“What’s the worse that could happen if you told them?” Cerys asked, not wanting to be handled to roughly anymore.

“Think about what goes on at school,” he hissed into her ear. “Can one of you pretend to–”

Himeko was way ahead of him. She had already spotted the booth where Bayani has the attention of no less than three barmaids, each of them with either a plate or a pitcher in their hands. She was storming over to them and putting on her best ‘I’m-angry but-trying-to-hold-back’ face. When one of the women turned around and saw Himeko, she looked surprised.

“Is this the kind of place this is?” she asked in a disappointed tone.

“What do you m–” another one asked as she turned around. Then she saw Himeko’s face and shut her mouth.

Then Himeko glared at Bayani. “We’ve been married hardly a week and you would already what these women hanging all over you?!”

“She really sounds pissed off,” Cerys whispered to her brother.

“I bet she’s heard her mother yell like that,” Peter replied with a grin.

“Mrs. Takamori?” Cerys asked, blinking in disbelief. “She doesn’t yell.”

“You keep saying that,” her brother replied, still whispering. “Quiet in public, loud in private.”

“Not Mrs. Takamori,” she insisted.

“Where else did Himeko learn to talk like that?”

Cerys had no rebuttal for that. Her friend was chewing out Bayani, half of her criticisms in Japanese. He glanced to the barmaids, then to Peter and his sister, with an expression of sheer helplessness. Peter was trying not to laugh.

One of the barmaids left, clearly not interested in disrupting this young couple any further, but two of them stayed and tried to defend him. Bayani decided to play along, and began to talk back to Himeko. Not in Japanese, of course; she could not even teach him to pronounce konnichiwa correctly (Cerys figured he secretly got it wrong on purpose). He used Tagalog, and the four of them were probably the only ones in the room who knew that they were arguing (well, pretending to), in different languages.

Cerys wanted to collapse onto the floor with laughter. She was in love with foreign languages, and languages jokes were sheer candy to her, a real weakness. Peter, knowing this, gripped her arm tightly to keep her from giving in.

Eventually the other two barmaids gave up and left, and Peter took his seat beside his boyfriend. To anyone else, it would look like two friend supporting each other, so they were not worried about what others thought. Himeko sat across from him and crossed her arms, pretending to still be angry at him. Cerys sat down beside her.

“Wow Himeko, that was…”

“What?” Himeko snapped, intending to keep up the act until she was sure that nobody else was listening.

“I would say that I will make sure no boy every cheats on you,” Bayani said after a while, when everyone else in the tavern was busy with other things, “but you seem to have that under control.”

Himeko gave him a satisfied grin.

“She doesn’t mess around!” Peter added.

“Has she ever?” Cerys asked. “Himeko has always done things to the utmost of her abilities.”