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It’s just Scaramouche’s luck that he’d ended up the son of a bakery owner as someone who positively despises sweets. Thus he’s forced to spend all day slaving away making things for people who enjoy cavities. For every hundred mora they spend here, they must spend a thousand more for teeth repairs. Humans truly are such stupid creatures.
Especially this girl in front of him, who’s now begging for a sample of the dango milk he’s mixing. He lets her plead for a bit longer just for his satisfaction, then finally gives her a cup. “That’ll cost you 2,000 mora, Lumine.”
She gasps. “Overcharging me 500 mora? Not fair. It costs 1,500.”
“That’s what you get for bothering me all the time.” Without fail, Lumine rudely barges into the bakery a couple times a week before the shop officially opens, and disturbs his workflow. Though he supposes it’s good she showed up today, considering… Ugh, never mind. Thinking about that just makes him nervous again. “I’m being generous, really. I should be charging you at least 5,000.”
“Oh please. You like it when I bother you. You always seem so happy to see me,” she says with a cheeky smile, and takes the cup from his hand.
“I have never once been happy to see you here. In fact, I’m quite sure I tell you to leave me alone every time, and you never listen.”
“Mmm sure,” she says like she doesn’t believe him, and he wants to snap some comment at her about it before she speaks again. “Y’know, this stuff is really good. I dunno why you don’t like it.”
“Maybe because it sucks?” Dango milk is one of those things that has never been successful, yet his mother insists on having him make them every day and encouraging customers to try it as well. It usually doesn’t work—people gravitate to the other items they sell. The display case is always filled with a vast array of different pastries—tarts, cheesecake, éclairs, pies, cakes… the list goes on. Lumine likes getting lemon flavored things, usually. He sometimes saves some lemon tarts for her.
“You say that about everything though. I feel like more people should try this, it’s an odd combo but it really works.”
With a groan, he says, “Please, you sound exactly like my mother right now. I don’t want to hear it.” He continues rolling out the pastry dough he was working on before she showed up, mainly to give him something to do because the nerves he’s been trying to suppress are starting to creep up again.
“Aw, your poor mother, having to deal with such an irritable son.”
“If I’m so irritable, why won’t you leave me alone?” he challenges.
She shrugs, looking away. “Habit, I guess. Anyways here,” she holds out a handful of mora.
He glances at her hand, then goes back to working on the dough. “Keep it. I don’t want it.”
“You can’t always keep giving me things for free, Scara.”
“I can do whatever I want. Besides, I owe you.” Lumine is the one who’s contributed to helping the bakery become such a success by spreading the word. When she does it, it works because she’s popular, and people listen to what she has to say. He, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. If they didn’t have Lumine vouching for them, they never would have gotten this far. So yes, begrudgingly, he owes her.
She frowns, but doesn’t argue—probably because she’s tried it before and it hasn’t worked. “I’ll leave it outside, then,” she says. He intently watches from the corner of his eye as she leaves the kitchen area to put the coins in the jar up front.
Scaramouche once again wonders why he lets her in here at all. He should kick her out, honestly. Keyword should, because he knows he won’t.
“You open soon, right?” she asks when she returns.
He nods—in around twenty minutes. It’s so early in the morning, he doesn’t know why she insists on coming by at this time. Yet somehow, that same fact brings him satisfaction, the fact that she goes out of her way to see him. And though he would never admit it, sometimes, very occasionally, it’s… nice to have her buzzing around the place like a particularly disruptive bee. Though today, he’s worried that bee will wander into places it shouldn’t—particularly, the storage room.
“Hm. Well I’ll free you of my presence then,” Lumine says. “Don’t sulk too much about whatever it is on your mind.”
“There’s—there’s nothing on my mind.” Damn it, he hadn’t been as subtle as he thought.
“Mhm, whatever you say. I’ll see you in a few days?”
He doesn’t say anything, just watches her with focused eyes. She doesn’t seem bothered, strolling over to the door, ready to leave. He should say something, or else what he worked on will go to waste and he’ll feel like an idiot, even more so than he already does, but his mouth feels like it’s sewn together.
