Work Text:
Gone. Again.
For the past week, every single day Monoma Neito visits the cafe around the corner from his office building, he’s been greeted with the empty absence of his favoured soupe à l'oignon.
Monoma just doesn’t understand. It’s not like the shop only makes one damn bowl of soup a day; so why have they begun to disappear almost routinely and why did it start last week, specifically?
He’s been coming here everyday; before work, during lunch hours, and after work, and not once has there been his meal of the day.
Letting out a long, drawn-out groan under his breath, the twenty-two year old presses his forehead against the glass of the display case, watching the croissants and apple crumbles stand proud in place of the onion soup he had so hoped for this morning.
Not that he didn’t enjoy those too; all French cuisine is good cuisine (the first rule of life), and Monoma would never be one to ignore a good croque monsieur but it just... wasn’t the same.
“Nothing’s gonna bring my mood up more than this,” he gripes to himself, reluctantly bending down to pick up a rather depressing ham-and-egg sandwich.
To think that the only thing that could have motivated him to put in more than twenty percent of effort in his work-in-progress marketing launch has literally been stolen from his life for an entire week.
Monoma’s been trying so hard to get by with mediocre meals ranging from green salads to literally anything else that exists in this cafe, but he’s beginning to get increasingly pissed at - at whoever the fuck keeps on taking his godforsaken soupe à l'oignon.
“What’s the matter?” Kendou asks, picking up a bottle of kiwi juice. “Is your food still missing?”
Monoma lets out a long, winded groan.
“So... no onion soup for you today either, I guess,” she says with the tiniest little shit-eating grin, moving up to the cashier to pay.
Kendou’s been his classmate ever since the first day of high school, and it’s no surprise that she’d be working alongside him as the research analyst to his marketing consultant.
The two have been (Monoma refuses to say best friends, but everyone else knows it’s true) close for quite a while, and now she’s been subjected to his complaints about the missing lunch for an entire week, the dude’s starting to get the feeling that she’ll just end up making the soup for him in order to get him to shut up. “Why don’t you just go somewhere else-”
“Listen, Kendou,” Monoma interrupts, plopping his own choice of lunch on the counter and reaching for his wallet. “I don’t care who it is that’s doing this, day by day, every single time I pass the damn shop, it’s gone and I swear on my honour that I will find this degenerate and end them.”
Kendou hums. “Good luck with that.”
“I’ll show them,” Monoma rants, snatching his food and his change (albeit not without leaving the coins in the tip box as he usually does) and marching out of the cafe.
He’s got a right mind to slam the door, but it is a public restaurant, and Monoma’s already made a fool of himself enough for the day. “You do not mess with Monoma Neito.”
He’s a man on a mission now, to hunt down this soup thief, even if it’s the last thing he does.
Also, he swore on his honour, and that’s one thing he really, really doesn’t want to lose.
-
The first step to Monoma’s plan is to, naturally, scope out the opposition. And by that, he means to literally, scope the shop out.
He’s pressed up against the glass window of his supervisor’s office facing the shop with a pair of limited-edition, diamond crested Rolex binoculars glued to his face, watching the storefront for any suspicious activity.
By that, he means anybody carrying anything even remotely resembling soup.
The people coming and going don’t take much notice of him besides his friends; Monoma’s pretty sure he heard Tsuburaba run into a chair and Kaibara snap a picture but he’s past caring about worldly matters.
Right now, all that’s important is that he doesn’t let the soup thief escape undetected.
Glancing back towards the cafe, Monoma’s momentarily distracted by a flash of purple hair (seriously, who even does that anymore? it’s 2017, not 2007), but other than that, there doesn’t appear to be anything out of the norm.
Guess he’ll have to send somebody down to investigate.
“No,” Kendou says firmly, slinging her handbag over her shoulder and adjusting her coat. “I already planned on going to lunch with Kinoko and the others. You’ll have to find somebody else.”
“But-”
Before Monoma’s able to finish his sentence, Kendou leaves the office, calling out a, “Remember to switch the lights off in my office when you leave!” over her shoulder nonchalantly.
