A machine used to grind up roasted coffee beans.
Example Sentence: To begin our process of creating coffee, I will be grinding up the beans I bought earlier with a coffee grinder.
Akira looks out the window. His side is melded to the cool metal of the train. The train races past tiny houses tucked away behind rolling hills, winding rivers descending from majestic mountains and soaring skyscrapers cutting into the deep green of nature. He shuts his eyes.
The scent of coffee from a couple seats away reminds him of his empty stomach from his mother ushering him out of the apartment as fast as she could manage. He wishes he could forget the look on his mother's face, but when he finally wipes his mind clean of his mother, it's replaced by an overpowering stench of rotting flesh. Akira's eyes fly open in shock.
It has to be a dream.
Blood pours relentlessly from the heavens, flooding the city around him. Skeletons of long dead animals wrap around the buildings of Tokyo, rising high up in the sky and blotting out the sun. Crowds of walking people burst into clouds of black smoke that dissolves into nothing. Distressed shouts are drowned out by the footsteps of those rushing to their workplaces and schools without aim nor meaning.
Akira watches in horror as the liquid slowly rises to his ankles, then to his knees. He tries to open his mouth, to shout for help, only to find that he can't. His feet are rooted to the ground and his mouth won't move. The liquid rises past his chest, to his chin, then rushes into his mouth, nostrils and into his lungs. Akira can't breathe. Unable to make even the smallest of movements, his consciousness fades.
He wakes up in a tunnel. Red pipes pulse with each thud that pounded at the inside of his skull. A train races past the platform Akira stands on. Disfigured bodies are scattered behind the train, blood pooling into a pungent mess. A second train roars past him at breakneck speed and adds dismembered body parts into the mix. Only the third train slows to a stop. The doors slide open slowly and Akira finds a boy his age curled up on the ground, dried blood matting his brown hair and fresh blood seeping from cuts covering every inch of his body. The doors slam shut when the thought of reaching for the boy crosses his mind. He can only watch as the train speeds up, leaving the station.
Not again, a voice rings out from all around him. Akira takes a step back.
Again? "What do you—"
The scenery fades like water flowing down a glass pane. In a blue room surrounded by prison cells, he watches someone an exact copy of himself desperately shake his head in front of a long-nosed man. The man vanishes into thin air only to be replaced by a man of the same face. A young girl in a vividly blue dress smiles sadly at him. Akira shakes his head and covers his ears.
His eyes fly open to find himself safely situated in the seat of a decelerating train.
"Yongen-Jaya," the monotonous voice reports and repeats it once again. Akira slings the bag over his shoulder and makes his way towards the train doors.
The doors slide smoothly open and he steps out onto the platform he's seen countless times, except that he hasn't. Today is the first time he's been anywhere near Yongen-Jaya, yet he can't shake off the unsettling feeling of deja vu that haunts each of his steps. He follows the stream of people up a flight of stairs and lets his feet take him through the backstreets of Yongen-Jaya. Akira's mind wanders away to God-knows-where and he only lifts his head when he realizes that he's stopped in front of a coffee shop: Leblanc.
He sees himself walking home with a cat sticking its head out of his bag sharing a pleasant conversation. An orange haired girl with her head propped up on the counter and an ageing man behind the counter look over at the door of the cafe when he pulls it open. They smile and welcome him back.
Akira shakes his head and his mind clears. He pulls the door open. The same man as he saw in the memory sits on one of the stools with a newspaper in hand. The only two customers leave when they see him come in.
"Right, it's today. I really don't have the memory for these things," Sojiro says.
"Thank you for agreeing to take me in for the next year," Akira says with a quick bow.
"I didn't expect someone with manners. So you…"
Akira's mind drifts away once again, only nodding when appropriate. His mind is blank and he can't seem to retain anything Sojiro's saying.
"I'll leave It to you then," Sojiro says. Akira's expression must have shifted into alertness because Sojiro scowls. "You haven't been listening, have you?"
"I have," Akira answers quietly and unconvincingly.
