DISCLAIMER: Ranma ½ belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

Morning Coffee
by pahlee

This is an alternate universe fanfiction.

Chapter 1

Every morning, the coffee shop opens at 5AM on the dot. Each day three employees stand sleepily around the door to wait for the manager to let them in. A monotonous motion, an everyday thing. One preps for the day, one stands by the drive-thru window, a headset in view, and the other up front with a fake smile plastered across their face. Behind them, their manager drags their feet to the door as they open up shop and let the customers start flowing in.

The flow of customers always start out slow, the regulars coming through and leaving like the norm. The manager on shift sitting in the office, reading paperwork and reading through the schedule book. More employees eventually roll in around 6AM and the customers start lining up. This is about the time the store manager comes in, jacket under his arm and a cup of a cup of coffee he had made at his apartment.

An average day at the coffee shop for sure.

"Good morning, Ranma," Akari said happily as she moved the papers off the desk in the office.

"Morning Akari," he greeted as he plopped down into the swiveling chair and chugged the rest of his coffee down, "How's the flow?"

"Steady," Akari said as she flipped through the book, "Sayuri called in sick today so—"

"Has the shift been replaced?" Ranma asked, ignoring the explanation. Akari pursed her lips and let out a strained sigh, "Yes." In her mind, she silently imagined pushing him out the chair, "If you had just let me finish my sentence…"

"Good," he said as he began to type away on his phone before over-looking the paperwork in front of him, "I got this if you want to go on the floor now."

Akari mentally rolled her eyes as she nodded and went out to help her seven employees. Inside the office, Ranma read over the messages in the computer before checking the vault. He checked the statements and read over the book. This process usually took him an hour, never leaving the small room. The classical music played at a steady volume, letting him hum every once in a while as he worked.

The coffee timers' dings, the pastry ovens beeps and the jingle bells from the door echoed in the small store as the employees all did their job. Leaning back in his seat, Ranma combed his hand through his hair and stared at the ceiling and let out a heavy sigh.

He had only been the store manager for two years now, ever since his mother gave him the position to manage this branch in Nerima, and in those two years his life was a repetitive motion. Waking up in the wee hours of the morning, coming into work every day from 6AM to 10AM only to leave and go to the gym to work out and then head home. Since his graduation from college, his life became a boring rut.

The time is approximately 9:45AM, the foot traffic in the store at this hour is usually slow. Their projected sells usually pertained to 2-4 cups of coffee being sold during this hour. The baristas would usually stand about, chat amongst themselves as they cleaned up their messes from the breakfast rush and prepare for the lunch – the chit-chat familiar and recognizable.

Ranma worked every day, the same time and knew the morning crew. Their lilting voices to soprano hitches, he recognized them by sound – never by face. Getting annoyed at the new promotion he was to set up and train the managers on, Ranma got up and visited the floor to get some food. Just as he set his feet back on the floor from balancing on the chair, the door chimed and he heard his crew change the pace of their conversation.

Ranging for happy hellos to some shy greetings, Ranma picked up Akari's voice say, "Thanks for filling in for Sayuri."

Ranma pushed his chair backwards to the opening in the wall to peer around it, but an espresso machine blocked the view of the person Akari was talking to.

"Oh, it's no problem, my class was cancelled today and I need the money," the voice said.

"Ah, I was worried that it was too early for you, you never come in this early," Akari shared a small laugh, "You think you can handle it?"

"We'll see, won't we?" With that, the employee walked around the counter and past the espresso machine that had earlier blocked her visage. And that was all it took for Ranma to fall out of his seat and onto the floor with a flop.

Author's Note
Well, it's been, what, at least a year since I've updated any story and all of a sudden I come in and bash you with this new story? I got inspired to write this when I was writing out some storylines and was wanting to do something along the lines of the boss falling in love with an employee concept. The setting happens to be in a coffee shop, but that's not really a big point in the story.

MadresPadres on tumblr is thinking of an AU of a coffee shop and if you go to their tumblr page you'll see more about it. I wanted to mention MadresPadres because part of it is a bit inspired from the coffee shop part.

I'll leave on this point, and hopefully get you guys an update once a week. Possibly? We'll see, once again it popped up in my head and I had to get it down. If anything, this will be a 10k story, pretty short but hopefully entertaining. Thanks!