Chapter Text
Zanka looks down at his notes again, eyes going bleary from his lack of sleep. Frowning, he crosses something out and rewrites after finding yet another mistake he made.
“Zanka, you look like you’re about to pass out…” Riyo says, standing up from her position on the couch and walking over to where Zanka was sitting.
“‘M fine…” Zanka mutters, attention still on the papers in front of him.
“No, you’re not. Look at your eye bags, you look like you haven’t slept in days!” Riyo exclaims, while grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. He glares and pries her hands off him.
“What d’ya want? I told you, I’m busy right now.” he deadpans.
“I’m saying, you need to get up and go do something. We should go to the cafe down the street, it opened a few weeks ago and all the uni students are recommending it right now.”
“Don’t wanna.” he replies, and tries to shoo her away.
“Come on Zanka! You need a break, you look like a decaying corpse right now.” Zanka scoffs at her comment, while she continues trying to sway him.
“Anyway, I know that there’s ages until your next assignment! Get up Mr. Overachiever…” Riyo says, dragging out the syllables at the end of her sentence.
Finally relenting, Zanka makes a move to get up. “Fine, but we better be back before three.”
Looking up at the dorm common room’s clock that shows 2:20, Riyo pumps her fists up and cheers while Zanka sorts out his papers, putting them neatly back into his folder.
“I need to go back to my dorm to put these away, I’ll meet up with you in five minutes.”
“Cool, I’ll wait for you at the gates. Don’t take too long!” Riyo says, already skipping out of the common room.
How she always has that much energy I’ll never know…
Walking back to his dorm, he’s actually grateful. He really does need a break after studying nonstop and sleeping less than four hours every night for nearly a week, a coffee break really does sound great right now. It also made him smile to know that Riyo was looking out for him, in her own overenthusiastic way.
Pulling out his keycard, he opens the door and checks if his roommate Follo is home. Hearing no signs of movement or seeing any indication he might be inside, he shrugs and makes his way over to his room, placing his folders onto his desk neatly before trudging over to the bathroom. He goes to the sink and turns the tap on washing his face with cold water as an attempt to try and wake himself up a bit.
As he reaches for his towel hanging next to the mirror, he pauses and stares at his reflection with his towel halfway up his face.
Holy shit. Riyo wasn’t kidding when she said he looked like a decaying corpse. No wonder he had been getting pitying stares whenever he went to the common room or library to study this week. His skin was paler than normal, which contrasted heavily with his extremely dark eye bags, while his hair was messy and sticking up in places and his expression in general looked like he was about to pass out soon.
Slapping his palms onto his cheeks, he splashed cold water on his face again and sputtered as he looked into the mirror. Seeing no difference in his disheveled appearance, he opts to just fix up his hair before putting on an oversized sweater and grabbing his phone, not wanting to make Riyo wait any longer.
Riyo waves at him from the gate while Zanka quickens his pace to watch up to her.
“Gee, what took you so long?” I was starting to think you ditched me!”
“Sorry… I was busy getting ready.” he replied.
The two walked towards the cafe while chatting to each other, Riyo telling Zanka about a new girl that recently joined one of her classes.
“Her name’s Momoa! She seems super cool, and her sense of fashion is so great y’know? I talked to her a bit and I learnt that she and her cousin moved here recently. They’re also both working at the cafe, so I told her that I’d come over to say hi!”
Zanka, content with listening to her ramble, turns his face to look at her with a raised brow. “So you only took me here to accompany you to see this girl?”
“Well yes, but it was also good timing since you looked like you really needed your coffee fix…”
Zanka shrugged, already used to Riyo dragging him along to meet new people. Ever since their first year of uni, Riyo has been determined to socialise with whoever she had an interest in, all the while dragging Zanka along with her.
With them starting their second year now, Zanka was grateful to have such a good friend like Riyo around. Without her, he’d definitely be holed up in his room, too introverted to try and make friends himself.
Now, he has a big circle of friends, many of them in Enjin’s cleaner club.
Suddenly, Zanka’s musing was cut short when he sensed Riyo come to a stop.
“Earth to Zanka, we’re here now.” she says, waving a hand in front of his face. He looked up, seeing a neat sign above the cafe with the word ‘Raiders’, glowing purple.
“This is a peculiar name for a cafe…” Zanka whispered to her, while eyeing the sign again.
“Don’t question it, I heard the boss was a peculiar person anyway,” Riyo whispered back, as she moved forward to open the door.
The bell chimed as they walked in, Riyo’s face lighting up and waving to the girl at the counter. “That’s Momoa!” she said as she walked forward, Zanka following behind her. The girl at the counter, with long wavy hair and seafoam green eyes, waved back at Riyo and smiled.
“Hi Riyo, I’m really glad you could make it!’ she says, while gesturing to Zanka. “Is that your friend you mentioned?”
“Yep, Momoa, this is Zanka. Zanka, this is Momoa! Like I told you, she’s new this year and she’s in one of my classes.”
