Julio, Noriko and her parents

[x-kaminari.livejournal.com]

What has to be the most awkward dinner, ever.



She'd escaped her parents for most of the day, claiming classes and the need to do homework (which would have rather startled most of her teachers had they heard her), but they'd caught up with her and insisted she come to dinner in the communal dining room, and now Noriko was stuck with them. Not terribly hungry, like usual, Nori was mostly just pushing the food around on her plate, although her mother's occasional barbs about the American-ness of the food kind of made her wish she felt like eating, just to annoy her. Even if Nori did kind of agree at times.

"Nori-chan, kondo bashou ni, hontou no nihon-riyouri aru?"

"Hai. Kedo... maaa, hontou no jyanakute..."

Julio spotted his girlfriend and her parents sitting across the end of the dining hall. While he had already eaten in his suite, he'd discovered that they were out of oranges and had gone down to steal one. From Nori's posture, she looked like she'd rather be anywhere else. Julio had a brief internal war, on the one hand, he'd never met her parents, and meeting the parents of your significant other was always vaguely terrifying, and on the other, what, was he scared of Nori's parents? What could they do to him.

Julio sighed and stuck the orange in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Might as well go say hello.

He approached the table cautiously. "Ah, Nori?"

Nori looked up brightly as Julio approached, but her smile halted as her mother looked up.

"Hello?" Mrs. Kikuchi said, smiling faintly at the young man.

" Hajimemashite. Watashi wa Julio Richter desu. Douzo yoroushiku." Julio said politely, with a small bow. He had picked up a thing or two from traveling to Japan and dating Nori, after all.

"Hajimemashite, Richter-san. Douzo yoroushiku gozaimasu," Mrs. Kikuchi replied, bowling with remarkable grace, given she was still sitting down. "Anata no nihongo wa jouzu desu-ne?"

"Kikuchi-san no musumei wa yoi sensei," Julio replied, throwing a glance at his girlfriend to see her reaction. He knew they didn't get along. Considering the lengths she'd gone to avoid them, the thought was starting to occur to him she might not have even bothered to mention her foreign boyfriend.

Nori was, in fact, staring at Julio, eyes wide, and quite clearly trying to develop spontaneous telepathy, but whatever it was she was so desperately trying to impart to him wasn't coming out. And she completely failed to blank her face before her mother looked over, smiling indulgently.

"I am very glad that to hear. Please, Richter-san, is want to join for dinner?" Kazue turned back to Julio, gesturing towards one of the chairs at the table. "Is nice to meet Nori friend."

Oh fuck. This could get ugly. Julio looked from the chair, to his girlfriend, to his girlfriend's parents smiling at him politely. "Thank you," Julio said, enunciating clearly for the Kikuchi's benefit. He was aware that he could be unintelligible at times, even though he was fluent in English. It had already lead to one very annoyed lecture in one of his English classes. "I would like to," he accepted a seat and raised an eyebrow at Nori. Maybe he would punish her just a little. If he could tell the old man about her, and intoduce them no less, then he should be able to have dinner with her parents.

Mrs. Kikuchi smiled at Julio as he sat down. "But Julio, you don't have dinner?" she asked. "I can get." Standing up, she waved for him to stay seated. "You tell about Noriko. Are you same... same class?"

Nori could practically see her doom coming upon her and realized her choices were simple. She could cower before it, unable to stop the inevitable, or she could embrace it. After all, it wasn't like she was ashamed of Julio. Or afraid of picking a fight with her mother. Looking up, she smiled bright. "Julio Nori boyfriend. Nori no kareshi," she added to make absolutely certain her mother understood.

The tension suddenly increased tenfold. Julio leaned his head on his hand. Here we go.

Nori's father was actually looking at her, which was kind of shocking, actually, and her mother had gone absolutely still for a moment, before turning back to face her daughter, expression blank. "Nori no kareshi... gaijin?"

"Hai, sou desu!" she chirped, smiling brightly.

Julio wished there was a polite way of saying, "Excuse me, I have to go before the inevitable family explosion." So he just ran a hand through his hair and signed. Maybe if I play dumb...

Unfortunately, the motion caught Kazue's gaze, and her eyes narrowed as she turned back to him before she smiled, a little over-brightly. "Richter-san, please tell about family."

Julio shrugged his shoulders slightly. "My father is a businessman in Mexico," which was one way of putting it, "and my mother passed on, died when I was a child. Otherwise I have a large family." And none of whom would ever put Nori through an interrogation which was feeling more and more like one of those old KGB movies.

"Ah, a salary-man," Noriko's father spoke up for the first time since Julio had come, and smiling slightly at the boy, but her mother simply frowned again. Turning to Nori she said, "Sore wa atode hanashimashou," and her tone did not bode well for Nori, who made a face at her back as she once again looked at Julio. "Is Julio have dinner?" she asked, finally remembering her manners.

"I have already eaten," Julio said politely. "I just came over to say hello. If I am interrupting, I can always come back later?" Julio had no idea if he was offending them at this point, and with all the tension in the air he really was starting not to care.

Her parents would never pick up on a thing like that, but Nori knew Julio fairly well, and she could tell it was bugging him. Which almost upset her more than her family tension itself, though she'd have been hard pressed to say why. Perhaps the thought that she wasn't important enough to him to cope with all this. Or that she was upsetting him by dragging him into it. Either way, she shook her head and said, "Julio is not has to stay," at the same time her mother said, "No, no, you are not interrupt."

"All right, I can stay for a little bit. Homework can wait," he said. Julio could almost hear his Abuela yelling at him for even thinking of turning tail and running. He just wished that Nori would give him some help here, or at least have prepared him better for this. Some days he just got tired of her assuming things, and he couldn't blame the communication failure all on the language barrier.

"Good, good, stay," Kazue said, turning and heading back towards the food service. "I get small plate. Young boy is always want eat."

And the two kids were left alone with Noriko's father, who seemed to be considering Julio with more attention than he'd given anything since his meeting with Dr. Voight. "Julio," he said, then bowed deeply. "Please take care of Noriko. Yoroshiku onegai-itashimasu."

"Kochira koso, yoroshiku onegai-itashimasu." Julio added, with a bow of his own. Who says gaijin couldn't learn?

Shinji seemed pleased by this reply which, in turn, seemed to make Nori less pleased. She was proud Julio'd gotten the phrase right, and his pronunciation was better than it had been, but things which made her parents happy were not high on her list right now.