[Vanilla]

"That won't be necessary," I stepped back, shying away from his touch. The last I remembered, hair follicles did not contain sensory nerves and yet, here I was—completely shaken and oddly embarrassed by someone else touching my hair and, well, invading my personal space. "There's no reason why I should be showering again when I've done so less than ten minutes ago. U-unless you're saying I smell strange."

I brought the back of my hand up to my nose, and then the collar of my shirt. Nothing out of the ordinary, I mean... it all smells like soap to me. But this act, however harmless, seemed to provoke quite the reaction out of my companion, who laughed shortly and had his eyes fixed on the collar of my shirt.

"Shut up and follow me," he grabbed the arm of my sleeve and tugged it towards him, starting towards the stairs as soon as he ensured that I was directly behind him.

The hallway was narrow and uncomfortably intimate despite the luxurious spaces I'd seen so far on deck. I figured that maximising the interior space of bedrooms was higher up their priority list than spacious corridors were but admittedly preferred walking alongside someone to walking behind them. Of course, I was more uncomfortable with the idea of bumping shoulders and elbows with Leroy than walking behind him, so. The logical solution was to go with the latter.

The solarium turned out to be an open observation area on the uppermost deck, shaded by a series of tall, collapsible parasols and, farther aft, featured an outdoor pool and sun loungers on the same teak-lined flooring. Towards the bow was an indoor salon, which I assumed was the one Leroy had been referring to (that served coffee round the clock) and adjacent to that, the gym and—a spa room. Again, unnecessary luxuries.

We entered the salon and were, at once, spoilt for choice. There were almost four completely different kinds of seating in the empty salon and we had the privilege to choose among canvas sofa seats, individual working pods, four-by-four restaurant seating and a row of bar stools overlooking the bow of the yacht.

Naturally, I was drawn to the view.

"Do you mind if we sit over there?" I pointed towards the bar stools as soon as Leroy headed for the sofa seats. He paused, seemingly amused.

"You're a romantic."

I denied this at once, fixing my glasses to hide the embarrassment bubbling in my head and coming up with a reasonable excuse regardless. It was hard to tell the difference between him pointing things out and asking questions.

"Not as much as I am an intellect. Curiosity is a good—dangerous too, yes—trait to have and I'm merely trying out something I would otherwise never have had the chance to. Like observing the view of the river from a river cruise at night."

Leroy snorted, laughing. "Whatever you say. Need anything warm?" He nodded towards the drink station that apparently served cookies and local biscuit treats as sides. It was tempting but admittedly, I wasn't as shivering cold as I was before so I eventually decided against it.

Lo and behold, he had the gall to ignore me.

"Chamomile tea and a coke," he said to the staff behind the counter, who got to work at once. I stayed in my seat, glaring at him from afar. Not only did Leroy remain unfortunately unfazed, he presented his indecent finger with a smirk.

Clearly, I was shocked and confused. It being the second time he'd ever done so towards me, I could now confirm my suspicions of the gesture being deliberate and not an accidental, habitual slip. At this point, there was no telling what sort of relationship we had since Leroy didn't particularly seem to like cooking for any of his friends whom he'd flipped off but neither was I any familiar with the teenaged version of him before me now.

"That was highly unnecessary but," I accepted the cup of tea regardless, "thanks. I guess. But now can we start on your non-existent problem on page eleven of the textbook?"

He rolled his eyes, laughing shortly. "I did a couple after dinner," he said, sliding me an examination pad of workings and answers. "Can't figure out why it doesn't match the answer at the back."

"Mhm," I had my lips drawn together to prevent a laugh from escaping. Within seconds, I'd spotted his mistake. "Why don't you tell me the exact formula of the population standard deviation."

"I wrote that down didn't I," he frowned, shifting the papers towards him before tapping at some unruly chicken scrawl of his. "This one."

"Alright, then let's play spot the difference," I flipped his textbook to a page I'd marked out during our previous session together. "This is the formula, and this is the one you copied. Now—"

"Fuck," was all he had to say, groaning as he added a square to the bracket of x's and medians.

"Language, Leroy." I reminded him sternly before moving on to the next supposedly unsolvable question. "Oh, and you're aware that both the sample and population standard deviation formulas require squaring? If so, then you made the same mistake here as well and I'm sure this calculation of binomial distribution over here can't be correct so maybe you'd like to type that into your calculator again."

"Genius," he muttered under his breath, which sounded like a sarcastic remark or one of frustration. I watched him correct his answers through fogged up glasses that were an embarrassment and prevented casual tea-sipping.

