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It was by a stroke of luck that Ashe ran the register that day.
Sylvain walked into the kitchen, pulling out his phone from his back pocket. “Hey Ashe, would you mind taking over the register for me?” he said. “I have a phone call to make that I totally forgot about.”
Ashe stopped stirring the pot of onion gratin soup and hooked the ladle on the rim. “Sure thing, Sylvain!”
“This better not be about a girl,” Felix said darkly as he sliced a carrot with punctuated precision.
Flayn halted in mid-chop, perking up with interest. “A girl, you say?”
Sylvain rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s not a girl. I need to talk to our accountant about a few things, that’s all. I’m the finance guy, remember?”
“Likely excuse,” Felix muttered.
Sylvain just shrugged in response. Then he gave Ashe a wink and disappeared into the back office.
Ashe couldn’t help smiling. Running the Blue Lions Café with his closest friends was hard work, but there was never a dull moment.
He made his way to the counter out front. At two o’clock, with the lunch rush over and the café one hour from closing, the occasional customer might stop in for a late lunch or a hot drink to stave off the winter chill.
Indeed, there was a customer waiting by the register—but not just any customer. The woman in the dark coat and checkered scarf had started coming in about a month ago, and she was now a regular who showed up twice a week.
And in the rare times she smiled, Ashe’s heart would beat a little faster.
“H-How can I help you?” he said, wiping his perfectly clean hands on his apron.
The woman looked up from the chalkboard menu. When she saw Ashe, her eyes went wide. “Oh, uh…”
Her gaze met his for an instant, as if to say, “It’s you.”
Then just as quickly, her eyes returned to the menu. “I’d like a fish sandwich. And something hot to drink.”
Ashe slid a laminated list of beverages across the counter. “We have different kinds of coffee, hot cocoa, and an assortment of tea. What would you like?”
The woman studied the list.
“Tea sounds good. But I don’t know which one to pick.” She glanced up again, and this time her gaze was steady. “What’s your favorite tea?”
Ashe was used to customers asking him for recommendations, but this was the first time anyone inquired about his personal taste.
Not only that, she looked right at him, with eyes the same soft hue as the violets that sweetened his garden. And the way she beheld him, her attention unwavering and unusually intent, made him feel like he was the only person in the world who mattered.
“M-My favorite tea?” he stammered, a blush creeping into his cheeks.
The shadow of a smile crossed her lips. “I can’t decide, so I’ll give your favorite a try.”
“Oh! Of course! Uh, let’s see…”
Ashe flipped the beverage menu around, but his growing panic turned the words into a jumble of nonsense. “I like angelica tea,” he said quickly, not knowing if it was even on the list. “I-It’s an herbal tea with a hint of sweetness. If you’ve never had it before, I can give you a sample to try, and—”
The woman’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “I’ll have angelica tea.”
“Right. Angelica tea it is!”
As Ashe rang up her order, he fervently hoped that they did, in fact, have the tea in stock. He mentally kicked himself for not making sure it was on the menu to begin with, which he might have actually read if he hadn’t been so flustered.
To his immense relief, there were still a few pouches of angelica in the rack that held the teabags.
When he returned to the counter with a mug of piping hot tea, the woman was studying a flyer taped to the other side of the register.
“What’s dango?” she asked.
“Uh, dango?” Ashe echoed, mystified by her question. “They’re rice dumplings on a stick, and they’re a popular street snack in Adrestia. We have it on the menu, if you’d like to try some.”
“Or I could learn how to make them,” she replied, her eyes still on the flyer. “‘Learn to cook with Ashe! Join us at the Blue Lions Café to roll up some Spicy Fish Dango. Thursday, 27th of Guardian Moon, 4 p.m.’”
The blush that had warmed his face earlier returned. “Oh, that. I really enjoy teaching people how to cook, so we started offering cooking classes this month.”
The woman finally glanced up. “You’re Ashe?”
“Y-Yes, I’m Ashe,” he said, with a nervous laugh.
She looked thoughtful. “I don’t cook much, but I’d like to learn. Maybe I’ll check out your class next week.”
