a/n: behold, the coffeeshop au that nobody really wanted but as written anyway. enjoy.
"Hi, welcome to Euphonium's, what would you like today?" the barista dryly uttered, clicking a pen while waiting for a reply from the young man standing in front of her.
"I'll take whatever you recommend," he answered, scribbling down something on a scrap of paper. The barista shot him a quizzical expression.
"I don't really have anything to recommend, er . . ."
"Shuichi," the teenager interrupted. "You're Kumiko, right?"
"Yeah," the barista grunted, looking down at her name tag. "This is a coffee shop, it's not like I'm going to know anything about this stuff. I've only been working here for a few weeks, anyway." This was a lie - Kumiko had been working the same tired job for the past several months, but she really wanted to get rid of this customer, who was now sliding the slip of paper towards her while muttering something about calling him sometime. Kumiko repeatedly clicked her pen in frustration, sending Shuichi on his way with an iced tea.
"Honestly, who asks for recommendations at a crappy coffeeshop anyway?" Kumiko laughed, sitting on break with her coworkers.
"I dunno, he seemed pretty cute," Hazuki Katou, another barista, commented.
"Take his number if you want," Kumiko grumbled, fishing the crumpled paper scrap out of her pocket. "I didn't really have the heart to tell the guy that I wasn't interested."
"It sounds like the start of a love story straight out of the books to me," Midori Kawashima squeaked, eagerly gesturing with her hands. "Two people, meeting at a tiny coffeeshop in the middle of nowhere and falling in love. Don't you agree, Hazuki?" The other girl nodded in agreement.
"You two are hopeless," Kumiko muttered.
It was a mundane job, simple and sometimes rather boring, but it paid the bills and Kumiko didn't mind doing it, so she tended to lose herself in the methodical motions of making the drinks and serving them to customers, some of which weren't exactly the friendliest people to serve. There wasn't a single day that went by without some impatient, cranky customer complaining about the amount of whipped cream in their hot chocolate, or how the beans "weren't up to par with the standards."
Kumiko had fallen into the habit of writing about some of the more intriguing people who walked into Euphonium's Coffee - the old man who talked to whoever sat in the worn leather chair in the corner, the girl who dyed her hair a different color every week, the family that always ordered four hot chocolates and left an extra tip each time. A tiny moleskine notebook contained little notes and comments on the customers, sometimes accompanied by doodles or things Kumiko had collected throughout the day. In this case, Shuichi's number (Hazuki had copied it into her phone under "cute mystery boy" and then given it back to Kumiko "just in case") and a short description of the guy and his weird comment about "recommendations" sat in the middle of the notebook.
I'll have to get a new one soon, Kumiko thought to herself, taking off her apron and picking up the notebook. She had been working in the tiny coffeeshop since April, and it was September now, but she still hadn't figured out what she wanted to do beyond the dull job of being a barista. She had played in a brass band in high school - the coffeeshop's name was part of what had drawn her to it - but she had given that up a long time ago, and living with a directionless yet well-meaning roommate who seemed to bring a new girl into the apartment every two days didn't exactly help either.
It was raining outside, Kumiko noticed with a grimace - she had forgotten her umbrella. With a resigned sigh, she tucked the notebook safely into her pocket and prepared to run through the six blocks to her apartment. Kumiko stepped outside and immediately broke out into a sprint, keeping one hand on the pocket holding her notebook. She could feel the rain soaking through her sweater, chilling her to the bone and drenching her in tiny freezing droplets. Kumiko shivered and tried to run faster, only passing the first block before being completely soaked. She had to stop after a few more steps, shaking the raindrops out of her hair and, still checking her pocket for the notebook, prepared to start running again.
"Do you need this?" a voice inquired from behind her. Kumiko let out a frightened yelp and turned around, noticing a girl around her age wearing a dark raincoat and holding up an umbrella. "You look cold," she added. Kumiko tentatively stepped closer to the girl. A few strands of black hair tumbled out from the raincoat's hood. "It looks like you need it more than me, anyway," she finished. Kumiko stared at the girl in complete confusion for a few moments before responding.
"I don't even know you, I can't just take someone's umbrella like that, y'know?" she mumbled. The girl fixed her violet gaze on Kumiko - she probably would have thought about how pretty her eyes were if she hadn't been preoccupied with the fact that this girl appeared to be completely and utterly serious about the umbrella. "It wouldn't, uh, it wouldn't be right!" Kumiko weakly added. The girl shrugged, dropping the umbrella on the ground and walking away. Kumiko watched her leave, dumbfounded by her behavior. "I can't believe I'm doing this," she muttered, picking up the umbrella as she began to walk home.
"Jeez, what happened to you?" Natsuki asked as soon as Kumiko went inside. "You're soaked! And where'd you get that umbrella?"