Mind you, tea-sipping is a critical aspect of life and imagine the suffering us bespectacled people are put through not being able to tea-sip.

"Now that that's corrected, all you have to do is sum it and divide that by 'N' and have that square rooted," I nodded in approval, tapping the tip of my pencil on the brackets he'd managed to work out. "Also, the school doesn't seem to provide graphic calculators for sums like these, do they? There's actually a function that allows you to skip all that formula calculation as long as you plug in the right numbers."

My student paused, looking up from his work. "How do you know all this?"

I stared blankly, slightly disarmed by the look in his eyes before noticing that I'd said a little too much. "U-um... well," I averted his gaze, clearing my throat. "A lot of things happened while we're apart and... actually. I... I was enrolled into a private high school at the age of ten."

Leroy didn't seem very surprised by this. "You skipped two years of high school, then."

"After skipping second and third, fifth and sixth and seventh... yes, I did," was all I managed rather quietly, having decided to start afresh ever since I applied for culinary school. "I wasn't planning on telling you. Or anyone here."

"Why?" He shifted to search my eyes, but it was hard to meet a gaze like that. "Did something happen?"

Oh the usual, I wanted to say. How everyone tends to form an impression about children who skip grades and look a lot younger, shorter, smaller than the rest of their high school classmates and will never fit in. It sounded far too snarky and snide, which I understood wasn't the best thing to say regardless of the voice inside. Chip taught me that.

"Yes," I sighed, careful with my words. "I'm sure you know what dumbing-down means."

He cracked a smile. "Just that?"

"Well, there are other things that I..." wanted to tell him like how every high schooler had been so obsessed about romance and popularity and appearances and parties and friends while I, ten, had never been given the opportunity to make a single acquaintance in elementary school which I spent skipping grades and changing classes all the time. That I was never really treated like an equal despite having an intelligence that said otherwise and the unwarranted verbal abuse that sometimes turned physical was never part of the plan and that despite all this, I had continued to speak and interact at the level I was expected to speak at.

I mean, don't you expect me to act like a fourteen-year-old, too?

All of a sudden, I missed Iolani Tori immensely and the urge to return to my bunkbed and hide under the covers with the hardcover version of the book I'd ordered was almost too much to bear.

"I'm sorry, I need to—"

The double doors of the salon opened with a bang and we turned at once, startled by the sound. Whoever it was that entered had headed first for the staff at the drink station before noticing our presence.

"Hi, have you seen my baby royroy oh good there he is," a girl dressed in her formal school attire with four badges decorating the collar of her blazer stalked over. "I've been looking for your shitty ass all evening!"

The final year student was sweet and vulgar all at once and I was vocabularily (not a word) confused. Leroy had the most disturbed and unsound look in his eyes, and he seemed visibly displeased by the current situation. Whatever the situation was.

"Tenner..."

"Everyone's down at the kitchen and if you remember what dear Violet said about En's cute little wedding cake the other day, they're settling it with something local like now so we need judges and I'm a judge so I want you and Jean baby to come too." The girl, whom Leroy addressed as Tenner, reminded me of strangely of Si Yin and her general storm-swept, moving-tornado personality and manner of speech.

I, naturally, found myself lost and unable to catch a word she said since the primary basis of it all appeared to names that both she and Leroy were familiar with. It sounded like there was something going on downstairs in the kitchen we passed earlier on.

"I'm busy."

My companion fell back on his only form of back-up phrases he had the energy of ever coming up with. Tenner, a senior, wasn't having any of it.

"If you're busy with your cute little friend over here, maybe the both of you can—" she stopped all of a sudden, squinting in my direction. "You're that boy. White, isn't it?" Her eyes lit up at once and all her attention shifted away from Leroy and directly onto myself. "I've been bugging Royroy over here to introduce me since forever! Layla Tenner by the way. I've never seen any first year differentiate white fish like you do and I could really use your help sometime," she flashed a grin in my direction. "Thank god you still have your magic tongue."

Layla Tenner! Good god, out of all the names Emily had drilled into my head for potential interviewees, she'd naturally emphasized on the student ranked above everyone else. Tenner was the first name on the board in Roth Hall and just like Si Yin had predicted, I was able to meet her on board.

"H-hello," I stammered a greeting, extending a hand which she took. "I'm Julian White. Nice to meet you."

"Wow your hair looks even softer than it is in the pictures," she dropped an off-handed remark whilst fixing her gaze on the top of my head. "It really is like a pale blonde. So cool."

