Aru Shah Oneshots

Love and Cookies | PART 1

Hira walked into the restaurant and up to the counter texting furiously on her phone. 

"Um, hi, can I meet with your manager? I'm here for a scheduled meeting," The person at the counter looked up. 

"Oh yeah, sure. I'm Luis, by the way," The guy grinned, and Hira cast away her phone," Follow me."

He lead her to the back, past the kitchen, and started up the stairs, Hira following close behind. 

"Um, Ma'am, we have someone here for you!" Luis called out. 

"Give us a few!" A woman's voice called out and Luis frowned. 

"She must be yelling at someone. Do you want me to wait with you...?"

"Ah, no, it's fine, I'll wait until they leave," Hira waved him away with a charming smile and Luis hesitated for a moment, before sighing and leaving her alone. Hira leaned against the wall, ignoring the constant buzzing of her phone. She was done with that relationship and back to living at her sister's house. Great. 

"-I need you to speed up your work, Rao. I know you're a great chef, but we're a high-quality restaurant. We can't just go around losing expensive customers like that because of waiting time. OK?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"All right. I don't want to see it happen again." 

Footsteps grew louder and Hira squeaked, pressing herself against the wall and darting her eyes away. No way was she getting caught for eavesdropping now. 

A guy? No a girl? Hira couldn't even tell the difference. Let's say just a person dressed in professional white chef clothes stepped out. Their hair was a fluffy mess, parted in the middle with something like side bangs. Faint muscles etched into the person's figure, but the facial features were still like a girl's, with small lips and narrowed eyes. Overall, it was Hira's Pinterest feed in one, an alluring aesthetic mess. 

The person almost slightly jumped when they saw Hira, a look of alarm rising on their face. Their eyes met with hers for a moment, a calming honey-like color, giving off an aura of that of a bear. Hira's heart tugged, skipping a moment until the clattering from downstairs was all she could hear again. 

Another woman, with manicured nails and prime white hair in a sharp blazer looked out, her fake eyelashes long and defining her stormy grey eyes. 

"Hira! Come in, darling," This person was entirely different from the "Ma'am" that Hira had heard about so far. The cook walked away without looking back, but Hira could see the beads of sweat that dripped down their neck still. Must've been that scary. 

"I'm Uloopi, but you can call me Ms. U," Ms. U sat her down on the chair, "I'm so glad you've chosen our restaurant for your next review. I do hope you understand how important this is for us." 

Hira smiled, "Yes! I'm very excited to try out your food. But I do want to get this straight, I don't want any other families or customers being driven away for the time that I will be here. So please let other customers come."

Ms. U smiled, "We would've never thought of doing so. But we do have some rules that we do need to assert before your filming. Will you be bringing any friends along?"

Hira nodded.

"All right, please pass this on to them. First of all..."

---

Brynne tucked the last of her clothes away, the scent of the restaurant all gone. 

But lying in bed, one last thing was etched on her mind. 

That girl. 

Brynne had seen her somewhere before. 

Brynne's phone started ringing, a sudden startle to the peace and quiet of Brynne's thinking realm. 

"'Sup Bee. How's the chef life?" 

"Hey, Aiden." 

"You sound tired. What's going on?" His tone changed immediately into worry and Brynne hesitated for a moment. Should she tell her best friend about her worthless life problems or talk about something more interesting? Probably the latter. 

"Nah, I'm not tired. Just worn out from the amazing life of a high-quality chef," She joked, and Aiden let out the breath he had seemed to be holding. 

"Good, good. 'Cuuz Aru and I are coming back to town and we needed someone to drive us back to my house."

"Oh. The Italy trip's over?" Brynne asked. 

"Gelato and everything. Aru's still not over the fact that Italy isn't France," Aiden chuckled. 

Brynne laughed, "The dating life."

"Speaking of dating. Find anyone?" His tone was almost teasing, and Brynne almost blushed at the thought of the girl from earlier. She was still bugging her, almost in a way as teasing as Aiden's tone, but Brynne brought herself to not telling him about until later. It was probably just a spawn of the moment thing anyway. 

"Excuse me? No. I'm way too obsessed with work and everything, I don't have time for a boyfriend. Or girlfriend." 

"Hey, just curious. I've brought back a ton of Italian foods for you to try out by the way, make something new, perhaps. I know I'm down for a taste-testing session with the great Chef Brynne Rao."

"Thanks, Ammama. You know you've been getting better at pep talks recently. Before it would be like, "Protein bar?" and be done with it." Aiden laughed and sighed. 

"I'm really proud of you Brynne. You've come a long way." Brynne could almost hear the smile on his face. 

"I'm proud of myself too."