"It's a long story," Kumiko muttered, pulling the notebook out of her pocket to make sure that it was still dry. It was.
"You should go get a change of clothes, you're probably freezing to death in that," Natsuki said. "I'll make some hot chocolate. It's probably not as great as the stuff you guys make at Euphonium's, but it'll warm ya anyway." Kumiko gave a grateful nod before running to her room to find some dry clothing.
"You could always just ask me to pick you up instead of accepting umbrellas from random girls on the street, you know," Natsuki grunted once Kumiko had finished telling her the story. "Do you think you'll ever see her again?" she wondered.
"It'd be nice if I did," Kumiko murmured. "She seemed really nice, and her hair looked really soft and she was really pretty." Natsuki laughed.
"That's somehow gayer than anything I've ever said, and I've literally said 'Kumiko, I'm gay,' multiple times."
"It doesn't really matter, anyway," Kumiko mumbled. "I'm not going to see her again, unless you know her or something."
"Nope," Natsuki sighed. "Can't say that I've ever seen anyone like her, at least not according to your description. I've met a lot of girls, but none of them seemed like the kind of person who'd give an umbrella to some stranger on the street." Kumiko drank the last of her hot chocolate and looked at the clock on the counter.
"It's getting late," she noted. "It's a work day tomorrow, it'd be best if I got some sleep."
"I guess I've gotta hit the sack too, then," Natsuki sighed, standing up. "I've got a date tomorrow, you know. Wouldn't wanna be tired."
"What does 'hit the sack' even mean, anyway?" Kumiko wondered. "I mean, did people in the old days punch sacks or something to tire themselves out? Did they sleep on the sacks?"
"I don't have a clue, to be honest," Natsuki called over her shoulder, heading into the shared bedroom and climbing into her bed. Kumiko followed and collapsed into her own bed on the left side of the room. "Anyway, 'night. Try not to dream about umbrella girl, 'kay?"
"I won't," Kumiko grunted, burrowing under her covers and hoping that Natsuki wouldn't hear the 'scritch-scratch' of her pencil as pages of the moleskine notebook were filled with every single detail that Kumiko could remember about the girl in the street, the way her voice stood out so clearly even through the pouring rain, the way her violet eyes were practically vibrant against the dreary gray backdrop, the way her dark hair had just barely poked out of her rainjacket hood. Kumiko tried to sketch her, but drawing had never been her strong suit, and she feared that a crude doodle would end up destroying the image she had of the girl in her head. She fell asleep with one hand still resting on the notebook, thinking of the umbrella in the hallway and its mysterious owner.
Kumiko tried her best to focus on work the next day, pumping out the usual customers' drinks, occasionally adding in a comment or two in her notebook - there was a group of college guys hanging out in the corner who all ordered frappuchinos, a middle-aged couple who shared their mocha, a ten-year-old girl begging her mother to let her have a coffee "because all of the other girls at school drink it!" Euphonium's wasn't exactly the most popular place - the drinks and pastries weren't anything special, and there were only two or three baristas around at any given time - but it still saw its fair share of business, most likely due to the fact that it was right across the street from an office building and only a few blocks away from the local college. There were people labelled "regulars" by Kumiko and her fellow baristas, and then there were the people who just needed coffee or a pastry or simply a place to quietly work. Kumiko had become an expert at handling both, but on this day she continuously found herself staring off into space, thinking of the rain and the umbrella and the girl. She wasn't the only one. Hazuki tapped away at her phone every time she had a second to spare, waiting for Shuichi to respond to the texts she had sent the previous night.
"You're missing out, Kumiko," Hazuki had told her on break. "He hasn't texted me back yet, but he's the one, I can feel it! You should try dating, you'd be a lot happier." Kumiko had grunted in response, absentmindedly stirring her coffee and watching a businessman reading the morning paper. She briefly wondered how Natsuki's date was going.
Hours passed, and Kumiko had grown sleepy and bored. She chalked it up to the increasingly chilly weather as she waited for the next customer in line. She looked up from her notebook in preparation to recite the dull welcoming line that she could probably say in her sleep at this point (and she actually did sometimes, according to Natsuki).
"Hi, welcome to-" Amethyst eyes met brown, and Kumiko's pen promptly clattered to the ground. "Y-you, you're the . . . you're the . . ."
"I'll have a grande single shot four pumps sugar free peppermint non fat extra hot no foam light whip stirred white mocha to go, please," the girl requested, digging for some money from her purse. Kumiko could see her shiny dark hair cascading down her back freely, and she didn't seem to take any notice of the stunned barista frantically scribbling her order onto a cup.
