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“What is love?”
Yoichi had thought that Mika wasn’t a melodramatic bitch, but there he was, draped almost comically theatrically over his sofa, wondering about what was the meaning of life if one could not find love, if all human beings were destined to die alone in utter despair anyway.
Yoichi sighed over the monologue Mika was having by himself, having lost count of how many he had witnessed in that month alone.
“Mika, it’s almost lunch time. What do you want to eat?”
Mika looked over to Yoichi, a blank gaze in his eyes.
“Yoichi, what’s the meaning of eating if you are going to excrete that out anyways? Why should people eat? Can we not survive without eating?”
Yoichi rolled his eyes over the theatrics of his best friend, already knowing what Mika needed to get over his emo phase.
“Let’s go to JIDA’s to eat, then.”
Mika suddenly perked up, quickly sitting up and directing his sparkling eyes at Yoichi.
“To JIDA’s?”
“Yeah, my treat.”
Yoichi was then surprised at the speed that Mika stood up, bolted to the bathroom and got out perfectly groomed, and almost laughed out loud when Mika didn’t waste a second to open the front door, looking back at Yoichi with haste, as if he were a little puppy demanding their owner to hurry up and take them on a walk.
And with those big, bright blue eyes of his, Yoichi could say that Mika could sometimes pass for a puppy. Sometimes.
But thinking that Mika was a puppy wasn’t so much of a stretch, given that maybe he would need to buy a lash so he wouldn’t lose Mika in the crowd, his blond friend so excited to arrive at the café that he wasn’t really paying attention to where his roommate was. Yoichi sighed and just did his best to keep up to Mika’s semi-jog, only to see Mika stopping when the café was in their sights.
Mika released a shaky breath and turned to Yoichi with was most likely another ridiculous rhetoric question, so Yoichi just grabbed his wrist and they both entered the store.
Yoichi ignored Mika’s soft gasp and sudden nervousness and took him to an empty table and sat him down, the same way a parent would do with their child. He then instructed him to not do anything stupid—hard to imagine that he was talking to a twenty year-old instead of a five year-old—while the waitress came to take their orders.
Mika nodded and played nervously with his sleeves, while looking around the café in a way that was most definitely really obvious.
If Yoichi wasn’t so used to Mika’s weird behavior, he would have laughed or maybe he would have told him to be more discreet. But alas, there was nothing he could do but to watch over Mika from afar, metaphorically speaking.
For now.
Shinoa, their waitress, was trying to muffle her laughs at the scene in front of her, having seen everything.
“Hi Shinoa,” Yoichi greeted her, before whispering. “Is he here?”
“No,” she giggled a bit more before calming down enough to talk. “But I guess he could be here at any moment? Not that I know.”
“Gods, I need someone to help those two,” Yoichi lamented in a soft voice so Mika wouldn’t hear them talking, not that he would notice anyway. “They are in too deep and they don’t even realize it themselves.”
“Tell me about it,” Shinoa replied, nodding. “If I have to hear Yuu-san gushing about Mika one more time I’ll poison his curry, I swear.”
“Yuu?” Mika perked up instantly at the mention of the name.
“I was just confirming your orders of two plates of curry,” Shinoa said easily, and Mika frowned in confusion.
“But you said—”
“Yeah, that’s our order alright!”
“Coming right up!”
Mika frowned at the disappearing figure of Shinoa and turned to Yoichi.
“She said Yuu’s name.”
“Did she?”
“Yeah. Isn’t it funny that even though there are so many names for boys and girls that start with that, there’s only one enough to captivate the world?”
“Is there?”
“Yeah. You might think that the purpose of names is to give your kid some sense of individuality and to make him stand apart from other kids, but still there are hundreds and thousands of people with the same name. And still, and still…” Mika sighed dreamily. “The name Yuu has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? If only ‘Yuu’ would notice ‘Mi’…”
Yoichi choked on his spit, so he quickly excused himself to the restroom.
Not that he was trying to run away from another of Mika’s monologues.
Definitely not that.
But still, it was still strange to see how such a silly encounter had changed Mika. Yoichi didn’t remember him to be this… melodramatic? Poetic? Lovestruck?
It had been in this same café. They had gone there to try their food and were supposed to eat quickly and then go home to study afterwards.
What Yoichi hadn’t expected was for Mika to fall in love at first sight with another customer, a kid with black hair and green eyes, who had come with a pink-haired friend, and was being quite loud.
Mika had stared. And stared. And stared. And refused to bulge until the other kid had left as well.
The next day, Mika had insisted of going back to the café. And the next day, and the next day, always hoping to meet that guy again.
Sometimes Mika was lucky and the other guy was there, having lunch or just having a coffee. But no amount of coaxing convinced Mika to step forward and talk to the kid, even though he had gathered enough amount of information based on the conversations they could hear from their seats.
