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A lot of people have a lot of dreams. Usually, they mature with age, when teenagers realise that not all of them can become astronauts or actors, and they settle into education with the end goal being to become a rich CEO or a happy retail worker. Only a few people cling onto childhood dreams, despite the adversity presented to them; each generation has a Beethoven or a Cobain, and they flourish because they never gave up.
With Maki, it isn’t like that. She’s wanted to be a baker ever since she was a child, but it’s not a calling, or an eternal dream. It’s just a fantasy. She never attended high school, never had the privilege of learning and growing and having her dreams crushed, so it stayed in the back of her mind - the singular thought, when things get bad, that in another life, she runs a little bakery and wakes up with a smile on her face. Even if it isn’t this universe, it’s enough for her, most of the time, to retreat into imagination of how good things could be if she was someone else and the world was a little kinder.
And now that it’s happened, she doesn’t know how to face the other challenges that come alongside it. Namely, opening a bakery in the middle of a recession, and struggling to keep her livelihood afloat. There are days that go by where she sits in front of the counter, looking at the cookies and cupcakes that she stayed up all night making, waiting for just one person to come in and let her know that it was all worth it. When they inevitably don’t sell, she never throws them away. There are people on the streets who haven’t eaten in days, and she stays outside for hours after closing, handing out the unsold produce to people who thank her from the bottom of their hearts for it. She never tells them that she understands. If this fails, then she doesn’t know where she’ll end up, and it scares her to think that stability could be snatched from underneath her so fast. She chastises herself for risking it all on a stupid dream, something that used to be nothing more than a fantasy; she could lose everything at the cost of trying to gain something.
There’s only one customer who comes in frequently. He always orders what he calls ‘baker’s choice’, buying whatever she recommends and leaving a generous tip in the jar. At eight in the morning, on the dot every day, he comes in, and she’s learned to expect his presence.
Today, though, she’s feeling particularly down. It’s been a tough week of sales, and unexpected bills have forced her to start auctioning off her old records and clothes to try and make enough money to pay her rent. When he comes in again, she puts on her fake, customer service smile, and asks him what he wants.
“Baker’s choice,” he laughs, “again.”
“I’ve got some new rose cupcakes you might like.”
“Hell yeah! I’ll take twelve.”
“Twelve?”
“Yeah! For me and my friends!”
“O-Of course.”
“Hey, you hiring?”
“Why?”
“I just left my job and I really like this place.”
“I can’t really afford to take on any employees. Sorry.”
“No worries. I mean, I’d work for free if you wanted.”
“That’s not ethical. I couldn’t do that.”
“It’s up to you. The offer’s open if you ever need any extra help around the place, though.”
“Why?”
“I like it here. You make fuckin’ bomb cupcakes. And I know business is tough for everyone right now, so if you need me,” he says, sliding a business card to her across the counter, “let me know.”
“Kaito Momota,” she reads off the card, “that’s your name?”
“The one and only. You’re Maki, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Like Maki Rolls!”
“I guess.”
“This might seem forward - hell, it is forward, but do you wanna go for a drink later?”
“Like a date?”
“If you wanna call it that, yeah.”
“Sure. I close up at five.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he flashes her a smile and a wink. Once he’s paid for the cupcakes, he leaves a tip in the jar - triple the amount he normally leaves - and walks out of the shop.
She only gets another five customers between then and five in the afternoon, when she starts to clean the counters and prepare the shop for closing. Kaito is waiting outside directly on the hour, and she invites him inside whilst she closes up and counts up the money for the day.
“So,” he says, “drink?”
“Yeah.”
They go to a little bar a few streets away, where he puts all of their drinks on a tab on his card and refuses to let her pay for a single thing.
“Why?” Maki asks.
“Why what?”
“Why do you keep coming in to buy cupcakes?”
“I love ‘em.”
“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy wholesale?”
“Probably. But they wouldn’t be a patch on yours.”
“Well, the place is going under,” she sighs, “I might have to close up shop for good soon.”
“No way!”
“Yeah.”
“Is there nothing we can do?”
“Unless you’ve got a ridiculous amount of money, nope.”
“What if I do?”
“I wouldn’t take it anyway,” she says, “I don’t believe in taking something I haven’t worked for.”
“Is that all you do? Work until you think it’s worth it?”
“I guess so.”
“I just left my job. I was a CEO, big business, six figure salary, all that. But it was boring as fuck, and I hated it. I’d much rather run a bakery.”
“Not in this recession you wouldn’t.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to spend all my money at your place to ensure that my favourite cupcakes are always in stock.”
“You like them that much?”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
They talk together for another hour, before he offers to walk her home. As they walk, they turn round a corner and pass her cupcake shop on the way back. The windows are broken and there’s debris all over the floor - it looks like the cash register has been broken into and, although she knows that there was no money in it, the place is destroyed. It’ll cost much more than she can afford to repair it.
“Shit,” she says, “fuck. This is…”
“Wait,” Kaito tells her, “before you panic. What if we could make this work?”
“Make what work?”
“Rebuild it. Rebrand. From the bottom up, y’know? Start it back up, together. I have contacts in high business positions, could get us some good promotion and maybe some sponsorships from business meetings and stuff. This could be good.”
“My shop is destroyed.”
“Yeah. And that sucks. But now you have to build it back up from the ground upwards, and I’d like to be a part of that.”
One Year Later
“Kaito, darling,” she shouts from the kitchen, “I need your help decorating.”
“Coming!”
“We’ve got a thousand cupcakes for the meeting with the Senator tomorrow. They’ve sent us designs with the order. You think you can pull an all-nighter with me?”
“Absolutely,” he says, kissing her on the cheek, “there’s no point sleeping anyway. All my dreams are here."