CHAPTER THREE HUNDRED SIXTY FOUR

"Do you feel better now?"

Yuri glowered, his cheeks a bit flushed from embarrassment, ramen noodles hanging from his mouth as he sipped at his bowl...but he nodded, and continued eating in silence.

Viktor seemed pleased either way, returning to the bowl in front of his own place, "How do they say it in America? 'Hangry'? When you're so hungry, you're angry?" He laughed, using his chop sticks to find a few noodles in the broth, and twirled them around in the base of a wide spoon to make them into a more manageable ball before eating it.

To call the small 'Kousei Rāmen' restaurant a 'hole in the wall' would be an understatement. The tiny location was built directly under one of the looping arms of the highway interchange between the official hotel and the arena. It would be easy to look over by a non-native resident, especially by those foreigners who wouldn't wander far from Universal Studios on the other side of the river. However, for a Native Son and Daughter of Japan, it was easy to spot. With grey pull-down security walls on one side, and a grey metal fence on the other, the orange and yellow signs above the narrow entry-way stuck out like a sore thumb, beckoning the eyes of any passerby willing to look, with the kana [こうせい らーめん] written in broad, brush-like strokes.

Inside, there was only enough space to have a few 4-person tables, each pushed right up against the walls, with some 2-person tables closer to the back, and a line of single-person seats that went like 2 long benches around the corner of the kitchen area. A small flat-panel television, above a window next to the door, was playing the local news.

"So did Viktor actually tell you what happened?" Minako wondered casually, taking a sip from her tall beer, "Or were you content not to know this time?"

Yuri glanced from broth to ballerina, but then looked down again as he swallowed the noodles he'd slurped a moment before, "I just asked how he handled it. Maybe I...just imagined the rest." He admitted quietly, still feeling slightly embarrassed for his earlier outburst, "It's been such a long time since I really talked to him. Maybe he's changed as much as he thinks I have, but I just didn't see it. Everything about him since yesterday was new. Before that argument we had, if you can call it that...I'd never once see him yell or cry about anything. He was always so...polished? I don't know how to describe it. Other than the occasional smile, he always had this neutral look on his face...it was hard to read him."

"Is that why you thought he was weird back in the day?"

"Sort of."

"You thought he was weird?" Viktor wondered, half-amused by the idea, even as a few noodles hung from his mouth, "Why?"

Yuri sighed and set his chop sticks down, wiping his fingers off on a cloth napkin before putting both hands into his lap, "I don't know, he just kind of was weird." He tried to explain, "Talking to him didn't always feel normal...I honestly felt sometimes like I got more conversation out of Vik-chan than him. Asahi would acknowledge what I said, and sometimes repeat back what I said in his own words, like he was trying to prove that he was listening, but he never really engaged further than that. It always seemed like...an interview." He grumbled again and reached his right hand up to press through his slicked-back hair, leaving his fingers hooked to the back of his neck for a moment, eyes watching the oil dots that floated at the surface of his ramen's pork-bone broth, "I was never the sort to really volunteer information, and he was never the sort to ask anything... There was a time I jokingly called him Asahi-senpai instead of Asahi-kun, as though I should look up to him as an upperclassman who didn't owe me any kindness or friendly informality, and he gave me this dead-eyed look like he didn't understand that I was joking." He said, remembering that very moment, and feeling the same awkward pit in his stomach that he'd felt back then. A distraction quickly came up though in the form of an elbow nudging against his arm, and he glanced aside.

"Eat." Viktor told him simply.

Yuri looked back down at the bowl and picked up the chop sticks next to it, fishing for noodles, albeit slowly, "Anyway, he was just...weird. To realize that he...well..." He hesitated to say it then.

"That he was into you?" Minako offered.

"...Yeah..." Yuri nodded a little, "...And that he felt that way all that time...it just makes me a little uneasy."

The silver Russian waited a moment, looking slightly aside to watch his partner find a few more noodles in the translucent soup, only to abandon them and go for the half-egg that was floating near the back of the bowl instead. He waited until he was sure that Yuri would eat it before saying anything, "...It makes you that uncomfortable?" He wondered, reaching for the ice-water in front of his right hand, and took a quick sip.

Yuri swallowed and shrugged, "Maybe that's the wrong word. Nervous? Uncertain? Maybe it's all those things. It just kind of blind-sided me to hear him admit it."

"I saw it and I told you almost right away." Viktor commented, setting the glass down again and reaching for the wide renge spoon to return to his ramen.