"H-here," Kumiko squeaked once she was done with the drink, shoving it in front of the girl, who gently took it into her own hands. Kumiko could feel their fingertips briefly touching, and she tried not to look the girl in the eye as she felt her cheeks turning red. The girl sniffed the drink and smiled approvingly, trotting away with the mocha in one hand and her purse in the other. Kumiko watched her leave, and quickly scrawled grande single shot four pumps sugar free peppermint non fat extra hot no foam light whip stirred white mocha in her notebook, hands still trembling and electric from where the girl had touched them.
Kumiko had been waiting at the apartment for about an hour, still chanting grande single shot four pumps sugar free peppermint non fat extra hot no foam light whip stirred white mocha under her breath when Natsuki stepped through the door and hung up her coat.
"How was the date?" Kumiko asked as Natsuki pulled up a chair and sat down. She shrugged.
"Eh. She was nice, I guess. We didn't really click."
"Are you going to see her again?"
"Doubt it. She seemed kinda out of it the whole time, if you want the truth. Preoccupied with college and all that. It was kinda cute, though. Sometimes she'd do this thing with her glasses where she'd push them up on her nose when she got really into talking about some course she was taking. I couldn't really relate, but she seemed completely serious about all of it. Maybe in another lifetime or something, ya feel?" Kumiko didn't quite know exactly what Natsuki meant, but she was fairly distracted by the lines and lines of grande single shot four pumps sugar free peppermint non fat extra hot no foam light whip stirred white mocha written in her notebook by her still-tingling fingers.
"I saw her again," Kumiko blurted out.
"Who?"
"Her. The umbrella girl from last night. She was at Euphonium's today." Natsuki perked up and started grinning from ear to ear, seemingly more interested in Kumiko's day then she had been on her own date.
"So, what happened?" she inquired, leaning in. "Did you get her number? Are you going on a date?"
"No," Kumiko muttered.
"What was her name?" Natsuki pressed further.
"I didn't even get that," Kumiko admitted. "I found out her coffee order, though." She triumphantly held up the notebook to show off the pages. Natsuki buried her face in her hands.
"God, Kumiko," she sighed, slumping back in the chair. "A coffee order isn't going to get you a date." She paused for a moment. "It's not really going to get you anything, actually. There's not much you can do with a coffee order, to be honest."
"I could buy her one," Kumiko offered. "Wasn't there some movie where the main dude listened to the girl ordering her drink and then offered to buy her one the next day or something like that?"
"Yeah. Groundhog Day. There weren't enough lesbians in that movie, in my opinion."
"There weren't any lesbians in that movie."
"Exactly."
"Anyway, I don't even know if she recognized me," Kumiko muttered, remembering the girl's expressionless gaze. "She didn't seem to act surprised or anything."
"Eh, she was probably overwhelmed by your beauty and couldn't think of anything to say." Natsuki teasingly prodded Kumiko with her elbow. Kumiko snorted.
"She was really pretty, though," she sighed. "I mean, I couldn't really see her that well last night since it was raining and stuff, so it was kinda weird seeing her up close, but she seemed so nice and calm and cool and-"
"We've gone over this before," Natsuki interrupted. "I don't know how you've done it after seeing this girl for a total of, like, three minutes, but it seems like you've got yourself a little crush."
"I hate crushes," Kumiko groaned, too tired to disagree.
"Don't we all?" Natsuki sighed.
"She had a nice smile," Kumiko mumbled, blushing when she replayed the scene in her mind. "I saw it when she was leaving."
"Just make sure to actually get her name if you see her tomorrow," Natsuki yawned, pushing back her chair and heading for the bedroom.
"Yeah," Kumiko said, following as she scribbled a few more lines of grande single shot four pumps sugar free peppermint non fat extra hot no foam light whip stirred white mocha in the notebook.
She dreamed of the girl that night.
Rain. So much rain. There weren't any buildings, just the wet pavement and the deafening 'pat-pat-pat' of the downpour. Kumiko shivered - she was exposed, cold, chilled right to the bone. A figure appeared in the distance, shrouded by the thick mist that the rain had caused. Kumiko broke out into a run, desperate for this person to see her, to get her out of this pouring, freezing rain. Her legs ached and she tired quickly, but the burning sensation in her knees was a welcome distraction from the coldness. No matter how quickly she ran, no matter how much distance she covered, the person was still unreachable, just as far away as they had been at the start.
"Hey!" Kumiko yelled. "You!" The person didn't make any movement indicating that they had noticed. "Do you know where we are?" Still nothing. "Who are you?" Finally, the person turned around, and it was only in Kumiko's waking moments when she saw those purple eyes staring right at her.
Kumiko woke up panting and shivering, clutching her covers with shaky hands. The stuffed animals that she slept with had fallen on the floor, and she noticed that the sheets had been twisted around. Natsuki was still fast asleep, the steady rising and falling of her back just barely visible from across the room. Kumiko looked out the window - the musky gray of early morning still decorating the sky. She sighed and nestled back under the covers, holding the paw of one of the stuffed animals as she waited for dawn to come.