Ashe’s heart leaped at the prospect of this lovely stranger attending his humble cooking class. And when she smiled, the quiet joy in her expression melted the distance between them and sent the flutter in his chest into a thundering gallop.
She found a table by the window and finished her tea and fish sandwich as Ashe tidied the front counter. When she disappeared back into the cold in a jingle of door chimes, Ashe remembered Sylvain’s wink. Maybe Felix was right. Perhaps the phone call was about a girl, after all.
On Thursday of the following week, closing time at the café came and went. Once the floors were swept, the register closed, and the kitchen cleaned up and put away, Ashe said goodbye to his friends and employees and began preparing for his class on making spicy fish dango.
He set up a large table as his station for demonstrations, which held a portable stove with a pot of oil, a mixing bowl, and a shallow tray. Four small tables formed a semicircle before the demonstration area, each with its own mixing bowl and tray.
The final step was to distribute the ingredients. Ashe scooped smoked trout from their tins, portioned out sun-dried tomatoes, and filled bowls with rice flour. Small glass ramekins soon held mounds of white sugar, powdery heaps of cornstarch, and piles of red pepper flakes.
But as he set the bottle of mirin next to the soy sauce at his table, the anxiety that brewed beneath the energy of making preparations bubbled to the surface. What if the woman from last week showed up? One of the names on the sign-up sheet could be hers.
Her steady gaze would follow his every move, and her head would tilt just so as a smile stole across her face. His palms grew clammy just thinking about it.
Or she might not show up at all.
That thought was enough to deflate his spirits. But she had only been vaguely interested in attending his cooking class, and here he was, hanging his hopes on the off-chance that she might make an appearance.
Ashe shook his head. Getting distracted was no good when there was still more to do before everyone arrived.
Finally, everything was ready. He hung the sign in the door welcoming guests to his class, then sat down to wait.
Snow blustered across the parking lot. A few cars formed lonely islands by the convenience store next door, and his own car was just outside the café’s front entrance.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. By the time the clock hands pointed to a quarter past four, the cars in front of the convenience store were gone, and Ashe’s car had accumulated an alarming amount of snow.
I’d better close up, he told himself. It doesn’t look like anyone’s coming with this weather, and that’s probably for the best.
Ashe started to clear the tables, and he was stacking the trays when the door chimes jingled.
“Sorry I’m late.”
The last tray tumbled out of his hands, and he barely caught the edge before it could crash to the floor. Heart racing, he whirled to greet his guest.
“I—uh—welcome!” he choked out.
The woman in the dark coat didn’t reply, but there was no judgment in her violet eyes.
“H-Have a seat,” Ashe said, hastily putting the trays back on the tables. “I don’t think anyone else is coming, so we might as well get started.”
The woman sat down at a table, and Ashe took his place behind his station. This wasn’t his first time teaching, but nerves got the better of him. As he demonstrated how to form dough from rice flour, the water kept sloshing out of his measuring cup. He couldn’t stop stumbling over his words. To make matters worse, the space between his table and hers felt like an unbridgeable chasm.
“O-Once your dough comes together,” he stammered, “you need to—ah, the next step is—”
“My dough isn’t coming together.”
Ashe looked up. The woman was wearing a small frown and attempting to knead a crumbly mixture in her bowl.
“Oh! Let me help you with that,” he said, stepping away from his table and coming around to hers.
He picked up the measuring cup at her station and started to pour. “You just need a bit more water—that’s right, keep kneading—a little more—that should do it!”
The dough was now soft and pliant, molding easily between the woman’s fingers. Ashe grabbed his own bowl of dough and showed her how to pinch off a small piece and flatten it into a disc. Together they worked, pinching off pieces of dough. He hovered at her table, unsure if he should stay or go back to his area.
The clock tick—tick—ticked through the silence.
He cleared his throat. “So, uh, I’m Ashe,” he said, trying to make his indecision less awkward. Then embarrassment flooded his face. “But I guess you already knew that.”
At his introduction, the woman’s eyes softened. “I’m Byleth.”
“Nice to meet you, Byleth,” he said, and suddenly it was easier to breathe.
Once they had a small stack of flattened dough, filling and rolling came next.
