They meet at a small cafe this time.

Yasuharu can see that Kagetsu is more nervous than himself. His friend - boyfriend now, perhaps - sits at a table fumbling with the napkin and poking at his soundless phone.

He doesn't sip nervously at his glass of water like most people would and Yasuharu wonders how many of his friends know the reason why, or if they even notice. It makes him ridiculously happy to know the reason why, even if it is a reason that carries behind it more grief than joy.

But this is the present, not a story from over a hundred years ago. So Yasuharu walks over and sits, immediately placing in the middle of the table a neat little light orange box with a tiny swirl pattern printed on it.

"Yasuharu! What's this?" Kagetsu chimes, leaning forward. His eyes shine as they focus on the gift, but he makes no move to grasp it until Yasuharu pushes it forward insistently.

"Just open it. I felt a bit weird not bringing anything. And we talked about those sweets we ate at the festival when we were kids, right?"

Kagetsu lifts the lid off a bit too quickly, but this isn't an era in which he has to worry so much about hiding his eagerness. When he opens it, he smiles an honest smile that Yasuharu hasn't seen in so, so long.

"It's namagashi[1]!" Kagetsu exclaims softly, lifting the contents out and placing them on an empty plate. "I haven't had one in ages!"

The namagashi are small, but glisten under the bright lighting in the cafe. They are light pink to match the cherry blossoms still blooming around this time of the year, and each one looks a little different. One looks like a peach, another like a persimmon, and another like a plum blossom.

Yasuharu does not blush like a schoolgirl who has prepared a homemade bento for her boyfriend. He simply smiles and urges him to try one.

It has been years since he's prepared food for Kagetsu. Back when he was still little more than a servant, he used to bring the spoiled rich boy he shared a room with his dinner, while Yasuharu had to eat in the kitchen. Except for maybe the first few weeks, it wasn't a job he really minded.

It felt nice to handle food - human food - again. He ignored the somewhat foul smell everything gave off the whole time he was making it, urging his brain to reach into his memories and recall what everything is supposed to taste like.

He only ate these particular namagashi once, during the New Year's festival. The first one he was ever able to attend.

Kagetsu cuts into one with a fork, and the soft food yields to the metal, opening up to reveal the dark bean paste inside, and probably the best part of the whole thing is the face Kagetsu makes when he eats it.

"How is it?" Yasuharu says before he even has a chance to swallow. It isn't like he ever cooked, even back then, so he leans forward eagerly, half worried and half pleased just by the fact that Kagetsu ate it.

"It's delicious! I can't believe you remembered what it tastes like!" Kagetsu says just one tone too loudly. They both look around the cafe and smile awkwardly, returning to the subject at hand with vaguely bowed heads.

But everyone in the cafe understands, to some degree. Food isn't only for sustenance.

Just, in this age, it also proves that you aren't a ghoul. As far as normal people are aware of, anyways. Yasuharu puts this to the test by reaching out and taking one quarter of the light pink mound of mochi.

He slides it into his mouth, silently gagging, but if he concentrates hard enough he can remember how he felt when he first had this food, a long time ago.

It was so sweet that his teeth hurt, but the flavor was so rich that he couldn't even speak for a few seconds. The outer skin is soft and yielding and a good red bean paste almost melts on your tongue.

"The red bean paste is a little too sweet," Kagetsu says critically, but Yasuharu knows he is only trying to keep up appearances - and help him gauge how to react. "But it really takes me back. Thank you for the gift, Yasu. Now I feel bad since I don't have anything to give you in return..."

"It's fine," Yasuharu says after he's swallowed the disgusting, cloying, sour tasting thing that this body of his refuses to accept as food. He smiles though, because he must. "I don't need anything."

He wishes that all he needs to survive in this world is Kagetsu, as corny as it sounds, because it's been a lonely seventeen years and he's learned that ghouls are yokai with human emotions and wants and needs.

He thinks it's incredibly unfair. They would be much happier if they didn't resemble the prey they covet so much.

They are sharing the last namagashi and pretending that they are children in the streets of a town not very far from here, surrounded by lanterns and wooden houses, when Kagetsu's coworkers walk through the doors.

