As always when I ordered Chinese food, it was way too much to finish in one evening, well, for my girlfriends it was as I didn’t really get the feeling of being stuffed or being hungry anymore, but you get the point. Ria was trying her very best to eat a bit more, but Em and I stopped her.

“Ria, if you have enough, just stop eating it.” I told her.

“Yes, overeating won’t be good for anyone involved.” Em joined in.

“But it’s such a shame to let it go to waste!”

“Who’s talking about waste? I have one pretty much empty fridge and a microwave. That just means you can eat the leftover Chinese food again tomorrow.”

It was as if she just had an epiphany as her face lit up. “I forgot about that!”

“About microwaves?” Em asked.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Rora doesn’t use them much.”

“We used it for spaghetti…” I commented.

“Did we?”

“Yes, to partially unfreeze the sauce…”

“Ooh! Right.”

“Ria, please.” I chuckled.

After that little exchange, we gathered up our plates and put them in the dishwasher while also putting the leftovers in the fridge. I’d somewhat underestimated the size of the boxes but in the end, after a tiny bit of puzzling, everything did fit quite nicely in the fridge, with room to spare.

“Do you think I should get a separate fridge for my stuff? When I buy a new house. Just so we can keep your guys’ food separate from my ‘grape juice’.”

“It doesn’t really bother me.” Em shrugged as she closed the fridge. “Everything is in bottles, right? It’s not like it’s just sitting there open in a bowl.”

“Doesn’t bother me either!” Ria replied.

“Hmm, I see.”

“That being said… if you’d like to be able to store more, a second fridge is always useful. How you then divide it we’ll see when we get there.”

“I do definitely want to buy a bigger fridge. Like, one of those big American ones with two doors that can dispense ice cubes!” I replied enthusiastically. I’d always liked the look of those fridges, however ridiculous they sometimes looked.

“We don’t even have one of those.” Em says. “Though that’s more because mom really didn’t like how it would fit into the new kitchen she designed. Ours is still quite roomie, but those American ones are something else entirely. Just imagine how many boxes of milk you can stack in one of those.”

I looked Em in the eyes. She looked dead serious, but after a couple of seconds she broke and started smirking. “If you do that, I’ll get you your own damned milk fridge.” I shot back. “Now, that stuff I don’t want anywhere near what I’m going to consume.”

“Awh.” Em teased back. “Not even a drop?”

“Not over my undying body.”

Ria giggled, she found the situation pretty darn funny.

“Anyhow, let’s go and get our drawing supplies.” Em decided to temporarily stop teasing me.

“Alright then…” I kept glaring at her for a couple more seconds, obviously without any bad intent.

We looked around and eventually found the drawing supplies we were looking for. I’d stuffed them in one of the cabinets, and it had been used so much over the course of this year that a slight layer of dust had formed on top of it. Nothing a quick wipe of my hand couldn’t deal with, though.

I put a pile of paper in the middle of the table while Em and Ria put the other drawing accessories there. Luckily, I had multiple pencils and stuff like that so we could all draw at the same time. Having said that, most of them did need some sharpening.

We sat down on one end of the table, with Ria at the head and me and Em sitting on each side of her, opposite to one another.

“Is there something specific we are going to draw?” I asked, sharpening my 2B sketching pencil.

“I’d say just draw what you want to be drawing.” Em gave me a nod and then looked at Ria. “Just have fun while doing so.”

“Mhmmm! I already know what I’m going to draw!” Ria almost immediately got busy drawing the first lines of her sketch.

“Eyy, someone’s getting a head start.” I chuckled.

“You can’t stop me!” Ria giggled back and continued.

“Do both of you mind if I put on some music?” I then asked in return.

“No, just don’t put it too loudly so we can still concentrate.” Em replied.

“Alright.” I quickly walked off to put on a calm playlist to get my own creative juices flowing.

Sadly… that didn’t really work for me as not a single idea came to mind.

