Shotaro, in a dramatic and melodramatic pose of indifference, shrugged his shoulders, stretching himself to grab for the flour in one hand while at the same time showing her a look that was akin to the careless gesture of throwing a pebble into the glassy surface of still water. "You see," he went on with a note of sarcasm, "not everyone was blessed to have chefs cooking gourmet meals and chauffeurs to drive us around when we were kids, Ms. Princess of a diamond company."
Fatiba's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, her gaze hard and cold. "You think I'm some privileged, entitled princess."
"Exactly," he replied, not even trying to soften it. He said it not with venom, but with that trained tone he used whenever he was trying to poke at someone's armor and discover if it would dent. His usual modus operandi: get people riled up, then observe what comes out when the cracks begin.
She let out a harsh, exasperated breath that felt like it was thudding deep in the center of her, pressing two of her fingers lightly against the bridge of her nose, as if she felt that by doing so, she could somehow shoo away the irritation that was piling up in her mind. But even for that, she did not simply turn and leave what was going on. She did not curse anyone that was involved. Instead, she stood there, locked in place like a person who knew that they should be angry at what was going on but was too exhausted—either from not sleeping or from too much curiosity—to keep up the act.
Behind them, Abbas sat, the very personification of time made flesh—still, incredibly stable, and completely inscrutable. He rested against the counter, elbow on it as if this kitchen had become his very own throne room, and was announcing himself the unseen witness to two fools fighting a losing battle for crowns that were literally invisible. And yet there was a depth to what was in his eyes, something significantly more restrained, almost reflective. He saw Shotaro not as a possible threat in the shadows, nor as so much as a guest in these walls, but as if he were a man watching a young hawk spread its wings for the very first time, opening itself to the possibilities that await. It was as if some portion of him, some long-dormant muscle of faith, had started to awaken to life again and move once more after lying fallow for far too long.
Meanwhile, Shotaro worked without flash, dumping flour and sugar into the mug with casual precision, then cocoa, salt, and the shimmer of vanilla extract like a ribbon of perfume. He didn't overmix—just stirred enough for it to hold. Then came the milk, the oil, and, with the same care you'd offer a prayer, the chocolate chips.
He shifted his attention back to her, his eyes fixed on hers. "Would you volunteer to take the honors?" he asked, offering the mug as if it were a precious gift lying in wait for her to claim.
She raised one eyebrow in a way that was unmistakably unconvinced. "Are you actually under the impression that I am going to fall for the old 'microwave this for me' con that people tend to use?"
"I think you're dying to know if I screw it up."
"Fair."
She picked up the object, stepped back from the counter, and went on to jam it into the microwave, tucking it in securely inside. One minute would do. Two minutes might be needed to get the effect. They all just stood there, their ears tuned to the muffled thrum of that little electric universe within the walls of the box—how odd and marvelous it was that something so mundane as this should be able to create such an air of suspense and anticipation.
Abbas said nothing, but he didn't even flinch.
The scent made its entrance first—soft, molten, and as dense as a cherished memory. It rolled out of the microwave in a manner reminiscent of a whispered confession, warm and slow, creeping with a gentle persistence into the crevices of tile and wood and the layers of old paint, stirring memories and sensations older than any of them could ever hope to name or recognize. It was the kind of smell that didn't merely arrive on the scene—it returned, much like something that had always been there in the background, waiting patiently, dormant, as if it belonged to the very essence of the house more than it ever did to the people inhabiting it. The delightful combination of chocolate and vanilla, mixed with sugar and salt, along with the quiet burn of cocoa—it all slipped effortlessly into the air, rewriting its very atmosphere, until the kitchen ceased to be just a mundane room and transformed into a cradle for something profoundly sacred and unreasonably beautiful.
When the microwave signaled, they didn't move.
Not because they had withdrawn into forgetfulness, but because something had occurred in the small spaces between the ticking of the clock—a phenomenon that made the air around them tight and heavy, like silk that had absorbed too much syrup. Then, gradually, like the creaking of a door softly opening in the world of a dream, Fatiba took one step forward. She approached, slowly, with deliberate intent, and opened the door of the microwave.
And the smell exploded.
Not in the most literal of ways, nor by means of fire or the clash of sound, but rather in terms of the sheer power of its being. It poured out into the air like a beast unleashed from its cage, thick and demanding, spreading out like the steam that billows from a hot battlefield. It wrapped around their ankles with an insistent pressure, crawled up their backs with a palpable energy, and produced the feeling that the ceiling was coming down around them, lower than it actually was. It was heavy, but in the finest way possible—sweet, cruel, and completely irrefutable. This was the kind of scent that struck you right in the middle of your chest with a wave of comfort, leaving you gasping, full of a gnawing hunger. A scent that made you intensely aware of just how long it had been since you last had the pleasure of being properly fed.
