If you want to. I—do generally like your presence, even if—you know. I'm not sure how they'd react.

I can be present and still not say anything to them or appear before them if it wouldn't be helpful.

Yeah. I dunno. We'll see how it goes. Yutaka looks up from his phone, glances somewhere, and immediately turns around so that he is not looking at that direction at all and so that he is instead walking somewhere else. Here's a waiter, he grabs a couple of hors d'oeuvres off their tray, pops one into his mouth, and surreptitiously offers Haru one.

Haru sneaks it out of his hand and gobbles it up.

Part of me kind of wants to apologise to Eiji but he'd freak out and frankly be very confused. But it depresses me and also pisses me off that he's pretending he has a girlfriend. I hope she's also gay and using him as a beard too otherwise that's just mean.

She could be asexual. Or just trying to get her parents off her back if they want her to be showing an interest in finding somebody. Lots of ways for there to be mutual benefit there. But it is admittedly not the way to bet.

Pisses me off, plenty of kids are single and he doesn't even come off gay, not really, not if you're not, like, paying attention, I don't know why he's so obsessed.

How are you sure he is?

I mean. You know.

I don't actually have very good gaydar.

No um. I mean. Hands-on experience.

Aha.

He looks down at his phone as he gets a text. Alright, they agreed to meet up later. Akira's wondering how I'm so certain it's going to be pouring buckets in half an hour so, easing them into it I guess. He puts his phone away. ...I'll figure out how to be nice to people for a change.

Love you.

And he's off.

Haru loiters by the plants but during uncrowded moments sidles up to Yutaka for eavesdropping and snacks.

Each time Haru shows up Yutaka's talking to a different person. He always seems to be smiling, his body language warm, and if Haru asks he always has things to say about them, tidbits and things they like and stuff he's asking them about. Haru'd already seen him doing social fu at the magicals but this feels a lot friendlier and more relaxed than that.

He's definitely the charisma build of their little adventuring party.

And then, right on cue, the rain suddenly gets really bad, at which point Yutaka finds the most graceful way to exit his current conversation so that he can go to the relevant balcony.

Haru follows him.

Yutaka lifts himself onto the railing, his back to the rain, and lights a cigarette while he waits. "Toshiki'll show up first," he predicts, "but Akira'll only be a couple minutes after that."

"That how it was last time? This is a pretty different conversation."

"Last time I didn't even know they were coming, and Toshiki didn't realise Akira was following him, but this time they both know. Toshiki's the braver one of the two of them but they don't really know that, so Akira sticks to the sidelines and only goes out when he knows it's safe while Toshiki'll just show up."

"Gotcha."

"Ah, and speak of the devil," says Yutaka as the door outside opens.