Nao felt that he was finally getting the hang of waiting tables. He had more or less memorized the layout of the restaurant by now, and he was making less and less mistakes. After a week of hard work and exhaustion, a bit of cheerfulness poked through the gloom in his heart.

“Nao, two orders for table seven,” Kit called.

“On it!”

Nao weaved through the aisles and arrived back at the counter, picked up the tray and headed back into the fray.

This was a place that had opened recently, and its size wasn’t large. In all, there were only about sixteen tables and two long bars where customers could be seated. The staff was likewise small, four waiters and six chefs, along with a couple of janitors. However, due to the pleasant open-air atmosphere and high-quality cooking, business was booming, and thus, the waiters and chefs were all struggling to keep up with the traffic.

Nao was glad to work here because the job wasn’t exceptionally hard, but he also wished it wasn’t quite so busy.

He reached the table, narrowly avoiding collision with a customer who stood too fast next to him, and breathed a silent sigh of relief. Working up a cheerful smile, he said, “One serving of wontons with green tea and one serving of tempura over rice with ginger tea?”

“Wontons are mine,” came an equally bright voice.

Nao leaned over to set the plate and cup down in front of this person, who seemed vaguely familiar. He recalled that this was one of his classmates.

While he was still straightening up, another voice spoke up quietly. “I ordered the tempura.”

Nao blinked in surprise, but schooled his expression before he was standing fully once more. He moved the remaining dish and glass to the table in front of Rin, then smiled again. “If there’s anything else, please don’t hesitate to call a waiter. Please enjoy the food.”

“I feel like I’ve seen you around before,” the other boy said, tapping his chin in thought. He snapped his fingers. “Right! You’re Nao Suruna, right?”

“Mm, that would be me,” Nao answered in a humble tone.

“I’m Wen Xulong,” the boy said with a merry grin. “We’re in the same class.”

“Mm, I remember,” Nao said, nodding.

Wen Xulong gestured to Rin. “This is my best friend, Shiniama Rin. He’s a little antisocial, don’t mind it.”

“Who’s your best friend?” Rin said irritably. “We’ve already met, you dumbass.”

Nao blinked again, a little shocked by Rin’s coarse language. He really couldn’t tell whether the two of them were friends, like Wen Xulong said, or whether the poor boy was just delusional.

Wen Xulong laughed. “Oh, so that’s why you weren’t introducing yourself. Shini-sama, you should always greet friends! You’re so rude, you know that?”

Nao cut in before Rin could speak, offering a polite smile and waving his hand. “Oh, Xulong-ge, you misunderstand. We’ve met before, but we aren’t friends. It’s alright if Rin-san doesn’t want to say hello. Besides, I really should be getting back to work anyway. It’s very busy tonight. But I’m glad to have met you.”

“Oh, alright,” Wen Xulong said. “Sorry for holding you up like this. We’ll let you go now.”

Wen Xulong watched Nao walk off to wait more tables, then turned back to Rin with an expectant look. “So what’s the story behind that, Shini-sama? You look ready to ram your head into a woodchipper.”

Rin scowled and stuffed a piece of shrimp in his mouth. He chewed as if he bore that shrimp a personal vendetta. Only after swallowing and taking a sip of his tea did he finally answer. “I lost my temper and yelled at him. I want to apologize, but I haven’t been able to catch him alone since that day, and now it seems like he doesn’t want any sort of apology, just distance.”

Wen Xulong made a noise of annoyance, then reached across the table and flicked Rin’s forehead. “Ancestor, just because he seems that way doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be good to apologize. You seem like the heartless god of death, but it turns out you’re actually a big softie. Appearances are deceiving a lot more than they are honest.”

Rin flushed a bit and shoved another piece of tempura in his mouth. “I’m not a ‘softie’. If there are any softies here, that’d be you.”

“Sure, Shini-sama. If you say so.”

Rin didn’t respond. He only continued to eat his meal with much aggression, until not even a grain of rice was left in the bowl. Wen Xulong, meanwhile, ate his wontons one at a time, chewing each one with a happy, crescent-eyed smile. He was long used to Rin’s personality and took little notice of the way he attacked his food.

The two of them set their chopsticks down at the same time, but their manner contrasted greatly; Wen Xulong’s chopsticks fell against their holder with a soft clack whereas Rin’s hit theirs with a much louder noise. When Wen Xulong looked up at his friend, his expression resembled a roiling storm.

Clearly, he was not going to be easy to cheer up.

Wen Xulong drank the last of his tea, then set the cup aside and mildly said, “Shini-sama, I think we’ll skip the karaoke room tonight.”

Rin was about to make a noise of assent when Wen Xulong continued, “Instead I think we’ll wait here for Nao-chan’s shift to end.”

Rin’s expression darkened in an instant. “If you want to wait, wait by yourself.”

Wen Xulong smiled. “Shini-sama, you and I both know you couldn’t leave if I really wanted you to stay. I’m taller than you now, and I’ve got more muscle. I’d just tackle you.”

“. . .You can’t force me to talk to him,” Rin said. “I’ve bothered him enough already. If I drag him off somewhere just to give him an apology he doesn’t want, then I doubt things between us will ever improve.”

“Shiniama Rin, if I have to drag you around by your ear to make you do this, so help me God, I will do it,” Wen Xulong said. “From Tuesday until today, you’ve had this cloud hanging over you. I’m conjecturing here, but you got angry with him on Monday, right? And it’s been bugging you ever since, making you lose sleep until you finally passed out right in the middle of class. It’s not healthy for you, you’ll go bald by twenty if you keep this up.”

Rin’s eye twitched. “What is it with you and going bald?! I’m not going bald!”

Wen Xulong wagged a finger at him. “But you will be! And then what will happen? After you go bald, you’ll get a bad back, and then your knees will start to ache, and you’ll have one foot in the grave at just forty years old. Don’t be foolish and cling to stressful things like this.”

“I’m going to give you a bad back,” Rin said.

“Mm, it would look good on someone like me,” Wen Xulong said, unperturbed by Rin’s empty threat. “But someone with your frame and that sour face you’ve got, it would just look pitiful. You wouldn’t be cute at all with a hunch. If you had a boyfriend and ended up like that, he’d leave you for a younger guy who’s more handsome.”

Rin swallowed an intense urge to flip the table onto Wen Xulong. “If you ever get a boyfriend, he’ll leave you for lecturing him about going bald every time he breathes.”

Wen Xulong grinned. “Oh well, I’ll live life all alone, then. At least I won’t be the bald one. Ah, Shini-sama, let’s order something for desert, yeah? My treat!”

And so Wen Xulong stalled for time in this manner, nitpicking his friend’s unhealthy habits and distracting him with all sorts of nonsense, all the while keeping a keen eye on Nao’s movements.

Meanwhile, Nao was practically up to his neck in work, rushing back and forth as if lives depended on it. He was so tangled up in the hustle and bustle that he barely noticed the empty feeling in his stomach, only coming to his senses when there was a strange grinding sensation in his chest and, with a loud beep, a wisp of smoke emitted from his engine panel.

That was definitely not a good sign.