“Fish dango is different from typical dango because it has filling—smoked trout and sun-dried tomatoes,” he explained as he combined the aforementioned ingredients. His words came more easily now. “Smoking and drying are methods for preserving food for the winter, so fish dango is traditionally considered a wintertime dish.
“For a modern twist, we’ll add some heat,” he added, sprinkling a pinch of cayenne pepper over the bowl.
Then he scooped a spoonful of trout-and-tomato filling onto a circle of dough. “Make sure you don’t overstuff the dango, or you won’t be able to close it.”
Byleth followed his example, spooning filling onto dough, pinching it closed, and rolling the dango into a ball between her hands. The way she worked was mesmerizing. Her fingers were careful and deliberate as she folded and shaped the dough. Focused, with not a single movement wasted.
And now she was watching him. No longer scooping or rolling, just…staring.
Ashe’s breath stuck in his throat. Was it something he’d said? Maybe his apron was on backwards, or he somehow got trout in his hair, or—
“So what’s next?” Byleth said with a puzzled crease between her eyebrows.
“Oh, r-right!” Ashe stammered. Of course! She was waiting on him for the dango, of which there were now nearly twenty balls resting on the tray.
“We need to cook the dango in oil,” he explained.
He whisked up the tray and checked the thermometer in the pot of oil at his station, thankful for something to keep him busy—and to cover up his awkwardness. “We made a lot today, but that’s okay,” he said, lowering the dough balls into the oil, one ladleful at a time. “It’s easy to make too much. This happens all the time when I make dango with my friends.”
“Do you do that often?” Byleth asked.
“We do! We’ll sometimes get together and make dango for game nights. But even when we make it for customers, it’s still a lot of fun.”
Her eyes widened with interest. “Your friends work here, too?”
“You could say that,” Ashe replied, chuckling. “It was my dream to start a restaurant, and my friends wanted to help. This café has been our project since we graduated college.”
A faint smile graced Byleth’s lips. “Looks like you were successful.”
“I guess so,” he said, his face warming under her compliment. “It’s been a few years, and we’re still here.”
Beep beep! Beep beep!
Ashe jumped as the timer blared. The dango was done—the dough balls had turned a rich golden-brown and bobbed gently in the pot. He fished them out with a slotted ladle and arranged them on a wire rack.
As the dango cooled, he showed Byleth how to make the glaze. This process was much simpler—soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and red pepper flakes went in a saucepan, and the concoction was thickened with the help of cornstarch and medium-low heat.
Then they skewered the dango—three per stick—and drizzled glaze over everything as the finishing touch. Amid the sweet aroma of fried dough and the heat rolling off the stove like a hearth, the silence was more companionable than before.
“I’m glad I found your café,” Byleth said as she coated a stick of dango with glaze. “I just started as a professor at Garreg Mach University. The food there is terrible.”
Ashe chuckled. “I hope we’ve met your expectations.”
She caught his gaze. “You have.”
Ashe had the feeling she wasn’t just talking about the café.
“So…what do you teach?” he asked, turning back to the dango to hide his blush.
“Psychology.”
Ah. So that explained Byleth’s intense, soul-baring stare—or maybe that was just her.
Finally, the glazing was done. Ashe plucked a dango skewer from the tray with a grin. “Let’s dig in!”
The first bite filled his mouth with smoky sweetness, followed by the slow burn of spicy heat. The dough was chewy perfection, and the trout practically melted on his tongue.
Byleth wolfed down her dango with gusto—a sight that set Ashe’s heart aglow.
“Dango always tastes better with company,” he said as he polished off his skewer. “That’s probably why it’s a popular group snack.”
“Eating dango with friends…” Byleth mused. “That must be nice.”
Though her tone was as self-possessed as ever, she sounded strangely forlorn.
“My friends—” Ashe began, then hesitated. Was he really about to invite Byleth to hang out with him and his friends?
Well, it couldn’t hurt. And she could always say no.
“We have a D&D game night this weekend, and we’re making dango. You’re welcome to join us.”
Byleth blinked. “Um…”
“Only if you want to, of course!” Ashe added quickly.
He held his breath.
Silence.
“I’d love to,” she said, finally—and the world grew brighter when she smiled.