Valentine Efforts

Almond eyes scanned over the kitchen counter, and worked at his mental checklist, brain quickly bringing up the memorized list of ingredients and things he would need:

Eggs, check

White sugar, check

Confectioners’ sugar, check

Ground almonds, check

Strawberry icing, check

Baking sheets, check,

Baking mats, check

Whisk, check

Pastry bag with round tip, check

Vanilla extract, check

Vanilla frosting, check!

…….

I’m missing a kitchen scale!

Almond eyes blinked in awareness, mouth dropping open fearfully. He quickly turned and looked around the familiar wide kitchen. However, as familiar with the appearance of the kitchen as he is, he has no idea where things are!!!

Yunho bit onto the bottom of his lip, and paced around his lover’s territory, his usual forbidden area.     His long fingers wondered on the doors of the counters, opening one after another, jumping between the lower counters and the ones above.

“Oh shoot, I have no idea where he put those stuff! How does a kitchen scale even look like?! Does it look like a normal weighing scale?! …Then can I just use a normal weighing scale…?” At the thought, the leader stopped on his tracks squatting in front of a counter and turned to the toy poodle staring at him. “Hiro-yah, do you think it’ll work?” 

Hiro barked joyfully, but then JiJi, sitting on the counter where he put the ingredients, grunted mockingly. Yunho quickly shook his head, “Nonono, there should be a reason why it’s called kitchen scale!” 

He went back to searching around, went through the cupboards with cups, plates and bowls, cooking pans, snacks, noodles,… until he came upon a measuring cup. “No scale but… this should work the same!” 

He picked out the cup and put it onto the counter next to JiJi, then he looked at the cat. “…Then what should I do?”

The Russian Blue lied down and stared back at him soundlessly. Figuring that he wouldn’t get a response, the leader sighed and took out a piece of paper from his jeans pocket. Fingers unfolded the paper of the recipe he found a few days ago, the recipe that started all this.

With a dazed and unsure mind, he read through the instructions that he had practically remembered again. A glance at the clock hung on the wall, he sighed as he put down the recipe onto the counter and glared at the ingredients before him. 

“5:15… 15 more minutes… what should I do?” Yunho asked himself. After a moment of hesitation, he pulled up the sleeves of his white shirt, and picked out a few bowls. “Okay, let’s do this!”

“300grams of confectioners’ sugar… grams and ml is 1 to 1 right?” Yunho looked at the ceiling, trying to pull back the math classes he had from school. He slanted his head a bit, “I think that’s right…”

So he picked up the bag, ripped open a corner, and poured 300ml of confectioners’ sugar into the measuring cup, and transferred them to a bowl. Then he washed the cup, “60grams of white sugar…”

He poured the appropriate amount of white sugar, then poured the contents out into another bowl, then his eyes widened in horror. “The sugar is sticking to the cup! They’re melting!!” 

He ran left than ran right, Hiro trailing happily behind him, then he looked at the bowl of white sugar, “Should I scrape them out?!!” 

Immediately, he grabbed a spoon and scraped the wet contents into a bowl. He put the measuring cup under the water tap again after he did, this time remembering to properly dry it afterwards. The leader turned back to the counter and blinked, “…Which one was the bowl with the white sugar…?”

Almond eyes stared at the two bowl of contents, looking way to alike for him. Actually, the two looked exactly the same other than the bits of wet contents in one. A few moments ticked by… “Oh well, they’re gonna get mixed together anyway!”

That sorted, he continued his measurement with a goofy smile. “250grams of ground almonds…”

As he did before, he teared at the corner of the package… eyebrows furrowed, “Why isn’t it opening?”

Feeling as if he’s losing to a piece of paper, he used all his might to tear at the package, legs standing apart in a perfect stance, “Mmmmmmmmmmmm yah!!!”

Time slowed as beautiful flour rained upon the kitchen, JiJi looking way too innocent, Yunho’s hair and face suddenly looking pale, Hiro turned into a white mushroom as he slipped and tumbled. 

“……” His mind ran blank as the two pets barked and hissed and grunted and sneezed and ran and jumped chaotically around him.

Eyes snapped to the clock once again, 5:35!

