“Hey, hey, Eki-sama,” called M2, his upper body leaning forward as he closely observed a basket filled with unusually shaped and coloured hand grenades. “What is this?”

“Hm?” softly hummed Eki in acknowledgement, looking over his shoulder as he washed the humongous pile of dirty dishes, caused by the feast they had all delightfully enjoyed together – both human soldiers and super soldiers alike. When he saw what M2 was looking at with a completely fascinated expression on his face, he arched one of his eyebrows. “That’s… fruits. Apples, tangerines and pears. Red, orange and green, respectively.”

“…” Intently looking at the bowl for a couple more minutes, M2 motioned one of his hands forward and picked up an ‘apple’. After giving it a couple of sniffs, he gave a large bite to its round, red surface, chewing off almost half of the fruit. “It’sh shweet.”

“Fruits possess natural sugars so there’s a large amount of them that are sweet,” explained Eki after a few soft chuckles. In between the clinks and clanks of the dishes being washed, he continued silently listening to M2 chewing non-stop the fruits inside of the bowl. For some reason, there was a certain feeling of comfort in sharing that area of the house with the deadly human weapon, for as curious as it may sound.

“Geh… This one is not sweet at all…” grumbled M2, sticking his tongue out at the half-eaten tangerine on his hand.

“You need to peel the tangerines first, M2,” shortly laughed Eki, shaking his hands around to take off the water and foam from his fingers and then drying them off on a hand towel lying on top of the counter near him. “I’ll teach you how to do it.”

“Nn…” acknowledged M2 with a soft nod of his head. One of his hands climbed up in the air and motioned towards his mouth, his front teeth readily biting and chewing at his thumb’s nail. His eyes carefully observed Eki and the movements he was doing with his hands as he surprisingly removed a thick layer from around the fruit, almost as if it was removing its clothes and stripping it naked.

“Like this,” said Eki, finishing preparing the fruit by gently breaking the wedges apart and immediately outstretching his hand towards M2 so he could taste the fruit. “Try doing the same thing that I just did if you want to eat more. I still have a lot of dishes to wash and, unless you want to help me do that, I can’t continue peeling them for you.”

“I’ll do it myself,” acknowledged M2, carefully removing the soft wedges from Eki's hand and holding them on his own. He readily popped one of the wedges into his mouth, delightfully munching it this time around. “It’s sweet. But also… prickly?”

“I think you mean ‘bitter’,” explained Eki, returning to the washing basin and resuming with the washing of the dishes. “Tangerines, and most citrus fruits, sometimes can be sweet and bitter at the same time. It depends on your luck, I guess. But usually the more juice they have, the sweeter they are. Or at least that’s how it looks to me.”

“Do you have more ‘bitter’ things here?” asked M2 with a mouth filled with tangerine wedges, its juice dripping down from his chin as he clumsily tried to chew the large number of pieces that he put on his mouth all at the same time.

“Can’t say that we do since I’m not familiar with the kitchen facilities of this building,” said Eki with a quick shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe if you search around the cupboards you’ll find something that you have never seen before. Why don’t you give it try? No breaking the doors, though.”

“It’s not like we go around breaking doors all the time…” grumbled M2 as he wiped his sticky mouth and chin with the sleeves of his clothes. He walked around the kitchen for a while, his eyes intently observing the cupboards around them and trying to decide which one he would investigate first. After wandering around for a couple of minutes, he decided to go for the closest one to his location, where he found a couple of paper bags. “Su…gar? Flour? Baking soda?”

“Those are what we call staple ingredients since they are ingredients essential to making quite a lot of things,” explained Eki, releasing a soft sigh at M2’s questioning voice. Just how little did they know about the normal world? “They can be used in regular dishes, like sugar to make certain sauces and flour to thicken sauces or pan-fry things. But those three are more commonly used to bake, like in those videos you were watching on the humvee. I don’t advise you into trying them raw like that except for sugar, though. I think you’ll have an unpleasant surprise if you do.”

“…” With his eyes stuck to the paper bags, M2 motioned his hand forward and took a hold of the one which had ‘sugar’ written it, readily opening it and spilling its contents inside of his mouth. “Sweet~ And crunchy.”

