Late One Night
It was three in the morning, but the men at Emerald magazine were far from clocking out. Kisa was just glad the company paid them overtime, knowing that no matter what medium it was, authors were notoriously hard to work with. Unfortunately, as he was on the phone with one of his authors, Kisa had been the first to fall asleep. The Emerald editors had a tradition that on the times near the deadline when they had to stay at the office all night, the first person to fall asleep got coffee and donuts at the place down the street.
Kisa had never been the first to fall asleep. They had started the tradition the second full cycle Ritsu was working for them, and it had always been him. Sometimes Kisa felt sorry for him and gave him some money to help pay. Because of this, Ritsu yawned and gave him a thousand yen bill before promptly passing out himself.
As he walked down the street, yawning and blinking up at the streetlights, Kisa felt somewhat guilty at having to pull an all-nighter. Yukina had showed up at his apartment the past Saturday with his sleepover bag, and it was only Tuesday. While Kisa was lurking the streets at a time most people didn't regularly experience, Yukina was probably in Kisa's bed, fast asleep. Kisa vaguely wondered when he'd be able to join him again.
Then he shook his head. No matter how much he loved the guy, he wasn't going to let his mind be invaded by such mushy thoughts. It was clearly the sleep deprivation talking.
The twenty-four-hour coffee shop was all but empty when Kisa got to it. Three am, after all, was an odd hour. The people who had to go to work in the morning were still asleep, and those who worked at night wouldn't be let out for a couple hours. There was a single man sitting over in a corner booth, a laptop before him and a large, disposable coffee cup beside him on the table.
There was someone at the counter too, of course. Kisa yawned for the hundredth time since leaving the Marukawa building and squinted up at the harsh, fluorescent lights.
"Uh, five double expressos and a dozen powdered sugar donuts." They needed as much caffeine and sugar as they could get if they were going to make it through without Takano snapping and telling the printer Marukawa had gone bankrupt. Again.
"Intern?" The voice sounded kind of smug, and it got on Kisa's nerves.
"Please, an intern would be treated better than I am." Then he looked up, and it took a grand total of point-four-seven seconds for him to recognize the face in front of him. It was Ichimura, the guy he'd almost slept with again before Yukina intervened. If he had known the man worked here, Kisa would've tried harder to stay awake.
As Ichimura worked to put together Kisa's order, he decided to keep the conversation going. "I just thought you were an intern, at Marukawa? Usually a guy in his twenties comes in here and gets this order." Ichimura glanced at Kisa. "He's not as cute as you, of course."
"…thanks, I'm sure Ricchan will be thrilled to hear that." He used Ritsu's nickname without thinking, and when he realized, he ducked his head. He just kept staring at the packets of sugar on the counter in their little glass container, hoping that would be the end of it.
"Is that the name of the guy who kicked me out?" Ichimura smiled and put the donuts and coffees down on the counter.
"What? No, Ricchan is my coworker." Kisa just glared at his wallet as he took out the bill Ritsu gave him and what he had left to pay.
"You must go to a pretty prestigious high school if you have to work so late to pay for it," Ichimura commented. "…so who was that guy?"
Kisa glanced over at the only other person in the whole place. The silver-haired man just drank his coffee indifferently, as if he couldn't even hear them. Kisa vaguely noted that he knew the guy from somewhere, but his sleep deprivation-addled brain wouldn't let him determine where. His default answer was, of course, that they'd slept together. That was probably it.
"I'm not in high school." Then he glanced at Ichimura. "And I thought you were some hotshot businessman. What are you doing serving me donuts at three am?"
"My family owns this bakery so I cover sometimes." And then he narrowed his eyes. "So what's the story with you, Shouta? Drop out of school?"
Kisa looked around again, and his eyes landed on the silver-haired man. He was lifting his coffee cup to his lips, but he was watching them out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly, though, the man's cell phone went off, and Kisa turned away from him. "I'm not sure it's worth it at this point to tell you the truth. The fact that I'm even seeing you here is just a fluke." Then he picked up the donuts and coffee, not bothering to take the fifteen yen he was owed. He thought that was the end of that, but Ichimura chased him. The man held the door open as Kisa just stood there on the empty sidewalk, balancing the to-go tray the coffee cups were secured in with one hand and the donut box on the other.
"Come on, we had fun those few nights, didn't we?" Ichimura said, a smile on his face as he ran his hand through his hair. "I realize you're still young and have everything going for you, but obviously you don't have reservations about older men if you-"
"I'm thirty!"
"…what?" Ichimura looked confused, and he let the door of the café close behind him. "What did you say, Shouta?"
"I'm thirty years old. I work as an editor at Marukawa Shoten's shojo department. I haven't stepped foot in a high school in twelve years." Then he put the box of donuts on top of the coffee cups. "And don't call me by my first name. You never had that right."
"Shouta…" Ichimura looked shocked at Kisa's admission and didn't try to stop him from leaving. So Kisa just walked down the still-empty sidewalk, his eyes closed. Eventually he had to open them when he accidently stepped off the end of the sidewalk onto a crosswalk and realized he'd passed the Marukawa building.
"Oi Kisa, someone came by here for you," Takano said when Kisa got inside.
Kisa put the donuts and coffee down on the only empty surface in the entire office and just looked tired. None of the Emerald men were cognitive enough to worry about what was wrong with him, though. "At three-thirty am?" he asked, rubbing at his eyes and vaguely wondering if he was getting wrinkles. It was probably just bags under his eyes. His mother always told him he wouldn't get wrinkles until he was dead and decomposing in the ground. It was a comforting, if slightly morbid, thought.
Takano just shrugged and tossed a denim bag at him before going to grab his cup of coffee. Kisa looked at it, confused, until he realized it was the bag he usually brought with a change of clothes and other amenities he'd need when he knew he wouldn't be going home. He hadn't even thought to pick it up that morning.
The one intern they had who was willing to stay there with them that late at night frowned when she saw there wasn't coffee for her, but she took a donut, anyway. "Yeah, tall guy. Really good-looking. Amazingly perky for this time of night."
Despite himself, Kisa smiled as he looked down at the bag. He opened it to see Yukina had put a frozen breakfast package in there as well. He vaguely thought about putting his name on the top of the package and placing it in the fridge down in the lounge, but Takano glared at him over his cup of coffee. "Get back to work!" he said.
Kisa jumped, pure terror going through him. He nodded and got his own coffee and donut before getting to work on the final formatting of his last manga pages. He was almost done working, so it was just a matter of getting it all into the printer afterwards. The layout people already had it all set out. Now if only all the authors would get their pages in on time.
He glared down at a panel that hadn't had a screen tone added. He knew that the author had been obstinate about it, saying the scene spoke for itself, but he could've sworn he had convinced her in the end. Kisa reached around in his drawers, sure he had screen tone sheets stashed away in there. Then he saw the note on his desk, peeking out from his fallen-over bag.
I'll see you tomorrow. I love you. Yukina.
"What's got you so happy?" Ritsu asked. The poor guy had his arms wrapped around his laptop and his head laid down on its lid. He'd probably slept the entire time Kisa was gone.
Kisa shook his head and stashed the note away in the drawers he'd been searching. He might forget it was there in the morning when he'd had a couple hours of sleep. Kisa tended to just collapse on a couch in the lounge after an all-nighter in the time between the old day ending and the new day beginning. And when he came back, he might find the note again and be able to get through the day.