[Vanilla]

"Good evening."

He shoved the key straight up the lock in a jump. "Fucking—"

Turning made him stop and squint in the darkness in which I was standing in, at the bottom of the steps up to the back door of the ice cream parlour. Frankly speaking, I would have found his face mildly amusing had it not been for the seriousness of our circumstance and the string of tension, pulled taut between us, ready to snap.

The accurate term was ambush. Leroy had no intention to be seeing me so soon after an ugly escalation of matters in which he'd quite literally run away from, and to be confronted so soon was perhaps an underhanded but necessary manner for the issue to be resolved.

He appeared speechless, standing at the top of the steps with the keys dangling off a hooked index. The flicker in his eyes warranted some form of explanation in countering disbelief.

"I can see you're surprised," I sighed, wisps of mist escaping from behind my scarf. "'How did he know I was coming out from the back door?' Well, most stores lock their front doors after opening hours, and this being an ice cream parlour, I was certain that preparations for the next day's batch of ice cream had to be done, which meant that someone had to be in the store itself for the next hour or so even after closing and the only exit would be from the back. Judging from the timing of your shift, I deduced two possibilities. One, cleaning duty, and two, you being in charge of the ice cream base. Factoring in your personality and the way you ran off a few hours ago, I thought the chances of you opting for the latter were higher. Nevertheless, I'd eliminated all chances of not being able to see you by coming early and waiting out in the cold just in case you were the anomaly and somehow chose cleaning over making ice cream bases and would leave right after locking up the front. Though now, I see that my initial prediction had been spot on. And 'how did he know where the back door was?' Google Maps. So. With that out of the way," I paused, having provided a clear and detailed account. "How was it? Your ice cream."

His reaction, delayed and oddly tame, was to finally start descending the steps to level our eyes and then, saying nothing, removed his wine knitted scarf and added that to whatever garment that was already around my neck. I could barely speak, being wrapped up like an unwieldly dumpling, and struggled to make myself heard in a flurry of blushing embarrassment.

"I—Leroy! I-if this is your way of asking whether or not I'm cold from standing out here, it does not work. Take back your scarf. I don't need it."

This idiot had the nerve to roll his eyes before unwrapping the piece of clothing and relieving me of my dumpling-ness. In return, I was able to reach into my tote bag and produce single-use hand warmers which I then slipped into his pockets.

"I had these prepared. They must make a lot of money from producing these things, especially since they practically run out of steam every twenty minutes or so. I've used five in the past hour sticking them all over the insides of my coat. Not including the ones in my pockets."

He laughed, and the sound itself made it seem like he was nearing the end of a three-day triathlon. Which probably did not exist.

I met his gaze and it was a small, flickering flame. Constantly. Struggling against the wind. The very tug on his lips made for a smile that was sad and at no point in my knowing of Leroy had I ever identified, in a single glance, that fearfully simple emotion. He'd been upset, disappointed and at times aggrieved but sad was... sad was a slow burning flame. Dying.

"It was bland," he said eventually.

And I registered this at my own pace, unconsciously huddling a little closer for warmth. Breathing in. "When you came over for thanksgiving and had Chip's pumpkin pie. Was that bland too?"

"Not as much," he admitted. We drew closer towards a streetlamp, away from the shadows directly outside the back door of the ice cream parlour, and stood under the orange beam out in the January bite. "It's hard to compare. They have different flavour profiles, you know that. But the pie... I remember it was sweet, at least. Now..."

"Alright." I nodded, pleasantly surprised by the direction he was going in and hoping that he'd continue down the rest of my mental flow chart after giving answers to the primary question I had. "So we've established that this is a gradual thing. Okay. And this um, lack of sensitivity... it has only applied to the tasting of sweetness? Of sweet things?"

"Don't know," he frowned. Honest. "I got through the three rounds plus all the bonus ones, so. And we did okay back in SOY."

"But back then... well, I know you weren't necessarily in charge of the dessert, that was Rosi, but when you tasted it..."

"It was fine."

"Exactly," I emphasized, glad that we'd arrived at another form of evidence to support the gradual change. The more justification we had for a premise, the closer we were to having a valid, sound conclusion. This was the hard part.

"And do you... I mean, are you sure you haven't been... well, you do know that, between us, it is completely acceptable for you to tell me anything, right? Anything at all. The chemotherapy drug bleomycin is an antitumor antibiotic that might result in a lack of—"

"I don't have cancer."

"Okay thank god." I'd breathed in relief while he snorted, laughing at my incredible overthinking skills with a shake of his head. "Well if you were on such medication yourself, the doctor would have warned you about it and you couldn't have been so oblivious or surprised about this whole thing either. Oh stop laughing. You know I had to confirm. I mean, I'd prefer for us to spend the rest of our lives together in the living world."

