A/N (7.18.2023): Only two more terms for you~

meronpan: a Japanese sweet bread that tastes faintly of cantaloupe.

seiza: a traditional way of sitting during formal occasions. There are a lot of specific ways certain body parts are positioned, but the one relevant for this fic is that the hands are placed palm down on the upper thighs with the fingers closed and pointing inward. There are other ways your hands are allowed to be positioned, but the palms-down one is the most deferential and often the precursor to a bow.

This chapter may be shorter, but it's definitely also sweeter!

Nanase makes the last train home and runs through the motions of preparing for bed, but she can't bring herself to sleep no matter the fact that it's well past midnight. She did anticipate not getting a lot of sleep tonight, but only because she thought she'd want to get started on video editing right away. Unfortunately, she's much more preoccupied with some other things about the evening.

"How do you know Kairi, Nanase-chan?"

"Between you and me, I think Tendo-sensei was pretty nervous about how you'd react to the food."

"Anything special to say about the dorayaki?"

Maybe alone, those conversations wouldn't make her wonder so much, but together…

She decides to rewatch her lunch day in Odaiba to see what Tendo-sensei was talking about. She sits at her desk, turns on her laptop, and pulls up the video. As her on-screen self walks through a shopping street in search of food, Nanase is more and more certain that she didn't eat any dorayaki on this day… and then she gets to the part of the video that shows the end of her lunch.

The Nana-chan in Odaiba cheerfully buys a meronpan at a small bakery on her way back to the subway. "Because no lunch date is complete without dessert!" she says in the video, but there's different text edited on screen. It was a throwaway comment, something she put up as a reward to the Sebentous who watch her videos instead of letting them play in the background.

Meronpan is tasty, but
of course I love dorayaki the most!

Tendo-sensei was right. She did mention it in her Odaiba video. Not in the way she was expecting, but it's there.

Embarrassment surges through her a second later. Having just finished rewatching it, she cannot believe this is the video by which he based her invitation to Ha-to. She's proud of it, sure, but it's barely about the food! No wonder he was so judgemental. She's lucky he even gave her a chance.

Nanase slouches in her seat. She had no control over it, but she can't help but feel regret. Maybe if she paid the extra money so that YouTube could promote her best and most relevant videos, this night would have gone differently for her. She would only have been up against herself instead of both her anxiety and Tendo-sensei's poor impression of her.

As if to mock her, YouTube autoplays another Rakki Seben video after her Odaiba one ends. It's the one where she toured a farm in Chiba.

She lets it play just as a distraction, but she soon finds herself actually just rewatching it. It was a good day. Among the many reasons she's glad she took up YouTubing, the preservation of her favourite memories in a more interactive format is definitely one of them.

A clip finishes of the farmer/tour guide explaining that even though beef is a relatively new introduction to Japanese cuisine, almost every part of the cow that you could name gets eaten somewhere in Japan. Then it cuts to Nana-chan sitting down to eat lunch at the on-site restaurant, and she muses out loud to the camera that she wouldn't mind eating a cow heart ("or any animal heart really!") just to try it.

Nanase pauses the video. Rewinds. Plays it forward. Rewinds again and plays it at three-fourths the speed. Of course, her words don't change.

Like, to this day, they haven't changed. Hasn't she been saying that exact thing all night? Sure, she's a consistent person, but it's not like she's been hoping to eat animal heart anytime soon.

Something about this seems like the result of a force stronger than coincidence. After all, another thought she's been having all night is the fact that all of her favourite or desired eating experiences were represented in Ha-to's menu… eating experiences which she is increasingly certain she's shared on the channel before. It's what you do on a food vlog.

Before she knows it, it's already four a.m., and she's rewatched every one of her published videos. (Thank goodness she's not scheduled to work at the clinic today.) As she suspected, she's explicitly mentioned or discussed the nuances of her tastes in food in most of them, and she can directly connect a kaiseki course to one of those specificities.