"Well, it's not my problem," Sojiro says and heads down the stairs.
Akira blinks. He must have followed Sojiro up the stairs without realizing. The room he stands in is cluttered with trash bags and piles of junk. Dust floats throughout the musty air. Akira stifles a sneeze and steps carefully through junk to open the windows. He's not sure if the breeze is going to help remove the dust or do the very opposite. He hopes it's not the latter.
Amid the trash bags and burlap bags and stacks of books and blue tarp and too much plastic, is his own cardboard box, packed and sent straight from the home he doesn't want to remember. He slits open the packing tape with the keys he won't touch for a whole year and opens up the box. Above the spare outfits he remembers stuffing in half-heartedly, are several things he's sure he has never seen before but knows.
How did he manage to get all of these to fit?
There's crazy outfits that belong in movies, knives, swords, an axe and a bunch of guns. Underneath are more smaller items like a recipe note for curry and coffee (Akira can cook… right?), a fancy box, a dog tag, and Akira shuts the box again.
Ignorance, sometimes, is the key to happiness. He stands up again, patting dust off his behind.
The open window hasn't done much for the junk on the floor, but the air is at least a little more breathable. Cleaning has never been his strong suit, but he's sure he can at least get the room to look livable. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully.
Hours later, the room is not cleared, but at least Akira could almost walk to each corner without tripping over garbage on the floor that seemed to have it out to kill him. He makes a mental note find out when the next trash collection day is.
Sojiro's compliments to his clean job are very much unnecessary. Akira pushes down the desire to call him out for leaving a bunch of trash around, but figures it wouldn't have done much for the whole "please let me stay here for a year" case.
"Is it alright if I go to the bathhouse tonight?" Akira asks.
The disapproval in Sojiro's expression is evident, and Akira's just about to settle for a night covered in dust when Sojiro begrudgingly says, "Thirty minutes. Any time after and I'm locking you out for the night."
Akira sprints.
"You made it back," Sojiro says from behind the counter with a tone indicating the possible thoughts of wanting to lock Akira out for the night.
Akira is quite sure he did consider it and probably was going to do so, but he didn't, and that's the most important thing. He tilts his head in response.
Sojiro holds out a small notebook and Akira takes it with both hands, "Here, it's a diary. Make sure you write in it."
Akira nods.
"You're on probation, but there's no real restriction on what you do. However, I'm obligated to report on you, so I'm having you record your activities."
Akira nods again.
"I'll lock up shop for tonight, don't even think about wandering out. If something goes missing in my shop, I'm handing you over to the cops."
Akira twists a lock of his hair between his thumb and forefinger. It's only fair that Sojiro would show hostility, but it feels strange coming from Sojiro. Akira remembers a different Sojiro, one willing to sit down with him after a hard day and— that's all within his dreams. He nods.
"We'll be going to Shujin tomorrow. I can drive you, but only tomorrow. After that, you'll have to take the subway. You better go to bed right away, I'm not responsible if you get sick from staying up late."
Akira nods and heads up the stairs to the attic. He opens up the diary and pulls out a pen from his school bag. On a closer look at the diary, his eyes narrow. The book is just about filled with scribbles easily recognizable as his own. He flips through it quickly to the end, and then opens it back up to the beginning again.
The writing is no longer there; the diary is completely blank. Akira presses a thumb to his temple and scrawls down a few lines on the first page. Throwing the diary down on the table beside his school bag, he turns the other way and collapses on his bed.
He shuts his eyes and hopes for a dreamless sleep, but if he were to have every wish granted, life would be much too easy.
A boy. His face half covered with a black and red mask. Brown locks matted with blood barely visible in the small window where the mask broke off, shattered into a million pieces. Blood dripping from his head, brows screwed together in pain and anger, blood dripping down his fingertips, eyes looking into his own one last time, transmitting a message he will never decipher. Blood clings to Akira's skin and face and blots out his sight. Blood entering his ear canals and he hears subdued sounds of metal shutters.
