[Hypnosis Mic] Cooking Together

Sika Deer

“Come on, Saburo-kun! This way, this way-- Oh, not that way!” Dice reached out and yanked Saburo away from the forest trail. When he looked down where he’d been about to step, he saw a snare. “You gotta pay more attention.”

“Where the heck are you taking me?” Saburo carefully stepped around the trap.

Dice pulled him along. “It’s fine, it’s fine! I gotta repay you for the other day somehow, so I’m showing you something good!”

The other day being when Saburo may have snuck into the pachinko parlor, where he may have, a-hem, fine-tuned a machine to give Dice back some of what he’d spent. It wasn’t stealing, you know, he’d just adjusted some probabilities to not-quite-force a jackpot. That could’ve happened without his influence. That parlor was totally a yakuza joint, anyways.

“Even if he said I could go with you, I just really don’t think Ichi-nii would want meEEE-” yoink, swish! and Saburo was hoisted high off the ground, feet-first, caught in a different snare.

“Aw, shit. I told you to look where you were going. I’ll figure out a way to get you down.” Dice circled the tree the trap was tied to, trying to figure out how the contraption worked.

“Be careful! I don’t want to fall!” He tried to figure out a way to release himself, but he didn’t have the core strength to lean up to get at his foot, and now all the blood was rushing to his head…

A booming voice called out just then. “Arisugawa-kun, great timing!” Oh, no, it was that Mad Trigger Crew soldier. He was running towards them, smiling a scary amount, and carrying an entire dead deer hoisted over his shoulders, its head bobbing grossly with each step. “Look at this! Trapped it today!”

Dice started to talk, processed the fucking deer corpse and was briefly baffled into silence, and then managed to say, “that’s really great, can’t wait to eat it, but could you help us out first? That wasn’t your only lucky trap today.” He pointed up at where Saburo was hanging.

“Oh. Little Buster Bro. Yes, let me get that.” He offloaded the animal onto Dice (who nearly buckled under the weight) and moved to where the other end of the trap was tied. He lowered it slowly, Saburo managing to adjust his own position so that he didn’t land headfirst as he went down. Riou took back the deer and headed off. “I need to finish dressing this as soon as possible. Come on.”

Saburo took a minute to reorient himself, and when he came back to it, Dice was following Riou along, motioning for him to follow, too. “Come on, this is gonna be awesome!”

“W-we’re going with him!?” Saburo was about to run after them, but remembered his previous error and slowed to check the ground for any more traps.

“Yeah! This was the good thing I wanted to show you. Riou-san always makes, aha, awesome food. Hey, what’re you gonna do with the deer?”

Riou took a moment to think before answering, “since there’ll be four of us, maybe a hot pot. I’ve collected some excellent spices lately.”

Dice suddenly looked dismayed. “Four? Don’t tell me that damn office worker’s here, too…?”

“You got along with Kannonzaka-kun last time.”

“Getting along for the sake of eating more food doesn’t mean I like the guy!” Dice groaned, then looked back at Saburo. “I think you’re bad luck. You got caught in a trap, and now we’ve gotta hang out with corporate slave numero uno.”

Dumbfounded, Saburo asked, “then why don’t we just not go?”

“I want hot pot,” Dice said.