Turning on his heel, Monoma looks over at Tetsutetsu, who’s just returned from his lunch break with a prepackaged meal.
“Ah, Tetsutetsu!” he exclaims loudly, making his way over to his work station and clapping a hand on the poor guy’s back harder than normal. “I was just wondering if you could do me a favour. You see, I...”
Tetsutetsu’s already shaking his head without even hearing the rest of Monoma’s request, half of his sandwich in his mouth. “Boss called me earlier to say that I had to attend a meeting in half an hour, and I desperately need to eat and prepare. Ask the others.”
Monoma retracts his hand.
Looking around, he can only see Tsunotori the foreigner and Yanagi talking, and Shiozaki working diligently at her desk.
So it seems as if he’ll have to take matters into his own hands. No matter, though. He had prepared for this beforehand.
However, just as he’s about to leave the office to make a break for it, his supervisor walks back into the office, squinting his beady little eyes at Monoma as if he’d know what he was about to do five seconds ago.
Monoma just hopes the man won’t be able to detect any traces of his prior binocular adventures in his office.
The next step in his plan is to sneak out of work to sit aimlessly at a cafe for a couple of hours.
“Kan-san’s going to kill you,” Awase hisses loudly at him the next day as they cross paths right in front of the door, his colleague returning from lunch and Monoma heading to “resume” his.
“My, you’re still scared of the dude who named himself Blood King?” Monoma hisses back equally as loudly, because in actual fact there probably isn’t a single person that’s not scared of their general manager. Not even the CEO.
Awase fixes his headband. (Monoma’s still not entirely sure if it’s in accordance to the dress code, but the guy’s been wearing it for as long as he can remember ever since he started working here.) “You better not be up to any shady shit. Kendou will smell your lies from a mile away.”
“Oh, she’s in on this though,” Monoma tosses over his shoulder as he leaves the building with an air of self-satisfaction and slight guilt.
Awase’s right; if his supervisor finds out he’s left the workplace without permission, he’s going to be a missing man just as absent as the onion soup he’s trying so hard to figure out the mystery of.
As he enters the cafe, letting out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding after having made it without being seen, the first thing Monoma does is make a beeline for the display case.
There is it.
His fucking soupe à l'oignon. In the flesh. Or the aqueous state. Whatever it was.
“Why,” Monoma begins, to himself, “is it here, today, the day I actually risk my job and subsequently my life, to find the culprit?”
Hastily making his way to the counter, Monoma makes quick work of purchasing the soup before anybody else is able to. He’s waited a week for this, and even though he’s already had his lunch at another place, there is always room for onion soup. Always.
“So it’s your turn today,” the barista ringing up his purchase comments, smiling wryly as if he were in on an inside joke and Monoma wasn’t.
It then dawns on him. Why didn’t he just ask the people who worked here why the soup was always gone?
“What do you mean by that?” Monoma asks, hoping that his question isn’t going to come off as creepy or anything. “Who else has the tastebuds for this,” Monoma gestures at the soup in front of him, having almost said god-awful but managed to retract his words at the last minute, “wonderful delicacy?”
The barista taps his chin. “If I remember correctly, the last time I worked this shift, there was someone who came in to buy what you got... I don’t remember his appearance, though. Sorry about that. He seems pretty insistent on getting to the soup before you.”
Monoma resists the urge to scream, yell and cry at the same time. Wouldn’t take a detective to figure that out.
“It’s alright,” he half-seethes, putting on his fake marketing smile he learnt from work. “I’ll just take this and leave.” And pray to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that nobody would see him re-enter. Especially not Kan ‘Blood King’ Sekijirou.
(Tokage ends up accidentally outing him with her chatterbox mouth.)
-
The next day doesn’t go as well as Monoma would have anticipated.
For starters, his onion soup isn’t there.
Which is to be expected - perhaps yesterday was just an anomaly.
