He's eating, certainly, but it really takes the backseat to watching Yuri, delighting in his delight. Has he ever cared this much about food? He enjoys it when it's in front of him, but for Yuri it seems to be an all-encompassing passion. It's really no wonder than his first instinct when skating Eros was to think about his favorite katsudon, even if Victor had found it a strange angle at the time. "I'm looking forward to sharing some Russian food with you in Moscow," he says, sipping tea and spearing a jiaozi to let it steam gently on his plate before he takes a bite. "It's not as nice as St. Petersburg, but you can still try some of the better-known dishes .. borscht and syrniki, and shashlik from the Izmailovsky market. Blini, they're like crepes."

Everything he's used to, and nothing like what he's been eating in Japan, where the fish is either raw or simply baked or steamed, and not smoked or preserved, and the starch is always rice and never potatoes or warm and crispy loaves of bread. The vinegar they use is different, the vegetables are different.

It's all delicious, but he has to admit that there's a part of him that's eager to get back to Russia and everything more familiar, to share some of his past with Yuri, instead of the other way around. Even if it is Moscow, and not his beloved St. Petersburg.

(He loves the katsudon at Yu-topia, but now that the weather is growing cooler, he finds himself craving a hot bowl of zharkoye, thick with beef and root vegetables, with a healthy dollop of sour cream melting on top.)

"Yurio is from Moscow, you know. He knows the city better than I do, maybe he can give us some recommendations."

Maybe. Or maybe he'll opt to maintain the radio silence he's kept since leaving Hasetsu back in the spring, it's difficult to say.