Chapter 1: The Meeting
Rin closed the door of the oven on the strawberry macaron shells and wiped his hands on the black apron tied around his waist. There. He wandered out of the kitchen to look out of the café windows at the blowing snow outside. It's already seven in the morning but the sky was cloudy and Rin could only see a steady fall of snow coming down in hazy gray light. Snow was already piling up two feet high in places on the ground. No sign of letting up, huh. A real snow day. Wonder if I'll have any customers today. He didn't think so, so he went to call the two staff that he had hired to help wait on customers to take a day off.
That done, he returned to the warm kitchen and debated with himself on what to prepare for the day's menu. Rin's little café is supposedly famous for having a changing daily selection of six to seven well-made pastries or cakes in addition to the daily menu but he didn't want to spend time baking up cakes only to have to discard them at the end of the day.
Hmmm, éclairs, that marzipan pistachio roll cake, and some tarts, he thought, apple, vanilla and lemon. They keep well enough that if nobody buys them today, they'll still be fine for tomorrow. Or, I can always take them home for Gou or give them away to Haru or Nagisa's and Makoto's families.
Rin moved around the kitchen with practiced ease, measuring out ingredients, slicing apples and stewing them, mixing up pie crust and flourless cake dough, and blending the tart fillings. Soon, the kitchen was filled the sweet smells of vanilla and cardamom, buttery piecrust, apples and cinnamon, lemon and orange, almond and pistachio and chocolate.
When the macaron shells were cool, Rin took a tasting spoon to test the chocolate cream he had prepared for the chocolate macarons. Bleargh. Yuck! He shuddered. This was the taste he learnt to associate with Gou and Nagisa glomping him, declaring that he had created dessert heaven, and Makoto looking at him with shining eyes, glowing with happiness. It was all disgustingly sweet to him, but since this was what everyone else (but him) liked, it should be all right. He piped the cream onto the macaron shells and gently pressed two halves together with latex-gloved hands, quietly pleased that the shells had turned out uniform in size. He hoped that the four flavours he had prepared were enough. He placed them in the display case next to the éclairs and tried not to feel gloomy as he thought of the alternative. Hope I don't have to throw them all away.
The bell chimed as the door opened.
"Welcome to Café Arc-En-Ciel," Rin turned to the door, surprised to have customers come in after all during this blizzard-like weather. He glanced out of the window and saw that the snow was still falling down as hard as ever. He turned his attention to the person at the door. A tall, trim, flame-haired man about his age was standing on the welcome mat, unwinding a woolen muffler from his neck, shaking his head, snow speckling his long trench coat and melting in his hair. Rin snagged a clean towel and moved forward to offer it to the customer to wipe the snow off. The towel was accepted with a smile of appreciation, and Rin was struck by the stranger's good looks. In the warm orange light of the cafe, it looked like he was sparkling.
"Table for two, sir?" Rin asks. His date is probably coming in later, he thought. He felt slightly sorry for whoever she was as the weather outside looked to be worsening, the wind gusting harder, dumping more snow down.
"Nope, table for one," The tall redhead grinned cheerfully as he removed his jacket, revealing a dark green turtleneck, black insulated wool pants and black leather boots. Rin blinked. Well, this is different, he thought. Maybe he only came in to escape from the snow. Usually it was groups of girlfriends, or couples, who entered this unrepentantly cutesy and romantically decorated sweet shop. Gou and Nagisa had been the ones to decorate the shop and design the uniforms. While it wasn't what Rin would have chosen, it seemed to work and gave the shop identity, so he had grown to accept it. At least, it wasn't an out-and-out maid café.
The customer brandished a magazine, which Rin recognized as one that had featured his café somewhere in it lately. "I read about this café and the reviews and pictures of the sweets looked awesome, so I thought I absolutely needed to take the day off to try them out." He smiled charmingly, like it was normal to take off days and brave blizzards to satisfy dessert cravings. "What have you got today?"
Rin brought him to a seat, and provided a menu to point out the sweets that were available that day. "We have macarons in different flavours, amande-pistache gâteau roulé, tart au citron, tart vanille, tarte tatin and éclairs."
"Good," the customer removed his gloves and rubbed his hands together. "Let me try them all."
"All?" Rin frowned, taken aback. Even for such a big guy, eating so much sugar would probably make him sick and send him crashing into a sugar coma on the floor. He felt queasy himself, just thinking about it.
