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Every year for Izaya's birthday, Namie would make him something special to eat.
Izaya never gave her any specific instructions on what to make, simply saying, "Surprise me." He always had a fascination with analyzing people's personalities through the food they made, and Namie was no different.
This year, she went with a chocolate cake.
In lieu of the more traditional, 'Happy Birthday,' she had instead written the words, 'Hope you get crushed by a vending machine,' which Izaya found amusing. It had ornate little swirls of frosting around the edges, and a few red sprinkles scattered throughout. Overall, the cake looked pretty good.
Izaya smiled, took a picture of it with his phone, then cut a piece of the cake and put it on his plate. He then used his phone to shine a light on it to see the finer details of the cake. Then he put the phone down, only to start smelling the cake instead to indulge in its decadent aroma.
Namie sighed exasperatedly. "Would you just take a bite already?"
Izaya chuckled. "I'm merely enjoying my cake, Namie."
"You haven't even put it in your mouth yet," Namie retorted.
"Alright, alright," he relented. Izaya picked up his fork and used it to cut off a small piece of cake, which he then raised to his mouth. He briefly paused to see if Namie had any particular reaction to this, but her expression remained blank and unreadable. Defeated, Izaya just took a bite.
It was better than he thought it would be. It was a dark chocolate, and more bitter than a cake normally would be, but since Izaya didn't particularly care for sweets, that may have been an intentional design choice on Namie's part.
"It's actually pretty good," Izaya admitted.
He didn't mean to sound so surprised, but he had been expecting nauseating levels of sugar. She seemed to have actually put some thought into it this time.
But there was another flavor in it, too. It was familiar, but he couldn't quite place what it was...
"So?" Namie prompted. "What does my cooking say about me?"
Namie had caught on to the game a long time ago, and even though she liked to pretend she didn't care about the answer, Izaya could tell she was still curious as to what his thoughts were.
Izaya inspected the piece of cake on his plate thoughtfully for a moment. Then he smirked and gave her his verdict. "Well, according to this chocolate cake, you're a complete psychopath."
"What makes you say that?"
Izaya smiled at her. "You put laxatives in the chocolate again."