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“...And a filet o’ fish and… oh, what was that, babe?” Hara stopped in the middle of conveying the order to Taira who was standing at the counter of the McDonalds at the front of a line that wrapped out of the restaurant into Osaka Station on his phone trying to keep track of what exactly his partner and their pregnant wife wanted from McDonalds.
It was a mistake for Taira to wait until he got to the counter to call Hara to see what they wanted from McDonalds. Huge mistake. Total. Miscalculation.
“Oh! Never mind the filet o’ fish, apparently fish makes her nauseous, now. She says she threw up last time she had one.” Hara continued, a cheerful lilt to his voice as though he was not aware of the absolute pinch that Taira was in.
He was holding up a whole line of Osakan women. This could be bad. Taira tried to give his best winning smile to the woman on the other side of the counter taking his order and replied through his teeth, “I don’t need to know about how she threw up. Is there anything else you want?”
“Yeah, she - oh, she just wants to talk to you. Hang on.” There was shuffling on the other end of the line, presumably as the phone was handed over. Taira could feel the cold bead of sweat drip down his forehead, slip down his neck, and soak into the collar of his shirt.
People were staring at him. Normally he didn’t mind this sort of attention out in public, he was a man in a poly relationship who worked in food and entertainment, it was just part of the deal. On top of that, his loud personality, stylish hair, and handsome face were enough to attract attention even if he was against the grain of Japanese society in many ways. Being a nail that couldn’t be hammered in when he was part of a society that glorified the hammer over the nail had definitely desensitized him to most things people said and thought about him.
“Must be a foreigner,” the woman behind him in line muttered to her friend.
Most things. But you didn’t just question an Osakan’s origin!
Taira whirled around, clutching the phone to his chest and snapped, “I was born and raised in this city! My wife is pregnant and-”
“...Yoshiyuki?” The muffled voice came from somewhere near his chest - oh, shit, the phone. Taira brought the phone back to his ear as quickly as he could just to hear his wife say, “He was at the train station, the call must have dropped.”
Then silence. He pulled the phone back from his face to see that the call had ended.
He lifted his eyes to look at the woman on the other side of the counter, again. Well, there was no helping it. He was going to have to come back to McDonalds for whatever else she wanted, anyway.
“...Can I also get a smile?”