"Yeah, but it was different, hearing it from him. I mean, I started that conversation with the fact that you saw it, so he couldn't try to blow if off like I was just seeing things." The younger figure pointed out, looking up at the man, "But hearing him admit it...it just kind of knocked me back a bit. It's the kind of realization like finding out your neighbor is a serial killer or something. It just seems so impossible, so implausible, that when you find out the fact of it, it's just...so hard to process."

Minako looked over the rim of her beer mug as she took another drink from it, but set it down soon after, keeping her fingers around the circular lip as she cast her eyes back to Yuri, "I guess that explains why you never invited him to Yu-Topia."

"Don't get me wrong," He started up again, abandoning the noodles he'd fished for a second time, "I'm not saying he's a bad person. He never did anything mean, cruel, or hurtful towards me. Or anyone, so far as I'm aware. I just kind of feel like maybe I'm the one that's messed up? I feel like I got dropped into a parallel universe where Asahi is a completely different person than I thought I knew. Finding out all these things about him, seeing him utterly break down like he did...it just...makes me feel..." He made a face as he struggled to find the right word, "...Discombobulated...?"

"You don't need to internalize all the stuff that you've learned, Yuri." Minako explained, picking up a rectangular piece of Oshizushi in her fingers, "You and him stopped being buddies seven years ago. You've moved on. It's not your fault, or your responsibility to feel bad that he hasn't."

"...I did kind of vanish though...he probably feels like I abandoned him specifically." Yuri muttered disheartedly, "I told him that he'd know why I left if he actually paid attention back then, but he just dragged the conversation back to the fact that he'd gotten me that spot in the Tokyo club or how he'd stayed back in Juniors an extra year or two just for me. I really don't know what to say to that. I had so much of my own stuff going on that I guess I just didn't notice what he was doing."

"And even if you had, what difference would it have made?" Viktor wondered, holding a piece of pork belly between his wooden sticks, "Just because he did something for you doesn't mean you owe him gratitude."

"It's not an easy thing to refuse people in Japan." Yuri explained, "Even if you know exactly what's going on and you still don't care at all, you're supposed to at least pretend like you do. What I did was...really rude."

The Russian just half-scoffed at that, "Oh, you mean like how you practically have to study someone's business card like it's the next Rosetta Stone?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you only owed that to elders and strangers."

"You're still supposed to try to put your best foot forward and not be a rabble-rouser." Minako explained, "People who are openly hostile or antagonistic can be seen as outsiders. Good and decent people go with the flow and try to keep the peace, even with people they might otherwise not get along with."

"That just seems so unhealthy to me." Viktor huffed, "Like those people who work in department stores who seem all robotic when they greet customers."

"It used to make more sense in Japanese society, because in most cases, one person out of two was always superior to the other, so you owed that person politeness." The woman went on, "We don't have such a rigidly structured hierarchy system anymore, but the desire to be highly respectful kind of prevails anyway. So...students are responsible for cleaning their schools, rather than janitors, to teach them humility...younger people will bow more deeply to their elders than the elders bow back to them, if at all...using polite forms of the language rather than the short-form used in more casual settings...even the fact that working men can go into the city, stay at their desks super late, schmooze with their work buddies at a bar where they pay women to laugh at their jokes and pretend to find them fascinating, only to go home to a wife who still has to go through the motions of being happy to see him, even though it's midnight and he should've been home hours earlier. No one wants to be that guy that steps out of line."

"Asahi really adheres to that, to a fault." Yuri added, "Even the way he told us he didn't want to come to the onsen with us...it's the kind of thing a working guy would say to his colleagues to apologize for being the first to leave. For the most part, no one wants to be the first to leave...it's considered a mark of laziness."

Viktor had his eyes narrowed and brows raised, gaping at the both of them stiffly, "...How did I never notice that kind of thing before...? It's not like I haven't lived here for 2 years already..."

"You're foreign." Minako smirked and pointed her hand at him casually, "No one expects you to know the rules, and no one really holds it against you when you don't adhere to them yourself. Most Japanese people might even think you're making fun of them if you try."

"I've been given dirty looks before."

"You're foreign." She echoed, sitting back slightly and reaching for her beer again, "You can't win. If you try, you're mocking someone...if you don't, you're just dumb and uncultured. I've seen foreigners speak perfectly fluent Japanese at restaurants, but the servers will still look to the Japanese person in the group to speak for them...even if that Japanese person doesn't know any Japanese!" She laughed, "It's fun to people-watch sometimes."

