If At First You Don’t Succeed…

As one bun watched the other, the air was oddly still. Dan brought the food to his mouth, took a bite… and chewed.

“… so?” Dagasho leaned in, studying Dan’s thoughtful expression.
“Mmm… popping candy? Dagasho, old man… you’ve surprised me. That’s not bad, I guess.”
“YEAAAAAAH BABY! FINALLY!” Quickly Sho turned away and threw his fists into the air, pumping air for a solid three seconds before spinning around on his heels to re-face Dan. “YA CAN’T TELL ME I AIN’T A GOOD COOK NO MORE!”
“Both you and I know I can, old man. But…” Dan wiggled the dango stick in Sho’s direction, “I do have to admit you can make at least one thing.”
“GOOD ENOUGH!”

“And so…” Dan leaned below the counter, causing Dagasho to pause his cheers for just a moment.
“Wait, there’s more?”
“Of course there’s more, what do you think I am?! Last time it was dango, THIS time we’re tackling mochi.” With an air of confidence, Dan tossed yet another tightly-bound notebook onto the desk for Sho to gawk at.
“Mochi? But haven’t we done that before? Y’know, pound and flip or something.”
“Gaah, just play along alright?! This is different—we’ve made mochi with basic flavors once or twice before, but THESE—” Dan pointed at the book, “—are my special seasonal mochi recipes. Lesse here…”

Dan popped open the notebook with one hand and wandered over to a shelf full of ingredients; he let his hands obviously trail along the ingredients (to keep Sho’s straying eyes on him, of course) before he stopped on a bottle of… edible glitter? With a wicked grin on his face, Dan turned around—bottle in hand—as he pointed at the mochi-tsuki mortar and hammers in the back.
“Ya think we can get through a round of making Glittery Mochi without you hitting my hands this time?”
“Are ya STILL on that? It was only a couple times, I swear — gah! Let me at that hammer ya spring onion, I’ll show ya how it’s done!” And with an annoyed—or rather, competitive—huff, Dagasho made a beeline for one of the hammers as Sho prepared the extra ingredients.

The process itself wasn’t all that different from the last couple of times Dan and Sho worked together on a batch… which happened surprisingly more often than one would think around the holidays, so it wasn’t hard for Dagasho to retain the little ins and outs of the different seasonal mochi flavors that Dan barked at him. Of course, all of this was under the pretense of “competition” between these two pride buns… so the both of them took this very seriously. With bated breath, careful timing, and after many, MANY attempts at trying to make a perfectly circular mochi shape without the use of a machine… the co-made batch of Glittery Mochi came into existence with minimal problems.

“Yep, after all that… heheh, I think I did a pretty bang-up job this time around! I didn’t hit yer hand once!” As the two buns sat over their sparkly creation, Sho sniffed with confidence… Dan, not so much.
“I say it’s still a little on the lumpy side… but I guess it’s not bad, considering where you started.” Dan mumbled something that ALMOST sounded like ‘good job’ — you’d need to rob this bun blind to get him to say a proper iota of praise to this self-centered old man.
“… ehhhh~? What was that, Danny boy? Wanna speak up?” Sho gave a teasing poke to Dan’s cheek and he perked up to respond, when suddenly—

SWOOP!

A wild chirop—obviously drawn in by the smell of mochi—dive bombed the both of them, stealing their Glittery Mochi from right under their noses.

“HEY!” Dan attempted to make a swipe at the imp, but it was too fast and evaded his slow attack.
“ACK! THE MOCHI!” With an exasperated cry, Dagasho also made a swipe… but then the two buns paused.

They watched the imp poke curiously at the mochi… and it almost seemed to attempt to try a bite. “Attempt”… because a piece of the mochi vanished, and then reappeared off to the side with a little cough from the chirop before it flew off into the distance.

“I… I… DAN! WHAT THE FUCK?” Dagasho’s cry turned from exasperation to one of anguish as he simply motioned in the chirop’s direction… Dan had to do his best to hold in his laughter, only barely succeeding.

Even if the technique of these two buns was spot on… it seems like even an imp could tell that the mochi that Sho made was a little… lackluster. Better luck next time!