His laugh subsided and left traces of a genuine smile on his lips. It softened his eyes and it was then that I'd realized we'd huddled a lot closer than before. Then it was leaning in and and and embracing, for want of a better word; a much-needed relief from the hours we'd spent apart brooding over a matter of such weight.

"Think it's genetic," he said into my hair, slightly above my ear. "Annie was losing hers too. I might end up losing it all."

I looked up at him. Or more precisely, at his jawline since that was all I could see in our current position.

"Sorry to burst your bubble Leroy, but what you're experiencing is most likely hypogeusia and the percentage of it being genetic is incredibly low beyond belief. Additionally, your mother losing her sense of taste, which I presume is one of the factors that had her sell the diner, could have been due to the medication she was taking since, as you mentioned some time ago, she was in poor health. We don't know if all your taste receptors are going to be affected until we consult an expert but until then, the only thing we're certain about is that your ability to taste sweet things have been, well... have diminished."

The idiot did not take this lying down. "Pretty sure it's genetic," he insisted, and I could practically hear the frown in his voice. "Says I'm likely going to end up losing all five basic tastes too."

"Says?" I'd blinked in response, stepping slightly out of the hug. "Says who?"

"Google."

I stared up at him, calmly waiting for more. "Alright." I nodded. "And did you check your sources?"

This made him pause. "What's that."

"Well, it's where the knowledge or information you attain stems from. Most of information on the net is secondary information, made easy to digest relative to proper scientific research that they either cite or refer to, so we should always check their sources. Sometimes, they source secondary information, which makes them tertiary, and so on so forth. Information is lost. Misinterpreted, paraphrased to no end. I refer to primary sources—research papers written by proper nutritionists, doctors and researchers. And I will have you know that hypogeusia refers to diminished sensitivity to detect a specific taste quality or class of compounds.

"While, admittedly, the study of clinical abnormalities in taste perception in pediatric populations has received little scientific attention, in part because, the clinical assessment of taste is not well developed, most information regarding your symptoms point towards hypogeusia. Most importantly, distortions of normal gustatory perception may occur with isolated injury to any one of your major nerve pathways even when you, the patient, do not recognize the problem. Which is precisely your issue.

"Of course, there will be a need for psychophysical taste and smell testing for proper diagnosis because gustatory dysfunction can possibly signify a number of systemic or neurological disorders. And we don't know for sure if it is merely a symptom of a bigger issue or if this could possibly lead to much distress."

I paused to check for understanding. Which was what I'd learnt to do over the years; allow others some time to digest the uncontrollably large amount of information I tend to dish out in a short span of time. Information per second was the term.

My companion's processing face was, as usual, unfairly attractive regardless and I was forced to stare at it for the next couple of seconds until he was done, and his attention had returned. He seemed moderately surprised.

"How long did you..."

"You can tell how many research papers I have gone through for the past couple of hours you were gone," I sniffled, noting the onset of a runny nose. "It's past ten o'clock in the evening and I haven't had an ounce of rest at the rate my heart is going. It doesn't help that I haven't the greatest morning or afternoon either and today has just been a complete mess and all I had been hoping for was a peaceful, quiet evening preferably without your absence and clearly, it has been going nowhere.

"What I'm trying to say is that I'd very much like for us to head home," I summarized. "And cuddle. If that is alright with you."

The pause that ensued had been, oddly enough, the perfect moment for a gentle, quiet cloaking of the land. Snow started to fall in whispers and I sneezed, breaking the silence. This time, Leroy made no attempt to bother about the protests I had voiced while he, again, removed his scarf and once again, transformed me into a dumpling.

"Love you too."

Under the fabric, I was cooked to no end in juices of embarrassment.

*

It was in our respective sleepwear that we gathered around the coffee table with a pot of instant ramen and a serving bowl each, expertly enjoying a piping hot supper at eleven in the evening over further conversation and pooling of information or findings that would help the two of us form a general, preliminary assessment of Leroy's condition.

"You could have the hospital refer you to a specialist as soon as possible. What about tomorrow, when you give your mother a call?"

"I don't want her to worry. She's got enough on her hands," he said, serving himself a huge portion of springy noodles and spicy soup. "I'll look for numbers up on the internet."

"Well, I've already done that." Pulling up a memo note saved on my phone, I slid it across the table. "Reliable experts, doctors and specialists with at least a hundred or so positive reviews. Depending on what help it is you are seeking, that is. I... understand that you and your father... well. The situation unfortunately requires the necessary presence of an adult."

