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You know how they say all bad things start and end with academics?
Well, aybe-may Gen’s the only one who says that, but that’s because it’s true! He gets a little bored during math and runs a social experiment that nearly shuts down his school. He attends the campus blood drive for extra credit but ends up passing out and missing an exam.
He picks a tiny little corner in the university’s shittiest cafe to cram for midterms and somehow ends up joining a cult. Dreadful.
Picture it: he’s minding his own business, like he always does. The thing is, he knew attending university as a celebrity mentalist would have its drawbacks, its spotlights, its woeful lack of ivacy-pray. But he’s found this corner, this perfect little corner in a portion of the library that has been cleared out by the bitter stench of what some might have the audacity to call coffee.
The barista always shows up hungover, signs into the register, and then runs off to attend class or sleep behind a bookshelf or whatever else they do till clocking out after lunch. And usually Gen is left alone to study without having to sign autographs or perform tricks or fake a smile when all he really wants to do is make his advanced statistical methods textbook disappear! Now that’s some magic he can get behind.
But today must be an especially urel-cray day, because why the hell not? As if Mondays weren’t already spawned from the fiery pits to spite Gen specifically.
“Yeah yeah old man, I’m ten billion percent too busy to grab lunch right now,” a student says, making his way into Gen’s carefully curated bubble.
He’s talking on the phone, paying Gen no mind. Gen sinks down a little lower in his chair, tries to hide behind his laptop. The last thing he needs right now is to be recognized. All it would take is a single snap-and-post and then Gen’s lovely little study spot will be swarming with fans. No, thank you.
“Raincheck on the ramen. Yep, I’ll tell the big oaf. I’m hanging up the phone now, go annoy someone else.”
True to his word, the stranger ends the call and shoves his phone in his pocket, standing there at the counter, waiting to be served.
Well, if it’s coffee he’s wanting, he’ll be waiting a while.
Gen opens a textbook on social psychology and holds it in front of his face. All he has to do is wait for this guy to wise up and head off to find a cafe that is capable of producing something edible. Wait… is it edible if he’s talking about a liquid? Drinkable? Imbibable? Whatever! the coffee is orrendous-hay either way.
“Hey, you.”
Gen flinches, ducking lower.
“You’re not even holding the damn book right.”
It takes a second for Gen’s eyes to focus on the upside down text. Shit.
“Maybe for you,” Gen improvises. “Studies show that reading upside down helps to stimulate different parts of the brain and can improve knowledge retention up to 37%.”
“So that’s what they teach over there in the psych department? If you spout bullshit statistics people will believe it?”
Gen peaks over the edge of the book. “I’ll have you know that most people do believe bullshit statistics if said with enough onfidence-cay.”
The guy raises an unimpressed brow and crosses his arms. He’s wearing a lab coat, which would be the most ostentatious thing about him were it not for his hair.
“So, you gonna work or what?”
Gen blinks. “Come again?”
He motions to the counter. “You gonna do your job and make me a coffee, or keep sitting there pretending to read that book upside down?”
Gen glances at the counter and then at the stranger, slowly lowering the book. There’s no recognition behind his eyes, no hint that he knows—or cares—about Asagiri Gen. Gen looks off in the direction that the barista had headed, knowing it’s futile. The stranger taps his foot.
“Are you sure you want to order from here?” Gen asks, skeptically.
The guy rolls his eyes. “Ten billion percent. So, you gonna take my order, or do I need to go back there myself?”
“There’s a better cafe down by—”
“The one with a line that could reach the moon? Yeah, I’ll pass.”
“There’s a reason this place is dead and that place isn’t.”
“Don’t care one millimeter. The vending machine is out of energy drinks, and I need some caffeine.”
And you know what? Gen could absolutely tell this smartass vegetable person the truth, but where’s the fun in that? Call it procrastination, or maybe Gen just wants to prove a point about the disgusting coffee.
He slides out of his chair and sets the book down, making his way around the counter. There’s a pot of burnt coffee, a small fridge with a carton of open milk and a few containers of mystery cream. Each bottle of flavored syrup on the counter has crystallized sugar around the spout. Grody.
“What can I get for you?” He asks with a smile. The stranger doesn’t seem as amused.
“Give me the least disgusting thing on the menu.”
And well, Gen’s never really considered himself a cruel person, but the guy was warned. He grabs the pot of coffee and a paper cup, fills it to the top, slaps a lid on it, sets it down with a smile.
“It’s on the house,” he says sweetly.
“Tsk, this your way of hitting on me?”
