Why did they think four hours of sleep was enough?

Vision only slightly blurry, Halle accepts a mug of coffee from their brother and sits down at the kitchen table. Their father glances at the dark, murky depths of the mug. "You really are too young to be having black coffee first thing in the morning."

"I'm sixteen, Dad." They take a sip of the coffee and immediately scald their tongue. "Dat's — " They wince. "That's plenty old enough."

"I'm over three times your age and I'm still too cowardly to have coffee without an unholy amount of milk and sugar," he jibes. "How your brother gets through it is beyond me."

Stellan shrugs, drinking his black coffee without trouble. Halle takes another cautious sip from their own mug and reels at the bitterness — it's way worse than they expected. Well, at least it woke them up.

Halle stayed up for two more hours after publishing their review of The Serenade, looking up the new restaurant someone requested. Unlike most of the restaurants they've been to in the past, Wang's doesn't have a website, an Instagram account or even a FaceBook page. They finally tracked the place down on Google Maps, and found out that the place is conveniently in their city — just in one of the shadier parts of town.

They barely manage to catch the plate of toast their father slides towards them. "Thanks."

"Why were you awake at two a.m.?" He asks. "It's not like you have anything to study for; you were done with all your tests last week."

"Someone asked me to check out a new restaurant. It's not far — I can visit it tonight." They yawn. "I am never staying up again."

Weak, Stellan teases.

"Don't rub it in."

The doorbell rings. Stellan glances in its direction, expression brightening, and places his mug down. With a slight smile, he stands up to go greet the person at the door.

Their father raises an eyebrow. "Is that Henrik?"

"Has to be," Halle says flippantly. "Nobody else shows up to our house this early."

They can hear the creak of the door opening, and the house is promptly filled with Henrik's loud voice. Halle cringes at the ridiculously-sappy nicknames they hear, all "honey" and "sweetheart" and "angel". Disgusting. The couple stamps upstairs, bringing their noise with them, and peace and quiet reign in the kitchen once more.

"Thank goodness." They go back to their toast.

The silence lasts all of five minutes before Henrik and Stellan thunder back into the kitchen, deep in conversation. Henrik strides over to the kitchen table with that blinding grin of his, ruffling Halle's hair until it's almost as unruly as his own. "Hey, you're up early!"

They dodge before he can mess up their hair even more. "Well, unlike you university kids, I don't have the privilege of choosing not to take eight o'clock classes." They yawn again. "Gosh, I'm too tired for school."

Nobody told you to stay up that late. Stellan yanks his boyfriend back, reaching up to wipe a toothpaste stain away from the collar of his shirt.

Halle glowers at him. "How dare you remind me my actions have consequences."

"Speaking of consequences," their father speaks up, "you best get going. The bus will be here in ten minutes."

Henrik has begun to fuss over Stellan, peppering him with questions on whether he's eaten yet, if he's drunk enough water, et cetera et cetera. Absolutely disgusting. Halle polishes off the last of their toast and runs upstairs to get their stuff. They wave briefly at their father and the sickenly-happy couple before stepping out of the house.

The bus pulls up the moment they arrive at the bus stop. They drop their payment into the coin box, taking their usual seat by the window. The city whizzes past, and the rumble of the bus combines with the idle chatter of passengers in a lazy, early-morning daze. Halle nearly drifts off to sleep again, before the bus makes a sudden stop and jolts them awake. After picking their bag and thankfully-undamaged phone off the floor, they resolutely swear they are never getting less than six hours of sleep again.

Two stops and three self-wakeups later, the bus arrives at the stop nearest to their school. Halle slings their bag over their shoulder, rubs their eyes again and gets off.

The streets are, as usual, a sea of green and white. Everywhere they look are kids from their school, clumped together in their little groups as they walk towards the campus while chatting and laughing. Just barely managing to avoid slamming into a tittering group of second-years (gosh, they're tiny), Halle yelps in surprise, caught off guard, when somebody tackles them from behind.

"Good mornin'!" Their attacker shows herself, smiling ear to ear. "You look half-dead."

"What an astute observation," they say drily. "Does it really show that much?"

"Well, you're acting more like a gremlin than usual, which is a pretty good sign that you're sleep-deprived. Normal Halle would wait until at least nine o'clock to start being sarcastic."

Ah, Erika. Where would they be without her? Halle dodges another group of juniors and replies, "I'm glad to see you're as cheery as ever, at least."

