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The day began, despite seeming just like any other average day, with Mikoto having a gut feeling that something was going to go horribly wrong.
He tried to ignore it. He’d learned over time that his gut, along with his instincts, should not easily be trusted—trusting them frequently led to him saying or doing things that made him want to curl up in embarrassment moments later, and he was working on not immediately following whatever his gut and/or instincts told him to avoid unnecessary embarrassment (not necessarily succeeding, but he was certainly trying). Unfortunately, he found that he could not simply ignore it. No matter what he did, there was still a sense of unease nagging at him in the back of his mind as he went about his day.
It wasn’t until he remembered that an interview Mayu had done recently was supposed to be released that day and went to read it that he realized that this time his gut may have been just a little right for once.
Of all the things to go wrong, Mikoto never would have expected it to be one of Mayu’s interviews. With Mayu’s lazy personality and penchant for using few to no words in most situations, interviewers rarely got anything from him that wasn’t directly about his judo matches. Which made the interviews rather boring to read or watch (although the video interviews were slightly less boring, in Mikoto’s opinion, due to the bonus of showing Mayu wearing his gi throughout), but Mikoto checked every single one regardless because he wanted to be a supportive boyfriend who took some kind of interest in his partner’s passion.
(Also, international judo champions didn’t get interviewed too often, it turned out, so he didn’t even have to do much. But mostly the supportive boyfriend thing.)
This time, someone must have worked a little magic—or perhaps Mercury was in retrograde, or pigs were flying, or any number of improbable things happened at just the wrong time—and gotten Mayu to leak information about his personal life somehow, because the title of the article read: OLYMPIC HOPEFUL JUDOKA REVEALS RELATIONSHIP.
As Mikoto stared down at his phone screen until it went dark, then continued staring at his gobsmacked expression reflected on the dark screen, all he could think was oh crap.
After a short internal freakout, following his brain short-circuiting and having to restart, he did the only logical thing to be done in moments like this—he called Chiyo. Within half an hour, she was at his apartment bearing freshly baked cookies from Umetarou and listening to him now externally freaking out about the article.
“Breathe, Mikorin, breathe.” Chiyo patted him on the back, not quite gently, as he hunched over with head in hands. “Surely it isn’t as bad as it seems.”
“It totally is! Everyone’s gonna find out, and then! And then—”
It wasn’t that he and Mayu were keeping their relationship a big secret, or that Mikoto was opposed to people finding out, or that he was ashamed or anything like that. While they didn’t go around announcing to the whole world that they were together, they weren’t particularly hiding it either. But there was a difference between complete strangers with ties to the media finding out that they were in a relationship and their friends, family, or even people like the little old lady who lived on the first floor of their apartment complex and always gave them baked goods whenever she saw them or their weird but friendly neighbor with a fussy pomeranian finding out. The latter were fine. Sometimes still nerve-wracking, depending on who (Mayu’s father, for one, had felt a bit intimidating to face), but overall easy enough to deal with. The former, however, were way too much for Mikoto to handle. Because if someone so much as stuck a microphone or a camera in his face and asked him about his relationship, he would cave under the pressure and say or do something stupid in the heat of the moment and probably completely embarrass himself in front of a random stranger and possibly the whole internet, and then! And then—
He just couldn’t handle it, okay?
“They’re gonna know,” he wailed, his voice somewhat distorted under Chiyo’s continued patting.
“Nobody’s gonna know. Look, the article doesn’t even say anything about who Mayu-kun’s dating, it just says he’s dating someone. It doesn’t even use the word ‘boyfriend!’ Most people aren’t going to guess that he’s dating a guy, let alone find out that he’s dating you.”
“But—”
“Shh, no buts,” she insisted. “Come on, Mikorin, you know how it is. Even if they see Mayu-kun trying to take over your personal space, most people won’t jump to the conclusion that you’re dating.” Mikoto paused. The more he thought about it, the more he realized she had a point. The only time people had ever seemed to assume that he and Mayu were dating was before they actually were. After they got together, it was like a flip was switched and people no longer tended to conclude that they were a couple even if they were caught in somewhat suggestive situations (except, of course, for the times that people had walked in on them kissing, but they had eventually come out to all their close friends and family so they didn’t catch them all off guard—and learned the valuable lesson not to make out in any of the Nozakis’ living rooms in the process).
“Besides, people are probably more likely to see him standing next to some random woman and wonder if that’s his girlfriend. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”
Mikoto sat back up, his panic mostly out of his system. Maybe he really didn’t have anything to worry about. Maybe everything would be just fine. “Y’know what, you’re right, Sakura. Thanks.”
“What are friends for?” She said, giving him a comforting smile. “Now, I’ve got to tell you what Nozaki-kun did earlier—”
Two weeks later, Mikoto found himself sitting on the couch in his apartment as Chiyo leaned over the couch’s arm and gleefully shoved her phone in his face, saying, “Look, Mikorin!”
When he looked down at the phone (after pushing it far enough away that he could actually see it clearly), he was met with a big, bold string of words that read JUDO CHAMPION NOZAKI MAYU MEETS WITH MYSTERY WOMAN: Possible girlfriend revealed in new photos!
He nearly choked on his own spit as he read the obvious clickbait title. It was clearly some sort of unreliable tabloid article, but admittedly it did spark his curiosity. Did they mistake a fan or some random passerby for his “girlfriend” with a tricky shot, or could it be—
“Nooo!” Chiyo shouted, her indignant voice dropping into a whine as she scrolled further down in the article.
Mikoto almost wanted to laugh when he saw the photo accompanying the article. The picture starred three very recognizable figures—on the far right was Mikoto himself, his bright hair clearly standing out despite half of him being blocked from the lens by Mayu, who appeared in the photo to be looking over Mikoto’s shoulder but was probably caught seconds before leaning half his weight on his boyfriend (two parts out of laziness, one part out of an excuse to invade Mikoto’s personal space); to their left, with more than a foot separating her from the two, stood none other than Chiyo, her short stature and the oversized bow on the back of her hair easy identifiers to anyone who knew her.
“It’s the wrong Nozaki! Why couldn’t it be Nozaki-kun!”
Maybe because he’s not famous enough for the tabloids to care, he didn’t say. Instead he chose to pat her consolingly on the shoulder as she stared at her phone and mumbled in a way that sounded suspiciously like a spell to change the article.
He decided it was best to just ignore that.
“Hey, look at the bright side—you were right!” He said instead.
His attempt at consolation fell flat, evident by how she dropped her head into her arms and let out a half-groan, half-whine of frustration. “Are you sure you’d call it the ‘bright side’ when your boyfriend is getting randomly paired up with your friend?!”
… Well, he wasn’t sure how he felt about that part of it. But that was something he could think about later. For now, it was enough that he could rest assured that his relationship would remain undetected by the media for the foreseeable future. After all, if they could assume that Chiyo of all people was interested in Mayu, they weren’t likely going to be connecting any actual dots regarding Mayu’s “secret” significant other any time soon.
Yeah, he definitely had nothing to worry about—
“Hey, Mikorin.” Chiyo’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Do you think Nozaki-kun would get jealous if I showed him this article?”
—but it looked like a certain someone else now did instead.