He listened as I explained the importance of having someone else older to rely on, preferably for financial stability which in his case, he desperately needed. A mere consultation could cost him hundreds in the case of a specialist. He needed an adult to be there for him at every turn of the way, helping him digest the loads of information he was probably going to receive and, most importantly, finding out about the likelihood of there being a cure.

"He's not the kind of guy," was all Leroy said in return and quite frankly, it shocked me.

Indeed, he hadn't made a single mention about how exactly he'd spoken to his father several days ago while his mother was in emergency and so to an outsider like myself, their relationship seemed murky and vague.

"I'll think about it. But these contacts," he scrolled through the names, clinics, email addresses and phone numbers accompanied with additional information like price points and expertise in bullet points. "They help a lot. Don't think anyone's ever... done something like that. For me. Know what I need without asking and actually being able to do it."

I paused with a chopstick of noodles midway between the bowl and my lips. "Well, you aren't the easiest of human beings to read either, you know. I can hardly tell what you're thinking, sometimes. And I'm sure your mother wouldn't like it if you were hiding such an important issue from her... though I suppose I'm... I suppose I would like to, perhaps, become accustomed to knowing what you need or... knowing you. At the very least, I would like to be someone you can rely on in times like these. When you feel like you have no one else."

He laughed quietly. "You are."

I had steam from the noodles fogging up my glasses for a moment of sheer embarrassment before registering his casual romanticism he himself did not seem to notice, merely continuing to slurp the noodles in his bowl without a care for the struggles of the bespectacled beans of the world.

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

We had spent so much of the previous evening thinking of logical explanations for Leroy's gradual loss of sweet sensitivity that I, once again, hadn't a single window of opportunity to be thinking of troubles of my own. The idiot and I were mapping out a brief history of anything sweet he could recall having over the past couple of months all the way back to the summer holidays before the start of school, considering the involvement of psychology that may have very well played a part in his current state and had ended up sleeping at two in the morning without being quite able to identify a concrete independent variable.

Needless to say, Leroy and I were so mentally exhausted by the end of the day that I'd nearly forgotten about worries of my own and had seemingly brushed them aside as petty in comparison to every single problem my companion was facing.

In fact, by the very next morning, I had woken up to yet another wave of anxiety after realizing that Chef Marseille and the team had, along with Keith, decided to go along with Keith's suggested publishing time of 9AM, mere thirty minutes after I'd brushed my teeth and checked my messages.

Leroy had the habit of laying in bed even after he was awake either in an attempt to go back to sleep or simply because this was not a day he was willing to start and I'd left him there to, um, burn some toast and overcook scrambled eggs because high and low heat was the vaguest concept I'd ever come across unless I somehow had a stove that presented everything in accurate numbers (measurements of thermal units). Hovering a hand above a pan was, to me, the silliest way to gauge heat levels but Leroy was the kind of chef that would do that and go 'yeah its ready' and I'd never be able to understand such miraculous phenomena.

I'd excused myself to speak to Keith on the phone, who had the article on scheduled publishing and every other medium of publicity on the same mode. Comments were turned off for the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram publicity and the Chronicle's site itself in which the article would be published had all remarks and comments filtered for approval.

I made up an excuse to return to school and Leroy had offered to send me to the station which, of course, I had declined and encouraged him to, instead, start making the necessary calls to his mother, the hospital, and some contacts on the list I provided him last evening for a referral as soon as possible. Tomorrow was the day of the final bonus round and though despite the whole conspiracy with Chef Pierre and Headmaster Birchwood going on, one could never be sure if the interschool would even continue in the first place, I needed to at least ensure that Leroy wasn't going to be left behind in the mess.

At exactly 9AM, the article was published and I had been on my way past Anton plaza to Roth Hall when the private messages starting flooding in on social media. Of course, I had been afraid to even look at them and had thought of deactivating my accounts and temporarily disabling access to my blog but I soon realized that... well, some people were coming forward with their experiences of prejudice and injustice both in the current interschool and previous ones as well. Especially among those who'd gotten eliminated earlier on in the competition.

I wasn't sure if Leroy was an active reader of the Chronicle (as much as he liked to claim that he'd read anything I write) or if he was on social media often enough to be knowing what was trending or being shared among his peers on their feed. Either way, he'd texted me about lunch, even providing a picture of whatever it was he made in my apartment and consequently, the dish I was missing out on, but nothing about the article. So I assumed he hadn't read or seen anything related to foul play.

