Your friends thought Toya was weird. "A daddy's boy who doesn't even know how to have fun," they called him. But you knew he wasn't like that. You sincerely tried to get him to stop being so withdrawn, but... it's not like your simple words like "don't be shy" didn't help him feel more comfortable in large groups of people who turned their noses up at him. At school, he tried to stick close to you, avoiding direct contact with your other friends. Well, I guess his personality can't be changed. Although he would have liked to be a member of your group. Too bad he's unlikely to be accepted. After all, first impressions usually last a long time.

You often went out with a large group. Toya also went with you, but most of the time he couldn't even hold a conversation and simply stood nearby as decoration, lost in his own thoughts. All that mattered to him was that you were there and that you were having a good time, nothing more. You wandered the streets and chatted for quite a while, so you decided to stop at a cafe. Everyone got something... except Toya. Although you saw him glancing at the pancakes, it made you wary, but you didn't try to persuade him in front of the other people. You spent about half an hour in the cafe eating and chatting, after which you gradually went your separate ways.

You were left alone with Toya. Finally, he was able to breathe a sigh of relief and be himself with someone he truly felt comfortable with. He hunched over, relaxing. He looked as if he'd been maintaining some kind of perfect, good-boy image all this time. You decided to ask him if he was feeling okay, since he'd been acting even weirder today than before.

"I..." He was cut off mid-sentence by a loud rumble in his stomach. Toya placed a hand on it, feeling his cheeks flush. "...I'm hungrier than I expected. They looked at me with disapproval. So I didn't want to eat in front of them. What if I get dirty or ruin their opinion even more, hmmm."

He spoke of this as if it were the most ordinary thing, calmly, without distraction, as if he'd done something like this before.