Nanase shuts her laptop shut immediately. She needs to get her in bed. Her sleep deprivation is obviously affecting her. What is she even thinking right now? That every aspect of Ha-to was tailored to her exact tastes? Ludicrous. She's a nobody YouTuber who doesn't even focus on the food in a video hosted on a food vlog; she isn't worth the time. Besides, accepting that her delusions are true is predicated on the idea that everything was orchestrated by none other than Tendo Kairi, who would certainly agree on how much time she is worth.

"Sounds like you'll need more than three minutes of my time, Sakura-san."

She flops backwards onto her bed with a groan. The sooner that she sleeps, the sooner she can stop being reminded of all the ways she embarrassed herself tonight and let go of the weird feelings these suspicions cause.

The repeated buzzing of her cell phone wakes Nanase up earlier than her bedtime this morning would prefer, but that's the ringtone she set for her family. It might be an emergency.

"Hello?" she mumbles into the receiver.

"Nana-chan!" her brother yells into her ear. "Have you checked the news yet?"

"The news about what?"

"That fancy dinner you went to last night! It made the entertainment column on Yahoo! News. You and that dress you spent too much money on are in the background of some of the photos," he teases.

That certainly wakes her up. "Eh? No way! Do I look bad?"

"Not really?" he says, to her relief. "If I didn't know it was you, I'd think you were the heiress of a mid-sized trading company."

Leave it to her older brother to keep her humble. "Better than a bankrupt trading company."

"You've got the spirit! I'll send you a LINE with the articles where your face is visible in case you want to pull the photos for your vlog."

"Thanks so much for looking out for me! I'll take a look."

"Take care today!"

"You too."

After they hang up, Nanase valiantly tries to fall back asleep, but the intermittent buzzing from her phone in the next few minutes makes that a lost cause. She might as well read the articles that her brother is sending her.

She starts with the shortest one, still hoping she might wind up falling asleep soon.

[Chef Tendo Kairi Bears Ha-to at First Kaiseki
by Negishi Mariko for The Tokyo Post

Saitama-born Tendo Kairi-sensei (33 years old) is a Tokyo-based chef best known for his skillful and timely rescue of an important dinner at the Peninsula Tokyo's restaurant last year after the head chef could not oversee the cooking due to personal reasons. Last night, he held a public, one-night only kaiseki dining opportunity in Ginza for a paying audience of about 200 people. The event was called 心臓(ハート), and there were eight delicious courses including an appetiser and dessert centred around the 'heart' theme. Despite being a kaiseki, there was minimal ceremony in presentation and explanation. Tendo-sensei simply and neatly introduced each dish's ingredients and preparation.

Tendo-sensei declined a formal interview, but reception of the meals were generally positive. "Unlike anything I've ever tasted before," "unique in every way," "a game-changer for the Tokyo culinary scene"—these are some of the things that were overheard through the night.

Pictures of the event hall and each course are included in the slideshow below.]

She doesn't click the slideshow, though, because something else catches her attention. Tendo-sensei declined an interview with the Tokyo Post?

She clicks through the other links her brother provided, and they all say he declined an interview with them.

Horror makes her bolt upright in bed. Did she perhaps monopolise all his allotted time for interviews?! She is so embarrassing.

Nanase opens LINE, sensing that it's far too late to apologise but feeling like one must be given anyway. Maybe she can transcribe the first interview Tendo-sensei did, where the light balance was off, and provide that to his management to distribute to the media in lieu of an in-person interview. Do chefs even have managers like actors do? She'll find out.

She intends to message the account that had sent her the invitation to Ha-to…

… Which has already messaged her this morning while she was asleep.

(Coincidentally, so did Yuki-san, but she'll read that later.)

[< cuisinebytendokairi

Sakura-san,
Thank you for your patronage last night. I look forward to your review.
Tendo Kairi]

The message makes her heart pound. Not just because it's a personal note from the chef himself but because right underneath that is a stamp of a cat wearing a mochi donut as a necklace with text that reads, 'I'll be in your care.' It's adorable.

It's familiar.

She uses the exact same stamp set. Fresh off the heels of rewatching all thirty-or-so of her videos, she knows for a fact that she's shown plenty of screenshots of her LINE messages. Any Sebentou would know she uses it.