It’s as she places a hand on the door handle that he finally calls out, “Wait!” a lot more frantically than intended. He quickly levels his expression quickly before she turns back to him with a questioning look.
“Hm?”
He clears his throat, and stares at her for a few moments, trying to think of what he wanted to say. When his mouth finally cooperates, he mumbles out, “Before you go… wait here for a second.” Then hurries into the adjacent storage room before she has time to reply or reject his request. The box sits at the topmost shelf, and it’s a bit of a struggle to get it out, but he’d had to keep it here so that she wouldn’t see it in case she barged into this room as well and snooped around—it’s happened before. Flipping open the top of the box briefly, he checks to make sure it still looks good before closing it again.
The heartbeat in his chest thrums. Will she even like this? It had taken him far longer than he’d like to admit to get all the decorations looking exactly the way he wanted, and on numerous occasions, he’d had to scrape off the frosting and start over. The flowers especially gave him a hard time for some reason, despite having piped thousands of flowers using frosting over his lifetime. These ones just needed to be perfect, though.
Returning to where Lumine is, he shoves the box at her before he has time to second guess himself. “Here.”
Lumine carefully wraps her fingers around the container, looking confused. “What’s this?”
“Why don’t you look inside and find out?” he snipes back at her.
She does just that, supporting the bottom with one hand and then lifting the top to view the contents. When she registers the contents, her mouth parts slightly in surprise. “You… made me a cake?” The base frosting color is light blue, and the flowers are mainly white with a tinge of blue. He’d also added some white designs around the border, and stuck some gold foil around the whole cake.
He’s quick to explain so that she doesn’t misinterpret the action. “There were some leftover ingredients that would have been thrown away if they weren’t used soon, so I figured I’d make something out of them. And… it was your birthday a few days ago or something, so…” She hadn’t come by that day, probably too busy cavorting around with the million other people who like her. The thought sets a sour taste in his mouth.
Her smile grows larger as his words register. “You remembered?”
He makes a noncommittal sound, suddenly desperately wanting to flee this whole scenario. “It’s lemon flavored. The cake. You like lemon.” The words come out choppy and disconnected. Kindness is too difficult. He’ll never do this again.
“Aw, and there’s even the flowers I wear in my hair piped in! And all the colors match me so well.” Lumine looks back at him, and her eyes seem to shine. She puts down the box onto one of the tables and before he realizes what she’s doing, her body is up against his and her arms are wrapped around him. “Thank you, Scara. This is very sweet. Pun intended.”
She’s warm, close, and that feeling in his chest seems to intensity tenfold. She smells like those same flowers in her hair, the ones that cost him his full sanity to recreate with frosting.
It takes far longer than he’d like to admit for him to fully register the entire situation, and he slowly brings down his own arms to wrap around her. He pushes his nose into the crook of her neck. “You’re unbelievable,” he says, but can’t help a tiny smile from peeking through.
When Lumine pulls away, her face is tinged red. “Did you have this ready for me on the actual day?” she asks, sounding a bit regretful that she didn’t stop by.
“Yes, so if it’s all dry now, don’t blame me.” It’s only a couple days old, and he knows how to properly store a cake, but maybe he just wants to be a bit dramatic to appease himself.
“Sorry I didn’t stop by, it was my brother's birthday too so I met up with him,” Lumine says.
He shrugs. “It’s fine, whatever.”
“Hm,” she says, sounding like she doesn’t buy his act. “Well I guess the next step is to have the cake together, yes?” Lumine sends a pointed gaze at him, and picks the box back up. “To make up for it.”
Scaramouche wrinkles his nose. “I don’t particularly care if you see me on your birthday, Lumine. And did you forget I don’t like sweets?”
“No, but I just still don’t believe that,” she says. “And I can’t have all of this cake. It’s small, but still too much for one person. Two people, though? I think that would be perfect.”
“Go with one of your other friends, I’m busy.” He’s supposed to be putting together a pie right now, not talking.
“Don’t be so stubborn, Scara, just say yes. It’ll be fun.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine, since you’re oh so desperately begging me. I’ll join you, Lumine.”
“Good.” She finally pushes past the doors to leave. And before the doors shut, she says. “It’s a date then.”