Perhaps he had actually gotten to the cafe faster than his hypothetical rival. Perhaps the gods above had decided to take pity on him for just one lunch break. Or perhaps the cafe had just accidentally made an extra.
Either way, if he’s learnt anything over the past week, it’s not to take his soupe à l'oignon for granted. Ne. Le. Fais. Pas.
Second of all, he had ended up on the customer service hotline as a penalty for his actions; something, Monoma thinks as he listens to a woman on the other side yell bloody murder about something he couldn’t possibly care less about; that wouldn’t have happened if his soup would just stay put.
“I understand, ma’am. We will get in touch with you shortly,” Monoma drones monotonously as he drops the phone back onto the receiver loudly with a defeated sigh. Even toilet duty would have been better than this.
Third of all, it’s 7pm; which was one hour past the end of his shift. Of course, overtime should have been expected, but at the same time, it meant that he’d definitely have no chance of seeing his soup today. Woe is him.
Standing up, Monoma begins to pack away all the papers and post-it notes on his desk, the weary feeling on his shoulders growing stronger and stronger. It’s not like he’s been thinking about a nice onion soup for the past ten hours.
Oh well. Maybe a simple café au lait would do for today.
As he makes his way down the elevator and out of the door, turning the corner to pass the cafe on his way to the metro, Monoma spots a... familiar-looking carton in the hands of a guy a few steps in front of him. The guy with purple hair that he’d spotted yesterday, apparently.
With a slight sinking feeling in his stomach, Monoma ducks into the cafe. If this meant what he thought it meant...
Just as he had speculated, the soup was gone.
In fact, it looked as if it had only been gone quite recently; a staff member is just taking down the sign that read soupe à l'oignon as he stares.
Monoma dashes back out of the store, completely forgetting about his coffee as he sprints (although with his athletic abilities, it was more like speed walking) in the direction the guy from before was walking in.
As he reaches a pedestrian crossing, skidding to a halt in his leather suede shoes before the red light, Monoma spots the now all-too-familiar head of unruly hair disappear down into the subway leading to the metro, and looks back up at the stoplight, silently pleading for it to turn back to green as quick as possible.
Sure enough, the gods are lenient for another moment, and as he hurries across the road and down the stairs into the station, Monoma’s praying to the very same gods that his new friend will still be here so he can have a good word with him.
Monoma scurries down the stairs, almost tripping and breaking his leg a few times here and now. He can see the purple-haired guy step onto the train with the suspicious drink in his hand. So goddamn close, just a little more...
...and his bag catches onto the turnstile.
Monoma’s entire body is jerked backwards, and he just barely manages to save himself from falling and landing on his ass in front of a million people during rush hour of all times.
Yanking his bag free, Monoma gains a second wind and makes another dash for the train, just as the doors close and his entire body hits the vehicle.
That’s definitely going to leave a bump.
As the train begins to move away from the station, Monoma can only brush his jacket off, haughtily glaring back at the people around him who just so happened to be looking in his direction.
Today really isn’t his day.
-
That’s it.
Monoma’s going to lay siege on this cafe.
He’s already called in sick to the big man, having faked a cough almost as convincing as Kendou's pep talks before a presentation. (Cough cough. ‘I’m sick.’)
As of the moment, he’s currently sitting at the table farthest away from his office building, wearing sunglasses and a fedora for good measure. At this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if a shady man with a gun came over and gave him an offer to join the mafia.
It’s already noon, which meant he’d missed the first onion soup of the day. No matter though - today’s objective is not to purchase the soup, but to catch the thief red-handed. He’s willing to give up the soup for one more day, if it means he’ll get to reclaim it for many days after this. All for the greater good.
The bell at the door jingles.
Monoma whips around immediately, and something in his neck cracks. Ow.
Sure enough, it’s Purple Manic Panic guy in all his glory, wearing... is that an apron?
Nevertheless, Monoma chooses not to jump to conclusions too quickly. That could’ve been minestrone for all he knows. God help him if he embarrassed himself yet again in front of this stranger.