"I love sweets," the big guy explained happily, golden eyes shining, as though that explained everything. Rin decided not to argue because the guy could always change his mind.
Rin served up a coffee, hot and black, with four macarons of different colours on a white plate. As he turned to move away, the guy spoke up to him. "Are you busy? If you aren't, I sure would like the company. I'm Mikoshiba Seijuurou, by the way. Call me Seijuurou." He stuck out his hand at Rin.
Rin considered for a moment. Why not, he thought. "Matsuoka Rin. Rin is fine." They shook hands and Rin took the seat opposite Seijuurou.
"So, what are these? Did you make them yourself?" Seijuurou asked, studying the macarons in front of him with interest.
Rin nodded. "Macarons. They come in different flavours. Here, you have orange, almond, strawberry, and chocolate." He pointed them out as he named them. "You should start with this one first. It has the mildest taste." He indicated the light orange one with light green filling. He rested his chin in his palm as he watched Seijuurou follow his recommendation.
Seijuurou bit into the macaron and stopped, staring at it in wonder. "It's like eating orange blossoms," he said.
Rin snorted quietly at the amazed expression on his face, feeling secretly relieved because that reaction was exactly how it was supposed to be.
"I'm serious!" Seijuurou stared at the bitten macaron more closely. "The flavour and texture is incredible. The shell melts away so fast, it's like eating clouds."
"That's because the shell is just air and sugar held together with egg white that's been beaten until it screamed for mercy," Rin shrugged.
"Stop describing this amazing thing you made with such horrible sounding words," Seijuurou chided, popping the remainder of the macaron into his mouth, then pausing to close his eyes in appreciation. "Wow. Just, wow. Do you have anymore? I've got to bring some home to let the family try them." He opened eyes and grinned at Rin. "So, which should I try next?"
"What's this?" Mikoshiba looked down at the slice of meringue studded green cake that Rin had presented to him with curiosity.
"Amande-pistache gâteau roulé. It's really just a direct translation from almond-pistachio cake roll to French to make it sound classier."
Mikoshiba grinned at Rin's lackluster description of his cake. "I like the description in your menu better."
Rin rolled his eyes as he remembered the pretentious description of "a sweet mix of pistachio biscuit moelleux, Bourbon vanilla crème onctueuse, and an almond/pistachio paste" that Gou had bullied him into printing on the menu (No one will buy your cakes if you describe them your way, onii-chan!). It was what it was, though.
"What does this word mean, 'moelleux'?" Seijuurou was asking.
"It refers to the cake being made without flour."
"What about 'onctueuse'?"
"A smooth paste." Rin shifted, remembering how he had struggled with all the French terms in patisserie school. He watched Seijuurou use his fork to cut a small piece of it and put it in his mouth. Suddenly, Mikoshiba's eyes widened in shock and he clapped a hand over his mouth so quickly that Rin jumped in surprise.
"What's wrong?" Rin asked in concern. Was he going to throw up?
Mikoshiba looked up, not lowering his hand. "It's like a pistachio and marzipan factory exploded in my mouth."
"Oh." Rin was nonplussed. Nobody had ever described his sweets as industrial disasters or shown such contorted facial expressions when eating his cakes before. "Spit it out, then."
Seijuurou shook his head as he reached out his free hand to grip Rin's tightly (not noticing how Rin jumped a little at the contact). "No," he whispered, face still scrunched a little as though in pain. "It's really, really, really bloody excellent."
Rin looked at Seijuurou's happily animated face as he spent the rest of the day eating his way through the range of sweets available in the café. It was rare enough nowadays that he got to sit down and bask in his customers' enjoyment of his creations or had the time to make small talk with them. He ended up sharing a lot more of himself than he had expected though. Conversation topics ranged from Rin's apathy towards sweets (But you're great at making them! How do you get all the tastes right if you think they all taste disgusting!?), Rin's experiences in patisserie school (nine months spent learning French terms, knife skills and bread making techniques before eventually going on to learn how to make and decorate plated desserts) and even his family (Yeah, I don't think you decorated this café yourself. It's just so… not you, you know?).