Nanase slaps both her cheeks at once, forcing herself to get it together. She must still be seriously sleepy—why else would she still be so cognisant and even suspicious of what can only be coincidences? This is probably a very popular stamp set.

… Even though it's a premium set that costs 150 yen.

She will later attribute her next actions to a combination of sleep deprivation and the overinflated confidence that comes from being able to hide behind a screen, but she decides her curiosity is something worth satisfying, and she tries her luck.

[< cuisinebytendo

Good morning! Thank you for the invitation. It was wonderful to attend.

The wait for my next upload shouldn't be long. I started editing last night! Thank you again for the interview. I will properly edit it so that you look the most flattering despite my poor camerawork.]

It doesn't take a full minute for her message to be read and even less time to get a response, which makes her so giddy it borders on delirious.

[Poor camerawork? I thought that's what the second interview was for.

I'm sorry! I was so nervous and focused on fixing the first camera problem that I created a new one. Tendo-sensei is not fully in the frame…]

The typing dots on screen stop and start in obvious frustration, making her laugh more than they make her nervous. This is probably really rude and unprofessional of her, but she's committed to the ruse now.

[Must I record another one?]

There. She's got him.

[Would you mind?

If this is the way you always produce your videos, it's a wonder you get any out at all.

Is the Skytree out of the way for you, Sakura-san?

Not at all!

Meet me at the plaza there today at 1300.]

She smirks. That's plenty of time.

In response, she only sends back the same mochi donut cat stamp.

When Nanase arrives at the Skytree, Tendo-sensei is already waiting at one of the rock-shaped seats spread around the plaza for decoration. He's wearing another fashionably long coat and a black turtleneck. The aesthetic suits him, and she wonders what he looks like in the summer.

She waves blithely and grandly when he looks over in her direction, and he is still sneering at her when she gets closer. "Oi, where's your camera?"

As casually as possible, she sits on the rock next to him. She didn't bring it, obviously. This isn't an interview, but an interrogation. "Yuki-san LINE'd me this morning," she opens without apropos.

"... Okay?" he says, clearly wondering what that has got to do with anything.

Nanase waits for more, but when it's clear that he has no intention of picking up her very blatant lead, she realises she's going to have to put in a little more effort to get anything resembling a confession out of him. If she's honest with herself, she knew all along that this would not be an easy feat. "She took a look at my YouTube channel when she got home last night, and she likes me. She says she wants to help me grow my brand," she continues.

If she weren't specifically looking for a reaction, she would have missed the fleeting crack of satisfaction through Tendo-sensei's otherwise stoic face.

"The YouTube channel that you're supposed to be interviewing me for right now? That YouTube channel?" he snarks.

She purses her lips and tries another approach. "Ryuko-san also LINE'd me asking when I was free so that we could plan for our collaboration video."

"Did you tell her that 1300 today at the Skytree works for you? It's not like you're busy interviewing me, or anything."

Nanase has to fight a giggle. Interrogations are much easier when she isn't infatuated with the subject and he unveils a wit that she didn't see coming yet undeniably suits him. "Plus, Koishikawa-sensei and Kisugi-sensei were very pleasant company. I had a great time meeting them." At his expectant stare, she finishes, "I'm kind of thinking there's a lot more merit to Ryuko-san's theory last night than you're willing to admit."

Tendo-sensei crosses his arms and looks down his nose at her. "My sister is the legal definition of intoxicated ninety-nine percent of the time. If you believe she's even capable of having theories, then you're more gullible than you look, Sakura-san."

Her good humour evaporates at the slight against her appearance and her ability to judge someone's character. This must be the Devil that everyone was talking about.

Well, she's armed with a secret weapon, and it's time for her to use it.

She looks the man directly in the eye and states, "I loved every meal last night."

"Uh, thank you," he says, slowly but in obvious appreciation for a more relevant topic of conversation.

"Sensei knew I would."

He uncrosses his arms and leans back on one palm with practised nonchalance. "And how would I know that?"