Yunho pulled out his ipad from his bag in the corner and swiped, drrrrr….drr…

A person’s face showed on the screen and the leader screamed cheerfully, “Changmin-ah!!!”

“Woah! Hyung! What happened to you?!” The magnae screeched at the sight of a white ghost.

Yunho shook the ipad, “The pack of ground almond broke!!! And now its everywhere!”

“Broke?!” Suspicious but not willing to ask in case he wanted to slap his dear hyung, he realized another big problem, “Then what about the ingredient!! You don’t have almonds anymore!!”

“No thats okay.” Yunho swept a spot on the counter with his hand, clearing up a ‘clean’ spot to  settle the ipad on the counter, holding it up with a stand at the back. He reached for the plastic bag next to a clear spot on the counter, where JiJi had been when Yunho had decided to make the kitchen snow.

With a bright smile, he pulled out another package of ground almonds, “I thought something like this would happen so I bought a spare of everything!”

The leader missed out the twitch on the magnae’s corner of his lips as he teared open the package a bit too wide and started pouring the contents into the measuring cup. 

“…Jaejoong-hyung is going to be pissed when he sees this… You better clean it up afterwards!” From his new camera angle, Changmin was able to see more of the kitchen, and the white world made him whimper at the image of his angry hyung.

“Ah! I put too much!” Yunho didn’t respond to the younger one, or simply ignored. Long finger lifted the measuring cup, “Hmmmm well, it’s not a big difference so it’s okay~”

“Wait wait wait hyung! How much is there in the cup? How much is there supposed to be?!” Changmin sounded way too worried to Yunho’s liking, but the leader answered nevertheless, while pouring the contents into a clean bowl, “Well the recipe says 250grams and the measuring cup said 300grams… 50grams won’t make that much of a difference!”

“Oh yes it will! Stop hyung!” The high pitched scream resonated in the kitchen but not into his hyung’s head. 

“Too late~~~” Yunho flashed the empty measuring cup in front of the ipad, “It’s okay it’s okay!”

“It’s definitely not okay…” Changmin murmured, and JiJi, now sitting next to the ipad meowed in agreement.

“Yunho chef says o~kay~ o-o-o-o-kay~~” Moving to an unknown beat, the great chef danced around the slippery kitchen. He picked up an egg and cracked it on the side of a bowl.

“Split it open carefully so that you could try keep the egg yolk in the half of the shell…” Changmin instructed, and Yunho did as he was told, stopping to focus at the task.

One done, second done, the leader laughed pride as he cracked the third one , “This is easy! I totally got the hang of it!” 

Somehow, with sudden divine force, or purely Yunho’s unbelievable chef powers, the cracked egg slipped out of his fingers and made a wonderful line in the air before it splattered against the white wall behind the leader.

“……” 

“Hyung!!!” Changmin screamed, frustrated and scared as they watched the contents of the egg drag slowly down the wall, leaving a trace of yellow along the way. Every centimeters it slipped down panged at the magnae’s heart.

Expressionlessly, Yunho spun on his heels to face the camera and cracked another egg as if nothing happened. He purposely blocked his mind of any fearful scenes that would undoubtedly cause him great trouble afterwards. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ll clean it afterwards!” He tried calming the panicking younger one, but Changmin kept screaming, saying the world is over, he would need to say goodbye to nice homemade treats, curses and evil voodoos are going to befall on him, and he’s going to get a call telling him he’s going to die in seven days.

“Shim Changmin!!! If you’re not going to calm down I would be the one coming out of this screen and hunt you right now!” That shut the magnae up, and the two moved on under Changmin’s tearful gaze.

“Okay, now whisk them!” With a sparkle in his eyes, Yunho raised the whisk high above his head before diving it into the big bowl of batter.

“I should be tipping in the vanilla extract about now!”

“Uhuh…”

“Hmmmm feels like it’s missing in color… Strawberry icing should be added in now!”

“That doesn’t feel right…”

“Strawberry matches best with chocolate!”

“That’s true but somehow it seems wrong…”

“Muhahahahaha! Muahahahahahaha! Muahahahahahahaha!!!”