Abbas blinked, and it was one. Only once. That was all. But it was not an ordinary blink; it was the blink of a man who had just remembered something deep and profound, something that he had forced deep inside him and had not wanted to look at or face for many long decades.
Fatiba turned on her heel, her brows drawn together as if she were struggling to decipher something vague behind a dense mist. "Care to tell me what you put into that?"
Shotaro, however, did not lift his head right away. He leaned against the counter with a casual pose, arms loosely crossed over each other. On his face was that typical tired but crooked grin, the one that appeared to speak volumes of work and experiences gathered in so many various ways, each of which he would not even deign to tell. "You know," he said considerately, "it's all about having just the right amount of chocolate-to-cream proportion," he said with a touch of excitement. "And, of course, don't forget to add a little honey for the touch of sophistication."
She involuntarily recoiled, scrunching up her nose in reflex. "Honey and chocolate? That pairing just doesn't do anything."
"It is dying," Abbas grumbled in a voice infused with the raw-boned cynicism of a man who had lived through the mayhem of wars, the uproar of coups, and the countless kitchen disasters of the past. He did not pause to look up at what was in front of him; he just kept poking at the brownie as if it were yet another sermon cleverly disguised behind its humble exterior.
Shotaro cocked his head to the side, not offended in the least; rather, he was only vaguely entertained, the way one would watch a cat batting at its own reflection in a mirror. "I can scarcely say that you were surprised," he said to him, twirling the spoon in his hand with a smooth flourish, as if directing the energetic crescendo of a symphony. "I was surprised myself, I must admit, when I first learned that Fire Force was really a prequel to Soul Eater."
That derailed everything.
Hold on a minute," Fatiba cried out, her voice rising half an octave suddenly, and her brow furrowing in a glarefully rabbit-like manner. "What's going on?
"The manga just finished," Shotaro replied, like it was a pleasant second dessert consumed informally. "Go read it yourself. The final chapters bring a connection between all the universes."
In a flash that felt like it was built up over months rather than just minutes, the heavy emotional weight that hung in the kitchen—a mix of unsaid rules, generational silence, unearned trust, and a hesitant closeness to something resembling warmth—was suddenly overshadowed by the crazy excitement of fandom and a late-night sugar rush. It was a jolt. The change in mood happened so quickly it felt almost legendary. Fatiba was frozen, her index finger pressed hard into Shotaro's shoulder like an attorney ready to pass judgment, her mouth slightly agape, caught between feelings of betrayal and disbelief. Meanwhile, Abbas let out a sigh so deep it seemed to echo from somewhere beyond his own lungs—a sigh rooted in years, maybe decades, of men who'd never cared about anime logic, but in that moment began to grasp just how intensely passionate these worlds could be. He gently stirred the brownie, watching the chocolate swirl in the bowl as if he was rethinking every past notion of "normal." And Mugyiwara Shotaro—pure chaos, grinning like someone whose thoughts raced faster than light—was already halfway through devouring a gooey corner of the brownie, his eyes sparkling with a kind of irreverence, as if what he'd just said was gospel.
"You can't just throw out spoilers like that!" Fatiba exclaimed, poking him harder now, her voice reaching a pitch.
Shotaro blinked, shrugged, and between bites said, "You like Fire Force? Wait… Ohhhh, that makes sense. they've got explosions and you're Muslim—"
WHAM. Her foot landed in his gut like divine retribution, cutting off whatever absurdity he was about to unleash.
"ACK—okay, okay, okay!" he wheezed, half-laughing, half-bending over the counter. "Just a joke! Bad joke! I promise to do better!"
Abbas watched the scene unfold quietly, arms crossed over his lap, the old robe bunching slightly at the elbows. A thought flickered through his mind, dry and a bit dazed: My granddaughter is too violent. Have I raised her wrong? There was no shame in it, just a sort of distant curiosity, like a man wondering if a tree he planted had turned into something wild and beautiful he never anticipated.
Still chewing, Abbas broke the silence, his voice weighted with memories that lingered like incense smoke from a fading ember. "You hit him just like your grandmother used to hit your father when he was caught smoking in his room. He insisted it was incense."
Fatiba glanced down, her hand twitching near her hip like it still clutched the shoe of justice. "She didn't mess around."