I had no idea what to say in return. "Is that so? Well, uh. Your hair, too, looks very... it reminds me of hazelnuts but in curls." Impressive display of vocabulary, Vanilla. So impressive.

"Hey, you know I came for Royroy as one of the judges but now that you're here," Tenner threw a playful wink in my direction, still holding on to the hand I'd held out. "Plus, you're way cute than he is. Frat boys get on my nerves."

"I'm sorry, but what is a frat boy?"

Leroy seemed to have had enough, getting up from his bar stool and coming between Tenner and I with a glare directed in her face. "Stop talking."

"You selfish little bitch," Tenner laughed, brushing my companion aside and, trust me, I've never seen anyone brush him aside the way she did. It was as though Leroy was completely irrelevant and simply out of the equation now that I was present. "Don't you know what it means to share?"

"U-um. No fighting, please," I managed to say, waving my hands around as though the action could do something.

Tenner cleared her throat and stepped away from Leroy, as though putting some distance between them both meant calling for a truce. "I'm sorry you had to see all that dearie. So? What do you think. Come down with us to the friendly for a quick bite?"

"You mean judge," I pointed out straightforwardly.

She laughed, nodding. "Yes yes. That."

For some reason, I had unconsciously turned to Leroy to observe his reaction to this or at least some form of clue as to how I should be responding. Although clearly displeased, I managed to understand in a single glance that he was not the one with the decision-making power at present. Tenner, on the other hand, had the most persuasive smile on her lips that made it very hard for any sane human being to refuse any request she was making.

==================

The last thing I expected to be seeing on luxurious yachts in general was a ruckus. After all, this was an elegant place of tranquillity that allowed one at peace to enjoy the river view in a relaxed, serene environment that was apart from the rowdiness of the city. Lo and behold, there were students running down the hallways of both the solarium and the upper deck of rooms, shouting and calling out the grand announcement of an event that we too, were about to participate in.

"Friendly on the kitchen deck!" "Birchwood and Chen!" "Friendly NOW! Downstairs!"

Coupled with the all-too-narrow hallways and other students emerging from their rooms, I was beginning to feel slightly claustrophobic; that, and hoping an instructor would come by and break things up or at least tell them to keep their voices down.

"Are you sure there's enough room for everyone downstairs?" I turned to Tenner with a face so stiff, I felt it crumble.

"Well there's the dining, which the kitchen overlooks since it's an open concept sort of thing," she reached over to pat my shoulder. "Come on, it'll be fine. Plus, you won't be the only one judging. You know Jean Mercier don't you? Number five? Best boy after baby En?"

I gave my list of interviewees a quick glance and confirmed the presence of Jean Mercier, a nutrition major and final year student just like Tenner was. He was under Emily's key list, which meant that she had yet to secure an interview with him and perhaps this would give me an opportunity to speak to him as well. Jittery with nerves and anticipation, I hurried to close the gap between me and Tenner up front.

"Tell me if you wanna leave," I felt a firm grip on my upper arm and turned to see Leroy holding me back, an uneasy look in his eyes.

"I take it that you'll be sitting beside me the entire time then?" I cleared my throat, glancing past the windows into the dining area that had students filling up every seat around. "You can't expect me to cross the room just to tell you something so private."

Leroy snorted, looking quite as though he was resisting the urge to flick my forehead for the third time of the day. Or was it fourth. "Or you could just admit that you want me there."

"Hmph," I turned, noticing Tenner waving us over from inside. "Another way to say it, I suppose."

*

Needless to say, Violet Birchwood was not the least bit happy when she found out that I was one of the few who would be determining the winner of her self-instigated friendly with second-rank pastry major Chen En two years older than herself. While her personal motivations for doing so remained unbeknownst to most of the room, the history between them both soon depicted a clearer picture as soon as the friendly began.

"Another fancy-ass dessert, huh? Has no one ever told you how to keep things simple?"

"I'm sure your father wouldn't agree with that, Vi," said her opponent, cracking open several strange looking fruits that appeared to have wood-like shells. "You weren't so closed to learning new things when you were younger but look at you now—brigadeiros? They're just chocolate truffles. You can't play safe if you want to win."

"You'll regret saying that when they blow your mind," Birchwood snickered, stirring what looked like cocoa powder into a huge pot. The scent of chocolate wafted across the quiet room filled with at least twenty other students, gathered to watch the two pastry majors go against each other. "God, settling this with you has taken forever."

"Uh, because you could never beat me?" Chen laughed, seemingly enjoying himself. The fruit he'd cracked open was giving off an odd odour. Tenner, restless from sitting down, had gotten up to pace between the two.