Akira's falling, falling and—
He groans, pushing himself off the ground. Brushing off dust from the side that hit the floor, he pulls himself back into bed.
So much for a dreamless sleep.
With the covers over his face, he blindly paws for his phone. After multiple attempts of trial and error, he finally manages pulls his phone under his covers and turns on the screen. His eyelids immediately shut at the unwelcome light, and he slowly forces them open again. It is almost seven. Soijro's voice in the back of his mind reminds him of the planned visit to Shujin today, burning all hopes and wishes for going straight back to bed away in a bonfire.
Akira groans.
He needs his beauty sleep, Sojiro doesn't… probably.
The next time he wakes up, it's a rude occasion where Sojiro roughly pulls the covers off his body and tells him to get up with a voice of pure annoyance. Akira thinks he had an important dream, though he can't recall even the slightest amount of it.
Shujin was dull. The principal was a hell of a man that took up ninety percent of the space behind his elaborately adorned desk. His homeroom teacher introduced herself with a mixed expression of boredom and concern for her future. On the trip back, Akira remembers Sojiro's voice drawling on and on, spelling out words of advise that he can't seem to recall a word of nor, to be perfectly honest, care about.
They step back into the warmth of Leblanc. Sojiro flicks the light on and says something that vaguely sounds like a question, spurring Akira's brain back into action. At look of confusion on his face, Sojiro sighs and repeats, "It's still early, but I won't be opening up shop. You're not going anywhere tonight, right?"
"I'd like to go to the bathhouse again, if that's okay"
"I thought you'd say that. Here," Sojiro throws something that Akira barely manages to catch. The metal rests cold in his palm. "I don't know why, but I think I can trust you. Don't make me regret this."
Akira nods, opens his mouth and shuts it again.
"Got something to say?"
"Why…" his voice trails off. "Thank you."
Sojiro nods approvingly, "Don't sleep too late." The bell on the door jingles as Sojiro leaves for his own home.
The fragrant smell of coffee mixed with the piquant taste of curry washes over him, calming the fatigue burning at his skin that he didn't even know was there. He's only been here a day but there's undoubtedly a sense of belonging, so much more than that dining table with the parents that pretended to care about his day, pretended to care for each other and pretended to care about their make-believe home. He props up his elbows up on the counter and presses the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes.
He should wash up and get some sleep. While he'd love to sit and wallow in his sorrow for a couple hours longer, he has school tomorrow, and he should at least try to live up to Sojiro's expectations… which really shouldn't be too difficult because Akira's sure that Sojiro doesn't have any expectations of him, but he'd at least like to not make that expectation fall below zero.
His dreams are filled with prisons and rehabilitation and chains and it's his fault. It's always his fault and it's always been his fault and why did he ever think otherwise and of course he's such a failure. His parents abandoned him because he's like this and— if he were to make the same decision, he'd abandon a son like him too.
Akira is sorry.
But he's scared that even if he says he's sorry, there is no longer anyone willing to listen to his words.
Akira wakes up weary. His eyelids feel like they're glued together and he's sure that if he looks, there'd be an iron ball chained to each of his limbs. The enticing warmth of his bed has Akira drifting off into the realm of sleep before a flash of blue burns away any lingering desire of sleep.
He dresses slowly and packs his bag slowly. He throws in an umbrella slowly and makes his way downstairs even slower, tripping on the third step to the first floor and crashing into the wall. The lights in the bathroom are harsh against his barely-open eyes and the toilet brings back unwanted memories of his dream. He dunks his face in cold water. It only serves to give him an un-refreshing brain freeze.
Sojiro's curry is delicious, though, and Akira almost feels like the morning isn't all that bad.
Almost.
"Thank you for the food. It was delicious."
"Yeah. Hurry to school. You don't want to be late on the first day."
