Chapter Text
It was early in the morning when Ryouma pushed open the door to the café with his shoulder, stepping inside the empty shoppe. Using the hand that held the keys to the store, he flicked the overhead lamps on, causing light to shine onto the colored, plastic tables that littered the front of the store. Similar plastic chairs set around them, and he pushed a stray chair under its meant table before letting the door close behind him with the light sound of a bell.
It was his turn to open shop today, and that was fine. Opening shop mostly meant turning on the machines and cleaning the counter and the tables - preparing for the day ahead at the café. Nothing that was difficult, it simply meant arriving earlier then he usually would.
Plucking the black hair tie he held in his teeth, the older man began to put up his long, wild hair into a manageable ponytail. As he stepped behind the dark counter, Ryouma slipped into the back to grab his apron. The shoppe wasn't a very large or popular coffee shop, it was owned by a sweet guy who stopped by often and treated a lot of the workers as his friends.
Passing by the work schedule for today after tying his apron on, he saw that his boss, Silas, was due to come in today. As well as a girl named... Setsuna. Briefly, he wondered if she was new. Though, a glance further back on the schedule revealed that to be false. It seemed she'd been working here for a while, but they never had the same shift. Ryouma let out a hum of interest to himself at the situation.
He hadn't been working that long at the café, but he'd met everyone who worked there as well. Or so he thought, it seemed. Whoever this Setsuna was, he was going to to give her a proper introduction when she arrived.
Rolling his long sleeves up his arms and up to his elbows, he began to turn on each machine that sat behind the counter, dormant from having been turned off the night before. They all turned on, filling the room with a gentle, low hum of heating water and preparing for use for the day ahead. With this as his background, Ryouma grabbed a rag and began to clean the tables for the customers.
Outside, the world was waking up. The sun filling the room with a golden shine, light warming the streets that had been cooled by the dark night before. Ryouma simply continued to clean, wiping down the counter he would stand at for the rest of his day. Then, as he put the rag back where it came from, he heard the tinkle of the bell at the door. Looking up quickly from where he was behind the counter, the glass door closed behind a girl who stepped inside.
After setting an umbrella she had with her in the stand next to the door, she looked up and met Ryouma's eyes. "Oh..." She spoke quietly, and the two seemed to quickly glance over the other. Ryouma noticed, first, her hair. It was a light blue in color, and it was styled to cover one of her eyes. The other of which looked at him, yet almost seemed clouded in her own imagination.
"...hello." She said, stepping forward. "I didn't realize we had someone new today..." Ryouma blinked, "Actually, I've been working here for about a month." He corrected her as she stepped behind the counter. "My name is Ryouma. Are you Setsuna?" He asked, and she nodded. Holding out his hand, she reached out her own with a gentle smile. "Nice to meet you..."
Setsuna stepped into the back room after that, and only returned soon after with her apron on when Ryouma was at the door, flipping the sign to open. She set some cups up by the register, and the two stood behind the counter as they waited for the first few customers to arrive.
Ryouma decided to break the silence that was being held between them, "So, Setsuna," he began, catching her attention as she glanced over to him from where she leaned against the counter, "have you been working here long?" Setsuna pondered the question. "Kinda..." After a beat of silence, followed by another, he assumed that was the only answer he was going to get.
"Well, do you like working here?" He asked, and Setsuna thought for a moment. She opened her mouth to answer, only to be interrupted by the jingle of the bell at the door, and the two of them prepared to start working instead of talk.
As work began, it seemed the two of them didn't work that badly together. For the morning, Setsuna had worked the register and took everyone's order with a dreamy looking smile. Ryouma worked the machines, filling the orders that Setsuna told him. Together, the two of them worked through the morning of tired people heading to work that needed caffeine or people who were planning on working at the café through the morning with a cup of something to keep them going.
Only once in a while, Ryouma would have to ask Setsuna how to pronounce the name that she had written on the cup.
"Setsuna, what does this say?" He asked, holding the cup out to her as he prepared to call out the name for whoever ordered it. The blue haired girl glanced at the styrofoam cup and smiled. "It's Mozu." She said simply, and Ryouma read over the name written there once more.
The name she'd written, however, was probably not how it was really spelt. Mowzoo.