"Okay but please don't tell me you're actually going to use that stinky toe fruit," said the school's number one, frowning at the pile of strange-looking fruits stuffed into a plastic bag. "I know you just got them from the market but how are you incorporating that into your blondie?"

"It's Jatoba, Layla," Chen wagged a finger in her face, taking the pulp of the fruit (that resembled a tube of powdery fibres) and pressing it into a sift. They crumbled instantly and turned into a flour-like consistency. "Subbing half of the flour with this and the vanilla with... this."

He presented yet another local fruit that I could at once identify thanks to the guide I'd been reading all day during the small pockets of time we had. "Ice cream beans! Or Inga, I think." Birchwood's eyes had snapped towards me with a glare, but her opponent responded rather differently.

"Yeah. You know about this?" He sliced open a pod and dug out the inner cottony pulp, holding it out and offering a taste. "I'm grating it into the batter."

"It's supposed to taste like vanilla ice cream," I nodded, taking a portion of the pulp and nibbling on its end. Almost like a chewier version of cotton candy but with a juicy finish. But it's too delicate to be cooked.

I was about to put the rest of the pulp in my mouth when Leroy, seated beside me, held my wrist all of a sudden and took the remaining portion without my permission. Of course, he finished it.

"Baking this might lose a lot of its flavour because it primarily comes from its juice," I told Chen. "Maybe you could—"

"Uh uh," Jean Mercier, wide eyes and huge smile on his face, proceeded to place a finger on my lip. It all happened very quickly. And honestly, I've never had my lips touched. Ever. "No giving advice until it's over."

"He wouldn't know." Birchwood scoffed, rolling her eyes in my direction. "Such an amateur."

Everyone else in the room seemed slightly surprised by her sudden animosity directed towards me and although I myself hadn't necessarily seen it coming, I wasn't entirely taken aback by this either.

"So we have a traditional dessert made with a non-traditional ingredients and a non-traditional dessert made with local ingredients." Tenner shrugged. "You guys actually kinda get along."

*

It wasn't deliberate or in any manner biased that all three of us voted for Chen's dessert over Birchwood's. While Violet's coconut, pistachio, and pepper brigadeiros were essentially well-constructed flavours that strayed decently from the traditional ingredients, they simply weren't on par with Chen's Jatoba blondies in terms of technique and creativity. I'd given her my honest review—as I always do—and acknowledged her deserved strengths whilst also pointing out her areas of improvement. For example, incorporating heat into chocolate wasn't a bad idea but she'd chosen the wrong type of pepper to use. That, and her preparation of it (carelessly leaving the seeds in) added an unsuitable bitter aftertaste to the chocolate.

Chen's Jatoba Blondie on the other hand, had the slightest hint of vanilla and a fudgy chew that he'd derived from making his own brazil nut butter and topped off with a milk cream from the same nut. Nearly every ingredient was local and the fact that he'd only just landed in this region a couple of hours ago and had come up with such interesting recipes was nearly ingenious.

"But if you add a little tartness to it and vary the texture by grating the Inga on top of the milk cream instead of just incorporating it into the batter..." I suggested as soon as he pulled me aside and asked for more feedback. "I mean. You don't have to listen to my advice but—"

"No actually, I was thinking the same thing about the tartness. Violet had me by surprise to be honest. I wasn't expecting her to, you know. Do the thing," he laughed. "Couldn't find a tart fruit around here that would be perfect for this. Any ideas?"

I did have several. In fact, I was dying to tell him but had been holding back since I'd risk going off strangely and having him find me odd and socially inept.

"I have two. One's called the rumberry but I can't remember it's local name. It's juice is tart and sorbets have been made out of it. I've seen the flavour on the streets, and I was curious as to what it was so I'd noted it down my notebook and asked our tour guide on the way back to the institute. If you're going for something fruity however, they have a very special kind of passion fruit here and it's called the maracuya. You could pair it with things you'd normally pair with passion fruit but I heard the peel's better than the seeds. Oh, and Miss Birchwood wouldn't like it if I said this but maybe you could convey this to her: there's a fruit here called cupuazu, related to cacao, and the pulp of the fruit is supposed to taste like a mixture of chocolate and pineapple. Had she used that to substitute maybe half of her cocoa powder, she might have gotten far greater results."

I stopped there, waiting for Chen's response as the buzz of chatter inside the dining area melded with the crickets and lapping of water against the yacht. Somewhere inside, I heard my name being called.