“Hi Momoa, it’s nice to meet you.” Zanka says as he offers her a small mile and a wave.
“Likewise!” she says as she turns her attention back to Riyo. “What would you like? I’ll make your drink, and I’ll get someone else up on the counter so we can sit down to chat.”
While the two girls chatted, Zanka looked around at his surroundings. There was a decent amount of people, no doubt most of them coming from their school. The cafe was decorated minimally but seemed cozy all the same, with a few potted plants while the decorations were purple, as were the worker’s aprons, he noticed.
The boss probably has a thing for purple… he thinks, when he turns to his right from the sound of his name.
“Zanka, we’re going to sit down and talk for a while, wanna join us?” Riyo asks, holding her drink and points to an empty table nearby.
“It’s okay, I’ll order something and wait for you.”
“Okayyy, won’t be too long!” she replies while walking towards the table.
Momoa unties her apron and hangs it up behind the counter, and tells Zanka that another worker’ll come to the counter soon, leaving to join Riyo.
Zanka’s breath is cut short as he sees the most captivating man he’s ever seen walk through the door behind the counter, hand behind his back as he ties his apron around his waist.
His hair, long dreads with gold cuffs on them, is tied up in a tall ponytail. His brown eyes, which Zanka noticed aren’t fully brown, they’re almost magenta and are framed by black glasses, look up at him and crease as he grins at Zanka.
“What’ll it be today?” the man asks, while Zanka is still staring unabashedly.
“Uh-” realization finally dawns on him as he scrambles to look at the menu and just recites the name of the first drink he lays eyes on.
The worker smiles again, and taps out his order on the tablet in front of him. Zanka notices the ten silver ringers decorating his fingers, which accent perfectly with the necklace and bracelets he’s wearing. (He’s still staring.)
The guy seems to take no heed and asks for his name for the order.
“--nka.” Zanka says, stumbling over his words after realising he’s been staring at the handsome stranger again.
“Sorry, say that again?”
“Zanka.”
“Alrighty, if you could wait at the end of the counter!” the man says, grinning at Zanka again and walks off to make his drink.
Zanka seems to fully come down back to earth and walks over to wait for his drink. He closes his eyes and tries to rest his beating heart, praying his face wasn’t as red as he felt.
Suddenly, he opens his eyes and realisation hits him like a truck, when he remembers how shitty he looks right now.
Holding back his groan, he nearly drops to his knees and wills himself to just disappear. Just his luck that when he meets the most beautiful man he’s ever seen, he looks like a dehydrated mole rat.
In the corner of his view, a drink is placed in front of him and he looks up to see the stranger sliding it towards him.
“Hey, Zanka. Your drink’s ready.” he says, handing him a straw.
Zanka takes the drink and mutters a quick thanks as he rushes out of the cafe, not sparing a glance at the handsome stranger again.
In his haste, he doesn’t notice the worker’s surprised face, or his open mouth that was about to say something before he ran off.
As Zanka speed walks away from the cafe, he finally takes a look at the drink he ordered and grimaces at it. It looks way too sweet, and looking at the sheer amount of whipped cream sitting on top he felt like he was going to vomit.
He sighs, realising he also left Riyo back at the cafe. Reaching for his phone in his pocket he shoots her a quick text, something along the lines of not feeling well and needing to go back.
Once he arrives back at the dorms, he doesn’t even bother to say hi to Follo who was sitting on their couch, rushing towards his room and closing the room behind him.
He puts his untouched drink on his bedside table and flops onto his bed, embarrassment from earlier events coming back to him in full force. He had been awfully calm after leaving the cafe as abruptly as he did, but now he was properly thinking about what happened, he let out a groan and buried his face into his pillows.
He couldn’t believe this was actually happening. He’d never been this flustered talking to someone before, and just thinking about how obviously he had been staring at the handsome man made him let out another muffled groan.
A knock on his door makes him turn his head towards the door, as he hears Follo on the other side ask him if he’s okay.
Letting out an exhale, he replies, “yeah, I‘m fine.”
“Ah, alright. I just heard you… it seemed like you were having some trouble.” Follo replies, careful to not make Zanka feel worse.
“Really Follo, I swear I‘m fine. It’s just a small problem, I promise.”
After Zanka reassures Follo and he walks off, a buzz comes from his phone and he reaches over to look at it.
It’s a message from Riyo, asking him if he was okay and if he was back in the dorms. Sighing, he drops the phone onto his bed and runs a hand over his face.
He was causing this much trouble to the people around him over a silly, what, infatuation? Crush? He didn't know anything about the man, let alone his name. Seriously, he had just met him for the first time just twenty minutes ago.
Not wanting to mull over his thoughts any more, he decides to go for a quick shower, then crawling back into his bed to take an afternoon nap.
Crawling under the covers, he tries to shut out any thoughts of his trip today and the stranger with magenta eyes and glasses, though he'll obviously be dreaming of him.