"So that's probably why people in Hasetsu didn't bother speaking Japanese around me." Viktor surmised, "It wasn't just to make it easy on me. To them, there was no point in me learning it, because they'd never listen to me if I spoke it anyway."

Both Yuri and Minako nodded.

Viktor just made a face at that and crossed his arms, "Rude."

"Maybe they'll ease up, now that you're officially part of the JSF." Yuri suggested, "And you're going to be a citizen soon, too. Plus, you're turning into a pretty familiar face in Hasetsu, so you've become of a fixture, and don't seem so transient anymore."

Minako leaned forward again, "Speaking of rude things though...did you get a chance to see the footage from Moscow yet?" She seemed to have a mischievous gleam in her eyes as she asked.

Both skaters shook their heads, and spoke in tandem, "Not yet."

"Oh, you'll love it."

"What happened...?" Yuri wondered for the both of them.

"I don't want to spoil the fun. You should look up video footage if you can." She explained, waving her free hand as though shooing them off already to go do just that, "I was talking to Mik about it in the break between that meeting and dinner. Apparently your father was quite entertained by what happened."

Viktor looked a bit insecure suddenly, though still tried to find the humor in it, "As glad as I am about how things have turned out with him...I'm really struggling to get used to how everyone else is talking about him now." He sighed lightly, "It's fine when Yuri does it...but the rest..."

"I suppose you could relate to Yuri's situation more than you realize then," Minako wondered, "Someone you haven't talked to in years and years...and suddenly they pop back into your life, completely changed."

"My father changed under my supervision," The Russian pointed out, "It'd be more similar if he turned up at the Summer Garden already accepting of my skating and relationship choices. It's been almost a year since then though, and he only started to shift rather recently."

"Hm...maybe."

"And he still doesn't accept Yuri's and my marriage." Viktor sulked slightly, "Not that I ever expect him to, but...if Yuri and I really go there to visit him before Euros, I'm not sure how we'll deal with sleeping arrangements and just...being ourselves."

Yuri found himself slack-jawed at the words, staring at his partner incredulously.

The silver Russian turned his head in turn and gaped back, "...What? It's true."

"I never thought I'd see this day." The younger man started, feeling the tears forming in his eyes, "My Viktor...is actually thinking about possible consequences in advance..."

Slate eyes just narrowed in confusion, "...What?"

"You're thinking of visiting Konstantin Nikiforov on your own before a major competition...?" Minako added, "...And why are you going to Euros? You're not able to compete there anymore."

"I know I know," He flicked his hands back at her, "We were going to go as spectators for once."

Yuri's eyes were wellsprings and tears flowed down his cheeks like rivers, and he latched onto the Russian's nearest arm, rubbing his face on it affectionately, "I didn't think it would occur to you how we'd sort those things out until after we got there...!" He spoke softly, though his voice cracked on a few notes as he tried not to sob those happy lamentations, "You're growing up so fast...!"

"I'm older than you are."

"I reiterate my first question." Minako chimed in again, "You're going to visit Konstantin on your own?"

"Thinking about it." Viktor corrected, "I half-suggested the idea back at my birthday party but Yuri said to put it on a back-burner, and we've only briefly mentioned it now and again since then." He explained, relinquishing control of his arm to his weepy-happy-clingy husband, "But then we talked about it again earlier and I suggested bringing the dogs with us...and then I thought, where will we all sleep? My papa's house is still pretty small, and wasn't exactly designed with guests in mind...and then I remembered what it was like to share the room with Yurio at NHK and Phichit at the start of the Grand Prix, and then you and Mari after that and...ah...well..."

Minako raised a brow, "...Why was that a big deal?"

Viktor felt a very subtle squeeze of fingers into his arm, but it didn't take that for him to already feel like he was wading into dangerous waters. The distinct memory of Yuri cutting him off mid-sentence at Campus Martius Park, and speaking only a few very specific words, was echoing off the inside of his skull. He put on a nervous smile in spite of the cold sweat running down the back of his neck, "Oh...uhm...well...you know... Reasons."

The ballerina just looked on, eyes moving from the elder to the younger skater, and back again. She then sat back in her seat and crossed her arms, giving them both a rather serious look, "Huh...you won't be able to have sex for days while you're out there."

Yuri dropped face-first to the table, bounced, then rolled to the floor, unconscious on impact.

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