? To make things easier on Busujima-san?”

“If you want my help just fuckin’ ask, dude.” Huh, maybe Dice did really hate Doppo, because now he seemed annoyed. Why the deference had set him off so easily, Saburo didn’t know, but his mood was far from the cheer he’d shown earlier. “Scoot, Saburo-kun,” he said, gently pushing against his side with his foot. Saburo got up, and the two adults worked swiftly to pull the table off its legs and set the components against the wall. Doppo then folded away the tarp that made up the center of the floor, pushing loose dirt aside to reveal a few hot coals.

Doppo started to explain, not that Saburo cared. “It keeps the room warm. Busujima-san’s practical knowledge really is quite extensive. But we’ll be, um, I think we’ll be starting the fire up properly for the hot pot, probably. Do you… want to start the fire, Yamada-kun?”

“No,” Saburo answered.

“Okay. Sorry. I thought y-you might like to help. I guess you’re not, ah-- sorry. Of course you wouldn’t be interested.”

Oh, Saburo kind of understood why Dice got so annoyed now.

Doppo stoked the fire himself, just adding a little bit of wood. It was pretty warm for its size, and didn’t have much smoke -- how’d he do that? Riou must’ve taught him some trick. Doppo put a wire grate over the fire.

At that moment, Riou poked through the doorway to see how the others were doing. Seeing the room set up, he smiled. “Thank you, I was just going to start preparing ingredients. Lad, since you didn’t learn about butchering the meat, you should help prepare the vegetables. That’s just as important to know.”

“Oh, is Saburo-kun gonna help out?” Dice asked.

“No, I’m not.” Saburo scoffed. “You dragged me here, Arisugawa-san, you can just do twice as much work for me.” He leaned down further where he sat against the wall, really not enthusiastic about any of this, at all.

“Are you sure, Yamada-kun?” Doppo started to ask. “Busujima-san really is knowledgeable about this kind of thing, so learning from him--”

“I’m sure,” Saburo affirmed. He put his hood up and sat in the corner and didn’t care that it probably made him look like a petulant child. If his phone had any bars he would’ve called Ichi-nii already and gone home. “I don’t care about plants or whatever.”

Doppo didn’t look as put off by Saburo’s hostility as he thought he would’ve. “That’s fine. I’ll help, too, Busujima-san, i-if that’s okay.”