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“No,” Riko says, “No. Nope. Absolutely not.”
Yoshiko pouts. “C’mon, Lily. How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tried?”
“Because I’ve eaten you’re cooking before.” Riko points to the plate of… well, it’s some sort of ball-shaped food, except it’s so burned that it looks black and probably stuffed full of peppers, or something. “I don’t need to have my tongue burned off a second time, thanks.”
“I’ll have you know my cooking is admired by many of my little demons. Whenever I share a recipe I get tons of responses telling me how good it is-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Riko waves her off, ignoring Yoshiko’s indignant squawk. What she can’t ignore, however, is Yoshiko putting on a show of being stabbed in the heart by her dismissal. Much as she would like to, she’s basically been conditioned to go along with Yoshiko’s excentricities by now. “Look. If it’s really that important to you, I’ll try one - just one,” she stresses, seeing how Yoshiko immediately perks up, “of… whatever you call this.”
“Fiery Eyes of Demonic Doom,” Yoshiko informs her, quite dramatically.
Riko holds back a grimace. “Yep. That. But after I try it, you have to stop pestering me about eating your cooking, all right?”
“I swear on the fires of Hell that birthed me,” Yoshiko says. She sticks out her pinky finger. Reluctantly, Riko curls her own around it and shakes their hands up and down.
“On the fires of Hell,” she echoes, with much less pizazz than Yoshiko. God, I promise I’ll go pray at the shrine tomorrow, so please let me survive this. With that desperate plea, she reaches out to grab one of the suspect looking balls. She squints at it for a moment. It seriously looks like it could be poisonous… but she did tell Yoshiko she’d try one.
Riko pops the deadly-looking food into her mouth.
At first, all she can taste is the bitter flavor of burnt food. Slowly, a hint of chocolate sweetness reaches her taste buds. It doesn’t really taste good, but it’s not necessarily bad either. Then she bites into it. First her teeth reach a layer of moist dough that tastes of cinnamon. Then she reaches the liquid center, and a burning sensation spreads through her mouth.
She starts coughing violently, blowing out her breath in an attempt to get rid of the heat. “Is that tabasco sauce?” she manages to wheeze out.
Yoshiko nods enthusiastically, completely oblivious to Riko’s suffering. “Good, right?”
Riko shakes her head, grabbing at her throat. It feels hot and itchy. Is she having an allergic reaction? “I can’t- water,” she wheezes, “Get me some water.”
Finally, Yoshiko starts to notice what’s wrong. She gets up with a concerned look on her face, filling a glass with tap water as fast as she can. She hands it to Riko, who downs it in one go. For a single, blessed moment, the heat in her throat and mouth subsides. Then it comes back with a vengeance. “More,” she pleads, coughing again as Yoshiko scrambles to comply.
In the end, she drains half a dozen more glasses before the pain finally subsides. “How can you eat that?” she demands.
Sheepishly, Yoshiko shrugs. “It’s not that spicy…”
Riko sputters incredulously. “Not that-?! Are you kidding me?!”
Even more sheepishly, Yoshiko twiddles with the feather in her bun. “It’s not like I put ghost peppers in it…” Riko shoots her a look like she’s about to reach across the table and strangle her, which causes Yoshiko to finally relent. “Okay, okay, it may have been a little too spicy.”
“And?”
“And,” Yoshiko adds with a long-suffering sigh, “I’m sorry.”
Riko rolls her eyes. Took her long enough to say it. Then, a plan starts to form in her mind. Yoshiko made her suffer, so she might as well get some revenge. “Apologizing doesn’t fix the pain I experienced.” Her mouth draws into a devilish smirk. “Maybe you should kiss it better.”
She’d been expecting Yoshiko to blush and run away, but only one of those things happens. A scarlet blush blooms on Yoshiko’s cheeks, but instead of running away she says okay and leans towards Riko. Her face comes closer and closer and-
Riko ducks out of the way, hands over her eyes. “I was joking!”
“Oh.” She doesn’t have to see Yoshiko’s face; her disappointment comes through loud and clear in her voice. “Does that mean you don’t want me to kiss you?”
Uncovering one eye, Riko peeks up at Yoshiko’s face. Just as she expected, Yoshiko looks devastated. “Well… maybe if you give me some time to mentally prepare.”
After all, she was only partially joking.