"You tell me, YouTube user C-B-Y-T-K!" she yells out, standing to point a dramatic finger in his face.

Honestly, Nanase had hopes that the revelation of his YouTube account username was all it would take but she clearly underestimated her opponent. Aside from furrowed brows and flared nostrils, he doesn't react at all.

She takes her hand back to fish for her phone and continue her onslaught. "'This was an insightful look into the animal husbandry industry that anyone who enjoys eating meat should watch. Great video as always,'" she reads out, unable to resist pitching her voice low in an approximation of his deep voice which probably harms her cause more than it helps. "'The cuisine of Kyoto is unlike anything Tokyo can produce. I hope you can try it one day. Great video as always.' You didn't just vet me. You actually watch my videos!" she ends back in her voice, shoving her phone in his face to show him the screenshots she collected of the thirty-or-so comments he's left her.

He isn't fazed. "Why do you sound mad about that? Doesn't a YouTuber want viewers?"

"I'm not mad!" but the high-pitched, emotional rebuttal probably doesn't help. She forces herself to take a breath at the eyebrow Tendo-sensei raises in her direction. "I'm not mad. I'm confused… maybe also a little disappointed."

The atmosphere between them becomes cold for reasons that have nothing to do with the season. "I didn't know it would be so disappointing to meet a fan."

"Oh my gosh, no!" Nanase plops back onto the seat and covers with her hands, appalled at how misconstrued she was. "I absolutely didn't mean that, I promise! I could never be disappointed with you! It's the circumstances; it's myself."

He doesn't say anything, but the lines of his face soften from consternation to interest, so she explains, "I always told myself I'd make it special if I ever got to meet a fan."

"I'm not a fan."

"You just called yourself a fan," she points out.

"I was speaking in the hypothetical," he refutes easily. "If anything, I am just a regular viewer."

She rolls her eyes and lets him have that. "Well, you're still the first 'regular viewer' I've ever met."

He rolls up from his relaxed position to lean a forearm on his knee. "So I'm your first, huh?"

"Don't be crass," she admonishes as she lightly shoves him backwards.

He takes the hit in stride, and they both chuckle—in humour and in dissipation of the brief tension from the previous conversation. When they settle down and the silence turns comfortable, he asks, "So you would have treated me differently?"

"I would have made it special," she counters.

For the first time all afternoon, Tendo-sensei turns serious. His blatant facade of unflappability is replaced with a version of him that somehow seems more authentic than the one that introduced the dessert course last night. "Then I'm glad you didn't know, Sakura-san. I just wanted to meet you, not whomever you would have made yourself to be."

Her heart beats faster. "You wanted to meet me?"

He may not be looking at her, but she can tell none of his attention is trained somewhere else. "You weren't invited by accident."

Nanase didn't think it was by accident. She thought she was just… lucky.

Well, maybe she is lucky, but in a different way.

"Why was I invited, Tendo-sensei?" she asks, voice quiet but searching.

He directs his gaze the distance, taking his time to give her a proper resolution to her confusion. He's still looking when he answers her. "As I said before, I loved my late wife's cooking. It didn't matter how much I learned in school or from other chefs, her meals would always taste the best to me… When she died, I didn't think I could still love food—not in the same way, and not ever again. I was even considering changing careers, going back to school, finding something else.

"It seems that my YouTube algorithms didn't get the memo, though. Your Odaiba video was recommended to me, and I clicked it. To this day, I still couldn't tell you why. I sat and watched the whole thing… and I just kept watching. I had seen all of your uploads by the end of that week."

He pauses, looks over at her, steals Nanase's breath away. There is a smile on his face. It isn't the biggest one she's ever seen, but it's genuine and directed at her. "You… You really know how to enjoy food, you know."

She tries not to flush at that. It isn't appropriate, and what good would it do to be embarrassed now? She's built her entire online platform on the fact she loves food.

"In my grief, I had forgotten what that was like."

He falls quiet after that, and Nanase joins him in his contemplation. There is something swirling within her, too complicated to identify and even harder to express. It weighs her down but is coloured bright.

