I’ll admit I did it because I wanted to see his reaction. Ordering for my friends whom I knew for years was normal, but what would he think? We didn’t know each other for that long yet.
To my joy, he shook his head and reached for the soda to take a sip, the sides of his lips curling up the tiniest bit.

Tarou curiously stared at him. “If you’d smile more, you could work as a model. Ouch!”
Tarou has taken a hit from Yuji. Tarou has received 34 damage.

Rubbing his arm, Tarou glared at Yuji. “What? It’s the truth.”

“I doubt he’d wanna be a model considering how much trouble his looks are already causing him”, Kaoru thoughtfully said. “Getting shipped furiously, having stalkers, unable to spend a minute alone without someone trying to talk to him…”

Aaaand here they were, going right into discussion mode.
I rubbed my neck, glancing at Mizuki who was listening quietly. As long as he didn’t look uncomfortable, I’d just let them do their thing.

“But he’s got his pick. Imagine you could decide freely whom you wanted to be friends with or go out with.”
“Nah, aren’t most of them just after his looks? That’s more annoying than nice, isn’t it?”
“Hmmm, don’t most people say they like his quiet temperament?”
“Ehh…”

Yuji clicked his tongue. “Wrong. They act like he’s some kinda ice-prince, like a manga character. You know, the ‘I only unfreeze for you’ type. If they found out he wasn’t exactly like in their perception - which I doubt -, they’d get mad.”

Tarou tapped his fingers on the table. “Riku isn’t.”

“Riku would freak out if Taizou had that kind of overbearing ice-prince character. Can you imagine him talking to someone like that? He’d shrink into the ground.”
That’s correct, but hey.

“Right, Riku being friends with him is like the perfect proof that he’s just a quiet guy getting very annoyed at his stalkers.”

Kaoru looked over at Mizuki, pointing towards him like he was giving proof. “See? Isn’t he rather docile? So the point is, he’s not that hard to get along with unless you annoy him, right?”

“He does have a sharp tongue, though.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard him being harsh on someone who didn’t deserve it, right?”

I looked at Mizuki, who turned to me with raised eyebrows in response. “Fascinating, isn’t it? They can talk about people at the same table while completely forgetting they’re not just puppets and can hear what they’re saying.”
Mizuki shrugged with a nonchalant face. “It’s interesting to hear what others think about me for once.

I clapped into my hands to gain everyone’s attention. “Guys, can we stop this topic for a moment and order?”

A stunned reaction. “...Oh, right.”

I didn’t want to wait for my food forever, after all. We waved a waitress over and ordered whatever we wanted. I started participating in the conversations after that, perfectly at ease joking around with my usual group of friends. 

Mizuki wasn’t talking much, but he was relaxedly leaning back and watching us with half-closed eyes like a cat in the sun, so I guessed he was comfortable enough.

We devoured our food like hungry wolves - except my crush, who ate slowly - before we began discussing our exams.

The scene must have looked hilarious from an outsider’s perspective: first, my regular group discussed the answer to a question, then, once we were finished, we simultaneously turned to Mizuki to check the answer. He was in the same class as Prez so we guessed he knew the answers.

Mizuki’s permanent frown from school was gone, his emotionless face in stark contrast to our excited behaviour. I think he was actually enjoying himself and it made me happy to see him get along with my friends.

My phone vibrated in my bag and I curiously took it out, exiting the conversation for a moment. It was a message from Haru.

‘I think it turned out nicely’, she wrote, the app showing me that there was still something sending.
I waited for it, quickly waving to my friends who had stopped talking to look over to me. “Just Haru.”

The message finally came, a jpg, and I tapped on it to open it. I knew she was working on something recently, so I wanted to see.
Curiosity killed the cat, but in this case, it almost killed my phone.

I yelped and jolted at the image, my phone slipping through my hand. I only caught it with lots of awkward fumbling, cursing loudly at my sister. Kaoru and Tarou immediately perked up.