“It’s not meant to be eaten like that, M2,” chuckled Eki, feeling that dealing with that super soldier, in particular, was quite similar to dealing with the exploring antics of a little child. “Like I said, they’re ingredients. You need to use them in actual dishes and enjoy them all bundled up with a few more. They taste much better like tha—“

“Cough, cough!” started loudly coughing M2 out of nowhere, forcing Eki to look over in his direction. He had absolutely no idea how he should react when he saw M2’s mouth pure white, small clouds of flour puffing out of it as he continued to cough. “Not… geh… tasty…”

“What did I just tell you?” sighed Eki, readily picking up a glass from the sink and filling it with cold water. “Didn’t I told you that you would have an unpleasant surprise if you tried to eat flour or baking soda like that? Here, drink some water to get that thing out of your mouth. I’ll get you more if you need.”

“Nn…” awkwardly acknowledged M2, opening and closing his mouth as if munching on a piece of oversized chewing gum to remove the white dusty substance from his oral cavity. He didn’t hesitate a single second to snatch the glass from Eki’s hand and greedily gulp down its fresh contents. “Geh… This tastes so disgusting in my mouth… It feels as if I just ate gun powder… Blah!!”

“I think gun powder would be even worse for you but I also get the impression that you just learned your lesson to never put this type of thing in your mouth again,” chuckled Eki, taking the empty glass from M2’s hand and walking back to the sink, so he could fill the glass a second time. “You should start listening to what we tell you. Just because we’re humans and ‘inferior’ to your kind, it doesn’t mean that we don’t know our way around the wor—“

“…”

“W-What is it?” hesitantly inquired Eki, taking a step backwards when M2 popped up out of nowhere right beside him, his eyes intently looking in his direction from a much higher position. When M2 lifted one of his hands and started motioning it in his direction, Eki couldn’t help but flinch in fear, tightly closing his eyes as his heart thundered inside of his chest, already expecting to have his skull squashed with the monstrous strength of the mass murder machine’s grip. “...!”

Eki, however, never felt anything – no hands on him, no crushing death.

“…?” Still with quite a lot of hesitation, Eki slowly opened his eyes once again, only to find M2’s face extremely close to his own as he stared straight into his eyes.

“Eh… It’s really not there like we were told,” mumbled M2, tilting his head just the slightest as he gently pushed the soldier’s hair out of the way and curiously looked at the empty orbit on Eki’s face, usually hidden underneath his oversized fringe. “I wonder what it tastes like inside…”

“…!” Eki slapped M2’s hand away as fast as he could, quickly covering his missing eye with the palm of his hand and walking further away from him. “W-What you just did is considered extremely rude and I would appreciate it if you would never do it again, M2!”

“Why should it matter if you’re missing one or two parts?” asked M2, leisurely returning to the counter where the bowl with fruits was placed and picking up a tangerine from it. “We’re also missing quite a lot of parts. Here and here.”

“Eh…?” softly interjected Eki when he saw M2 point at his chest and then at his head as he spoke.

“To survive, we throw away what’s not needed,” continued M2, his fingers clumsily peeling a tangerine and half squashing the juicy wedges. “Your food and tangerines are delicious. I don’t think you need that eye for anything if that’s the case. You’re better off without it.”

“What’s… with that…?” mumbled Eki in nothing more than a whisper, his hand unconsciously pressing even more strongly on his missing orb.

“But… Aren’t you still alive even without it?” pointed out M2 as he walked towards Eki once again. He put the messy peeled tangerine on top of the counter, right next to the soldier, and then shook his hands around to dry his hands of the juice sticking to his fingers. “It’s not like you stop being you because you’re not complete anymore. Eki-sama is Eki-sama and Eki-sama’s food is good. I’m hungry. Can you make more food for me?”

“…” Eki remained completely silent for a couple more of seconds before he burst out laughing, shaking his head around at M2’s words. “Once I finish washing the dishes, I will. And if you are that hungry, then eat the tangerine you just peeled or help me with the washing.”

“Eh… I don’t wanna…” grumbled M2, a pouting expression readily appearing on his features. “And that tangerine is for you, Eki-sama, so I can’t eat it.”

“Is that so? Then you’ll need to wait,” said Eki, a soft smile on his features as he picked one of the crumbling wedges of the tangerine and put it in his mouth, resuming with the cleaning process once again as he savoured the sweet and bitter juicy fruit.

“I don’t wanna…! I want to eat Eki-sama’s food now!” complained M2 once again, his pout getting even more accentuated on his features.

“Yes, yes.”

“Now!”