The time came to honour her promise.

She sat on the stool in the kitchen, flipping through sample books and old recipes, trying to get an idea on how she would do Baekhyun’s cake. The party was on Saturday, and for the whole week it received much ado. Baekhyun was the talk, the topic of all whispers. His party was to be grand, they said, nothing short of perfection.

She already planned it to be three layers, sandwiched with chocolate cream cheese. She had a vague idea of the topping: a shower of white chocolate curls and an oozing chocolate drizzle.

“Is that too much chocolate?” she wondered to herself with a frown. “Yeah, its too much chocolate.”

The front bell rang and the next few seconds found Jongin tumbling into the kitchen with a thick green scarf and tousled honey hair. He grinned at her through the window, hooked his fingers through the loose knot and pulled it free. She noticed he wore a beautiful blazer, a kind of navy so deep that it was almost the velvet midnight of the sleeping sky. His buttoned up shirt was blue –ocean blue, and it was equally as pleasant.

“If that’s the uniform you people get, I’d love to transfer to your school,” she said when he walked through the kitchen door.

Jongin looked up, confused, and then looked down and laughed. “It’s not really all that grand when you put it on every day. I still prefer my sweats and my dancing shoes.” He pushed back his hair; his cheeks looked flushed from the cold.

“Merciless weather, isn’t it?” she commented sympathetically as he stuffed the scarf into his satchel. The tail caught the zip and refused to go in, so he left it hanging, a dab of colour against thick black fabric.

“Not so bad when you run.” He shrugged off his blazer and made his way to change.

“Why would you run?” She turned her body to look at him as he passed.

“Cause if I don't,  I’d be late.”

She checked her watch. “You still have ten minutes into your shift.”

He just smirked and closed the changing room door behind him.

He came out when she was in the midst of whisking cake batter, a storm of flour descending upon her from all sides. He walked over, observed, and the ingredients she’d set aside. His eyes were the thick, creamy brown of the batter slowly blending in the care of her hands.

She let him watch her work for a good ten minutes, and then transferred the bowl into his hands. He readily accepted it, his brows knitting in curiosity.

“It’s Devil’s food cake,” she told him before he lost all restraint and stuck his finger in.

“A remarkable rich choice,” he commented, sniffing it, and then testing its consistency with slow revolutions of the metal spoon. “Expensive too.”

“The price of quality.” She reached across the counter, pulling a buttered cake pan. She took the bowl away from him and began spooning in the mixture. “Today, you’re my taste tester.”

Jongin’s brows shot up. “I’m getting paid to eat what you make?”

“You’re getting paid helping me create the perfect recipe.” The last dollop of batter settled in with a splat. “So do it right.”

“Aren’t your recipes perfect enough?” He took the pan from her to pop into the oven.

“Can’t hurt to experiment,” she shrugged.

“Why?” He looked genuinely curious.

“Just because.”

He shook his head. “It’s never just because.”

She relented. “It’s for someone.”

Jongin folded his arms, his back curving over the counter. He then smiled. It was the smile that drew melancholy upon the air and dripped understanding in the oven’s warmth; it was a smile that disarmed swords and dismantled armours.

She found her voice to ask him, “Is it stupid to keep doing things for someone who can never give you anything back?”

“No, no,” Jongin shook his head slowly, gently. “It just means you love them.”

The cake came to be in stages.

First, they baked. Baked and baked on hours to an end. The bowl ended up large and heavy; Jongin had to heft it while she scraped it into an obscenely humongous rectangular cake pan.

“I don’t understand why you have to tweak the recipe,” Jongin had said as he stood over her shoulder, watching her mix vanilla and orange peel, fold and whisk the batter.

“Just a little more,” she told him, snatching spoons wooden and metal and bottles to tip for that final finesse, the flavour that curled like smoke on the tongue.

“It was perfect when you let me taste it,” he argued, hands on hips, expression exasperated. “I even let my friends have a bite. They thought it was the best thing they’d tasted since the time they had anything at their grandmother’s.”

“I just…” she shook her head, pushed him away. “Just let me work, Jongin.”

He shook his head, withdrawing further assault, but when she caught him staring at her a little while later, there was sympathy in those eyes –sympathy and concern.

That very day, she toted fondant and butter in heaping bags from nearby stores, dug out colouring and little silver balls of sugar from the pantry. Jongin had a steady hand, so she let him ice. He was precise, careful, as he lathered the base over the large cake. Before, when it was just out of the oven, it looked plain and bare, a slab of smooth rock over the metal counter.

Jongin watched silently as she wrote Baekhyun’s name.

He pronounced it mechanically, working the syllables around his tongue as a connoisseur would food.

“Tell me about him,” he said, backing into a stool and perching on it. “I’d like to know about the boy for whom you are willing to do anything.”

She blushed, but Jongin’s words had genuine sincerity. So, she talked.

“We go to the same school. Once, a long time ago, we were in the same class. He loves to sing and has a lovely voice for it: strong and husky.” She glanced at Jongin. “By your standards, you’d probably think it’s raw, untrained. But he’s good; he can hold a tune and bring emotion.”

She reached across the table for a slab of chocolate, picked up a knife, and began scraping away little curls to shower over the cake. “He’s friendly, and honest. So very honest. If he finds money, he’d go around the school looking for the owner. If you asked him to teach you something, he’d teach until you could do it on your own.”

Jongin spoke no comment. Instead, he took another knife, stood next to her, and began scraping away curls to add to the growing mound. “He sounds like a nice guy,” he said, and then joked, “How’s he physically?”

“He’s alright,” she said, smiling softly. “Soft face, and pretty, clear eyes.”

“Sounds like a girl,” Jongin remarked, and earned himself a shower of chocolate onto his face and collar.

“He’s not quite so tall,” she added despite herself. Not quite like you, she thought, as Jongin turned and looked down at her with dark, laughing eyes. Shoulders not quite so broad, legs not quite as long. She didn’t say any of it out loud.

“Yeonjoo is tall and elegant,” he told her, dumping his mound of chocolate curls onto hers. “People call her slender, but sometimes, I think she looks too frail, too thin.” He shook his head, regretful. “I can’t say anything because that’s how the teachers want their ballerinas to look.”

“She must be beautiful.”

Jongin smiled. It was so delicate, so abstracted, so absolutely gentle, that she found herself jealous of this faceless girl. To have a boy look at her like that, smile that smile when he talked about her –how could she walk away from that?

“Like a fairy,” he said, and then busied himself again. A few seconds later, he looked up, bemused. “What?”

“It’s just that –I’ve never seen a guy compare a girl to–just wow.” She laughed slightly, ducked her head.

“You want a simile for yourself too?” he asked, leaning his weight against the counter.

She tried to sound light, joking. “It’d be nice, so long as it’s not overdone.” She bent down, brushing the curls to the sides of the cake, leaving it to sprout and flick and scatter. Her unbound hair fell over her cheeks, twisted over the curve of her shoulders.

“I can think of one,” he offered, bending further, closer. “A mermaid.”

She blinked, turned her head sideways to look at him in speechless bafflement.

“Because of your hair,” he added, and then laughed.

She laughed with him because it must be a joke.  He can’t mean it. He can’t possibly have meant it that way.