Dango 101

Although it was arguably against his better judgment, Dan had agreed to try to teach Andi how to actually make dango, rather than simply trying to break a counter with her mallet.

She was certainly the most… enthusiastic student he had seen, and unlike many buns whose vice was Sloth, she certainly didn’t lack for physical strength or work ethic.  It was just that…  Well…

“Andi, let’s pause, then try this one more time,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing.

“Aww, okay!  These warm ups are pretty fun.”

Dan seemed to gaze into space.

“Andi, when you’re training someone at the gym, do you give them instructions on how many umm…  What’s the word…  When you want them to do a lot of exercises in a row?”  Shibani wasn’t succeeding at getting much rest with the furious pounding of rice dough (and occasionally the countertop), so he’d settled for watching and enjoying the view of two beefy buns from the comfort of his pillow pile instead, cuddling with Andi’s impup, Wave.

“Reps?  Or like… sets?”

“What’s the difference between them?” Shibani asked.

“Oh, well a rep is each time you do a thing, and then sets are a bunch of reps.  So if you wanted to do fifty push ups, you could break it into like - it’s fifty reps but five sets of ten!”  Andi would have dropped to the ground to demonstrate, but there really wasn’t much space with the pillow pile moved in for Shibani to watch.

“Maybe it would go smoother if you thought of the strikes like that?  You wouldn’t over-exert a client, right?”

Dan gave Shibani a look - Andi could not even remotely parse what exactly his expression was, but it was at least three distinct emotions.  “That’s an idea.  Let me think…”  As he thought, he carefully scraped the remains of the last try off the table, tossing it to Wave.  It wouldn’t hurt the impup, or even change its color since they were working with raspberry dough today, and it saved him from having to get rid of the trash too early.

Wave’s form seemed to stretch and deform to take in the overworked dough, before returning to its normal shape, tail wagging.  While the dough rapidly began to be absorbed, it settled back into Shibani’s arms, lightly headbutting his hand to demand more pets.

Dan brought out another batch of dough.  “So let’s do one set of ten swings… reps, to start,” he said.

With the more familiar language, Andi was definitely more precise and listened better.  It also made it possible for Dan to stop her before she had overworked the dough, and for the first time, she got to actually work to shape it.

Dan guided her to split up the three balls of dango, then showed her how to knead them.  Andi was, as ever, far too enthusiastic, and the two balls she had kneaded were… probably overworked again, but Dan was close enough to done he just let it pass.

At last, after cooking, the balls of raspberry dango were skewered, and a sauce dripped over them.  Then, Shibani, Dan, and Andi each tried a piece.

“Well, it’s not… bad for a first attempt,” Shibani said, doing his best to be encouraging.

Andi’s mouth was too full to say anything.  The overworked raspberry dango was a tad too chewy to make talking easy.

“Mmm.”  Dan, of course, was eating the best attempt of the three dango balls - the one he had demonstrated kneading on.  It wasn’t as good as one he had handled the whole process for, of course, but it was… edible enough.

Finishing, he disappeared into the house for a bit, before returning with what looked like a printout.

Looking at it as he handed it to her, Andi missed Shibani quietly offering the rest of his dango ball to Wave, who was more than happy to consume it for him.

“These are some… recipes, for if you wish to practice more.  Since I can’t really let you use my shop often.”

“Oh, that’s such a good idea!  Thanks Dan!”  Andi couldn’t wait to practice more - working out with the mallet just wasn’t quite as fun when she wasn’t hitting something, and if a workout resulted in tasty dango, that seemed perfect to her!

“I guess…  You’re welcome…”  Dan looked at Shibani.  “Time for some rest.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll let you get to it!  Thanks again you two!”  Andi was like, 80% certain that Dan was using ‘rest’ as code for ‘sex’, so she was plenty willing to leave quickly.  She scooped up Imp from Shibani’s arms and went to leave through the front door to the shop, since it was nearest.

As the door slammed shut, she completely missed the sight of Dan sitting down and groaning into the pillow pile and Shibani patting his back as soothingly as he could.  ‘Rest’ might just mean ‘rest’, this time.