Beautiful Wilting Flowers

Tempura

Ina POV:

We walk down the sidewalk, Dean drooling over every passing restaurant, Greigh rolling his eyes, and me elbowing him. Over, and over, and over...

"This seems like a cool place," Dean points to a food joint with a bright neon sign. "Want to go in for a bite?" He suggests, shrugging nonchalantly, but I can tell that he really just wants food now.

I'm just enjoying the lights and the fresh air, and Greigh seems to be calculating the price of literally everything (classic Greigh), but Dean has just been dragging us everywhere to find a place to stuff his face.

Greigh shrugs, and looks over at me to make the final decision. I've already declined three spots that Dean has pointed to; one looked very greasy and generally suspicious, the other was a hamburger joint (we have them in Canada and England too), and the last one was a dessert place. Honestly, eat the dessert after you finish the main meal! I think I would make a great mother, thank you very much.

But this one looks okay; it's a sushi place where the plates and sushi are passed along the conveyer belt, and the sushi is freshly made, ready to be eaten. And by now, I'm starving too, so I give a firm nod of appreciation, and Dean pumps his fist.

"Finally!" He exclaims, and holds the door open for Greigh and I. We walk in, and I'm immediately hit by the smell of fish and rice. Not the gross fish kind of smell though; the yummy food fish kind of smell.

A waiter comes up to us, and asks something in Japanese that I don't understand. I'm about to pull up google translate, when Greigh says something in Japanese fluently, and the waiter nods.

Dean and I exchange a wide eyed look, alarmed at Greigh's sudden translations.

Not realizing Dean and my confusion and surprise, he waves us after him as he follows the waiter. The waiter shows us to a nice little place in the back with two couch chair things with a table in between, and Dean sits with Greigh across from me. The waiter hands me a menu, then passes them to Dean and Greigh. He says something, Greigh responds, and the waiter walks away.

"When did you learn Japanese?!" I laugh, surprised and impressed, but Dean is already on the menu, and says at the same time, "Did he say any of the daily specials?"

Greigh laughs, and rolls his eyes at Dean.

"Yeah, the special of the day is the tempura," He then turns to me. "I learned it throughout high school. The private school I went to supported a lot of different languages for students to learn, and I chose Italian. But then I got kicked out of the class, so they transferred me to the class with the least students, and that happened to be Japanese. I can speak it, but I can't write it." He shrugs, acting cool, but I can tell he's trying to impress us. Dean just raises his hand for the waiter though, and I let him order ahead, still thinking about this new information and what to order.

As Dean orders a feast, I frown at Greigh.

"How did you get kicked out?" I laugh, trying to sound like it's not a big deal, but I'm probably miserably failing, and it kind of is a big deal though. Greigh is always on top of his school work; he's always had a plan of going into business and starting his own company. Everyone knows that. At least, I sure do.

"Um, just some fooling around and stuff. Paper airplane throwing, and crap like that." He crumples up his chopstick's wrapper, avoiding my gaze at all costs.

I'm pretty sure it was something more than that, because my innocent, naïve Greigh doesn't know that people actually do that; let alone get kicked out of a class for it. He's one of those people who take everything incredibly seriously, but he's not a very good liar. I can tell, and that doesn't say much. At all. Am I the only person who's seen the cartoons and the class clown throwing around paper airplanes and being like, "PSSST WHATS THE ANSWER" not so subtly, but then goes to school in real life and gets disappointed at the reality of how actually boring it is? Hmm?

"Greigh." I give him the look your mom gives you when she acts like you can trust her with all of your darkest secrets just for her to go and spill them to her mom friends (that took a weirdly unrelated turn, uhhh), "I know that's not really what happened; you're too smart to mess up an important class." I give him a half smile, trying to reassure an explanation out of him.

"No.. that's really what happened!" He insists, unconvincingly, and I snort.

"I'm sure you would calculate the aerodynamics perfectly, but we both know the fact that you would get kicked out of a class messing around 'aint true." I say, digging up answers.

"Whatever. Believe what you like; it's my explanation, and it's not changing." Greigh gives me an okay, back off, please, look.

I suddenly feel guilty for prying for the answers he didn't want to give, and making answer them to questions he didn't want to be asked in the first place. I'm about to apologize, but Dean gives an excited man-squeal all of a sudden (I know *groans*), and points like a six year old at ponies. I always thought those weird six year old pony obsessions were stupid; they're smelly, unhygienic, expensive, and they don't do anything truly amazing...

Anyways, Dean is pointing at the food conveyor belt, and our food is circling towards us. He excitedly lifts everything off of the track, and I laugh, raising an eyebrow.

"Dean, did you order for us?" I ask, wondering if I was too caught up in talking to Greigh to notice Dean ordering huge amounts of food.

"How do we eat all of this?" Greigh moves our stuff off of the table so that we have room for the plates and plates of Japanese delicacies that Dean keeps piling on.

"Have you met Dean?" I ask Greigh. "He eats ten thousand pounds a day, but they never even seem to show on his body!" I laugh, pinching Dean's rock solid built stomach, and he wriggles away, severely ticklish.

"This is true," He shrugs, but turns to me after grabbing all of the food. "But I workout once a day, twice on the good ones, so you can't say anything, miss jogs once a week." He rolls his eyes.

"Alright, alright," I throw my hands up, and grab the chopsticks from their package. "Dig in." I stuff some food in my mouth, and groan at the delicious pleasure.

If Greigh and I look like were enjoying our food, Dean looks like he's ready to keep it for a pet.