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Victor felt slightly tired, and it was quite unusual for him to feel this way. Some people claimed he was so energetic, he must have dipped in energy potion. But he felt tired as he stayed up and studied. Yuuri looked so cute that morning, rubbing his eyes sleepily, but even that wasn't enough to get him back into his good spirits. Why couldn't Yuuri just talk about himself?

"Are you hungry, Victor?" Yuuri asked, sitting next to him but far enough, that made the scowl on Victor's face deepen.

Why was he always thinking about food? Even his Eros was food. And how was he supposed to survive when Yuuri was like this? Victor's mood was progressively sinking down the sea level, and he knew that he was making an elephant out of a fly*, but how could he not when he came all the way here for Yuuri, and Yuuri acted like Victor was less interesting than the food in his plate.

"Victor?" Yuuri tried again, this time his voice came out panicked and anxious.

"Um..." Victor looked at the Japanese man who didn't have his blue-rimmed glasses. Those eyes looked so cute that Victor let out a defeated sigh. Life wasn't fair.

The food was tasty as always. Yuuri's mother made the most delicious food in the world. But still, Victor didn't expect to have the food as his opponent to Yuuri's heart. He wasn't prepared to compete with pork cutlets, egg omelette, or other food Yuuri liked. That was too much.

Mari entered into the room and brought them additional bowls filled with the most colourful food Victor had seen in his life. She said something to Yuuri which made him blush like a fully ripe tomato. He heard something about Bikutoru and more mentions of this Bikutoru, and Yuuri glancing at him like he was Koshchey** the immortal trying to steel Yuuri's beloved katsudon.

Why Mari got to be so bold and outgoing and Yuuri all shy and uncommunicative? If only he had some of that cheerful attitude Mari had, Victor would consider himself a blessed man. But life was not meant to be easy. Victor put down his spoon. He was going to overcome all the barriers and bring Yuuri out of his shell. He had seen him out of it, and Yuuri had blown Victor's mind.

He was so lively in Sochi, dancing with him and hanging from his neck half-naked. How come he turned so cold and distant? What kind of thing was this? Did he have some sort of split personality?

"Today we are going to try a new set of exercises," he said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin and eyeing Yuuri. "And we need to talk about your diet."

Yuuri's eyes narrowed at him and his lips pursed slightly. He looked displeased, but Victor was keen on eliminating his opponent―Yuuri's food. If only he could understand what Yuuri was mumbling at times, things would become so much easier.

And even when Yuuri was unhappy about something, or something bothered him, he didn't protest much, and didn't voice his objections, which in a way made Victor feel worse. He felt like he was stealing a child's candy.

He swallowed the food in his mouth and pushed back his bowl that was still full of food aside. The expression in the younger skater's eyes was breaking Victor's heart. Ugh, why was he so cute? This was unfair.

Yuuri stood up, mechanically did a slight head-bow and ran away, leaving Victor behind. Yuuri's mother gave him a sweet smile when she walked in to take the plates and Victor wondered if he could find out more about Yuuri from her. The idea crossed his head, but he dismissed and forgot it right away when Yuuri ran back into the room, breathless in his exercise garments.

"We c-can go," he said in a meek tone.

...

Victor fell on his bed and closed his eyes. It wasn't the best idea to have Yuuri do such stretches that did a few tricks to his lonely mind. He had to lock away the pole-dancing Yuuri images that his mind conjured and concentrate on couching his student properly. After all, Yuuri was his student and maybe, Yakov was right to dismiss him the way he did.

Makkachin rubbed its nose against the side of his leg, making Victor sit up on bed and look at the happy poodle.

"You don't get my pain, Makka, do you?" he asked, gently petting the dog. "Maybe, I want too much. People do strange things when they are drunk all the time."

The dog barked happily as if he agreed and Victor sighed again. He shifted in bed and leaning closer to the stand and turned on the lamp. His books were still lying there. He reluctantly grabbed them and decided to just flip through the pages.

"I wonder what would it be like to surprise Yuuri by speaking to him in Japanese when he says something thinking I won't understand," he smiled and pressed the book against his chest. "Well, maybe he doesn't ever say anything in Japanese that he doesn't say in English. Maybe he is just like that, not interested."

He took his pen and opened the notebook. "Let's see," he started to make notes, reading the textbook information. "Japanese alphabet has so many characters!"

He lazily flipped the pen between his fingers. "Makka, can you see how brave I am? This is harder than if I went to slay a dragon to save a princess. My imagination is getting wild and, now I sound like Georgi, which is not a good sign."

He returned his attention to the book and read. "Japanese writing system uses Kanji and Kana. Kanji are adopted logographic Chinese characters. Kana is a syllabic writing system that has two forms, Hiragana and Katakana."

Victor made a few more notes and glared at his book. "Tell me Makka, why do they need so many alphabets, isn't one enough? Do they not want me to write love letters to Yuuri? Yeah, love letters are too old fashioned, but..."

"Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words with no kanji representation, or whose kanji is too obscure, as well as grammatical elements, and Katakana is used to write borrowed foreign words. This just means I will learn only Hiragana," he hummed to himself. "Kana consists of 46 symbols that forms the Gojuon table."

Victor rubbed his eyes. "Unnecessary information is unnecessary," he mused. "Knowing in what table they put these letters isn't going to help me with Yuuri."

He pet Makka's head, sipped water from his bottle and continued. "Japanese script is vertical."

He swore everything on internet on Yuuri he had tried to translate was written horizontally, but whatever, maybe computers didn't like vertical. His eyes sparkled when he realized that the next section was going to teach him how to write Hiragana characters. Now he could feel he was making a progress. The first one was あ. The corresponding character given in Russian was [a]. He smiled as he tried to draw it.

The book instructed him to write characters with a certain stroke order; first, the small horizontal line, then the slightly curled-at-the-bottom vertical line and then... um then... how was he supposed to draw that sprawled down 'nine'? First few attempts were terrible. He had a beautiful handwriting and couldn't stand how ugly his characters turned out in Japanese. After a few attempts he managed to draw them correctly.

He made an entire 4 lines of あs and smiled satisfied. Yuuri Katsuki.

Japanese あ-a is close with its pronunciation to the Russian [a]. Well, then he would just pronounce it how he pronounced the Russian a-s.

Next character was い-i. It was fairly easy to do, and Victor felt much better and proud of himself. For a short moment, showing Yuuri how he wrote Hiragana characters crossed his mind, but he shook his head. This was supposed to be a secret, after all.

う-u and え-e were easy as well. But when it came to お-o, Victor pouted. お and あ looked similar. What if he confused them! He narrowed his eyes. お had a small stress-like dash and was curled differently at the bottom. He wrote the characters several times, until he was absolutely sure he wouldn't forget how they looked.

*To make an elephant out of a fly is a Russian idiom that means to make something momentous out of a trifle.

**Koshchey is a folkloric male villain that abducts the hero's love interest in Slavic (including Russian) folklore.