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The monastery phone ringing in the middle of the day isn't that unusual, and Fujimoto Shiro picking it up and immediately sighing isn't that unusual either.
"Sorry he's caused you more problems, I'll come talk to him." Is also not that unusual, with the continued interactions of Rin, the first year of middle school, and his classmates.
It's the next word out of Fujimoto's mouth that gets the attention of every priest in the monastery.
"Yukio?"
Fujimoto Shiro is very glad his boys have both had the chance to grow up relatively safe, relatively healthy, relatively normal. Their childhoods were nothing like his, they're safe and happy and normal. He's probably doing a good job.
This is just... some kind of minor setback. A minor setback that Yukio's having. He's not Rin, he isn't going to be in trouble for throwing a desk or punching another student or walking out of class in the middle of the lesson. Yukio, whatever trouble he's gotten into, is going to have been creative about it. Which is probably why Yukio's teacher looks frazzled and Yukio looks like he wants to melt into the floor.
"Your teacher just told me you made a girl-"
"Five girls, Father Fujimoto," the teacher clarifies, and she looks exhausted.
"... five girls cry. On Valentines Day."
Yukio looks like he's trying to vanish into the collar of his uniform, and a little like he's about to start crying himself despite having grown out of tears by now.
"Yes, father."
"Can you explain to me what exactly happened?" It isn't a surprise that his shy, serious son has got the attention of his female classmates. Yukio's growing up to be a handsome kid, and it's probably the age where girls start noticing things like that, even if Yukio is too focused on his studies to notice. But Yukio's generally better at being polite than whatever he did that made five girls (five of them) start crying into their handmade chocolate.
Yukio mutters something, turning even redder. Shiro glances over at his teacher, hoping for some kind of clarification there.
"He..." and oh, that's unusual, the teacher is suddenly a little thrown off, a little unsure. It's a cute look on her. "... told the other students that it was against his religion to accept chocolates."
Well, that... explains nothing. Actually no, it explains why the teacher is unsure, she probably doesn't know anything about Catholicism, if this stated inability to accept chocolate from classmates is actually a religious restriction or just an awkward preteen thing.
"Yukio. Would you please explain to your teacher and to me why it would be against your religion to accept chocolate from your classmates?"
Another mumble from Yukio, where he's looking down at the ground. Shiro waits. Eventually, Yukio repeats himself.
"It's Lent."
...
The boy's a genius. Shiro can see the entire plan laid out right there in that one little sentence, all of Yukio's blindingly sharp intellect focused behind the childish idea of avoid accepting chocolate from girls. The fact that it completely backfired on him is objectively hilarious and Shiro has to focus all of his considerable poker face skills into not laughing. He can't laugh. If he laughs it would be a terrible example.
"Yukio. You made five of your classmates cry."
"Six." the teacher corrects. "Five girls."
"You made six of your classmates cry. You could have at least accepted the chocolate, even if you can't eat it right now."
The teacher looks at Yukio, who doesn't look back at her or Shiro, mostly just looks like he's going to just spontaneously combust right there, break out in flames that will consume him entirely until he's just a pile of ash on the ground. It's a good thing the kid doesn't have Satan's fire.
"He'll apologize to his classmates," Shiro says. "And I guarantee you that nothing like this will ever happen again."
"Weaponized Lenten abstention." Shiro says, as they walk back towards the monastery together, shaking his head.
Yukio still looks like he's going to descend straight through the sidewalk to Gehenna itself to escape this conversation. On the one hand, Shiro feels pretty bad for the kid. On the other, he's kind of glad that he's managing to project some kind of aura of parental disapproval rather than barely-contained amusement.
"Yukio. I understand why you did that," not really, at Yukio's age Shiro would have been thrilled with the attention "but you can't just decide to give up chocolate for Lent to avoid Valentines Day."
