Kendo no Go
In the Language of Kendo:
A Fanfic in 100 Chapters
by Akai Kitsune
21: Oishii
~*~
Nagasaki was a beautiful town, filled with many treats and
trinkets to shop for. Kaoru loved to travel through it whenever the chance
happened to occur, spending hours at a time admiring the stalls littering the
streets.
She loved sweet things of any kind, and would happily make a day trip with
Megumi, Tae, and Tsubame to the sweet shops of downtown Tokyo, indulging in the
fattening snacks she so rarely found for her own home. Kenshin was an excellent
cook, for certain, but he was no gourmet chef, and he made no attempts to create
any elaborate desserts.
Her first taste of Western chocolate was, needless to say, an extremely
pleasant one.
"Oishii!"
The shopkeeper in Nagasaki had laughed at her, she remembered with a light
frown, after Kenshin had politely purchased her a small piece to test it. He
himself had smiled, taking her arm to lead her to the next stall, where another
offered treat awaited her experimenting tongue.
He had not expected her to drag him back, purchasing a full box of the dark
brown squares of mixed cocoa. At the end of the day, his wallet was as empty as
his stomach, even though she had offered him a piece. He hadn't liked the look
in her eyes as she held it out to him, and had declined with a weary smile.
It had made her happy, and that was all right.
'I do hope she has enough money for our tickets to get home again,
though...'
It wasn't very long after that Kaoru discovered that
Kenshin did not even like chocolate. She found the idea simply uncanny and
unbelievable.
"You what?"
He waved her off, grinning and going back to chopping the vegetables he had
been cutting before she crept up behind him and popped the half-melted treat
into his mouth. "The taste just doesn't really appeal to me," he answered
honestly, as she watched him in astonishment, absently licking the liquid
sweetness from her fingernails. As soon as he saw she had finished, he smiled
secretively, and took her hand in his, gently brushing his lips against the tips
of each finger, making her blush.
"However," he murmured into her ear, "I think you are more
than enough for me, aren't you, koishii?"
Inwardly, he winced. 'Ouch, that was terrible, wasn't it?'
She did not seem as daunted by his words as he was, and instead blushed
deeper, and rewarded him with a bright smile, moving closer to meet his kiss.
He could taste the chocolate on her lips.
"Not so bad, is it, love?" she mumbled in his cheek as
they pulled apart, her eyes sparkling in merriment.
He merely chuckled, pressing his forehead into the crook of her shoulder.
"Nothing about you is bad," he whispered, his hand curving tightly around her
back. He felt her hands in his hair, and he restrained another small bout of
laughter; she always loved it.
"You are too sweet for me," he said instead, tender and
affectionate, almost against his will.
She laughed that time, the sound light and carefree in his ears, and shifted
away from his embrace, still suckling on her fingers for any excess treats
hidden on her skin. He watched her departure for a moment longer, the feel of
her touch and the taste of her - and that chocolate - still lingering on
his body, then returned to cooking. A silence suddenly filled the room, and he
began to hum, involuntarily and very quietly, to brush away the discomfort.
Halfway through a tune he couldn't name, Kaoru's furious scream echoed
through the household.
"Yahiko! Get out of my chocolates!"
Her shout was quickly followed by a crash, an alarmingly unenthusiastic "itai!"
and the sounds of footsteps pounding down the halls. Various cries of their
argument ensued, and he winced in sympathy with each crack of wood against the
offending head.
Kenshin caught a whiff of the chocolate as the footfalls passed the kitchen
and continued on into the yard, and was roughly reminded one of the reasons why
he didn't like chocolate.
Silence.
He began to hum again.
~*~
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