Gen’s smile grows wider. “I wouldn’t make assumptions just yet, dear. You haven’t even tried it.”
He snorts and picks the cup up, taking a tentative sip. He spits it out immediately.
“Eww, what the hell, dude?” He sputters, setting the coffee back down, face looking as green as his hair. “You tryin’ to kill me!?”
Gen shrugs. “I’m not a very good barista.”
“Yeah that much was stupidly obvious. Don’t quit your day job, Asagiri.”
Gen yelps and drops down behind the counter.
So he does recognize me! This is utterly orrible-hay! Soon the whole school will know, and I can say goodbye to my perfect study spot…
On the other side of the counter, they guy breathes a laugh.
“Relax. You’re working over here to stay away from rabid fans, right? Your secret’s safe with me cause I don’t care one millimeter about who you are or how many trashy books you’ve written.”
Gen peeks up over the counter, narrowing his eyes. It seems like he’s telling the truth, but even for a mentalist of Gen’s caliber, it’s difficult to get a read on this guy.
“Name your price,” he says.
“I don’t need your money, but since you asked: dump this shit out and make me a real coffee.”
Now that he’s confident no one has overheard his identity and come running, Gen stands up, leaning on the counter causally. “Yeah, not appening-hay. I’m more of a cola guy myself. I don’t even know when this pot was brewed.”
“Heh, so that’s why your coffee tastes like radioactive sludge.”
“You know what radioactive sludge tastes like? Oh my god,” Gen gasps. “Is that why your hair looks like that? How errible-tay! It must be so hard for you.”
“Laugh it up, Magician. Yours isn’t any better.”
Gen makes an indignant noise and tugs his hat down lower. “Ude-ray! The term is Mentalist and I’ve been a little too busy to see my stylist recently!”
“Whatever, just scoot over.”
“What are you…?” He starts to ask, but the stranger is already dropping his bag and rounding the counter.
“Here’s your problem, Mentalist,” he says, pointing to a tub of ground coffee dated February 9th. What year? Gen doesn’t know, but it’s October, and that’s just asty-nay.
“Coffee’s got hundreds of chemical compounds, but we’re interested in the volatile ones. You know, aldehydes, ketones, pyrazines, furans...”
“I most certainly do not know.”
“Heh, right, forgot who I’m talking to here. More volatiles mean more flavor, but they evaporate off pretty damn quick. It’s slower for whole beans cause the increased surface area of coffee grounds causes more off-gassing. You can keep freshly roasted beans sealed in an airtight container for a few months, but they should be used within a couple weeks of grinding.”
“Okay… so this coffee is too old?”
“Bingo, ten billion points for you. You can slow down that evaporation by 70%—” he pauses to look at Gen. “That's a real statistic, by the way—if you keep the coffee grounds in the freezer, but the container has to be sealed.”
“Uh-huh… I don’t really follow what all that sciencey talk has to do with coffee, though.”
“All food is science. Coffee’s no exception, and if you want the perfect cup, you’ve gotta follow the roadmap.”
Gen is feeling more confused by the second. “Oh, of course, the roadmap. What roadmap, exactly?”
The guy grabs a napkin from the counter and a pen, scribbling out a mess of doodles and diagrams, things like fresh coffee grounds and ideal mass percent coffee constituents all pointing to a cup in the center of the napkin.
“For now, let’s focus on the brew, since we can’t really do shit about the old ass coffee grounds.”
He grabs the old pot of coffee and dumps it, sets it down, starts rolling up his sleeves. “Grab me the soap and a clean sponge, we’ve got some cleaning to do before this place can pass a food sanitation inspection.”
Gen groans. “Do we have to?”
“It’s part of your job, Mentalist.”
“It’s not my—” Gen stops himself.
Well, it’s quite the dilemma. Eally-ray, he should give up the ruse right now, tell this mysterious customer the truth. Gen’s no barista, he’s just tired and bored and looking for a chance to procrastinate a bit. But… the stranger is standing there with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, looking at him expectantly, and well, maybe Gen just needs a soft reset from all the studying and mental anguish.
“—favorite part of the job,” he finishes.
The guy clicks his tongue. “Get over it and get to work.”
Twenty minutes later, after an agonizing amount of work (no, Gen is not being dramatic, thank you very much, this guy’s just a stickler!) Gen is once again pouring coffee into a paper cup. Only this time, maybe it doesn’t smell quite as bad as the first one, and he’s a little more confident it won’t give anyone food poisoning.
Only a little.
