The day Suoh Mikoto ordered Yata to take dating lessons from Saruhiko Fushimi was the most embarrassing day of his life.

That is, until the lessons themselves started.

()

Izumo Kusanagi, owner of the HOMRA bar, second in command to Mikoto Suoh, and widely considered the smartest member of the gang, put the freshly-polished glass down on his gleaming bar and said, "Call me crazy, but it might not be such a bad idea."

At that precise moment, despite the utmost respect he had for Mikoto's right hand man, Misaki Yata experienced a profound drop in his admiration for Kusanagi's intelligence.

He spit milk all over the bar (milk, because God fucking damn it, it was never too late to try for a growth spurt). Kusanagi shot him a glance like a dagger.

"Sorry I'll clean it up but what?"

"From a strategic point of view—"

"But it's fucking Saru!"

"Yes, you've already mentioned that he's offered to help you with your… girl problems."

"It's Saru!"

"Yata-chan, please calm down. I'm going to have to throw you out if you keep banging on the bar like that, and then you might run off and do something rash, and then we'd all have to sort out your mess. Including Mikoto. Do you want that?"

The mention of his King does it. Yata sits back down, sitting on his hands for good measure.

"Now, try and listen to me. Whatever your personal opinion of Fushimi Saruhiko—and I think everyone in HOMRA knows what that opinion is—you can't deny that he's in a position of power in Sceptre 4. I deal with information, and I know how powerful, how crucial, sometimes, a well-positioned inside man is. One spy can do a lot of damage if he is in the right place at the right time. Are you following me, Yata-chan?"

"But I wouldn't be spying," is all the defense Yata can summon. "Saruhiko's too"—he's going to say smart, but bites the compliment back for principle's sake—"stubborn to drop anything like that."

"And for years we thought Sceptre 4 was impenetrable, yet here's its third-highest head offering to help you with your personal life. Offering. To help you. I mean, short of Munakata coming in to wipe my floor or some such thing… Try to stand in my shoes and see how obvious the choice is."

"W-well, how do we know he's not trying to spy on us?"

"He very probably is," answers Kusanagi. "And that's why you can't screw up. What I'm saying here is that I trust you, and that HOMRA trusts you, to be able to play this game better than he can, and ensure that HOMRA comes out the winner. Besides…"

"Yeah?"

The barkeeper sighs and puts down the glass he's polishing. "I don't know how to say this delicately—"

"You don't have to be delicate with me. I'm not one of your champagne flutes."

This gets a laugh from him. "I'll be blunt then. Yata-chan, you're nineteen years old. Have you ever dated a girl before?"

"You, uh, that's… no."

"A boy, then?"

"Kusanagi-san! With all due respect, what the fuck!"

"Hey, how can you know if you've never tried?"

"Is that the principle you operate your romantic life on?"

"…That's a forbidden topic for junior members! Look, I'm just trying to cover all the bases here. Anyway, who knows? On the off-chance Fushimi isn't trying to drill a hole in our defenses via you, he might actually help you a little on—that front."

"Kusanagi-san, please tell me you're shitting me. What could that dumbass bastard possibly know about women? As if one would even touch him with a five-meter pole!"

"Women like all sorts of strange things," says Kusanagi with an oddly faraway look on his face. Yata's skin crawls with embarrassment. He really doesn't want to know what he's talking, or flashbacking, or whatever, about.

"What's this about women?"

At that moment, Yata's vague desire to run away from the bar morphs into a positive need to flee.

"Chiise," he mumbles miserably in Mikoto's general direction.

Anna, attached as ever at the boss' side, peers at him through a red marble.

"Are you okay, Yata?" she asks very kindly.

"I'm fine," he grunts, energetically combating the temptation to crawl behind Kusanagi's bar and never emerge.

"What's wrong with him?" asks Mikoto, jerking a thumb in Yata's general direction.

Yata's head shoots up. He gives Kusanagi a look crossed between total pleading, fury, and nervousness.

Kusanagi cheerfully ignores him. Yata's ears ring with a shattering noise as his hopes of avoiding complete and abject humiliation crash to the floor in pieces.

"Well, Yata-chan was actually talking about an interesting proposal with me!"

Yata makes a strangled noise. Please don't do this to me, he tries to say with his eyes, but Kusanagi is determinedly dodging his gaze as he explains away to the emotionless HOMRA boss. Anna, whose doll-like head is barely level with the bar's surface, gives him a pitying look. At that moment, Yata begins thinking of ways he can resign from HOMRA. Mikoto-san won't want him after this, hell, Anna won't want him after this—

"Sure," says Mikoto.