"You're insane," he finally laughed, taking his phone out of his back pocket. "Hey, have you heard of the cross-year segment? It's always on the last day of SOY and I was wondering... I mean, you'd be great to have on our team." Chen held his phone out to me. A dial pad. "I saw your performance on the taste test too and uh, it's not like I'm confident I'll be captain this year but you'd be a waste if you're not recruited or anything."

Gingerly, I accepted the phone and stared at it. Was this all part of a dream?

"You... you want to include me in your cross-year team?" I repeated, in disbelief. He nodded. "But it's honestly... really rare to have first-years. A-and surely, there are better people. I mean I'm flattered, but I—"

A hand reached over my shoulder and in a sweeping movement, returned the phone to its owner. I turned.

"Leroy? Oh. Um. Were you..."

"Heey, man that's rude," Chen sported a surprising pout, fiddling with his phone. "I saw him first."

"I saw him eleven years ago," said Leroy pointedly. "You sure?"

I got between him and Chen, stating that I was not to be 'seen' and that I was intellectual property of myself. Which made total sense, really.

"It's late and I need to go," ended up being my final statement, upon which I'd turned to my childhood friend and given him a look. Thankfully, he got the message.

*

"You really considering his team?"

As I'd predicted, this was a topic that Leroy wouldn't simply leave untouched and forgotten. The moment we stepped out of the river cruise and onto the pier, bracing the wind, he brought it up.

I could tell from the look on his face that there was something he found reluctant about Chen recruiting me for his team and while I was, indeed, socially inept, connecting the dots for rational conclusions wasn't out of my reach. Knowing that Leroy had been somewhat subtly using me as a taster and psychologically getting me familiar with his style of cooking, I understood his concerns perfectly.

"If you knew a thing about politeness, you would know that I was declining his offer," was all I said in return, unable to hide my amusement. I'd never seen him so affected by something that didn't concern the... the time at his mother's diner.

"So you don't want to be recruited for the cross-year?" He had to ask and by this point, I was surprised he hadn't figured out what I meant.

I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him.

"No Leroy. I clearly didn't refuse the school's number two to, I don't know, join number three's team even though he hasn't outrightly asked me to just yet so I've decided to do him a favour and consider myself reserved until he finally picks me when he's captain. And mind you, it's when he's captain, not if, so he'd have to do something about that and me refusing other offers clearly doesn't mean that I have complete faith in this number three on getting that title because he's... I don't know. He's him."

There. Done. Though I didn't necessarily have all the confidence in the world to look him in the eye after such an oddly emotional outburst, I did my best. Amidst the freezing winds and the loud summer crickets and the mosquitoes probably sucking my blood, I did my best.

Leroy had paused and looked up then, the hint of a smile on his lips. "Fuck you."

Needless to say, I was gobsmacked into outer space.

"That is very rude," I had my arms folded. "I'm doing you a favour and I'd always thought that's what y—"

"I meant," he laughed, a teasing lilt in his voice. For some reason, his face seemed to be closer to mine than I thought it was. "Fuck. You."

I was frowning by this point. "I don't think I understand."

He was close. Very close and with every passing millisecond, seemed to get even closer. The rational mind reminded me of the importance of personal space and the need to take a couple of steps back but for some reason, instinct was going the other way.

Leroy's chest was approximately four inches away from mine and the reason I knew that was because I could not bring myself to look at his face any longer. Nothing in me could explain why I was letting him get this close or how I seemed to have an idea of what was going to happen but at the very same time, had a mind that was completely blank.

"I meant," he repeated, clearly smirking by now. "You—"

===================

A/N: Hi everyone! Thank you for the questions last week :) they were enjoyable to answer. I've got some ideas regarding my update schedule, which will most likely return to every alternate week (Vanilla, FS, Vanilla, FS) while I'm working here in Japan but!!

One of my most loyal readers suggested that I start up a Patreon account to put up bit by bit of the chapters of Vanilla, since every chapter is about 6-7k words and I find that sometimes, they can be split into two depending on that so that my Patreon readers can get the usual weekly updates instead of every alternate week thing. I haven't been able to do this but I might be working towards it by writing far in advance. Right now, I'm about 10k words ahead of what I'm posting so I might be setting up for this ^^

As for my usual readers here on Wattpad, you don't have to worry because the updates remain the same. It's probably only if you're that desperate to read the next chapter HAHAHAHA but this is kinda still in the making. I'll keep you guys updated on my Instagram (hisangelchip). 

Thank you for showing your support for seesaw <3 

-Cuppie, *sips matcha latte*