Movement to her side brings her attention back to Tendo-sensei, who turns to face her properly. His back is straight with his hands on his knees as if in seiza. "You saved me, Nana-chan. Not just my career, but me. Thank you."

The use of her internet persona's name completely undoes her. The unnamed feeling inside her bursts out in tears and bawls; she completely ignores his ensuing bow and hugs him with all her might.

"What is this?" he demands, trying but not very hard to exit the embrace.

She would love to answer him, but she needs to get some of this emotion out of her before she can even think to articulate it. She cries harder.

The tears and prolonged contact are making him uncomfortable, though. "Nana-chan?" he tries again.

He said it again! Somehow, it's what she needed to hear. "You suffered so much loss!" she sobs into his shoulder. "I cannot even imagine the pain and darkness you were going through, all while I was off trying to find something tasty to eat for dinner. And I took videos of it and put it online, hoping that it could brighten someone's day, no matter how much or how briefly. And it did, and that person is you."

She squeezes him tighter, his farcical resistance abandoned. "I'm so sorry, but I'm also so grateful!" she wails.

"We're in public, Sakura-san. Compose yourself." In spite of his curt words and tone, though, Tendo-sensei snakes an arm out of her grip and tentatively rubs her upper back, brushing against the ends of her hair as he does.

After a moment, he rests his hand there.

A moment later, he shuffles them to sit side by side on his rock.

Not long after, her cries subside into sniffles, and then he reveals, "It was for you."

"Huh?" She tries to lean back to look at him, but the arm at her back doesn't let her go very far.

"The entire pop up kaiseki was for you," he confesses with his head down, speaking into the space between them. "I wanted a reason to meet you. I wanted you to try my cooking. I wanted to make you food you'd enjoy."

Nanase fully disengages from the hug, and he lets his arms drop to his sides. He still avoids looking at her, but he raises his heat at least. She roughly wipes away the vestiges of her tears, wondering if maybe she just can't see clearly, but they're still there, painted plainly across his face. Embarrassment, nervousness, hope.

She clears , as composed as she's going to get. "What kind of food do you enjoy, sensei?"

He finally looks at her, inquisitive and hesitant, but answers anyway. "Crab."

She tries her luck one more time. "I happen to know a great crab place," she offers with a tiny smile. "Would you like to join me for lunch?"

When the doorbell rings, Nanase is putting the final touches on the decorations in her apartment. She looks it over one last time and nods to herself in satisfaction before letting in her guest.

"The streamers are crooked," Kairi says in lieu of a greeting as soon as she opens the door.

She gasps and turns on her heel in indignant inspection. "Where?!" She even used a level!

Her offence is quickly forgotten with the feel of Kairi's lips on hers. His warm chest against her back and his fingers on her cheek gently guiding her face to his never fail to give her butterflies, and she hopes they never will. She doesn't ever want to get used to this feeling.

He gently pulls away, and Nanase slowly blinks back to awareness to find him smirking at her. "Gotcha."

It takes her an embarrassingly long second to get the joke. "You can't do that to me!" she shrieks as she tackle-hugs him. "This is important, you know that!"

He laughs as he returns the hug. It's the laugh where he's amused that she's so gullible but endeared by it at the same time. "I know, I know. I also knew that you didn't answer the door immediately because you were decorating."

His voice turns slightly admonishing towards the end, and she pulls her head back so that he could see her regretful wince. "I'm sorry. I know I said we could do it together, but I got jittery just sitting here and waiting."

Kairi squeezes her sides in forgiveness and leans in for a swift kiss on the lips before letting her go. "Ah, but it would have been nice to see it come together. I never thought I'd have the chance to see it in real life," he says as he walks closer to inspect her handiwork. She moved her dining table deeper into the kitchen to create space for her loveseat against a blank wall, which she decorated with streamers, battery-powered fairy lights, and a hang-up blackboard sign she got from Daiso that she wrote Rakki Seben on in chalk.

When he turns back to her, he has a smile on his face that reminds her he's loved her longer than she's even known him. "It looks great, as always. Can I sit on the couch?"