“Heh, nice work, Mentalist. It doesn’t smell like hot, liquid garbage.”
“Okay, first: ew. And second: ew. Urry-hay and take a drink, I want to make sure it’s… hmmm…”
“Potable, that’s the word you’re looking for.”
Gen rolls his eyes. “Of course you would know that.”
“Don’t tell me you’re impressed by something so stupidly simple?” The guy asks with that same half-laugh. “I could show you ten billion—”
Vrrrrrrt, vrrrrrrt, vrrrrrrrrt.
“Shit,” he says, reaching for his pocket. “Gonna be late, see ya around, Mentalist.”
He darts around the counter and grabs his bag, slinging it over his shoulder, typing a message on his phone.
“Wait!” Gen calls after him. “You didn't tell me your name!”
The stranger turns back only long enough to smirk. “I didn’t?” He asks, before disappearing around the corner like he’s the magician and Gen’s just a tired, overworked college student.
“And you forgot your coffee…”
Silence.
Hmph. How ude-ray.
Gen pouts a little, but it’s justified, okay? He was having a perfectly fine afternoon before that stranger burst into his life and filled his head with all these science facts about coffee. And okay, so maybe he was also having a teensy little bit of fun blowing off studying, but now the guy went and ruined it!
He grabs the cup of coffee from the counter, fully intending to dump it out, but… he gives it a wary glance. He’s eally-ray not a coffee person, but one little sip can’t hurt, can it? He squeezes his eyes shut and brings the cup to his lips, just barely tilts it back. It’s… not quite as errible-tay as expected. Not really good by any stretch of the imagination, but a vast improvement.
Hmmm… maybe he was on to something.
Gen sighs and turns to dump it in the sink when something on the cup catches his attention. There’s a name written on it, sitting right under a spikey-haired doodle of Gen’s mystery coffee expert. He feels a smile curling the corners of his lips.
“Not a bad trick… Senku-chan. Not bad at all.”
And if Gen sits back down and googles local coffee roasteries, then it probably just counts as more procrastination.
This definitely counts as procrastination.
Gen drums his fingers against his laptop, waiting for the barista to show up, clock in and leave.
There’s an insulated bag in his satchel that holds fresh milk and coffee that was roasted and ground yesterday, and Gen is itching to put Senku’s lesson into practice.
Will Senku be back? No, probably not. But, that doesn’t mean Gen can’t test out all of his smartass little instructions. He flattens the napkin out on the table, studying the steps once again. If he can work his way through exactly how Senku had shown him, but with fresh coffee grounds, then the coffee should be antastic-fay, right?
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait long. The barista is gone as quickly as they came, and Gen immediately slips out of his seat and races behind the counter.
“Fresh coffee, check! Clean coffee maker, check!” Gen measures out the proper amount for one… no make that two cups. Just in case Senku…
Well, it’s a silly thought.
He tilts his head and sighs. It feels a little like watching paint dry as he waits for it to brew, but it smells much better than it ever has before, and he knows he didn’t skip any steps. Aybe-may that self-confident coffee scientist really is an expert.
Gen’s only just pouring himself a cup when he hears footsteps around the corner. He yelps and dives down behind the counter, crouching low to hide the top of his head. He just needs to wait till they pass and—
“Heh, it’s only me, Mentalist.”
It probably means nothing, the unusual burst of excitement that races through him at that familiar voice, nothing at all.
“Senku-chan!” He says, popping up with a smile.
Senku looks exactly the same as Gen remembers, that pristine lab coat and wild hair, the thick book bag slung over his bony shoulder, intelligent eyes alight with mirth. He gestures to the pot of coffee.
“Smells better. Surprised you took my advice.”
Gen pouts. “I’m not entirely useless, you know?”
“Sure you’re not,” he says, dropping his bag. “You were right, by the way, about reading upside down. I did some research. Turns out it’s a pretty good neurobic exercise, though your 37% claim was ten billion percent BS.”
Gen grabs a second cup and sets it down in front of him. “Eally-ray? But, I made that up.”
“Eh, even a broken watch’s right twice a day, Mentalist. Like how you sandwiched actual neuroscience between ten billion pages of phony nonsense.”
Gen freezes, holding the pot of coffee aloft, just above Senku’s cup.
“You’ve read my book?”
“Well sure. It was the easiest way to verify my hypothesis.”
“Which is?”
“You’re just as full of it as you seem.”
“Ude-ray!” Gen huffs, pouring the coffee. He slaps Senku’s hand away before he can reach for it. “No touching! I need to froth the milk.”