"Don't pick that up." Chef Marseille had received me as soon as I was in the building and she saw me reaching for my vibrating phone. The caller ID was unknown. "Do not speak to anyone. They might be related to the headmaster. Or Pierre. You don't want to be giving away information before the lawsuit... yes, you are very smart and extremely intelligent, but you are also highly defenseless about some things in your pursuit of truth and people could easily use that against you, so. But good job on the article. It was... more objective than I'd imagined it to be. Just the mere presentation of facts but done so skillfully. I don't know what you're doing here in culinary school when you should be a lawyer."

I'd stopped short, thanking her before quietly slipping my phone back into my tote bag and then following her into a room that had Keith, Violet, Layla Tenner, Chef Lindy and even Chef Allan in it, with documents all over the conference table and laptops open. Some of them were on phone calls. Out of nowhere, a superior force struck me square in the chest and I was soon able to register it as Si Yin.

"Oh my god you actually did it you are so smart but so stupid because I don't understand how you're brave enough to do this and oh my god people are actually coming forward and Layla might?? Get a chance??? To come back to school???" I'd hugged her back while she spewed words into my shoulder. "They're trying to negotiate for settlement outside of court so so so part of the deal we're like thinking of offering is that Layla gets to compete in the interschool??? Replace someone?? I don't know but like I think we're getting somewhere and it's so cool how you did it."

I could see Violet pacing the room while Si Yin continued to crush me in her arms, glancing over occasionally. Keith was trying to speak to her but she did not seem to be listening. Chef Marseille was only able to provide me with details on my store keeping duties after Si Yin had filled me in on what had happened.

Apparently, they were receiving good publicity on the article because the previous winner of the interschool from CSS had re-tweeted it and added her take on the entire thing. Headmaster Birchwood had only just made a call to his lawyer and Chef Lindy was the first one to know. Chef Pierre was the only one who had gone completely bonkers about the situation and threatened to sue me, the writer, for defamation. And everyone else behind it.

Still, nothing was a match for Si Yin's um, apparent wealth and connections. Or her family, to be precise. So either way, I had on my side three well-known professionals apart from the fact that Chef Marseille had promised to ensure that I was not going to be implicated in any form of malicious intent since technically, I had none.

"These are the instructions for the store keeping. As long as you do them before ten o'clock in the evening, should be fine. But make sure they have your records of your student pass going into the inventory and whatnot, so we can prove that you're part of the team as a logistics member. This is the list of ingredients you'll be checking for. That aside... well done. We'll take over from here on out."

I stayed for a little while longer until the afternoon was over, running through stories from past and current participants of the W-interschool and their words that could potentially discredit the entire system. Needless to say, they were unexpectedly encouraging in light of the wholly precarious situation and the risk I'd taken. At the very least, there was a certain extent of truth beyond our own experience. And while Violet was most certainly conflicted about this all, she'd thanked me.

"It's not like I'm surprised or anything. I knew you were a nerd from the beginning." Yes, that was her thanking me.

Layla Tenner had, of course, been the most emotional one. It was weeks and months of bottling it all in, possibly being the scapegoat of several instances including having placed last in the cross-year segment and being shamed by most of the school for 'quitting' at her worst.

"How are you and Royroy doing, by the way? Last I heard, you guys were obviously hooking up," she'd laughed amidst tears and I had turned to Si Yin, who had pretended not to see, hear, or notice our existence. "I... thought I'd never get to do what I love again, you know. I let everyone down. Like, the team. And poor baby En." I had to pause to register that she had been referring to Chen. "You barely even know me... and you're putting yourself out there. I just really wanted to say thanks."

I told her that it had nothing to do with taking sides or, well, doing something for someone I necessarily 'knew' since ultimately, journalism was about the truth and nothing more or less. She'd smiled and told me that this was certainly not the case for most of the world, and that sometimes, people simply preferred an entertaining lie.

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

A/N: So I actually really wanted to leave this at a cliffhanger by writing a bit more and then ending it off at yet another interesting unfolding of events but LOL I FIGURED THAT'S ENOUGH HEART ATTACKS FOR YOU POOR BEANS so lol I'll just have to put it off till next week ahhhh scrumptious, delicious escalation of events are just my type of climax. 

As you all know me very well, an Intentions chapter will be up in about two days because, as I always do, explaining the significance of certain symbols and writing choices is always important in the understanding of the story as a whole and this is where most of you will be going 'omg I was right about this' or 'oh so that was what it meant' or 'i didn't notice this from the start but now that I read it again...' that kind of thing! 

So yes, that will come in the next two days because, I mean, I obviously made the major decision of giving Leroy what he has and clearly this is super important to the rest of the story's events. 

I hope the explanation of hypogeusia didn't scare you or anything, but they are all scientifically backed and it does exist :') I did my everything to research when the idea came to me. I'll explain in the Intentions chapter. I'll see you very soon~

-Cuppie.