Mingyue stood atop the streetlight, silhouetted against the glow, her long hair billowing behind her in the night wind.
She remained poised in her landing stance, scythe held out to her side. Nuomi was perched on her shoulder, its ears flattened backward from the wind of her high-speed dash, the bell on its tail still jingling.
She looked down at Lightweaver, who was leaning against the utility pole, her chest rising and falling slightly as her breathing slowly settled.
She had clearly rushed over at her absolute maximum speed the instant she sensed the mana fluctuation.
And that dramatic entrance... she always had to drop down from somewhere high.
Well, since she actually showed up, Lightweaver would begrudgingly admit her reaction time wasn't bad this time.
These are cookies I baked with my own hands. If she dares to say they taste bad, I'll snatch them right back and make her watch me eat them all myself.
“...Someone is late,” Lightweaver said, pulling her hand back and tossing the bag of cookies upward.
Mingyue reflexively reached out and caught it. She looked down at the bag, then back up at Lightweaver leaning against the pole, her expression shifting between confusion and suspicion.
Nuomi had already leaned half its body off her shoulder, its nose twitching as it took a deep sniff of the bag.
“What is this?”
“Cookies. I made too many today.”
Mingyue squeezed the ribbon tied around the bag, as if trying to confirm that it was real.
“You waited for me here... just to give me cookies?”
“I just made too many, and I couldn't finish them by myself,” Lightweaver said. She pushed herself off the utility pole, brushed the dust off her coat, and turned to walk toward the other end of the alley.
After a few steps, she paused and glanced back, the glow of the streetlight catching the side of her face.
“I don't know if you'll like them. If you don't, just give them all to Nuomi.”
Nuomi let out an excited, “Really?!” and placed both front paws on Mingyue's wrist.
Mingyue looked down at the bag of cookies in her hand and carefully slipped it into her waist pouch, her movements gentler than when she handled anything else.
“...I will savor them. Nuomi only gets one,” she said, not looking at Lightweaver but staring down at the buckle of her waist pouch instead.
Lightweaver didn't look back. She simply waved a hand dismissively as she walked away beneath the streetlights, eventually vanishing at the end of the alley.
Long after Lightweaver's figure had disappeared, Mingyue remained standing in the same spot.
“Aren't you going to chase after her?” Nuomi asked.
“...No need.” Mingyue leaned her scythe against the wall and sat down on the steps at the alley's entrance.
She pulled the bag of cookies back out of her pouch and placed it on her lap. She hadn't had a chance to examine it closely under the streetlight earlier.
Now, by the light of the moon, she noticed that the ribbon had been tied rather clumsily. The tails of the bow were uneven, as if it had been untied and retied several times.
“She called me over just to give me this,” she murmured, holding the bag up to the moonlight to study it.
“She also said she was waiting for the moon.” Nuomi slid down her shoulder and squatted beside her knee, also looking up at the sky. “The moon really is beautiful tonight.”
“...Idiot, the moon was just an excuse.” Mingyue carefully placed the bag back on her lap, untied the opening, and peeked inside using the distant glow of the streetlight.
She picked out a misshapen cookie and studied it for a moment, suddenly remembering what Lightweaver had said at the very end.
“The ugly ones are the ones I shaped myself.”
She had pretended not to care, but every word carried a silent warning: You'd better not say they look bad.
But there was really no need for that. Even if the cookies she shaped were completely abstract, Mingyue would eat every single one of them without leaving a crumb.
She popped the cookie into her mouth and chewed slowly.
It tasted wonderful—better than any cookie she had ever eaten at any dessert shop.
This realization sparked a strange sense of competitiveness in her. The next time they met, she absolutely had to tell her that the cookies were delicious.
Mingyue really should have felt a bit frustrated.
She had chased her for so long, only to be summoned so easily with a single bag of cookies, like a cat running over at the sound of a bell.
But holding this bag of cookies, she felt that being summoned wasn't such a bad thing after all.
At least she was willing to summon her, and not anyone else.
At least, on this night when the moon was so beautiful, the person she thought of was her.
There probably weren't many people who got to eat cookies she baked herself, and those she would wait in place for were likely even fewer.
“You're smiling,” Nuomi said, poking her wrist with the tip of its tail.
“I am not.”
“You're grinning like an idiot. You've been smiling this whole time.”
Mingyue carefully sealed the cookie bag and put it back in her pouch. She stood up, picked up her scythe from against the wall, and swung it onto her shoulder with a fluid motion.
She turned and began walking back toward her home.
“Aren't you going to eat them?” Nuomi tilted its head, looking at her.
“I'll eat them when we get back, with some tea. And I can't eat them all at once. She didn't say how long they'll keep, so I'd better space them out over a few days.”
Nuomi teased its contractor with its tail. “If Lightweaver had seen you smiling like that in the alley earlier, she definitely would have called you an idiot.”
“...She couldn't see me. She walked away so fast, almost as if she were running away from something.”
Shizuru scooped Nuomi off her shoulder and held it in her arms, looking down into its large, glossy eyes reflecting the moonlight. “Do you think... she didn't want me to see her blushing?”
“It's possible! But she must look really cute when she blushes,” Nuomi analyzed seriously.
Shizuru placed Nuomi back on her shoulder and quickened her pace.
“Let's go back and brew some tea. That black tea from last time should be worthy of her cookies.”
Shizuru slipped back inside through her bedroom window.
Nuomi hopped off her shoulder, bouncing twice on the bed while consciously remaining completely silent.
Shizuru pulled out her chair and sat down, taking the bag of cookies out of her pouch.
She laid the cookies out on the desk, one by one.
She stood up and cleared off the area of her desk near the window, freeing up a clean space.
From her drawer, she pulled out a tea towel she normally only used before major exams. Folding it twice, she laid it on the desk and placed the cookie bag right in the center.
Then she reached into the very back of her cabinet to retrieve a tin of black tea she was usually too stingy to drink.
While waiting for the tea to steep, she leaned against the kitchen counter, pacing back and forth with anxious anticipation.
She placed her teacup next to the cookie bag. Nuomi was already sprawled on the desk, pinning its tail under its front paws in a display of polite, patient waiting.
Shizuru sat down in her chair and pinched a star-shaped cookie out of the bag with two fingers.
After swallowing, she took a small sip of black tea. She picked up another one; like the star, its standard, perfect shape meant it wasn't one of the cookies Lightweaver had molded herself.
She picked out a third one. She stared at it for a long time, turning the cookie over and over in her hand before finally putting it into her mouth.
She didn't chew immediately, letting it rest on her tongue as the rich buttery aroma slowly melted over her tastebuds.
It was a bit sweeter than the nice-looking ones—perhaps because she had added more sugar, or maybe it was just her imagination.
“This is the one Lightweaver shaped,” she said to Nuomi, offering the remaining half of the cookie.
Nuomi carefully took it and took a bite. Its ears twitched as it delivered a professional assessment.
Shizuru picked up every single cookie to inspect them, planning out the exact order in which she would eat them.
She would eat the perfect-looking ones first, saving the ones Lightweaver had personally shaped for last.
Lightweaver definitely waited for a while.
This realization filled Shizuru with a deep, incredibly complex sense of satisfaction.
She packed away the tea set and went to brush her teeth.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror for a long time. She looked like a completely different person from the usually calm and composed Shizuru Kirishima.
“Lightweaver... she has feelings for me too, right?”
Shizuru murmured to her reflection.
Rate on N.U.