The guy’s name was Yuu. He was studying in a nearby university—Mika was a little heartbroken when he learned that they weren’t studying in the same place—, and was bad at his studies, rather spending his free time playing videogames or reading manga. But thanks to some sort of miracle, he was accepted into university and was now thinking of what to do with his life.
It was amazing how much amount of information Mika could retain about the guy, and he would then gush about him to Yoichi for hours on end. But at the same time, Mika was too shy to say something and then would get random bouts of depression and self-loathing when the possibility of Yuu having a girlfriend arose, thus giving birth to what Yoichi liked to call his ‘late emo phase,’ with Mika trying different outfit styles to impress Yuu better and his random monologues about whatever his brain came with.
And it wouldn’t have mattered to Yoichi because he loved him anyways, but Mika had started losing his appetite and would only eat his whole portion when they were eating out in the café, maybe because he was a mess of nerves and finally got hungry, or just so the café didn’t deny him entrance next time because he never touched his food.
Either way, Yoichi was already concocting a plan so the two of them could already start talking to each other, because it was affecting Mika’s health. And he had obviously noticed how Yuu would stare at Mika when Mika wasn’t looking at Yuu, and Yoichi would almost snort at the blush that the raven would sport whenever he was gawking at Mika.
Why were the two of them so dense?
Yoichi sighed and came out of the restroom, to see that a guy with long silver hair in a ponytail was at their table, talking to Mika. Yoichi sighed again.
Ferid.
Ferid was another regular at the café, and he would flirt with Mika, obviously interested in him. But Mika was too awestruck with Yuu to even glance at other people, so after some polite refusals, Mika had just started to pointedly ignore Ferid. Yoichi thought he could remember an opportunity when Mika actually snarled at Ferid, not that it deterred the man.
Yoichi sighed again. He would have to go and push the man away, because Mika was so repulsed by Ferid that he refused to touch him or talk to him in any way possible.
Not that Yoichi blamed him. Ferid had a suffocating air around him that made people gag or shiver in disgust.
To his surprise, Yoichi didn’t have to do anything. A blur of black hair stepped in between Ferid and Mika, glaring at the man with the hatred of a hundred volcanoes.
“Can’t you see that you’re bothering him? Just go away!”
Yoichi’s mouth almost fell to the floor.
It was Yuu.
Ferid smirked, and boldly stepped into Yuu’s personal space to look down at him.
“Oh, dear. I’m talking to my future boyfriend, so you’re kind of in the way. So can you go away?”
“He’s not your future anything! He’s clearly not interested in you, so leave!”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because he’s my boyfriend!”
Yoichi almost choked on air again.
What?
Clearly Ferid was taken aback, before he shook his head smugly.
“And that’s the better excuse you have? Obviously you are not Mika’s anything, so—”
“Leave my boyfriend alone,” hissed Mika, having stood up in anger, and walked to Yuu, gently grabbing his hand and tugging him to the table. “Yuu-chan, just ignore this bastard and let’s have our date, okay?”
Yoichi saw Mika hesitate for a second before he kissed Yuu on the cheek, which left them both red to their ears, but at least Ferid hadn’t seemed to notice Mika’s slip and he had stormed away, screaming obscenities.
Yuu and Mika didn’t seem to mind much, considering how hard they were staring at each other.
And maybe they would have stayed there, awkwardly standing in the café and just lost in each other’s eyes, if not for Shinoa who had arrived with the curry and just cleared her throat to let her presence be noted.
Well, Mika and Yuu were in the way and she couldn’t get to the table without them moving away, so maybe if she hadn’t had the plates in her hands she would have stayed back and recorded the scene.
Both of them jolted out of their trance and blushed, quickly sitting down in the table. Shinoa raised an eyebrow, but left the plates and left, catching sight of Yoichi near the restrooms and shrugging.
Yoichi felt like shrugging back, honestly, knowing he had lost his seat. But part of him also wanted to stay back at the café, just to satisfy this weird urge to know how would things play out in the end for his friend.
“Seems like we’re stuck together then, huh?”
Yoichi turned to where the voice came from, and saw it was Yuu’s friend, who was staring at Yuu and Mika with some sort of indifferent gaze, but when he turned to Yoichi, he smiled.
“Guess so,” Yoichi smiled again, and they headed together to another empty table.
“It was high time they started talking to each other,” Yuu’s friend muttered. “Name’s Kimizuki, by the way.”
“I’m Yoichi.”
Kimizuki smiled again, and Yoichi knew he could get used to this.
And well, he might have been a bit too distracted after lunch when Kimizuki gave him his number to see that Yuu and Mika left the café hand in hand, silly smiles pasted in their faces.