Shotaro, stretched across the kitchen counter like a lounging cat, bit into another corner of the brownie and spoke without shame or survival instinct. "That old tart doesn't seem like the robot she made him—ACK!" His sentence was cut short—violently, beautifully—by the sudden impact of a swift sidekick to his ribs. It was less a strike and more a physical punctuation.
He fell off the counter with a thud and a groan, holding the brownie in his hand like it was some kind of offering.
"You told him about Rashid?" Abbas asked now, his voice low and unaccusing, like someone testing the water's temperature with their fingers.
"I—I… yeah," Fatiba admitted, rubbing the back of her head, her eyes darting sideways as if she were a kid caught between guilt and relief. "I might have let slip… a bit too much."
"Damn," Abbas muttered, not in anger but with the world-weary tone of a man who long ago accepted that all things sacred and shameful eventually surface over food. "At least you had somewhere to vent."
"An honest vent," Shotaro croaked from the floor, giving a thumbs-up while holding the brownie like a dying gladiator saluting Caesar.
He didn't get to finish the bite. Her foot came down like an ancient force, pressing him into the linoleum tiles like a tent peg being hammered into sacred ground.
Silence.
Then Abbas leaned back in his stool, lifted his cup of tea with utmost grace, and declared, "Just like her grandmother. May she rest in peace… though I'm pretty sure she's haunting my toilet bowl, that perverted freak."
"So, have you mentioned what went down in London?" he asked as Fatiba's pupils expanded in horror.
"No," she replied, "no, I have NOT!!"
Fatiba stiffened, like someone hearing a gun click behind her. Her eyes widened, pupils dilating as if she'd just been plunged into darkness. "No," she said too quickly, too defensively, too authentically. "No, I have not."
It felt like the temperature in the room suddenly dropped.
Abbas sighed, but it wasn't the exhale of a man letting go. It was filled with the regret of old generals—the kind who had once marched their troops into a trap and watched the flags burn from afar. "Ah… damn it," he muttered, shutting his eyes. "I shouldn't have mentioned that."
Shotaro, still half-buried in the floor but now fully alert, raised his head like a meerkat detecting emotional tension. "The incident," he repeated, stretching it out like it was the title of a thriller novel. "I'm guessing you're talking about something that went down in London. Something… significant enough that she returned to Japan two months after studying abroad. Something that still haunts both of you, like an unpaid parking ticket but heavier."
"Shut. Up." Fatiba pointed at him so quickly her knuckle cracked.
But Shotaro's grin returned, that mischievous look making him even more dangerous the closer he got to getting hit again. "So what happened? Did you spice up the food? Did you call football soccer? Please tell me it was dramatic."
Abbas sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose like she had done earlier. "This is exactly why I don't talk during dessert."
Fatiba turned to her grandfather, jaw clenched. "You were supposed to act like it never happened."
Abbas opened one eye and shot her a look so ancient it could have been carved into stone. "And yet here we are. You brought home a boy your age who happens to cook like heaven's angels. What did you expect? it always comes out of my mouth"
"I thought you'd keep it under wraps!"
"I forget things, kid!" he snapped, then added in a quieter tone, "That's how I survive your grandmother's ghost while she tried to grab it wen I loo."
Shotaro, now sitting upright with his legs crossed like a schoolkid in detention, finally said gently, "I don't need to know. You don't have to fill me in. But…"
He tilted his head.
"…whatever it was, you came back alive. And I'm here right now, from tommorow our summer break will start, you have 6 weeks to tell me about it, right?"
Fatiba didn't respond. But her shoulders relaxed just a bit, enough for someone to notice. She glanced at her grandfather, who gave her a look that clearly said, "It's your fault."
She muttered, "If you bring up London again, I'll kick your ass."
"You're already living it up," Shotaro shot back, reaching for another brownie. "Whether it's London or not."
"So, what hobbies do you have, kid?" Abbas asked, intrigued like a royal suitor.
Shotaro paused for a moment, clearly too engrossed in licking a bit of chocolate off his thumb. He looked like a conqueror reveling in his spoils. As he leaned back in his chair, silver hair glinting in the kitchen light, he finally replied, "Hobbies?" His head tilted slightly, as if he were turning a marble around in his mind. "I enjoy cooking, obviously. Household chores are my thing, and I'm into video games too. I read a lot, anything from academic journals to manga to religious texts."