"It's just to mask my impending fear of failing all the tests we had last week because if I did all my plans for the future are going to crumble before my very eyes and I'll lose my will to live."

"I — " They pause. "Okay."

The two of them step into the school building and begin climbing the many flights of stairs to reach their classroom. The moment they open the door, they're greeted with the beautiful sight of one of their classmates tripping over another's wheelchair while the ten others in their class watch, greatly amused.

Erika sweeps into the classroom to help pull her friend Raivis, sitting on the floor looking absolutely defeated, to his feet. "How do you miss an entire wheelchair?" She laughs.

"All I'm running on right now is coffee and sadness." Raivis dusts his pants off. "There's no room left in my brain for common sense. Uh, sorry Ella."

The girl in question shrugs nonchalantly. "Apology accepted. Maybe."

"Yeah, screw you too."

"Raivis!" Erika elbows him. "Be nice."

"It's okay, we're all terrible people first thing in the morning." Ella wheels away carefully, making sure not to roll over anyone's toes. "Especially right after Hell Week is over."

"Oh, don't remind me," Halle groans. They make their way to their desk and set their bag down next to it, then sink into their chair. "I screwed up history so bad."

"I don't think I understood half the questions in my chemistry test."

Erika giggles. "Ah, imagine taking a science subject."

They pull out their laptop and open up to their website. A few more comments on their review of The Serenade have popped up overnight, some of them containing constructive criticism and some consisting solely of unintelligible key-smashes — nothing new. A few people have upvoted the comment requesting a review of Wang's.

Raivis nears their desk and Halle slams their laptop shut. Raivis snorts. "Calm down, I'm not going to look at your screen. It's not like you'd ever be looking at any weird stuff."

"Define 'weird stuff'."

"I dunno, crappy Netflix movies with questionable scenes or something like that." He sits down next to them. "Ugh, I really can't think."

Halle cautiously opens up their laptop again, this time going on Twitter. A restaurant they don't even remember visiting has mentioned them, thanking them for a review they posted five months ago. They pull out their reviewing notebook and flip to the notes they took for the place, squinting at their messy scrawl. Apparently the place was "woefully mediocre, dishes most definitely edible but outshone by many other places that provide it". No wonder they don't remember it.

"Whatcha looking at, Puff?" Erika has draped herself over the back of his chair. "Got another sponsor or something?"

"Please don't call me 'Puff'."

"But you call yourself that all the time!"

"Online, Erika. Only online. And it's used by people who, unlike you, haven't known me for four years."

"Sure, Puff," she teases. "Or should I use your full name? Sure, PuffinReviews."

"I hate you so much."

"Love you too."

The teacher steps into the classroom and everyone falls silent. Halle closes their laptop again. Their reviewing notebook is resting on their lap, and they resist the urge to open it up again and look through old notes. This evening, they'll get to fill up its pages once again.

"So what are you expecting? Is it gonna be a hidden gem or a total cesspool?"

Halle takes another bite of leftover sarmale and replies, "I have no idea. I couldn't find a single review of the place anywhere, which is a first."

On their right, Ella asks, "what's the place called again?"

"Wang's. It's a Chinese restaurant close by."

"Hey, I've been there before! The food is really good, and it doesn't cost much. Be sure to have an arm-wrestling match with the waiter after you're done."

"What?"

"Arm-wrestle the waiter," she repeats. "His arms are even weaker than yours."

They cut out a forkful of sarmale. "Arm-wrestling aside, is the service good?"

"It's great. There's only one waiter and two cooks, but they get the food out pretty quickly." Ella pulls out her phone and swipes through it. "The choir went there after winning the chorus festival back in October and they managed to whip up food for all forty of us." She shows him a photo.

In the photo, the school choir is grinning at the camera, cramped around a few round tables pushed together. Red lanterns seem to be hanging from the ceiling, making the entire place awash in a soft scarlet glow.

"The place isn't decorated like that all the time." She points at the lanterns. "The girl running the cashier said it was a sort of festival and they decided to hang lanterns to celebrate or something, so it'll probably look different when you go."

The tables in the photo are practically covered in food. The blurry pixels show plates of what look like potstickers, steamed eggs, tofu puffs and even more dishes Halle can't name. There's no way they can cover all of them in one visit.

"So what do you think?" Ella switches her phone off.

Halle smiles. They can already see their notebook, flattened open to a new page that's half-concealed by the table. "I can't wait."