***

Twenty minutes later, the formerly fearsome wielder of Mad Hatter finds himself sitting at a table and staring with the first flickers of anger at the contents of his bowl. Not that he can see it, but swirling the spoon around had already told him enough.

"What is this?" he demands testily to the pink-haired man across him.

Wang Yi finishes crunching his iceberg lettuce. "Soup."

"I know that, but why is it in front of me?"

"Because it's lunchtime," Wang Yi says simply. "Look, it's liquid—you don't even have to chew—"

"It doesn't make a difference what my teeth do," Break replies testily, "when my stomach is the one with the problem."

And that's the crux of things, isn't it? Break hates food—or rather, has trouble keeping it down, but he can't just eat candy all day. He's been taking bits and pieces at home, but a mouse probably eats more than he does in one sitting and no one (not even Zhilan and his ever-winsome personality) can really make a dent of difference about that.

So Wang Yi takes Break on a field trip.

An approved kidnapping more like, managed with a rented wheelchair that he urges Break into because 1) it'd be faster and 2) hey, he wouldn't have to do any work. Break looks awfully thin in the chair too, but it's something neither of them comments on because Break will kill him and Wang Yi has better things to die for, and so they manage to get along just fine for the first few blocks.

Back in the restaurant, Wang Yi sets aside his fork and raises a hand. ' Check, please. '

Break arches an eyebrow. "Oh, are we leaving already?"

' You have better things to do with your day than fight with soup, ' Wang Yi points out.

"Such as seeing all the ways you bend over backwards twisting your words to appeal to me?"

' Whatever works, ' Wang Yi shrugs and smiles at the waiter coming to their table. ' Hi, can we also get the soup to go, please? '

"I'm not going to drink this at home either."

' What, like I can't? It's good soup, I'll take it if you don't want it. '

Break shoots him another look, Wang Yi laughs, the soup is packed and the bill paid. See? Everything is fine.

***

Everything is not fine.

Xerxes Break pinches the half-bitten sugared bittermelon between his hands with something akin to fascinated disgust before waving it in Wang Yi's face.

"What is this abomination."

Wang Yi finishes chewing on his sugared burdock root. ' It's candy? '

"It is not."

' Yeah, it's a little healthier than that, I think. Plenty of sugar though—isn't that what you like? '

"It doesn't matter how much sugar you put if it still tastes bitter afterwards!"

Break drops the candied vegetable back in the box and Wang Yi takes the chance to peek at his other options: ginger, orange peel, and radish. ' That's because your box kinda sucks, ' he says matter-of-factly. ' Here, have a tomato from mine—they're pretty good, no funny aftertaste. '

He picks up a piece but Break beats him to it, using his cane to hook the inside of Wang Yi's box and dragging it to his side of the table.

' Hey, what gives—? '

"You said my box sucks, so we can just skip the hassle and trade," Break explains matter-of-factly while pushing his own over. He dips confidently into Wang Yi's box, picks up a piece of mystery satozuke, and pops it in his mouth. Like the other one, it's chewy, but satisfyingly sweet with no weird flavors, though still disappointingly just a carrot. He's mollified, but just barely. "Why would anyone spend time coating vegetables in these..."

' Tomatoes aren't vegetables, ' Wang Yi points out.

Break wants to shut him up.

***

They end their day of impromptu food tours (no candy, in Break's case) and sightseeing (sight-speaking, in Wang Yi's case) in front of the same sweets store they passed that morning. This time they're both walking on their own feet, Break having abandoned the wheelchair a while back after getting sick of sitting in it. He stops as soon as the smell of sugar wafts over his face, nearly causing Wang Yi to trip over him and drop all the bags of snacks and samples they'd gathered throughout the day.

' Xerxes, ' Wang Yi begins when he realizes why they've stopped. He reaches for the man's arm. ' Don't—oof! '

Break shoves him back none-too-gently and crosses his arms, irritation written all over his face. "I've been going along with your terrible shop decisions to taste all manner of manufactured nightmares. It's about time I get something I'll actually appreciate, don't you think?"

' Zhilan said neither of us are taking a step in a candy store today so—hey! Put that down! ' Wang Yi leans back as Break suddenly raises his cane at him. ' Listen to me—ouch! ' He gets thwacked on both shoulders.

