© The witch and the beast is propierty of Hiroshi Noda and Kousuke Satake.
Coffee
Guideau stares at the black liquid in her cup. She sniffs it, and the strong, bitter scent fills the air. More sensitive to stimuli than most, the beast disguised in a pretty shell can pick up the scent of dirt, damp wood and vanilla.
She is apprehensive about the drink, thinking it might not taste good. Ashaf, sitting across the table, picks up his own cup and takes a sip, eyes closed, savouring the moment. Then he opens his eyes and looks back, encouraging her to take a sip, his gaze soft and calm as usual.
Guideau grabs the cup brusquely, spilling some of the contents on her hand, scalding it. She mumbles a curse and pours it all down.
It takes her half a second to process and react. Her position shifts, and Ashaf is almost certain that her eyes sparkle.
"How was it? Any good?" he asks, eyebrow raised, hand still holding his cup.
Guideau stares blankly at her empty cup. She mumbles something unintelligible, and before he can react, she snatches his cup away.
"Give me that."
"I'll take that as a yes." He smiles, unbothered, as usual. "Slowly," he advises. "Enjoy your drink."
Guideau finds herself listening to his instructions, enjoying the aromatic drink between small sips. The moist lips twitch in the beginnings of a smile, or at least an expression of satisfaction.
"What... is this?" she asks, swirling the mug around, an interested gaze fixed on the beautiful porcelain.
"It's coffee, Guideau."
She looks up. "I want more."
"Perhaps we should order some decaf, or we won't be able to sleep".
"What's that?" she demanded with a curse, her attention lost, now focused on him, an annoyed expression on her face.
Ashaf signalled for the waiter to come to their table, ordered two more cups of coffee (decaf), ready to instruct the disgruntled beast in the manifold world of coffee.
A/N: The witch and the beast is an upcoming anime to be released on January 2024. There's a 10 volume manga, which has captured my attention and obssesion for the last couple of weeks. I haven't found any fanfics, nor a cathegory here onf the site, but there are a couple of works on Ao3 and a Russian site called ficbook.
I am not a native speaker, thus, I've used the help of DeepL to fix the text. I can't believe I wrote "encourage to took", lol I always tell my students to use infinitive verbs with TO, and now here I am, making the same mistakes lol