Brant sifted through the plate of spaghetti in front of him, looking for meatballs. "Ryu, this is the last time I ask you to order something for me beyond just translating."
Said dragon looked at his host, shocked. "I thought I'd get you something you never got the chance to have back home, since we have the chance to, here."
"I never have spaghetti back home, not because I don't get the chance to at home, but because I do not like it."
"Oh. Sorry." Somehow, the seven foot tall, copper-scaled drake managed to make himself look pitiful as he picked at his salad.
Brant sighed and looked around the table. Aranea was munching on breadsticks and some pasta dish with a name he couldn't pronounce. Ophia was carefully slipping a piece of seasoned chicken into her mouth, swallowing the meat whole; not the first time he'd seen the Echidna lamia eat that way. And Loba seemed more interested in him than her minestrone soup…as usual.
That done, he expanded his assessment to the rest of the restaurant. A number of Con-goers were chatting and eating here at the Al Porto Italian restaurant in Tokyo's Big Sight tower. Brant didn't even like Italian food, in general, but his homestays had insisted, so here they were.
As he watched, a visibly-Japanese human woman wearing a set of costume dog ears walked up to a table in Aranea's line of sight followed by a whopping seven liminals. Man, how does she manage to survive all of them? Or is she lucky enough that they all aren't attracted to her? The way they sat certainly suggested the latter: the massive serpent, a Jormungand he believed, coiled up at one end of the table with a pink slime girl (Huh, I didn't know those existed.) who held a lamia-like purple slime in her arms; a centaur sat on the other side of the table next to a small-breed arachne he recognized as Mara, the one who had set up the whole shebang in the first place; the human sat next to an owl-winged harpy; and the gargoyle he remembered as the co-organizer of the Con sat by herself opposite the harpy.
A heavy weight on his right arm reminded Brant of the primary reason he hadn't yet finished his meal; thanks to a glass of wine, Ryu had upgraded from merely sending suggestive looks his way to outright cuddling his arm as though it were a security blanket. "Isn't this so romantic, Brant? You and me enjoying a candlelit dinner, together?"
Brant glanced over at the other Exchange Program host and they shared a momentary sympathetic look; both of them knew how much of a handful liminals could be. When Ryu nuzzled his shoulder, Brant's patience wore thin. "Oh, Ryu~" Even emotionally dense as he was, Brant knew he had made the insincerity in the words extremely obvious.
"Yes, Brant?"
The American host didn't respond with words. Instead, he brought his left arm around and pressed two fingers into the dragon's side. Immediately, the monster-man stiffened. Both of them knew what lay just a couple of scales away.
"You-you wouldn't dare. Not in public."
"I would, and I will if you don't knock it off." Ryu let go and returned to his food and drink. "Thank you."
Once more, his gaze shifted toward the other host and her homestays, but they were engrossed in their own conversation, apparently about someone named "Mimi." He made to return to his meal when he noticed that Aranea was staring at the group with what looked like a wistful expression on her face. "Are you alright, Ara?"
The arachne tore her gaze away. "Yes. No. I don't know."
He reached as far across the table toward her as he could. "Hey, you know that I'm here if you need to talk about anything."
They looked back at the gathering just in time to see the human yank off the ears with a beet-red blush. "It is just…they look so happy, together. They all look like they have someone to share their heart with."
"And they're all lesbians. 'Cept maybe the little slime." Everyone else stared at Ophia.
"How do you know?"
"Come on. I'm a lesbian, you all know that, and my gaydar's goin' crazy just lookin' at 'em." He heard her add under her breath, "Too bad they're all taken. The jugs on that Jormungand. Whew."
Brant took a moment to process the former assumption, ignoring the latter lewd comment. He wasn't a bigot, far from it, but he was having a hard time believing that a lesbian human host had managed to be assigned only lesbian liminals. If Ophia was right about their orientation, that could not have been a coincidence. He huffed a laugh as a delivery of breadsticks to the table was gone before the basket even hit the table.
After he finished his meal, he considered speaking with the other host about their respective experiences in the Exchange Program, as well as the differences between the Japanese and American versions of the Program. Then he saw Ryu polish off another glass of wine, his third of the night, and Brant decided that he would rather not risk an embarrassing mistranslation. "Let's head back to the apartment."
As he passed by Aranea, he whispered, "I know you hate wasting your silk, but could you tie up Ryu tonight, so that he doesn't try anything?"
Seeing the dragon stumble out of his seat, the arachne sighed and nodded.