"Then you should've picked a route without the store," Break scolds him. "Even I can see that." And I'm blind. Idiot.

' Well that's because— ' This is the closest route to the bus stop and—Wang Yi pauses as the cane raises itself again and finally drops his bags to reach inside his pockets. ' Dammit Xerxes, I already bought them for you! '

A small cloth bag of candy almost hits Break in the chest before he catches it with pure instinct. He can't see its contents, but the smell of strawberry is obvious enough in the air. Digging in, he unwraps one from its wrapper and pops it into his mouth. Delicious. Wang Yi gets an appraising look in turn. "Since when?" After all, they'd been together for the entire day.

' Obviously I bought it yesterday! Loopholes exist, you know. ' Wang Yi says, and Break can already hear the scowl. He doesn't appreciate the dig at his intelligence though, so the butt of his cane darts forward to smack Wang Yi precisely in the center of his forehead.

' Ow! '

"It's what you deserve," Break huffs as he pockets the offering in his pockets and turns around, cane tapping against the ground in a brisker, more cheerful pace. "Come along, we're running late." He still wanted to be home before Zhilan returned from the library.

' Oh, so you were keeping track of time, ' Wang Yi grumbles as he bends down to pick up their bags.

"Your constant glancing at your phone was obvious enough."

' How did you see that? '

"You were so noisy about it I didn't even have to look."

' That's...pretty neat, actually. '

Whatever the case, the day is done. It would've been better if he'd snuck out by himself, but it's true that with Wang Yi around things went faster. Break finally parts with the bright-haired nuisance at the door, slips into his room in the empty house unnoticed, and gleefully digs out the bag of candy he'd gotten for free in the end. Now, time to enjo—

The bag is empty. Not wholly so—because he shakes a few more sweets out of it, hearing them drop into his lap, but the weight of the package completely belies its sparse contents. Frowning, Break feels the insides with his fingers and brushes against something round and smooth sewn in between its fabric layers. They were similar to pebbles, but clinked on impact with a sound not unlike hard candies...

Sensing a bad premonition, Break runs his fingers through the pile of sweets he thought he dumped out and realized most of them are just balls of cellophane. Wang Yi must have lined the top layer with a few candies and stuffed the rest with empty filling. How clever. How irritating. How atrocious. He will get him for this, oh yes he will, and the next time they meet there shall be a reckoning the likes of the world has never kno—crinkle.

His fingers brush against paper—another handwritten note? When Wang Yi already knows he's blind? Again the anger in him soars, but he can't deny wondering what the fool had dared to write. So.

He reads it, in the end.

Sorry. Like I said, Zhilan would kill me.

But I figure you could try sampling stuff from different stores so you can pick a fav in the future? There's 6 from Golden in there, though I heard there's a lot more shops hidden in Archimedes and Cotes. Something to think about, maybe. No need to keep this note for blackmail. I already told the people who would've wanted to know.

Break only wishes Wang Yi could write shorter messages that get to the point faster. He feels around his lap until he finds the five remaining candies—all strawberry-flavored, he notes—and cleans up the remaining cellophane into the bag before he's caught and forced to explain. Or perhaps there's no need to bother, if Wang Yi's already shared about his ideas. He doesn't quite trust the man on his words alone, though.

This, he reminds himself, is not an act that merits murder. Not even a phone call—though he gets satisfaction imagining himself tearing the man down with words alone. Wang Yi does have a strange propensity to grovel, which is as annoying as it is convenient. He uses his voice to dictate text messages instead.

XB [txt] Very funny. XB [txt] I hope you know that I'll be expecting one bag from each store after this, considering the difficulty of describing which candy is what when I can't see them.

There's a ping a few minutes later when Wang Yi replies, his words spoken out loud by the phone A.I. for Break's convenience.

WY [txt] Well yeah, that's the fun part, you see? WY [txt] Finished tracking down Zhilan—gave him the 6 bags—you two can figure it out together. WY [txt] Unless you ate the samples already, which is fine too but that means you've reached your candy quota for the day, so he won't let you taste-test any more until tomorrow.

