TOKO POV

We began walking again, but we don't speak much as it's kind of awkward now.. But Komaru broke the silence, 

"Uhm.. Why do you.. You know.." I realized what she was suggesting, and replied with,

"It's.. It's complicated, I-I don't want to talk about it.." I say nervously.

"Alrighty then, I understand. My brother used to cut too, but he's all good now."

"Oh," I said, slightly shocked. "I'm glad your brother is doing well."

"Yeah, he's actually super cool. I know he'll love you, and I think you'll like him too!"

I blush a little, "Yeah, hopefully. I'm sure he's nice.."

Once we reach her house, Komaru busts open the door and greets her brother by yelling-

"I'M HOOOOME!!" which was followed by fast stomping on the stairs, with what was, I assume, her brother running down the stairs.

"Hello Komaru! And who is this?" He greets with an oddly similar smile Komaru gave me in the school garden earlier.

"Oh, yeah, this is Toko, a new friend of mine. C'mon Toko!!"

She grabs my hand, and starts speed walking down the hall.

"W-where are we going?" she asks.

"The kitchen, silly!"

I decided not to respond, and look at the hallway we're walking through. We aren't walking very fast, so I do have a chance to look around a little. I see pictures of her and her brother on the wall, them as little kids, and  them growing up, up until more recent pictures. Them at theme parks, playing with toys, and many pictures of them smiling together. They seem like very happy and considerate people.

We arrive in the kitchen, and I was a little surprised to see how big it is.

"We're here! What do you think?! I made Makoto help me clean it this morning so that you could come over!" Hm. So Makoto is her brother's name.

"Really..?" I say, confused. "Why would you go through all of that effort to make your house nice for someone like me..?"

"Well, I didn't want my kitchen to look disgusting when you came over."

Fair point.

"Well anyway, let's get baking! Here, put your hair up in a ponytail or something, so it won't get in the way while we bake." She says thoughtfully, while handing me a hair tie, and then putting her own hair in a low ponytail. Due to her short hair, her ponytail was more of a short stub on the back of her head and less of a ponytail.

I did as she instructed, and put my hair up into a messy ponytail, and then turned to look at her. She stared at me in awe and squeaked-

"OMGOMGOMGOMG YOU LOOK SO CUTE IN A PONYTAIL! EEEEK!" She said, stomping in place happily, then grabbing my hands and jumping. I blush a hard red, and look the other way.

"T-thanks.." I mumble.

"Well anyway, let's start, shall we?" She says, beaming.

"Of course."

She hands me an apron and puts one on herself, but then she pauses and says,

"You know what, we should probably change out of our uniforms first." She then takes off her apron, hinting I shouldn't put mine on, so I place it on the counter.

She grabs my hand again, and starts dragging me up the stairs. We walk down the hall, and arrive at her room. She opens the door, revealing a nicely decorated, and tidy room. It gives off a relaxing vibe, and it's a warm, diluted, desaturated orange color. She turns around and to look at me. 

"Here it is, what do you think?!" She says excitedly.

Then the smell hits me. I smell a nice... Febreeze-like smell. It smells refreshing, and Hawaiian-ish. 

"It's very calming, I like it." I say, smiling once more.

She starts walking over to the closet, and says, "I'm glad you do, because I'm forcing you to stay the night!!" I had no objections, so I simply followed her over to the closet. She opens her closet and waves her hands enthusiastically around it, implying I should pick out something from the hangers. I look at her as a sort of consent to search for clothing, and she nods at me. I look back to the racks, and start searching. I end up wearing a pair of worn shorts, with an oversized T-shirt. Komaru wore basically the same thing, except that our shirts were different. My shirt had a logo of some sort, and it was gray. Her shirt was white with blue-ish green stripes, and her shirt was hanging off her right shoulder a little bit, revealing a blue strap beneath.

Once we're all changed up, we head back down to the kitchen, and put on our aprons.

"So.. what do you plan on baking..?" I ask.

"Cookies of course, it's the most cliche thing we could cook!" She giggled.

"Yeah that's true.." I said, blushing at her giggle a little bit.