Ria looked over to my paper for a second. She’d been drawing almost constantly for ten minutes, while my paper was still pretty much empty. “Is it not working, Rora?”

“I just find it hard to decide what to draw…” I tapped the back end of my pencil against my cheek. “What are you drawing?”

“It’s still a secret.” She pouted her lips just a tiny bit.

“Why don’t you draw us like one of your French girls, Auro?” Em teased. She’d also been pretty busy drawing.

“I wouldn’t say no if you both wanted to pose for me. Topless would be even better.”

Em immediately started blushing and tossed a small eraser at me. “Jerk.”

“Hey, you proposed.”

Ria just giggled before she looked at my paper again. “Why don’t you try to draw the garden at school?”

“You mean the spot where we went after you fed the ducks?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, I could definitely try that.” I smiled.

“I’m looking forward to your drawing, then.” Ria smiled back.

When we looked back at the table, Em was looking at us with a strange expression.

“Is something wrong, Em?” I asked.

“Well… I probably shouldn’t say this…”

“Say what?” Ria asked as well.

“Hmmm… you see… I looked up something about ducks recently… and apparently bread isn’t really good for ducks…” She awkwardly scratched the back of her head.

“Wait, really?” I scratched my cheek. “Is it that bad?”

“Have we hurt the duckies!?!?” Ria immediately stood up, clearly distressed to hear about this sudden news.

“Well… it won’t actively hurt them like chocolate hurts dogs.” Em started to explain. “So it’s not really that harmful.”

That seemed to calm Ria down quite a bit, as she sighed a sigh of relief.

“Then what’s bad about it?” I asked on.

“So, according to the article I read, bread will give ducks the feeling that they are full without them having ingested the necessary vitamins and nutritional stuff they actually need.” Em continued explaining. “And then there’s also something about how molded bread is not really that good and how bread can help algae grow, which is bad for the actual food ducks need.”

“Ah… so if I understand correctly it’s the same as a human only eating a single type of food, so they don’t get to ingest all the different vitamins we need?”

“Pretty much.” Em nodded, she then looked on to Ria who didn’t seem particularly happy but at least she wasn’t panicking. “If you want to, Ria, I can make a list of things that are really good for the duckies so we can go and give them healthy food next time.”

Ria looked up at Em, the spark of hope reignited in her eyes. “Really?”

“Of course.” Em smiled. “It’s not too much work, just 5 minutes on the internet.”

“I’d like that!” Ria was back to her happy self.

“And the ducks will like it as well.” I smiled too.

With this crisis averted, the three of us continued on with our drawings. Now that I had finally something in mind to draw, I could start as well. Time started to fly by as we were just having fun being together. I did try to peak a couple of times at what Ria was drawing , but every time she shielded her drawing just in time for me to really be able to tell what it was.

“I’m done!” Ria called out and held her piece of paper out in front of her, with the drawing to her.

“I’m pretty much ready too. What about you, Auro?” Em put down her pencil and looked up at me.

“Uh… well, I’m not going to color it and I doubt it’ll get much better, so I think I am too.”

“‘Kay, is everyone ready to reveal their drawing then?” She asked

“I am!” Ria nodded.

“Me too.”

“Alright. On the count of 1, show your drawing. 3… 2… 1…”

We all then put our drawing in the middle so everyone could see each other’s work. When Em and I looked at Ria’s picture, both of us were just taken aback by how beautifully cute and wholesome it was. Ria had drawn the three of us, together with Shima, cuddled together on the sofa. It was amazingly well-done.

“Wow, Ria…” Em was speechless.

“Holy crap, I didn’t know you were that good at drawing.”

Ria blushed. “Do you like it?”

“Like it? I love it. We should scan this in and then print it out so we can hang it in the living room!”

“I agree.” I nodded enthusiastically.

Ria blushed even harder and didn’t know what to say either.

-We should really do this more often…-