"How do you stay so slim if you like sweets so much? You must have eaten enough sugar today to poison a horse!" Rin was rather appalled (despite himself) on Seijuurou's behalf, he was sure to get diabetes this way; he wasn't exaggerating about the sugar content. He had made the sweets, he would know.
"Ha!" Seijuurou laughed. "Great metabolism, I suppose. It's strange but my blood sugar level never spikes no matter how much sugar I eat. I also used to be really serious about competitive swimming in high school, and I still keep up with it even now."
"Heh~, swimming huh," Rin mused, heart twinging a little at old memories and nostalgia. "I used to swim competitively too, as a kid."
"Really?" Seijuurou looked interested at having something in common with Rin.
"Yeah, but I quit when I was thirteen years old. It was a long time ago," Rin pushed his hair back and looked away.
Seijuurou wanted to ask what memory it was that made Rin look so sad, but Rin, looking out of the window, interrupted him first.
"Oh, look. The snow has stopped."
And so it had.
Rin stood in the door of the café, facing Seijuurou. "Thank you for your patronage," he said softly, breath escaping in white puffs in the cold air.
Seijuurou smiled broadly as he replied, "Thanks for the great service, Rin! I really enjoyed talking with you and learning about the sweets you made." He lifted up the bag containing the packed desserts that he had requested for the trip home.
"No problem," Rin replied, trying not to shiver as he crossed his arms to tuck his bare hands into the crooks of his elbows to warm them. "Don't eat all the sweets yourself. You'll definitely grow fat, I guarantee it."
Seijuurou laughed loud and cheerfully and in that moment, Rin wondered if he should ask for his phone number or offer his own instead, wanted to ask if there was any hope of them keeping in touch after today. He was only a sweet-maker though, and Seijuurou was a customer. What's more, in their entire conversation, they never did talk much about their private lives, and Rin didn't even know whether he had a chance or not. "Well," he heard himself say, "If you want more, you know where to find me. Be careful on the way home."
Seijuurou smiled, then turned and walked away. Rin stared after him until he disappeared at the turn, then, shivering, went back into the café.
.
Notes:
patisserie: A pâtisserie is the type of French or Belgian bakery that specializes in pastries and sweets. In both countries it is a legally controlled title that may only be used by bakeries that employ a licensed maître pâtissier (master pastry chef). In France and Belgium the pâtissier is a pastry chef who has completed a lengthy training process, typically an apprenticeship, and passed a written examination.
Café Arc-En-Ciel: Rainbow Café
This author is very very VERY enamored with the MikoRin pairing… Please talk to me, if you like this pairing too.
Inspiration for this story came from various threads floating around Tumblr.
Namely the
1) "Imagine your life if that one event had never happened" and
2) the "Universe and galaxy are very big, the Sun and Earth are very small and we are even tinier, like dust, so it is very easy to rationalize eating an entire cake."
3) "αη∂ ι'∂ ¢нσσѕє уσυ; ＩＮ Ａ ＨＵＮＤＲＥＤ ＬＩＦＥＴＩＭＥＳ, ｉｎ ａ ｈｕｎｄｒｅｄ ｗｏｒｌｄｓ, ɨn Ⱥnɏ vɇɍsɨøn øf ɍɇȺłɨŧɏ, ι'∂ ƒιη∂ уσυ and ＩĐ ⅭᎻՕՕՏᎬ уσυ." I rather like this idea, red thread of Fate and all that, and my overactive mind is spawning so many AUs for these two, I am surprised. Why do these two dorks inspire me so? =S Not all AU's are equally fleshed out though, so some will never see light of day.
Patisserie school curriculum can be found here. london/patisserie-training/en
Cake references, preparation can be found here. category/features/?src=tab
Café Arc-En-Ciel stands for Rainbow Café in French (in reference to the Drama CD where Rin reportedly made rainbows in the pool).
(I was searching for suitable names for Cafés online and one of the first ones that appeared was "Le Dauphin" which is, you guessed it, "The Dolphin" in French.
Rin's café almost got named Café du Chat (The Cat's Café) but I'm sure it's used somewhere already, Café RinGou (Apple Café and a pun on his and Gou's name, Café Cerise (Cherry/Sakura Café) and Café Grand Requin Blanc (Café Great White Shark, I really liked this one).
I also thought that since Rin hated sweets, this is like, the most ironic profession for him to land into. Ah, but, you see, Mikoshiba loves sweets!