"What?" gasps Yata, surfacing from his misery like a man from a stormy sea.

"Sounds good."

"You think it's a good idea?"

"That's what he just said," says Anna pityingly.

Yata ignores her. "You want me to go ahead with this?"

"Yeah."

"You want me to take dating advice from S-S-that fucking asswipe Saru."

Looking bemused, the King replies, "I don't care what you do with him so long as you spy on him while you do it."

"See?" chirps Kusanagi. "All of us here have the utmost fate in you, even our King. Consider it a new assignment. Right?"

"Hm," echoes Mikoto vaguely, his supply of conversation seemingly exhausted for the day, as he reaches behind the bar and pours himself some whiskey.

"It's all settled then!"

Betrayed, thinks Yata, collapsing face-first onto the bar as Kusanagi chuckles far too brightly. Betrayed on all sides… Even Anna's smirking at me. It's all been for nothing. I'll be the laughingstock of HOMRA, of Shizume fucking City…

But, God damn it, Mikoto had given the word.

Now, what else could he do but obey?

()

"What makes you qualified, anyway?" he snaps.

Saru stares at him testily, tilting his chair way back on two legs. Yata, who's already sitting at least a meter from the edge of the café table, scoots his chair back another few centimeters. At this rate, they're going to be at opposite ends of Sakura Square by their third minute of conversation.

Mikoto-san might've ordered him to go through with this shitty assignment, but that didn't mean Yata had to enjoy it.

"I grew up with three sisters. You came from, what was it, a family of six boys?"

Damn him for remembering. And an absent escapee mother as well, so seven males total, with Yata the youngest of the entire lot… He was supposed to be the long-expected daughter of the group, but though the doctor had sworn up, down and sideways that the sonogram showed a girl, no one could doubt the screaming child that arrived on a blazing July 20th was a male. By then, though, it'd been too late, and Misaki it was.

A shard of memory comes back to him: Saru and him on a lazy summer day, lying on the sidewalk, and Saru saying, "No wonder you're so attached to that baseball bat. You probably had to fight your way into existence with it…"

Saru is looking at him oddly. Has he been spacing out?

Recovering the thread of the conversation, Yata spits, "So what? Did you date all of them?"

"I've had seven girlfriends in the past two years," Saru counters languidly.

"Didn't know there were that many dumb girls in all of Japan."

Saruhiko's sigh is the essence of exasperation. His bangs flop with irritation. "Misaki, do me a favor."

"Fuck you, I told you not to call me—"

"Count the number of times you've had a conversation with a girl over three minutes in length."

"…What?"

"Hurry up and do it. Or have you lost even the intelligence required to understand basic Japanese?"

"I understood you perfectly fucking fine!" Yata barks. "But your question was just plain weird!"

"It wasn't weird at all; what would be weird is your answer. Tell me. Ten? Less than that? Could you count the number on one hand, even?"

"Fuck you!"

"Is it—could it possibly be zero?"

"You know," snarls Yata, "I'm coming very close to saying fuck what the King says and—" Then his brain kicks into action and his mouth snaps shut.

"Go on," drawls Fushimi, his voice a lazy drip of black ink scarring the shocked, bleached silence of secrets accidentally revealed. "What did the King have to say?"

"…Said, that… I, I mean we… HOMRA shouldn't antagonize Sceptre 4 anymore?" Damn it, the end of the sentence comes out with a lilting rise.

"Well, for fuck's sake don't ask me; I don't know."

"A-anyway, what the King says is none of your fucking business," blusters Yata.

"You're the one who brought him up! As if I want to hear more about Mikoto Suoh. He's all you fucking talk about. Mikoto this, Mikoto that. One would think he's your boyfriend or something."

"The fuck did you just say? Take that back, asshole!"

"I don't think I want to." Saru stands abruptly. "Are you gonna make me, Mi-sa-ki?"

Yata smirks and pushes his chair back. "Bring it, you idiotic monkey, and I'll shove your sword so far up your ass that the whole of Sceptre 4 won't be able to pull it back out."

"Well then, I'll take your skateboard and jam it where the sun doesn't—"

"I'd like to see you try!"

"Talk is cheap. Let's go," orders Saru, thumb sliding the hilt of his blade half a challenging centimeter from its scabbard.

Yata cracks his knuckles. "Sounds fucking good to m—"

Both their phones ring.