Abbas raised an eyebrow—not because of what Shotaro said, but how he said it. The utter absurdity was delivered so nonchalantly that it was hard to discern where exaggeration stopped and reality began. Internally, he felt a flicker of amusement, a familiar Iranian expression where the lips barely move but the heart laughs. On the surface, he simply nodded and remarked, "A handy young man."
Yet beneath that calm facade, Abbas's grandfather instincts were in full swing. Tall. Good-looking. Skin tone similar to theirs. Not shy about religion. Sarcastic yet respectful. Keeps things tidy. Can cook. Doesn't leave the dishes like some sort of cursed scavenger hunt. Carries himself like someone older. Good posture. Seems... dignified yet sad. Possible tragic backstory. Deep voice. Smells like cardamom and something fiery. Might even be on the run from the gods. My granddaughter could do worse. Heck, she has done worse.
He sipped his tea with the serious air of a man about to sign a treaty. "So, Shotaro. What do your parents do?"
Shotaro blinked. "dead."
"Oh." Abbas blinked in surprise. "Sorry to hear that."
"No," Shotaro replied, his voice softer now as if he'd carefully packed the topic away in a velvet-lined drawer. "They think I'm dead."
"What the hell? Then who raised you—?"
"Akakitsune Rin," he replied. "You know, the owner of the whole northeast side of the city."
Abbas paused. "The red light district?"
"Yeah. It has a way of talking. Sort of."
Fatiba sighed dramatically, dragging a hand down her face. "Can you just act normal for one meal?"
Shotaro looked at her, dead serious. "I am being normal."
"And the sword?" Abbas asked, equally curious and a little unsure if he was going mad.
"I keep it around for things to do...stufff," Shotaro responded.
A genuine silence settled over them. Not the heavy kind from before, but a lighter one—like everyone realized they'd walked into a play without knowing the script, yet somehow it was all working.
Abbas took another slow sip of tea, letting its warmth coat his throat as he leaned back in his chair, wrapped in that rare, still moment where the soul nods before the brain catches up. He didn't say it out loud—he didn't need to—but it was clear in the long breath he exhaled, in the slight curl at the corner of his lips: this boy was dangerous. Not in the way of knives or chaos. But in the far stranger way that mattered more—he understood people. He was a little unhinged, a little too sincere, a little too willing to laugh at the sacred and lean into the ridiculous. He was exactly the kind of wild unpredictability someone like Fatiba needed. A counterweight. A balance. A divine nuisance.
He narrowed his eyes just enough to seem serious, though there was a sly flicker behind them. "Your favorite actress," Abbas asked casually, like it didn't mean the world. But it did. Because a man is defined by many things—including the stranger woman he chooses to adore.
Shotaro blinked once, then leaned forward with such deceptive sincerity it could've been either prayer or prank. "Sydney Sweeney," he said.
Abbas stared at him. "You're lying."
"I am," Shotaro replied with a mischievous grin. "You're quite perceptive for someone with withered eyesight."
Abbas scoffed, but it was a smile in disguise.
"Alright then," Shotaro said, straightening like he was about to declare something sacred, "Marylin Monroe."
For a moment, silence settled. Not awkward. Not tense. Just sacred. Abbas Darvish blinked—and for the first time in years, felt something in his chest that neither of his two sons, with all their polished suits and respectable jobs, had ever made him feel: pride. Relatable, irrational, irrationally relatable pride. He had lived through hunger, war, heartbreak, and being in manchestor. But never had he felt so immediately inclined to adopt someone into the bloodline. If he had a divine decree or a ceremonial sword in hand, he would've knighted the boy promised to Fatiba on spot and declared the betrothal finalized.
Without a word, Abbas extended his hand with the kind of respect passed between veterans and philosophers. Shotaro took it, firm and fast. Their palms met like two comets that were supposed to crash but somehow found orbit instead. They didn't speak. They didn't have to. Their mutual recognition filled the room like sunlight through old blinds—hazy, golden, eternal.
Fatiba watched this bizarre, radiant bromance unfold with an expression that could only be described as betrayed bewilderment. She squinted, shielding her eyes like someone looking directly at a divine aura. "Did he just go around stealing other people's grandparents like that?" she whispered, more to herself than to them. A strange pout bloomed across her lips as she crossed her arms. "Hey, that's my grandpa," she huffed.
The handshake between Abbas and Shotaro lingered just long enough to glow with a red-orange hue, like a sacred aura in a shonen anime no one agreed to be part of. Shotaro nodded solemnly. Abbas did too.
Fatiba blinked and muttered under her breath, "Holy shit, too bright."