"I've got some suggestions, depending on what you like."

"Mushrooms are not a protein," Haru remarks. "If I'm going with udon and am not a big fan of daikon, what should I get?"

Yutaka is partial to this here option with tuna and that there option with tofu, personally, and neither of them have daikon.

Haru will order the tuna one.

And he'll get the tofu. He presses the little button so the waiter will come get their orders, and then when he's gone Yutaka asks, "So you never got around to telling me about Twain."

"Oh yeah! So my favorite book of his is Connecticut Yankee, which has been translated into Japanese but not since 1976 as far as I can tell, and it's out of print so I don't actually know if the rendering's any good -" And he can explain the premise of the book for as long as Yutaka seems interested and what Twain does with the prose.

Yutaka can be interested! Boys talking about things that interest them are interesting, he loves the way their eyes light up and they forget themselves when they get lost in the flow.

Yay! And Haru has also read Twain's other well-known novels and stories but has not chased down, for example, the Joan of Arc one, nor bothered with the unfinished fragments of the later Tom Sawyer sequels, nor all the essay collections. And what does Yutaka like to read?

Yutaka will go with stuff they read for literature class, i.e. Japanese lit, which regardless of how much he likes it he's had to write thousands of words about so he can produce the sorts of opinions of someone who does like it if necessary!

"I'm still not quite fast enough with dense Japanese text to enjoy it as directly as I can a story in English, even relatively archaic English, but I'm looking forward to getting there."

"I have to use a dictionary more often than I'd like to admit to read some of these, the standard curriculum kanji just don't cover it."

"Well, at least it's not just me then."

"Are you planning on going to university in Japan?"

"Not sure yet! My plan has been research medicine. I'll probably apply to schools in both hemispheres and see what happens."

"Both hemispheres? You're looking into Australia or something?"

"East and west are hemispheres!"

"...I guess they are. I hadn't... thought about them that way before."

"They're halves of the sphere! Just divided more by custom than by astronomy."

Here's the waiter with their food.

"Itadakimasu."

"Itadakimasu!" he agrees, cheerfully, splitting his chopsticks perfectly. Is that good luck on his quest to get in Haru's pants? Who knows.

Haru's got a few splinters clinging to the one on the left but it's not getting him down. "I was so bad with chopsticks when I was eight. I told Ren 'I can just bring a fork everywhere in my pocket' and she said 'pocket lint is not part of this complete breakfast'."

Yutaka almost chokes on his udon and has to hide his mouth with a napkin to cover his giggles. "A fork! In your pocket! That's adorable."

"They're a lot easier! Especially with dyspraxia*!"

*This is an 18 mora word in Japanese but Haru has memorized it specifically.

"Dys... what?"*

* はったつせいきょう。。。何だって？