Nanase nods, and he lowers himself onto the loveseat slowly, like he's savouring it. There's a silly, saccharine feeling bubbling up in her that she tampers down. "Did you come here today as a Sebentou or as my boyfriend?" she asks instead of letting it out. She should save it for later.

"What kind of question is that? I'm both, obviously," he says absentmindedly as he bounces a little to test the cushions.

She turns, ostensibly to continue preparations but mostly to hide the smile on her face. "I appreciate the diplomatic answer, but I know who I'm dating. You're a Sebentou first and my boyfriend second, and I've made peace with that."

He doesn't acknowledge her teasing, so she looks over to find him observing her apartment, the apartment he's been to plenty of times before, from this specific point of view. Yeah, she knows who she's dating.

"Remember, I'm going to call you 'Tendo-sensei'," she says as she walks back to him with bottles of water.

"Yes, yes, 'Nana-chan'," he dismisses, and she giggles. She's glad he's broken out of the habit, but sometimes she misses the early days when he could only call her Nana-chan. "That's who you were to me for so long," he had defended every time, and there's just no word for the emotion that that causes other than love.

She double-checks everything one last time before she settles next to Kairi on the loveseat. The ring light isn't too bright, the new camera Kairi bought her is fully charged and on the tripod, and the settings are correct. The only thing left now is to start recording.

"Are you ready?" she asks rotely as she organises her index cards in front of her.

"Hmmm, ah. No, I forgot something."

Nanase's head snaps up. "Like what—!"

With the second of such an arduous interaction in a matter of minutes, she's admittedly kind of wondering if he'd be willing to postpone filming by an hour or two.

Kairi ends the kiss decisively, though. "I'm your boyfriend before I'm a Sebentou," he maintains, and then he faces forward.

The haze she was under clears enough to make room for emotions other than desire. Namely, exasperation. (Granted, it is still fond.) "Alright, sensei, you've made your point. Are you ready now?"

Kairi crosses his legs and folds his hands on the top knee. "Sure."

She clears a little, throws on a smile, and presses 'Start Recording'.

"Hi hi, Sebentous! Welcome back to my channel. If you're new here: this is Rakki Seben, I'm Nana-chan, and I love food… Almost as much as I love my boyfriend!"

She splays her palms out in a presenting way, and he takes his cue. "Hello, everyone. I'm Nana-chan's boyfriend, Tendo Kairi."

"As you might have guessed, we're doing something a little different on Rakki Seben today. Instead of introducing you to food, I'm going to introduce my boyfriend to you! That's right: we're doing the boyfriend tag!"

.

@watanabe_wants_nabe 12 hours ago
nana-chan is taken! i am totally okay with this and not at all devastated. guess i'll go comfort myself by going to the nabe place in nihonbashi she recommended :')

@mochi.wo.mochi 7 hours ago
if i couldn't be the one to date the hot tokyo chef guy, i'm glad it's nana-chan 😌✊ i'm so happy for you two!

@daikondaisuki 3 hours ago
not even 30 seconds into the video and BOTH of them have already done that 'gazing adoringly at the other person when they aren't looking' thing? they're in love your honour and i have 11 minutes and 6 seconds of content to prove it

@CBYTK 38 minutes ago
Thank you for showing us a more personal side to yourself and introducing us to your boyfriend. Great video as always.

A/N (7.18.2023): twitter // tumblr

The usernames explained:

tamagotamako: tamako is a common female name, tamago is the word for egg

yakini-kun: yakiniku is the word for Japanese-style barbecue, -kun is a familiar honourific

watanabe_wants_nabe: watanabe is a common last name, nabe is the word for hot pot

mochi.wo.mochi: literally 'I have mochi'. mochi is a homonym that can refer to the sticky rice cake (analogous to the Korean tteokbokki) that is used in sweet or savoury dishes or to the concept of possessing something, wo is the participle used for direct objects in Japanese grammar

daikondaisuki: daikon is the Asian radish, daisuki is the word for love

CBYTK: cuisine by tendo kairi a la sato takeru's real life clothing brand abyts (answer by takeru sato)

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope you liked it :)