Break arches a brow.

XB [txt] Why couldn't you have just given me the bags to begin with? WY[txt] What, and deprive Zhilan of his bonding time? I'm not a monster. WY [txt] And also, leaving that much sugar with you unsupervised is just insane right now. XB [txt] Don't act like you care all of a sudden. WY [txt] Don't act like you don't, then. WY [txt] Do you want me to tell you what Zhilan's wearing instead? Because he's looking pretty fluffy—fluffier than usual, I mean. XB [txt] I can ask him. Myself. WY [txt] Ok, then what about kissing tutorials? WY [txt] I found a good one the other day WY [txt] Not freaky I mean—so that might be—

Break turns off his phone in the middle of Wang Yi's rambling messages and puts it on the table by his bed. Forget the switcheroo with his candy bag. Forget the tiresome snacks Wang Yi had them sample all day. Forget even the careless way the guy references his relationship with the special someone in his life, because he hears the door opening and Zhilan stepping inside in his soft, quiet soles.

He tilts his head to listen closer, hearing the footsteps pause as shoes are taken off before their owner walks straight to his bedroom door. It's ajar, so all Zhilan has to do to nudge it open with his shoulder to peek inside.

"Xerxes," he begins breathlessly. "Did—do you want to try some candy?"

And oh. Just hearing that is already sweeter than anything he's tasted today, including the candy he'd sucked on outside the house. Break opens his arms to welcome him, a smile already stealing onto his lips, and says yes.

It is a matter of fact that I do not experience appetite. This is a result of the medication I have taken for ADHD since I was seven years old. You’d think I’d be skinny because of this. I’m not - I tend to walk the line at the top of the “healthy” weight range. I also have an exceedingly recalcitrant and resentful relationship with food: I absolutely hate having to eat. I like how food tastes, but I hate having to seek it out, and I despise spending time on preparing meals. I resent that I have to put food in my mouth and consume it. Lunch is the worst meal of the day.

I remember that in high school, I spent a year eating Clif Bars for lunch. I liked the Peanut Butter and the Chocolate Chip ones (to the extent that one can “like” Clif Bars). After that, I ate trail mix for lunch for a semester. My senior year, I’d have a little 2″x2″x1″ Ikea-brand Tupperware-type container with rice and fish, and that would be my lunch. All of my lunch. At all. Ever. I mostly subsisted on stress and anxiety that year. (I also went through a Major Depressive episode, which contributed significantly to that.) This was nothing new. My family had experimented with giving me protein and nutrient shakes when I was in grade school, but such things were less than palatable and it turned out that the most reliable way to get me to eat was to have me be directly answerable to my teacher for finishing my food.

In college, I got a little better about lunch. When I was a sophomore, I had a lab class at 1:30 PM, and after an anxiety attack on the First Day of Lab brought about by low blood sugar, I made it a point to pack a small lunch every day. This was essentially because anxiety attacks in lab are both dangerous and detrimental to one’s grades (not so much because I wanted to “be healthy”). On the other hand, a typical dinner that year would be a half-cup of rice and a half-cup of Japanese curry. I dropped a lot of weight that year, but I also got dizzy a lot and felt cold most of the time. It wasn’t fun. ADHD, perhaps counterintuitively, made it easier to move past the physical sensation of hunger and disregard the thought of eating in favor of some other activity - usually study.

As I became more aware of the difficulties I was creating for myself, I managed to get into a pattern of reasonable eating. The healthiest period was probably when I was studying in France and was being fed regular meals by my host mom, who’s an actual doctor. My weight stabilized (at the higher end of healthy), I was active, and I felt like I was well.

Lately, however, I’ve been living without supervision, and I’ve relapsed into a lot of negative eating habits. I hardly eat lunch anymore - I hate the amount of time required to prepare and consume food midday. I don’t eat much for breakfast (normally my favorite meal, associated with pleasant childhood memories). I’ll frequently find myself dizzy and shivering at 8 PM, having had about 600 Calories all day. I’ll force myself to eat a large dinner to compensate, but that doesn’t necessarily help my metabolism. My nails grow more slowly. Bruises and scratches take longer to heal. I’m cold.