"You have an interesting way of spelling things." He commented, and he heard Setsuna laugh gently. "Thank you." She said, and even though it wasn't much of a compliment, Ryouma smiled back at her as he looked to the cup again. He took note of the way her letters were curled at the edges, and he thought that seemed to fit.
Setsuna seemed like the type to curl letters at the edges.
Spelling mistakes aside, it was only after the rush of the early morning had passed and the coffee shop settled down did anything eventful happen. The door opened once more, and both workers looked up to see their boss walking in with his usual grin. Then, he looked to the two workers and his expression moved to confusion.
"You guys both have this shift?" He asked, approaching the counter. Setsuna nodded, and Ryouma spoke up. "Yes, we do. What's wrong with that? I've never had a shift with Setsuna before."
"Yeah, it's because I usually put her with Azama. I guess I messed up the schedule somewhere..." Silas said, before glancing to Setsuna. "Setsuna, you should wear your headband when you're working." He pointed out, and the blue hair girl seemed to remember that was a thing.
"Oh, yeah." She said, reaching around her neck to where a black piece of elastic was. "Sorry." Pushing the headband up, she adjusted it som the bang that was in front of her eye instead was pushed back. Of course, when Ryouma met her, he didn't question the bang where it was. Though, now that he saw her without it in her face, he wasn't sure how he felt about the change in her appearance after all morning working with her.
Silas chatted with the two of them for a while, asking how things had been going before he arrived, and the two both said it was just fine. Nothing was broken or on fire, and Silas considered that a success. Afterwards, he headed into the back, leaving the two of them to continue their work as it was.
They ended up switching the roles, with Ryouma at the register and Setsuna making the drinks. At least then most of the name on the cups were spelt closer to what the name truly was. Though, things started to pick up again around noon, and more customers arrived to the little shoppe.
Ryouma wrote another name onto the cup with the black sharpie, before he glanced next to him at Setsuna. She was putting whipped cream onto the top of someone's drink, twirling the tip around and finishing the tip with a small curl. Ryouma saw the smile that appeared on her face as she finished, the smile that lingered as she set the whipped cream to the side and continued on with the drinks.
Yet, that smile stuck with Ryouma. The look of accomplishment in her eyes that he hadn't seen her with all day. As another customer stepped up in front of him, he watched the girl behind him grab a cup from one of the coffee dispensers and rush over to the other counter. A bit spilled over the edge of the cup, hitting the floor with a barely noticeable smack.
Ryouma turned back to the customer, taking their order before he heard the sound of a rubber shoe slipping against the ground right behind him. Quickly leaping into action, he spun around, and dove down, quickly grabbing Setsuna before she could hit the ground. She blinked up at him, and he even was surprised at his own quick action.
Setsuna smiled up at him, closing her eyes as she did. "Thanks..." She told him, and Ryouma couldn't help but stare for a moment. After of which, he lifted her up, and the two of them got back to work. Ryouma turned back to the customer whose order he was taking. "I'm sorry, where were we?" He asked, clearing his throat.
The rest of the day, however, was hardly as eventful. Ryouma took his lunch break, and Setsuna hers, with Silas filling in for the missing person as the other still worked. The three of them, together, made it through the day unto the sun was starting to set in the distance. Their time for the day was up, and Silas turned the sign to closed soon after the last customer had left.
"Alright... seems the day is over." Silas said, and the two other workers nodded. Ryouma undid his hair from the ponytail, heading into the back to return his apron and gather the things he'd left there that morning. The brunette then headed out into the front, walking to the door as Setsuna cleaned the tables in the front with a rag.
"See you all soon, I assume?" He asked, and Silas waved. "See you Ryouma!" He turned to Setsuna, he looked up at him and gave him one of her sleepy smiles. "See you, Ryouma..."
He smiled back, before pushing the door open.
"Oh, wait, Ryouma."
He turned back, finding Setsuna standing up instead of bent over cleaning the table.
"You asked me this morning if I liked working here..." She began, and Ryouma faintly did remember asking her that. "And I do like it, though I usually work with Azama..."
Ryouma had been Azama before, and he wasn't exactly easy to explain. Why Setsuna had to work with him all the time was beyond him. Still, he was about to leave when she spoke again.
"But..."
He looked at her, finding her smiling face lit by the gold of the setting sun, shining through the window.
"...I like working with you most."