To the girl known as Sakuraba Harumi, this year's Valentine's Day held a special meaning. That was because this Valentine's Day was the first since she had experienced the feeling of love, which she had only read of in books in the past. Of course, this wasn't the first time Harumi tried her hand at making chocolate. She had made chocolate for her family and the children in the hospital every year. However, this had been the first year she had tried her hand at true love chocolate. So she was carefully proceeding to make sure she made no mistakes.
Aau, I should've started on preparations earlier!
Harumi stared at the mountain of candy on the desk in the clubroom and was secretly panicking. The clubroom was still cold as they were approaching the middle of February, but Harumi didn't have the time to freeze. As a result, not even her knitting was going very quickly.
Actually, Harumi hadn't realized that she had someone she wanted to give a true love chocolate to until very recently.
”Are you going to give Satomi-san your true love chocolate, Sakuraba-senpai?”
She hadn't realized that the situation she was in this year was different until Yurika had pointed that out. She had only planned on giving chocolate to her family and the children in the hospital this year as well.
Harumi didn't currently have the courage to confess to Koutarou. However, since the boundary between obligation and true love chocolate was so blurry, she could express her feelings to their fullest. Because of that, Harumi definitely wanted to give some chocolate to Koutarou, but she couldn't afford to fail. She was of course going to do her best, but she also wanted to make some chocolate that he would want. She didn't want to make him some chocolate out of self-satisfaction.
She had started researching Koutarou's tastes when it came to sweets. However, since she had only realized this the other day, her research hadn't progressed very far. And since she couldn't flat out ask what kind of chocolate he liked, she was now starting to panic.
“Right, right, the other day, that Mackenzie said this thing during work”
Koutarou, who had been ardently knitting, stopped as he reached for the cup with freshly poured tea.
How about this time...
Harumi paid attention to Koutarou's hands. The knitting needles and knitting were on the desk. In his left hand was a cup of tea, and his right hand was reaching out towards the mountain of candy.
Here it is!
Harumi had waited for Koutarou to take that action, and she instinctively held her breath as she watched where the hand was heading.
“He wants you to appear in another play. It seems you were a big hit even with people outside of the school”
Unaware of Harumi's intentions, Koutarou grabbed a snack and threw it into his mouth.
Another vote for milk chocolate.
Harumi made a mental note of every type of snack Koutarou ate. What he had eaten this time was a snack based on chocolate. Harumi had prepared the snacks, and on top of the rice crackers and potato chips, she had also carefully placed some chocolate based snacks as well.
In total there were three kinds of chocolate snacks, each with a different coating. There was the sweet and easy to eat milk chocolate, the bitter chocolate which had no sugar or milk in it, and the bittersweet chocolate in between the two. This time Koutarou had taken one of the milk chocolate snacks.
Currently, it looks like Satomi-kun prefers milk chocolate...
Harumi had secretly been researching Koutarou's preferences like this since last week. Since she couldn't find it in her to ask him straight out she had taken to this roundabout method. If she only lined up the table with chocolate, she felt like she would be found out, so she put in various other candy as well. As a result, the research was taking a long time and Harumi was starting to panic.
Which means that I should use milk chocolate in a unique shape...
From her research, Harumi knew that Koutarou was extremely fond of shaped candy. When she had left candy she had shaped after molds using flour, water and syrup, Koutarou's eyes had sparkled and he had gone after those first. And based on her research up until today, she learned that Koutarou preferred milk chocolate.
And so Harumi began thinking of recipes in her head.
“Sakuraba-senpai, Sakuraba-senpai”
As Harumi was looking up into the ceiling, thinking of recipes, Koutarou's face suddenly appeared.
“Y-Yes!?”
Shaken by Koutarou's sudden appearance, she raised her voice. Since it was completely unexpected, she jumped so far back into her chair that she almost fell over.
“W-What is it, uh, S-Satomi-kun?”
“Weren't you listening?”
“I-I'm sorry, I-I was just thinking of something else...”
Harumi tried to calm her beating heart and apologized to Koutarou in a fluster. She couldn't stand for it if Koutarou were to hate her for something like that.
“Kukuku, Ahahahaha!”
However, instead Koutarou began laughing. Harumi's panicked attempts at excuses were so cute and funny that he couldn't hold it in.
“S-Satomi-kun?”
Harumi was surprised by Koutarou's unexpected reaction. And that in turn was even funnier. Koutarou's sides were about to split with laughter.
“Wahahahahaha, w-what's with that face, Sakuraba-senpai? Hahahahaha!!”
“Geez, Satomi-kun!!”
“T-That's because, wahahaha, y-your face, your face is!! Ahahaahahaha!!”
Harumi quickly realized that Koutarou was laughing about her face, but by then it was already too late. Koutarou switched between laughing and gasping for breath.
“...Satomi-kun, you really are such a bully... geez...”
Harumi's angry face consisting of 50% embarrassment, 40% affection and 10% anger only made Koutarou laugh even more.