The Pink Rose's Promise (BL)

7. A Coffee Shop Date

Ichirou was quite certain that he wanted to die when he woke up on Sunday morning. He wanted to say he didn't remember what happened last night, but he remembered every little bit of it. From him getting drunk fairly quickly, to the lame crying, he remembered every moment. Even after Masahiro texted him, asking him how he was, it took several hours for Ichirou to be able to respond properly. He apologized profusely for the trouble he caused Masahiro, and begged him never to speak of Ichirou's first love, as it was supremely embarrassing.

Before texting Masahiro back, he did send Yuuhei a rather long text message, chiding him about leaving Ichirou all alone with Masahiro. This was, after all, the first time he'd gotten drunk around the alpha, and so he wanted to have a friend there to keep him safe. However, that friend had gotten the number of a hot alpha and then bolted, afraid he was going to end up doing it before he was ready. He didn't take into consideration that Ichirou might have ended up doing it before he was ready as well.

However, this experience left Ichirou with blatantly obvious information: he could trust Masahiro. It wasn't as though he wasn't erring on the side of trusting Masahiro, but with this, he was officially certain that Masahiro wasn't about to do anything to him. After all, there would be no more opportune moment than when Ichirou was drunk and alone with him. So, going forward, Ichirou decided to believe in Masahiro.

Yuuhei texted him in a panicked fashion the next day, horrified that he had given his number to Takeru. As it turned out, he actually was not quite desperate enough to want to be with an alpha. However, at the same time, he was also really flattered that someone hot and rich was into him. So, naturally, he was at an impasse. He wanted the attention he was being given suddenly, but he didn't want the attention from Takeru.

In the end, Ichirou suggested that Yuuhei just tell Takeru he didn't want to date him and that he wasn't interested in him. A few minutes later, Yuuhei responded, saying that Takeru was now officially chasing him and that if he just had a one-night stand with him, this wouldn't have happened. Ichirou honestly didn't know what to do with that, so he simply wished Yuuhei good luck, who begged Ichirou not to let him deal with this alone. Ichirou asked Masahiro to do something about it, and Masahiro said he would talk to Takeru about chilling out. Somehow, Ichirou was not sure that Takeru would stop. He seemed like the sort of guy who had zero chill.

Now, Ichirou had something else to deal with; posting his "date" pictures online. He hadn't up until this point because he was nervous about what people's reactions would be. He knew for a fact that some people commented on every single one of his pictures with "marry me," or something similar. Those people would not be pleased if he had a "boyfriend." Still, for his parent's sake, he couldn't just pretend to have a boyfriend offline and not online. Curse his willingness to share too much of himself on the internet.

So, after careful consideration, he posted photos of when he hung out with Masahiro in the garden and from their dinner. He captioned them simply, "Hanging out" with a bunch of heart emojis. It was a vague enough descriptor that people could assume that "hanging out" meant either with a boyfriend or with friends, based on the section image. Almost immediately, he began to get a barrage of questions as to whether or not he had a boyfriend now. He scrolled through the comments, something he knew better than to do, noticing that some people were trying to figure out who they were already. The internet sleuths were on the case.

Ichirou put it down, deciding that if they figured out who Masahiro and Takeru were, it would be fine. That wasn't the part that mattered, it was them finding out that he had a fake boyfriend. He wasn't sure when most people with a significant online following said that they had a romantic partner, but he definitely wasn't about to do it when they were less than two months into this fake partnership.