Yasuharu is attentive to anyone carrying around metal suitcases, thanks to his current life as a ghoul, and he stops eating to point them out to Kagetsu.

Instead of surprise, his friend merely stands to greet his coworkers, explaining that they had wanted to finally meet this mystery lover of his, and Yasuharu instantly ducks his head and feels his face heating up despite himself. He wants to shrink away and hide under the table.

"Oh! So you're the reason why this guy's been saying 'No, thanks!' to free drinks? Our boss pays for us every now and again, but Hamamoto-san declined last time. We all thought it was weird," rambles one of the younger guys around Kagetsu's age. None of his words are accusatory. In fact, he is grinning as he talks, which only makes Kagetsu laugh. "I'm not into guys, but I guess you have good tastes, Hamamoto-san!"

Yasuharu merely smiles and gives them a minuscule bow.

None of them seem surprised that Kagetsu's 'mystery lover' is a man younger than him. He wonders what impression his friend gives off at work nowadays.

"This here is Yasuharu, my boyfriend." Kagetsu maneuvers his way over to Yasuharu's side as his three coworkers fill in the other sides of the table. It's gotten a bit crowded, but the waitress just brings over extra menus and soon everyone is squished around cups of tea, coffee, and glasses of water.

"I'm Sekimoto Yasuharu," Yasuharu says formally, figuring that Kagetsu left off his last name because he could no longer be sure which last name he had in this life - reasonable, given the amount of times Yasuharu changed it in the past[2]. "It's nice to meet you."

"Yasu, these are my coworkers, Yamada, Kimura, and-" Kagetsu motions to each as he introduces them, but is cut off by 'Kimura' before he can finish.

"Wait, wait, wait! You're already using nicknames? How long have you been dating!?" Kimura is definitely the first guy who he heard speak, definitely. He is a short young man with glasses and Yasuharu wonders how he hunts ghouls like that.

Yasuharu shrinks back, willing the heat to leave his face but only succeeding in making himself look shy.

He cannot believe that Kagetsu's coworkers are this okay with them. People in this day and age are supposed to be more conservative about men liking other men, right? Instead they seem happy for him, that he's found someone to like.

"Ah, but I've known Yasuharu for a long time. We grew up together so I've always called him Yasu, right, Yasu?"

Actually, he wants to say, you've never been able to stop calling me 'Sho-chan', but of course he cannot say such a thing. No one can know that he was once called Shozo.

So Yasuharu smiles and nods. "Yup. I'm a little surprised you told everyone though?"

Kagetsu leans forward and motions to the other three at the table. The other two are busy arguing about what to eat and Kimura still seems fairly enthused at the idea of his coworker dating another man.

Maybe they're only interested because of how unusual and strange it is to them.

"Not that we were dating of course! I wanted to ask you about it first."

You did no such thing, Yasuharu thinks to himself as he grits his teeth. The disgusting, sour taste of the mochi is still plastered to the roof of his mouth and coats his tongue, but he only has water to wash it down. Everyone knows ghouls prefer coffee, after all.

"But they all know that I like men, yeah. You know how I am when I drink..."

Yasuharu does smile at this because if that is a subtle hint to the fact that he hasn't changed much since the old days in that respect, he can see how Kagetsu let that bit of personal information slip. He used to be a bit better about not drinking enough to get to that point, but...

"So, we know how you met, how about..."

They talk through the rest of lunch and Yasuharu deals with it all, smiling in the right places and eating even though he really wants to vomit and by the end he is definitely feeling worse than he did before.

Kagetsu asks him if he's feeling okay and he lies through his teeth. But Kagetsu isn't as oblivious as he was as a child and he leads Yasuharu away, telling his coworkers that they have some other plans for the day.

"You enjoy yourselves!" Kimura calls out across the street, in front of a ton of people, and Yasuharu wants to hide his face in his hands and never look up.

Kagetsu's friends are a colorful bunch, that's for sure.

They don't hold hands on their way to Kagetsu's apartment, but that's okay. Yasuharu isn't so sure he would be able to prevent himself from attacking Kagetsu, either because eating that disgusting food has made him hungry for something he can actually eat, or because he's still annoyed that Kagetsu invited his coworkers without telling him.