As the guy steps up to the counter, Monoma seizes his chance and stands up from his seat, leaving his long-gone-cold coffee to sidle up behind him in line.
There it fucking is.
As the words, “onion soup” leave the other’s mouth, Monoma places a hand on the man’s shoulder, trying his best to ignore the fact that the other’s quite a bit taller than he is.
Trying his best to sound as bitchy as possible, Monoma opens his mouth to ask a question, his signature fake marketing smile plastered cheaply across his face. “Excuse me, but have you been purchasing this soup at this diner for the past week?”
Purple Hair turns around, and the first thing Monoma notices about him is his eyebags.
Jesus fuck, this guy looks like he gets two hours of sleep on a daily basis. It’s almost enough to make him forget his salt on the matter of the soup, but the scent of said soup being heated up snaps him back into reality.
Monoma’s grip on the other’s shoulder tightens ever so slightly, ignoring the slight embarrassment that must be showing all across his face in the form of a light blush. “Answer the question.”
The guy blinks. “Does it matter?”
Monoma resists the urge to roll his eyes so far back into his head, his optical nerve would have been showing. “Well, yeah, since I haven’t been able to buy it for seven painful days in a row.”
“I didn’t know anybody else actually liked this stuff,” the guy quips, raising an eyebrow. Sliding the money towards the cashier, he places his other arm on top of Monoma’s hand, lowering it down from his shoulder. “Well, if you seem to like it so much, why don’t we share?”
Whaaaat is thiiiiiiis?!
Monoma’s heard of ‘befriending the enemy’, but this is...
All of his pride and virtue is telling him to snatch back his hand coolly and utter a, “I don’t need your soup,” before swishing his coat like a pantomime and striding out of the cafe. He knows he shouldn’t be accepting (half of a) lunch from a complete stranger, especially one that’s been indirectly depriving him of happiness and joy for an entire week, but...
God, the smell of onions and meat stock is really getting to him. Quite an odd combination of scents if you ask him, but a heavenly blend nonetheless.
“You want to share that with me?” Monoma asks in a slightly softer tone, his incredulity showing just a little. Juuuuust a little.
The guy shrugs. “Sure, why not? Since you’ve wanted it for so long.”
Turning back towards the cashier to collect his change, he glances over his shoulder back at Monoma, who’s still honestly kind of in shock after the other’s offer. “Why don’t you sit down first-”
“My name is Monoma Neito!” Monoma blurts out.
The other guy stares at him for a while.
And then cracks a tiny little smile.
“I’m Shinsou Hitoshi.”
-
“So, why did you only just start buying my soup last week?” Monoma demands, with half a spoonful of soupe à l'oignon in his mouth.
Shinsou shrugs. “I only just started working here a while ago.”
“And about two days ago? When I managed to buy it?”
“I was sick.”
So it was God’s doing. In a way. Monoma makes a mental note to visit the local shrine this weekend.
“I can’t believe you actually like this shit too...” he mumbles, shovelling another spoonful daintily into his mouth.
The unexpected gesture of kindness compared to his earlier hostility has managed to shut him up for the most part, and he can’t seem to stop staring at Shinsou’s face.
“What’s up with your eyes?” Monoma asks, pointing vaguely in his general direction. “You work at like a twenty-four hour shop, or...?”
“They’re natural,” Shinsou explains, twirling his spoon around between his fingers that makes Monoma just ever so slightly dizzy from watching. “I actually work at a pet store, down the block.”
Ah. So that explained the apron. And apparently the reason why his nose has been feeling rather irritated for the past twenty minutes that they’ve been sitting here.
“Pet store, huh?” Monoma remarks, glancing down at said apron. So Shinsou was an animal kinda guy. That would’ve been another contribution as to why he’s beginning to dislike him less and less; if he weren’t allergic to animal fur.
Shinsou cracks another tiny grin that, in Monoma's modest opinion, could cure cancer and solve world hunger. “Yeah. You should come visit someday. Maybe I’ll even let you bring soupe à l'oignon over.”
Monoma’s in trouble.