Somebody please tell me that the chapters are finally in order!

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• LET'S GET COOKING! •

Anybody that knew Sakura Haruno knew that she was never unconfident about anything so to see the nervous wreck that she was being right now was, to put it lightly, very surprising. Well Sakura's plight was understandable.

She was going to teach Sasuke how to make dangos come Saturday and while that sounded amazing (you know, spending the whole day uninterrupted with Sasuke and all), she had no idea how to make dangos. It was like a blind man leading another blind man across a busy road– they'd surely crash.

Sakura was panicking. What would she do?! Ask Hinata for help? No! That was out of the question! She would do this by herself, thank you very much! That's right! She had a recipe book she could follow, she'd be alright.

She'd be alright– yeah right! First she had to search for the dango recipe among the numerous random recipes she took pictures of in Hinata's cook book. Was there even a dango recipe in the book? She wasn't sure.

It took a while but she finally- luckily- found a recipe for dango. Sakura looked it over. Heh, sounds easy enough! All she needed were some ingredients and a pot of water. Phew! She was beginning to think dango required an elaborate process like separating egg whites from egg yolks or other yucky stuff like that. She didn't even need to practice making dangos!

Everybody knows where this is going, right?

Saturday came before Sakura could say 'inakaitakerunomikoto' and she was mentally prepared for the big day.  A whole day alone with the boy of her dreams! Oh how the girls in school wanted to be in her shoes. She even memorized the recipe so that she'd look cool to Sasuke and she made sure she looked irresistibly pretty today, surely Sasuke would have no choice but to fall for her now!

"Hi, Sasuke-kun." Sakura greeted when Sasuke came to pick her up.

"Hn." Sasuke replied with his usual grunt. It was so cute! Sakura was lost in how handsome he looked again today so she didn't hear him until he called her name. "Sakura."

"Huh?!"

"Are we going to buy the ingredients or do you have them ready?"

" O-oh right! Yeah we're going to buy some things if that's okay with you." She replied and Sasuke smiled. Weeell, it was more of a subtle quirk of his lips but on Sasuke it could as well be a full blown laugh. Sakura flushed. He was really excited to learn this thing, wasn't he?

"Alright, let's go shopping."

-

Sasuke drove them to his house when they had bought all the ingredients they needed.

"Pardon the intrusion." Sakura said as she removed her shoes at the door and wore the house slippers provided.   She noticed Sasuke opening the windows of the house and got curious. "Is nobody at home?"

"We're the only ones here." Sasuke replied.

"Hmm. I don't know why I thought Mebuki-san would be a stay at home wife in this story." Sakura muttered to herself as she started moving the things they bought to the kitchen. "I thought there'd be maids and butlers too since...wait!" Just then Sasuke's earlier words registered in her mind.

"We're the only ones here."

Sakura turned red. She was alone with Sasuke. She was really alone with Sasuke!

"What are you doing?" Sasuke popped up from behind her, where she stood frozen at the hallway.

"N-nothing!" The pinkette yelped and sped walked to the kitchen. For someone alone at home with a girl Sasuke sure was being so normal. Wait! Did this mean he was home alone with girls more frequently than she realized?! No way!

"Sa-ku-ra." Sasuke bopped her on the head with a bowl. "Stop spacing out and let's start cooking."

Sakura came to with a shake of her head. Goodness, she had such wild thoughts! "Hey I'm the sensei here, you shouldn't hit your sensei on the head you know."

"I won't if she doesn't space out. Here." The dark haired male handed a green apron over while he slipped on a purple one. Does one need to tell how incredibly hot Sasuke is with an apron on rolled up sleeves and hairpins in his hair?

Before she spaced out again Sakura moved to wash her hands. Sasuke did too and they got started.

"First we soak the skewers in water." Sakura began but was cut off by a curious Sasuke.

"Why?" He asked.

Sakura wasn't expecting the question, simple as it was, so she didn't find words to say for a moment. "W-well I guess it's to allow them to penetrate the dough easier. Aaanyway, let's mix the rice flours together in a bowl now." Sakura recited from the imaginary recipe she had in her head.

Once again Sasuke cut in with a question. "What's the difference between the joshinko rice flour and shiratamako sweet rice flour?" And boy did he need to stop because Sakura didn't really know the answers to his questions!

"Then let's add sugar for taste." Sakura evaded the question.

"You evaded my question." Sasuke pointed out.

"I know!" Sakura snapped much to the boy's surprise. She cleared her throat  to cover up her blunder. "That's an assignment for you."

Sasuke crossed his arms. "How original."

"Aaanyway! We should add the water now to mix the dough."

"Shouldn't the water be hot though?"

"Oh that's right. I forgot."

Fortunately with an electric kettle it didn't take more than three minutes to boil enough water to mix the dough. Mixing the dough was a different ordeal on its own for how was one supposed to mix hot dough with bare hands?

"The water wasn't supposed to be that hot." Sasuke unhelpfully provided. At this point he was the one teaching his teacher.

"Gee thanks for the information." Sakura mumbled sourly while Sasuke chuckled.

"You're really bad at this, aren't you?"

If Sakura was any other person she would have panicked at his words. But she was Sakura so she calmly replied him. "I told you before didn't I? I'm only good at cinnamon buns."

"Then kneading dough should be easy for you." Sasuke provided. Now Sakura panicked. True to his words, if she could make buns that perfectly then kneading doughs should come easy.

"Er em- I-"

"Easy." Sasuke rescued her before she fainted on the spot. "Let's use spatulas until the dough gets warm enough to knead with our hands. You can tell me the recipe while I perform the tasks. Deal?"

How can somebody be so cool and organized? Sakura's eyes sparkled. "Deal! But Sasuke, I thought you didn't know how to cook." She observed.

"I don't. Somehow this just comes easy to me. And I read the general recipe online so I have a vague idea what I should do and not do." Sasuke replied absently.

"That's a genius for you. Kyaah! Sasuke-kun is just so handsome!" Inner Sakura gushed.

After kneading the dough they rolled them into balls and boiled them. Then they skewered them and the dango was ready! All that remained was the sauce but before that they taste tested what they made.

"Hmm." Sasuke hummed. "It tastes like chalk." He deadpanned.

Sakura spat her dumpling out. "But we followed the recipe, how come it tastes like this?"

"I think we didn't let it boil enough. We took it out too early. And it tastes like normal dango. Are you sure you aren't missing an ingredient or something?" Sasuke asked and Sakura sweat dropped internally.

She knew this was coming. Despite having the recipe she couldn't quite replicate Hinata's cooking no matter how she tried. Was she missing an ingredient? She didn't know. "I'm not. Let's start all over again, we'd get it this time."

And so they started all over again.

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Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. Please vote and comment if you did. See you in the next chapter.

-Star.