Komaru heads over to the fridge, and pulls out some butter, eggs, and milk, then walks over to the cabinet and grabs sugar, flour, vanilla flavoring, and chocolate chips. She walks over to a different cabinet, and pulls out a mixer, a measuring cup, and a couple glass bowls. She brings all of this to the counter, and then starts pouring the flour into a measuring cup. We start adding all of the dry ingredients together, then adding the wet ones to it. We put it all in the mixer, but Komaru had put it on the fastest setting, resulting in the cookie dough spurting out everywhere. We stared at each other in shock for a few seconds but then started giggling a little. That giggling turned into an entire laughing fit. After about 30 seconds of us cracking up, Komaru's brother came running down the stairs, claiming he had heard screaming. We continued laughing, but even harder at the fact her brother thought something bad had happened, and thought we were screaming because of how loud we were laughing. After about five minutes, we finally stop laughing, and go back to cooking. We put the cookies in the oven, and then we talked for a little bit while the cookies were baking. Once the timer went off, we took them out of the oven, and called Makoto downstairs to come eat them with us.

"Oh wow, Komaru you did an amazing job on these, I think these are the best batch of cookies you've ever made." Makoto commented. "Yeah I have to agree, these cookies are probably the best cookies I've had in awhile. I thought Walmart cookies were the best, but I guess I was wrong about that." I chuckled. After we had eaten all of the cookies, Makoto went to his room, and I followed Komaru into hers.

When we entered the room, we changed our shirts due to them being covered with flour and cookie dough, and sat on the bed. We talked about school work for a little while, but then she paused and looked at me for a moment. I sat there, and looked at her back. She gently placed her hand under the left side of my jaw, then wiped cookie dough off of my face, and popped her thumb into her mouth with a satisfied hum. I froze, and my face felt hot. Komaru realized what she did, and her face proceeded to heat up.

"..."

"..."

"I-I AM SO SO SORRY I SHOULDN'T HAV-"

But I interrupted her by placing my hand under her jaw, then rubbing cookie dough off of her face, and putting my thumb in my mouth with a sincere smile. We smiled at each other for a few seconds, then fell into a comfortable silence. We both took out our phones, and did whatever. I realized Komaru was texting someone, but I didn't really care who it was, or what they were talking about. I opened my phone, and went into my contacts. I changed the "unknown" person who had texted me to Komaru, with a star emoji next to her name, just for fun.

KOMARU POV

I see Toko put a star emoji next to my name, and I ponder within my thoughts. I wonder if she likes me back..? There is a possibility, but I feel like that would be moving too fast, after all, we only now became officially friends. I had talked to her for a very long time, but we were never really close, we were usually just go-to partners for projects and such. I guess I'll just have to wait a little while...

We end up playing never have I ever, and telling stories about our past. But once we were all burnt out on stories, we fell into silence again. I looked out of my window to see that it was dark outside. No clouds were to be seen in the sky, and little twinkly lights were blossoming out of the dark surface. The moon was half full, and I could see two people holding hands in it. But then suddenly, I heard a weird clunking noise coming from the vents. Then I realized no air was coming out. "Oh boy.. Our heater went out." I mumbled to myself. "Hold on Toko, I'll be right back. I got up off my bed and walked into the hall, down to Mako's room. I opened the door. "Hey Mako, the heater-" But then i realized he was already asleep. "I'll just tell him tomorrow I guess." I thought to myself. I closed the door and headed over to my room once more. I got back into my bed.

"Hey toko?"

"Hm?"

"The heater just gave out.."

"Oh, ok. I don't mind the cold."

"Well I'm already freezing.." I said, shivering.

 "Oh, is it possible to get more blankets from Makoto?"

"Erm.. he's asleep," I said. I then continued to mumble,

"D-do you mind if I cuddle with y-you..?"

TOKO POV

Komaru mumbled something, and then her face went red.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch what you said.. Can you repeat that please?"

Komaru's face turned to a deeper shade of red, and then she asked in a barely an almost impossible to hear whisper-

"C-can we cuddle.. I-I'm really cold.." She then looked away.

My face heated up, and I replied,

"S-sure."

Komaru almost immediately grabbed me, and snuggled with me. She was very warm and soft, she reminded me of a puppy or kitten almost. I will admit, it felt very nice. I thought about what I was feeling as I started to get a bit sleepy.

"Why do I feel like this?" I thought to myself as I felt my eyes get heavy. "Why do I enjoy this so much? No, we're just friends right? This isn't that weird.."I tried to push these weird feelings aside, as I knew exactly what they were. "I'm not falling for anyone ever again..." Was my final thought before I drifted off to dreamland.