Akira lets his feet take him back to the Yongen-Jaya station. He boards the train and holds his bag close to his body, trying to take up at little space as possible around all the other riders. His mind drifts from the nightmares to the man beside him in deep need of a bath to the coffee he wishes he'd asked for more of to the news playing on the screen over his head. Shibuya station is more crammed than the train itself, if that was even possible. At the sight of uniforms resembling his own, however, his mind zones out comfortably as he falls into step behind them.
Which, of course, brings about the cliche that was bound to happen.
He rounds a corner and walks straight into the side of someone leaning on the other side of the pole.
It's hard.
God forbid he walks into someone with any amount of meat on their bones.
"Sorry," Akira mutters, taking a step to the side and continuing on behind his schoolmates. At least, he tries to, before an equally bony hand stops him in his path. "I apologize for that, but I need to—"
"I'm deeply sorry as well, but have we met before?"
Silky brown hair frames the perfect face glowing with the assistance of expensive skin care. The reddish-brown eyes showing a hint of recognition in the midst of all the confusion. The carefully smoothed down jacket and a pair of sleek black pants. It is safe to say that Akira has no idea who the person in front of him is, yet the brown hair does remind him of something, something he can't quite put words to. Maybe he was in one of his recent nightmares, but the abundance of them also means he really hasn't clued in any further on who the person in front of him is.
"Probably not? Unless you used to live in the countryside," Akira answers after a long time. "Sorry, I really should get going. First day of school and I don't want to be late."
"Oh, did you just transfer here?" Akira nods. "I apologize. I won't take up any more of your time then, but please, as a token of my apology, I'd like to buy you dinner some time. Here is my number."
The boy hands over a business card that Akira really has no idea of what to do with.
"It's fine, it was my fault too—"
"Please, I insist."
"…Uh, OK," Akira stuffs the card in his pants pocket. "Sorry, I really have to go, so, um, catch you later."
"Yes, that would be great. I'll see you next time."
Akira ignores the sense of deja vu clouding over his brain and follows some Shujin students to school. Hopefully, he won't be late. There's probably no getting around a horrible first impression, but hey, he can at least try.
His homeroom teacher looks at him the way one might look at a roach discovered crawling through their pleasant shower. Though it's not unexpected, it's still quite unpleasant. When Akira's asked to introduce himself, he thinks his words were carefully chosen and his voice manipulated to sound friendly and enthusiastic, yet the reaction from the class isn't quite what he expected. Whispers break out almost on cue about his criminal status and he can't help but wonder how the news got around.
It won't hurt me, Akira convinces himself. He knows none of the people that faced him, whispering behind their hands. And he won't know them. Nothing will be worse than having his closest, most trusted friends turn their backs on him only months ago. He blinks and heads off to his desk, where he sits down and immediately turn to stare out the window.
Class passes by relatively dull. Even with his neighbour's childish refusal of sharing textbooks, Akira keeps up with the material with ease. It's almost funny when one of the teacher calls on him with a condescending snicker only for Akira's near-instant answer to replace the scorn on his face with shock. Ignoring the useless preaching at the front of the room with relative ease, Akira drifts in and out of consciousness, exhaustion knocking him towards sleep yet loud cracks of gunshots and flares of blue firmly block the entry to the realm of rest.
A bell signifies the end of the day and Akira covers a yawn behind a hand. He pulls out his phone and his thumb hovers over the red eye glaring into the depth of his mind. He frowns.
He doesn't remember downloading the app, nor does he know its purpose, yet the icon seems familiar. He presses down and a robotic female voice immediately pipes up on speaker. Eyes from all around the classroom turn and stare as Akira fumbles with his volume and all but sprints out of the room in embarrassment.
I need earphones, he thinks, and then wonders if the app would bypass his earphones and blast his classmates with the speaker on full volume again. He sighs and shoves his phone away in his school bag. For now, he needs to get back to Leblanc before Sojiro wonders where he's died off to and reconsiders Akira's keys privileges. Adjusting his bag, he sets off and hopes he won't get lost in the midst of his train transfer.
Around the corner, a pair of brown eyes watch as Akira heads down the stairs, "So that's the transfer student. I wonder if he…"