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Izuchi is of the opinion that all that truly matters in this world are cold, hard, facts. As a genius, his concerns are with mathematics, the sciences, subjects with practical applications. Anything that cannot be described objectively holds no interest for him.
Friendship is difficult to quantify, and in his view useless. Love, far more so.
It has occurred to him that this view of his may be because he himself is particularly poor in both subjects.
Nanashi has the habit of completely sidestepping whether or not someone is good at making friends. His own poor social skills outweigh nearly anyone else’s, and his enthusiasm for the subject makes becoming social contacts with him more of an inevitability than anything else.
Izuchi could leave him alone. At any time, he could cut off contact completely and refuse to speak to him ever again. It’s only because Nanashi is a source of intriguing data that he refrains.
If that means tolerating Nanashi’s attempts at friendship, so be it. It’s not as though they’ll amount to anything anyway.
Nanashi has a tendency to seek friendship through brutish methods: gifts, mainly, but also simply being around his object of affection long enough to find out something they need assistance with and then insisting on helping them with it. Izuchi has no such needs, but he allows Nanashi to continue plying him with presents because there is no logical reason to say no to free snacks and medicine.
(Nanashi once gave him a bikini, and Izuchi’s eyebrows raised so high that he thought they might pass above his hairline. “And the meaning of this?”
Nanashi laughed, seeming a little nervous. “Just seeing if you would like it!”
“It clearly isn’t designed for my body shape,” Izuchi said. But he still took it.)
Nanashi is a tolerable part of Izuchi’s life, for as long as his data still interests him and no longer. Izuchi doesn’t know when the day will come that he cuts off their association, but in the meantime, he’s growing used to seeing Nanashi every few days, and receiving messages on his phone daily. Nanashi forwards him pictures of seashells and Izuchi enlightens him about the variety of mollusk the shell likely came from, despite knowing that Nanashi likely only cares if it’s ‘pretty’ or not.
What a shallow understanding of the world.
When he mentions as much to Nanashi, Nanashi replies immediately, “I don’t think it’s like that at all! Anyway, if I was like that, I wouldn’t like you, would I?”
“Are you saying I’m unattractive?” Izuchi asks.
“That’s not what I meant, but… You don’t care much about your looks besides just being neat, and that shows a lot,” Nanashi says, and Izuchi can’t contradict him. “But that’s okay! There are other reasons to like you! You’re super brilliant, and it’s fun to learn new things from you, and you’re really helpful to other people once in a blue moon, when you feel like it!”
Those times he’d assisted Nanashi had only been for the purposes of gathering data. They’ve had this conversation before and it’s gone nowhere. “Liking people for more than their appearance and having an interest in the natural world are different matters entirely.”
“Really?” Nanashi looks particularly thoughtful for once. “Izuchi, do you like people for what they can do for you?”
“Of course,” he replies. “That’s the only reason I associate with people.”
“Isn’t that kind of thinking sort of the definition of ‘shallow’?”
Izuchi opens his mouth and finds that he has no immediate retort. A genius like him, educated in all practical fields of study, who puts more thought into each decision than most commoners will put together in their entire lives, called shallow?
“...That’s completely different,” he mutters.
Nanashi laughs, annoying as usual. “It’s okay! Even if you don’t do anything for me, I still like being around you! Because I like you a lot!”
“Your logic is exceedingly simplified and makes no sense,” says Izuchi. “I’m tired of your rambling. Cease speaking to me at once.”
Nanashi leaves him to his thoughts.
It may be true that some fields outside of his interests, he has put no effort in understanding. He knows nothing of the arts, nor of music, and he does not appreciate either. When it comes to things like friendship, he can quote from psychological studies, but he still doesn’t ‘get’ it.
Does that make him shallow? A person of limited scope, content to live in his own world and remain ignorant of all that does not suit him? He can’t accept that.
He ruminates for a long time over his choices, before finally sending a message to Nanashi.
‘We are going out for ice cream tomorrow. Six o’clock. Don’t be late or the offer will not be made again.’
‘A date?!?!’ comes the reply.
Izuchi’s first instinct is to shoot back that of course it isn’t, you brainless simpleton, but is that just because it personally makes him uncomfortable and thus he pushes it away? He has to be more self-aware than this.
‘If you insist on calling it that.’
Nanashi sends back so many hearts in reply that Izuchi is confident in assuming they mean ‘yes’.