Milk Mochi

Astro managed to only mildly stumble his way through the entrance of Dan’s Dango, righting himself just as he saw Dan reaching out to catch him, but drawing his arm back as Astro stopped himself from crashing face-first into the floor.

“Dan! Buddy! How’s your day been?”

“It’s been well. You sound more excited than usual”

“Well, my favourite confectioner invited me over, that’s you by the way, and it took me only an hour to get here! Without injuries! And Meteor only destroyed one sock in the past month, and I didn’t drop anything on my last shift, and-”

Dan took Astro’s rambling in stride, only gesturing for the multi-coloured bun to follow him to the workshop as he listened to Astro’s achievements of the week, such as only spilling one drink at work, noticing he took a wrong turn before he got down the street, properly settling his uniqor into living at home as he slowly got the number of deceased socks down to an acceptable one a week- apparently the anxious imp just had a taste for socks, so he’d just stocked up on ones he doesn’t particularly care for since it’s not like he couldn’t afford some extra packs of socks-

He was focused enough on recounting how his past couple days had gone that he barely registered Dan gently guiding him to a sitting position and handing him a mortar of steamed rice, Astro just starting to pound the rice without pausing the stream of words leaving his mouth, only stopping a couple minutes later as he finally needed to draw in air, setting down the mortar and pestle as he refilled his lungs.

Dan patted him on the back. “It’s good that your week went well”

Taking in one more deep breath of spicy burrowgatory air, Astro gave a big smile. “Thanks! It’s been great! So, how much longer am I meant to be beating this?”

“Pounding. Three minutes”

“Alrighty!” It was a simple enough task, with Astro ending up with a cohesive mass of sticky rice dough by the end.

“What flavour do you want”

“Milk mochi would be nice to have, I’ve been weirdly craving it lately, although I haven’t actually had it since I was just an itty bitty little bun under the care of my demon, y’know he used to make the mochi himself, I thought he was the coolest being to ever exist when he let me eat like an entire ten of them in one day, in bed as well-”

Dan just gave a quiet grunt in response to Astro’s newest tirade of words, waving them over to the table in the workshop to mix food colouring into the dough, turning it from the basic off-white of glutinous rice to the appealing soft blue shade of the usual milk mochi he stocks before quietly guiding Astro on how to shape and roll the dough around the filling, which had been frozen to make it possible to actually wrap the rice around, as having it in a liquid state during the process would just make a mess, whether it were an expert or novice handling it.

Astro had been practising rolling dango into perfectly round balls after the last lesson he’d had with Dan, and found that the mochi wasn’t much different besides being larger, even if it also became more of a roundish mound rather than a perfect sphere- that’s what they were meant to look like! Probably. Astro had actually managed to forget at that moment as a sudden surge of anxiety made him doubt in his ability to accurately recall how mochi was supposed to be shaped, but then he remembered that if Dan thought he was making some sort of horrendous slight against the art of shaping rice dough he would’ve already said so, so even if whatever he’d done wasn’t perfect, it couldn’t be that bad.

Looking up to see if he had the expert’s approval of his finished mochi, Dan stared at the treats sitting on the floured table for a full minute before giving a satisfied nod and taking the filled dough to set it under a towel, to wait until the filling had thawed for an ideal texture to bite into.

The two took the time waiting for that to chat more, with Astro doing most of the talking as he stocked up on sticks of dango to take back to his burrow, mostly picking up the black sesame flavour that he had found to be Meteor’s favourite, even if Astro’s personal preference was the sweeter taste of the peach dango, since he wasn’t a large fan of the texture the seeds stuck into the grey dough gave. He wasn’t going to question his imp’s tastes in actual food though, as the pile of holey socks in the corner of his room pointed towards the imp’s odd inclinations well enough.

It didn’t take too long for the mochi to thaw, and as Astro took a bite of the treat he knew it was completely worth showing up to the workshop that day- it wasn’t quite as amazing as he remembered it being as a child, but the nostalgia of the mild flavouring had him finishing it off quickly. Dan handing over a copy of his recipe book officially had him deciding that week was the best he’d had ever, hugging the grumpy-looking bun before making his way back home.