.
.
"Ma'am," the girl at the counter said. "The table is ready for you and your son."
"Son?" Bishamon said. Kazuma glanced around, confused. "I'm sorry, but you must be mistaking me for someone else," Bishamon said.
"I don't think so, ma'am, it says here party of two. You're the only two waiting."
"I-" Bishamon opened her mouth, then closed it, dumbstruck.
"Veena," Kazuma said. He gently took her arm. "Do not fret. I believe it's more how you're dressed than how you look."
Bishamon glanced down at her outfit: a long shawl with an ankle-length skirt and shoes that Yato had called "geriatric." ("Yo, Bishamon! You know that's what old people with diabetes wear, right?" Yato said, but Bishamon had ignored him.)
"Yes...yes. Of course, Kazuma. This shawl is rather matronly, isn't it?"
"Indeed it is," Kazuma said, and he smiled, blushing brightly. He really was adorable, when Bishamon stopped to think about it, and pretty soon she forgot that she looked old enough to be his mother.
xXx
.
It didn't stop at the restaurant.
She discarded her shawl and hiked up her skirt, and even though the denizens in the Near Shore generally ignored them, on the offhand chance they did notice them, they made snarky remarks about the middle-aged lady dating a college student. "I'm not middle-aged!" Bishamon said.
Her head was in Kazuma's lap, because the humiliation of the day was giving her a migraine and the only thing that made it better was Kazuma cradling her head and stroking her hair along her temples. "I'm not even that much older than you, Kazuma! I made you my shinki only two centuries after my last reincarnation."
"That's all?" Kazuma said. He stroked her hair, thoughtfully. "I did not know you were only two centuries older than me. You and I are practically the same age."
"I know! And yet those idiots at the Near Shore seem to think I'm your mother."
"The shoes did not help much," Kazuma said. "Neither did the shawl, come to think of it. But I thought you looked very beautiful." He smiled, gently. She felt his fingertips gently brushing her temples.
The next day, she found a newspaper clipping taped to the gate of her mansion.
COUGARS ON THE LOOSE, it said. OLDER WOMEN AND THE MEN WHO LOVE THEM. And below it Yato wrote, "Thought you'd be interested!" And he drew a smiley face with a tongue sticking out of its mouth.
(Apparently Yato had found out from Tenjin, who evidently had seen her at the restaurant. "I feel your pain, Bishamonten," Tenjin said, and he fanned himself, thoughtfully. "The denizens of the Near Shore think I am older, too." )