Chapter Text
"Yomo-san, could you move that for me?" Touka briskly points towards the couch located to the left of the cafe. It's an old thing, purchased cheap from a street market. The man who had sold it to her seemed weirdly enthusiastic about it, entertaining her with stories of its longevity that she'd been too busy to care about. But it was beautiful and had the kind of flair she's been searching for, the quaint, old-world style she wanted to emulate at :re.
She spent a while sitting against it, a needle and a thread in hand, trying to fix all the tears and slashes the furniture had suffered over the years. The process was a frustrating one, as well as time-consuming, but the result was good. After she finally managed to rectify the sofa, she had stood back to admire her handiwork, and called for Yomo to admire it too.
"Left or right?"
"The left," she said after some deliberation. The two of them had had their hands completely full over the last few weeks. In her time in Anteiku, she never truly appreciated how much effort had to be invested into establishing a café, how much time had be spent studying mortgages and overdraws, researching which business was better at creating signs and kettles, how to attract customers, what kind of services and commodities they should provide. Their to-do list was constantly swelling, never stopping its rapid growth. Even with her diligence, it was hard.
Yomo didn't question why she wanted to open a cafe. He didn't question why she already had such a firm view of what the cafe should look and smell and sound like. He didn't question why she suddenly sliced off the hair she'd been growing out for months. He had always been a stoic man, even before that happened. But these days he was more taciturn and morose than ever, with any form of emotion from him becoming increasingly scarce.
But when the two of them began to fill out the empty books shelves together, with works of Kafka, of Sen, of long-winded, archaic books he used to talk of, she noticed for the first time in a long time, his expression shift as his lips press into a hard straight line.