Senku lifts a brow. “Hurry it up, then, would you?” He says, but it sounds more teasing than serious.
“I’m a little curious though,” Senku adds, voice raised over the whistling of steam. “You had the whole mentalist thing going for you. Why put it on hold for this?”
It’s not exactly clear what he means by this. College or coffee? Either way, Gen’s never been very fond of showing his cards.
“It’s eally-ray of so little importance.”
“More BS from the BS Magician.”
Gen rolls his eyes. It feels ridiculous that he would even be considering sharing something so personal with a complete stranger. Maybe it’s that Senku doesn’t seem to care who he is. Maybe it’s that Senku treats him like something more than Gen the celebrity. Gen pointedly looks away, focusing on the milk.
“I’ve always understood people. How they work, what motivates them, makes them tick. Mentalism is the one thing I’ve always wanted to do. Being a magician was just a way to get closer to people, to earn their trust and attention. But, the more famous I became, the more people started wanting Gen the magician rather than Gen the mentalist. Even with my book, the publisher made me take out anything of real academic merit. I suppose I realized that no one was ever going to take me seriously as a mentalist if I didn’t prove myself in some way.”
He looks up, expecting to see the look of judgment on Senku’s face. He doesn’t expect that same, confident smirk.
“Tsk, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re just a dumb magician. I mean, you ten billion percent are a dumb magician, but you know, ya got other things going for you, too.”
Gen laughs.
“Oh, of course. I always have a future as a barista should college fall through.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, I haven’t tried the coffee yet.”
Gen splits the milk between the two cups, trying to make sure the foam is even before pushing Senku’s cup toward him. Senku brings it to his lips with more confidence than Gen thinks he should have, considering the first cup he’d been served from this specific cafe.
Gen holds his breath, and when Senku takes a sip, he doesn’t spit it out immediately. It’s a victory in Gen’s book.
“Well, damn, Mentalist,” he says, blinking down at the cup. “Better be careful. If anyone finds out you’re capable of brewing something good, you can kiss your cushy work study job goodbye.”
“Can I let you in on a little secret?” He asks.
Senku raises a brow. “Something tells me you’re gonna share it either way, but sure.”
Gen takes a drink from his own cup and grins. Aybe-may he could become a coffee person if it tastes like this.
“I don’t actually work here,” he admits.
A normal person might react with shock. Gen’s quickly learning that Senku is anything but normal.
“Heh, figured as much.”
“What gave me away?”
“Yesterday, you tried putting water directly in the filter basket. Even the shittiest barista knows how to brew a pot of coffee.”
“You underestimate how bad I can be at something, Senku-Chan.”
Senku rolls his eyes. “Well, Newton’s third law and all,” he says. Gen is about to ask if that’s the one about things in motion when Senku adds: “They restocked the vending machine this morning.”
Oh, Gen thinks with a mixture of confusion and delight. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He’s sharing a secret back with me.
“So, why come back?”
“You’re tellin’ me the genius mentalist can’t figure it out? Tsk… knew you were a phony.”
Gen can feel his cheeks heat against his will. If Senku-Chan were anyone else, Gen might have a hope of reading his intentions. And then, you know possibly, maybe, perhaps reciprocating those intentions.
“Are you… is that your way of saying…”
“That I’m recruiting you for my Kingdom of Science?” Senku interrupts before Gen can make an absolute fool of himself. “Damn right I am.”
He sticks his pinky in his ear, face splitting into a sinister smile. “I can always use more manpower for my experiments, and having a mentalist on my side means you can help me lure in more recruits.”
Gen jumps. “Eriously-say!? This isn’t some kind of cult, is it? ‘Cause it sounds like a cult!”
Senku shrugs. “Join and find out. Unless you’d rather spend your free time playing barista, in which case, no one’s ever gonna take you seriously.”
Gen’s next protest dies on his tongue. Damn it all, Senku’s good at that: drawing people in, convincing them to become part of his orbit. Huh, aybe-may they’re not so different in that sense.
He gives Senku a long, studying look, wondering if he really even needs a mentalist when he already has underhanded recruitment tactics figured out. “Are you sure you think mentalism is BS?” He asks, skeptically.
Senku answers by gesturing to the coffee and raising a brow. “You sure you don’t care one millimeter about science?”
No, Gen thinks, glancing down at the crumpled napkin, at the roadmap to brewing coffee scrawled across it. Realizing, with equal parts exhilaration and dread, that he’s definitely going to join the cult. No, I’m not sure, Senku-Chan.