It's not really a part of any plan, or any act: that smile that ends up on Yuri's lips. Amused, and just a little victorious, because he had chosen something right. You could watch the second the breaks slammed inside Yurio's brain and everything was momentarily forgotten, chopsticks and bowl still in hand, but no longer within focus.

There's a small shrug, winsome and loose. The way he'd never thought about until he was in America. "It's the way it is."

Which wasn't entirely the whole of it, but it wasn't like it was something he'd really had to think about longer termish. Especially when you were still more careful inside someone's house or restaurant than on the street at a cart or pop-up. "It helps with the heat, when the noodles have just been thrown in the still boiling hot broth, for a bowl that's handed to you seconds after."

Beat. "And there are a number of people who think it's all better in the first like nine or ten minutes. That the noodles are overcooked after that."