"Like hell it suits me!" Even with the praise, Horikita couldn't suppress the shame and anger boiling up. She leveled the plastic longsword straight at Yukio but didn't dare take it further. The frustration was killing her.
Right now she was mentally cursing up a storm—serves her right for ever betting with someone like Yukio! This was humiliating!
What a total bastard!
Yukio didn't care about the plastic sword at all. He casually pulled out his phone; the flash fired again and again—click, click, click.
Horikita's first reaction was to squint; her second was to raise the sword high to shield her face; the third was to shout, "Y-You're taking pictures?!"
She was fuming. Fine, she'd cosplay; fine, she'd cook. But photos? That was way too much! If these leaked… the mere thought made her want to smash her head into a wall.
"Relax, relax. I'm keeping your knight-cosplay pics to myself. I won't share them." Yukio soothed her, but the shutter kept going.
Horikita flew into a full-on mortified rage and lunged with a foolish stab, which Yukio brushed aside one-handed with ease. "Alright, I'm done. You're not really planning to cook with the sword on your hip, are you?"
"J-Just you wait." Horikita had no way to deal with him. She tossed the plastic sword, turned to the fridge for ingredients, and hurried into the kitchen.
Clearly she just wanted to finish fast and get out. She'd had enough—first the knight outfit, then the photos. If she didn't wrap this up quickly, who knew what he'd try next?
But as she stepped up to rinse the rice, Horikita slapped her forehead. Curse Yukio for getting her so flustered—she'd forgotten she didn't need to wear the gloves.
After another flurry of motion, she undid the plastic arm guards, took off the black gloves, and finally settled at the sink to wash the rice.
Watching the water cloud with starch under the running tap only made her more irritable. Who would make such a request? Yukio—what a devil.
Just then Yukio wandered in. "Tsk, tsk. I love that face of yours—all humiliation, but still obediently cooking."
"…" Horikita froze. A few blue veins stood out clearly on her pale forehead in a tidy '井', then she started glancing around. "Yukio, where's your kitchen knife?"
You don't fear a plastic sword, fine—surely you'll respect a knife? You like watching me all put out yet forced to obey? If she didn't find a knife and take a swipe at him, the anger just wouldn't clear.
"Whoa, that mad? You're ready to grab a blade?" Yukio cocked a brow with a roguish grin and pointed at the cabinet. "In there. But heads up—if you swing, I won't mind disciplining a captive knight who still won't behave."
As he spoke, his gaze roamed over Horikita, as if he were deciding which part to "discipline" if she resisted. That look made her tense up; she didn't dare act rashly.
Horikita really was completely in his grasp. She couldn't think of any way out, and even if she found the knife, she knew she wasn't his match. The frustration was enough to kill her.
"W-What do you even want?" she burst out at last, pouring the rice into the cooker, then turning to chop vegetables—only to find Yukio still staring at her.
Yukio started to wonder if embarrassment made her brain slow down. "Didn't I say at the start? I just want to watch you cook in the knight outfit."
"The point isn't the cooking—it's me watching you cook like that."
And, honestly, it did scratch a very particular itch: the icy, humiliated Horikita, proud in her knight's garb yet forced to meekly cook—just seeing it gave him a satisfying sense of conquest.
…That time? Yukio thought a moment, recalling how he'd felt back then. "Two reasons. On the one hand, it was paying back a favor to Horikita Manabu."
"On the other, I just felt it wasn't right—there you were, throwing yourself into unifying Class D, and they stuck you with Sudo's debt."
Horikita remembered that debt. Compared to being forced to cook in a knight outfit, what her classmates did back then had been far more infuriating.
Wait—so repaying her brother's favor was part of it?
Did that mean this guy wasn't doing it because of her, personally, but because of her brother? That it had nothing to do with her at all?
At that thought, she sneaked a glance at Yukio out of the corner of her eye.
She couldn't say why, but a vague, hollow disappointment spread inside her. The more it grew, the faster her hands moved.
She sped through the prep; before the rice had even finished cooking, she spun on her heel to leave. "Everything's set. When the cooker's done, lunch is ready. Goodbye."
Hmph. If he only wanted to see her make a fool of herself and didn't care about her as a person, why stick around? Just to keep being humiliated?
"Horikita." Yukio called out. She stopped dead and looked back—she didn't even know why she stopped so fast.
"You're not… seriously thinking of going outside in that knight outfit, are you?"
Her pale face, which had just started to calm down, instantly flushed rose-red again at that one line. She dashed into the bathroom to change back into her uniform, then hurried out, leaving Yukio behind with a single parting shot:
"Bastard."
...
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