Weinhart noticed the approaching figure first, the way he noticed most things quietly and without making a production of it.
"We have company," he said.
Adam's gaze shifted toward the owner crossing the restaurant floor. He said nothing but his posture adjusted slightly in the way it always did when he was paying closer attention than he appeared to be. Weinhart stood smoothly, composed as ever, and by the time Yong Hae Shi reached their table everything on their end looked perfectly unhurried and perfectly deliberate.
"Do you have business with our table, sir?" Weinhart asked, his tone polite and entirely unreadable.
The owner paused and scratched the back of his head briefly, then seemed to decide something and straightened, his manner shifting into something more formal without losing its ease.
"I am the owner of this establishment," he said. "I simply wanted to ask whether the food was to your liking."
Weinhart smiled faintly. "Yes. Quite excellent."
Liam nodded with the enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting for an opportunity to say this. "It's really good!"
Adam gave a short measured nod. "You have our compliments."
He smiled, genuinely pleased, and then glanced at the empty space beside Fainyx with the casual air of someone who had already decided what they were about to do.
"Would it be alright if I joined you for a moment?"
Weinhart looked at Adam. A brief silent exchange passed between them and Adam gave a small nod.
"You may," he said.
"Thank you."
He sat down beside Fainyx without hesitation and Fainyx, who had continued eating through all of this with the focused calm of someone paying no attention whatsoever, felt the deliberateness of the choice immediately. There were other seats. The choice to sit here was not accidental.
He kept eating.
"I should introduce myself properly," he said, settling back with the ease of someone entirely comfortable in any situation he walked into. "My name is Yong Hae Shi. Owner of this establishment." He smiled lightly. "It's a pleasure."
Weinhart returned a polite nod. "The pleasure is ours."
Liam leaned forward immediately. "You have a unique name Mister! This place is amazing, I've never seen anything like it!"
"I get that often," Yong Hae Shi said, and there was something in his tone that suggested he found this genuinely funny for reasons he wasn't going to explain.
Adam, who had been observing quietly since the man sat down, spoke then. "You speak well," he said. "For someone so young."
Yong Hae Shi shrugged slightly. "I've had unique experiences."
Vague and smooth. Fainyx's hand moved steadily to lift another piece of food and he filed that answer away beside everything else he was quietly collecting about this person.
Then Yong Hae Shi turned toward him.
"Your younger brother is quite quiet," he said, directing it at Liam but his eyes moving to Fainyx.
Liam laughed awkwardly. "Ah, he can't really talk."
"...Oh?"
Fainyx set his chopsticks down, took out his notebook, and wrote neatly.
[ I apologize. I am unable to speak. ]
He turned it toward Yong Hae Shi who read it without any particular change in expression, still relaxed, still smiling, but his eyes doing something that Fainyx had already learned to notice, lingering slightly longer than the words required, taking in more than what was written.
"I see," he said simply.
A short pause settled and then, very casually, "You use chopsticks well."
Fainyx wrote without hesitating.
[ I learned by watching. ]
A lie, a clean one. He had prepared it upstairs without knowing he would need it and he was glad he had because the alternative was considerably more complicated.
Yong Hae Shi hummed. "Is that so?" He leaned back slightly. "Interesting."
Liam, clearly sensing something in the air that he couldn't quite identify and responding to it the way he responded to most things by filling the silence with conversation, leaned forward brightly. "This place is really unique! Where did you learn to cook like this?"
"From somewhere far away," Yong Hae Shi said pleasantly.
Fainyx's grip tightened very slightly under the table where no one could see it.
Adam's eyes narrowed by a fraction. "Your cuisine is unfamiliar. It doesn't originate from this region."
"You could say that," Yong Hae Shi agreed, which was technically an answer and contained no actual information whatsoever.
The air at the table carried something subtle now, not hostile, not even particularly tense, but the particular quality of a conversation where multiple people were being careful in different directions and everyone at the table was at least somewhat aware of it. Weinhart's posture stayed perfectly calm and perfectly attentive. Adam kept his expression neutral and his observations quiet. Liam remained cheerfully unaware that anything was happening beneath the surface of the conversation.
And Fainyx ate his food and listened to all of it and watched Yong Hae Shi the way he watched everything quietly, from a slight distance, collecting information without drawing attention to the fact that he was doing it.
Then Yong Hae Shi glanced at him again. Brief and casual and entirely deliberate.
"You're an interesting group," he said lightly, to no one in particular.
He didn't stand to leave. Instead he settled more comfortably into his chair, one arm resting on the back of it, the posture of someone who had decided he was going to stay a little longer and saw no reason to be subtle about it.
"Actually," he continued, something like genuine curiosity entering his expression, "I think I'm more interested in your stories."
Weinhart's attention sharpened almost imperceptibly. Adam's eyes did the same.
"May I ask," Yong Hae Shi said, tone polite and unhurried, "Are you nobles?"
A brief silence fell over the table.
Weinhart responded before Adam could, his smile composed and his voice carrying the particular gentle firmness of someone redirecting without confronting. "It is somewhat impolite to ask such a question directly."
Yong Hae Shi blinked. Then laughed quietly, scratching his cheek with the expression of someone who had genuinely not thought that through. "Ah, you're right. My apologies. That was rude of me."
"It's fine," Adam said. "We are merely here for a visit."
Yong Hae Shi accepted this without pressing and nodded once. "I see." He shifted the topic with the ease of someone who knew when to move on. "What brings you to the city?"
Liam answered immediately. "We're touring! Our little brother hasn't been outside before so I'm showing him around!" He said it proudly, still sitting slightly closer to Fainyx than was strictly necessary.
Adam sighed but he still added quietly, "His body has been weak since birth. He has mostly stayed within the mansion."
Yong Hae Shi nodded slowly and his gaze drifted back to Fainyx with an expression of open and uncomplicated interest. "Then this must be quite a new experience for you."
Fainyx gave a small polite nod and said nothing else and thought why does he keep looking at me with considerably more feeling than showed on his face.
Yong Hae Shi's eyes stayed a moment longer than necessary, not enough to make anyone else at the table comment on it, but enough that Fainyx noticed it the same way he had noticed every other small deliberate thing this person had done since sitting down.
"It's a good thing to step outside once in a while," Yong Hae Shi said, his tone light and easy. "The world is bigger than you think."
Fainyx lowered his gaze slightly.
He knew that. He knew it better than most people in this restaurant could imagine. But something about the way it was said carried a weight that the words themselves didn't fully account for, as if the statement was pointed somewhere specific, at someone specific, and both of them knew it even if neither of them was going to say so.
Yong Hae Shi rested his chin lightly on his hand and stayed where he was, relaxed and unhurried and watching, and Fainyx continued eating with his expression perfectly composed and his thoughts considerably less so because somewhere between walking into this restaurant and sitting down for what was supposed to be a simple meal he had become the subject of someone else's curiosity and he found, with some irritation, that he didn't like it even slightly.