“Show us!”, they shouted in chorus, reaching out to grab my phone.

“Like hell!” I fought to get it to lock before they could reach it, wheezing when I barely managed to do so. Both guys glared at me.
“Boring. What did she send you? Fujoshi stuff?” They were caught up on the fact that Haru was a fujoshi ever since I told them.

I frowned and tried to take my phone back. “Yes. So no need to see it.”

I didn’t lie, but I wouldn’t have freaked out so much if it was her usual drawings. The point was who she had drawn on the cliche ‘Oops I stumbled and fell right on top of you’ manga page.

Mizuki frowned at the word. I had explained it to him during one of the tutoring lessons so he recognized it. “Your older sister sends you stuff about… what was it, shipping guys?”

“She probably thinks his reaction is funny”, Yuji guessed.
“Exactly that. Making me awkward is her hobby.”

Everyone turned quiet for a second before Kaoru spoke up.
“Do you know that thing where someone tells you not to google something because it’s disgusting?”
“And you do it right away cause you’re too curious? Yep.”
“I do that, too.”

I curled up over my phone, gaze turning wary. The creepy grins turned to me.
“So, show us.”
“No.”

“Oh come ooon! It made you yelp in surprise, we wanna see! Is it because it’s too graphic? Or is it something disgusting?” “An orgy? Bestiality? Aliens?” “Weird art style?”
They wildly began to guess, fixing me like hunters their prey.

More vibrations from my phone. I had the bad feeling I had just gotten more pages.

I sweated, whining. “Yuji!”
The tall guy chuckled. “Not on your side, this time. I wanna see it, too.”

I caved in.
“Okay! Wait a second!” The wandering hands halted. “I’ll let Yuji see and he decides whether it’s something that you guys should see or not.”

That was a tactical move: Me saying no was fun to overthrow. Yuji saying no, on the other hand, was the emperor’s decree. You didn’t try to force him to change his mind. He had a way of making people feel terrible about something.

Yuji’s eyebrow jumped up and my other friends pulled back their hands expectantly. Mizuki curiously looked at my phone, but didn’t play along.

I walked around the table to where Yuji had scooped back in his seat, unlocked my phone and held that first page out for just him to see, watching Kaoru and Tarou closely who were staring at Yuji’s face.

My friend’s face first turned into an ‘Oh’, then crumpled into a frown. He locked my phone by himself and looked at the expectant idiots.

“No.”
“Whaaat! Just how bad is it!”

I sighed in relief and went back to my seat as they bickered lightly.
Mizuki bumped his hand against my arm. “Now I’m curious, too.”

Ergh. Not that I’m not curious about your reaction, but… Can I really tell you my sister ships us… 

“Maybe some other time”, I rejected him vaguely. If our relationship actually developed more into the direction of a couple… Well, I could show him then.

He didn’t press me for the issue.

“Even Taizou wants to know”, Tarou huffed. 
“See? He’s not the ice-prince. He’s curious about his friends’ issues like any other guy.” Yuji grinned. At that moment, Kaoru just had to throw in the most awkward comment.

“I bet he’s the type to want to know everything about the people he likes.”

And Mizuki just jolted. Almost out of his seat.
A ‘welp, bad topic’ went through everyone’s head and Yuji threw himself into the flood to change the flow of the conversation.

“Says the guy who writes down every girl’s three sizes, ah!”
“I do not!”

Actually, what they were talking about was the reason why Kaoru had made the comment in the first place.
We just recently had a conversation about how Tarou knew everything about his favourite celebrities. He had defended himself, saying that it was normal to want to know everything about your crush, to which I agreed but Yuji not. The discussion went on for a while.

When Yuji mentioned ‘curious about friends’ just now, Kaoru had probably remembered that and made an off-hand comment.

Owl

One more chapter! I'll place it all in the next one, no idea how much words that will be xD