Chapter Text
Hakuri seriously needs this job like he needs air. He's already lucky enough to be able to score this dingy apartment that's five minutes away from the local university he's attending, but he really needs a job ASAP or else he's going to be eating nothing but ice and water by the second week of living here.
Can you really blame him though? He'd haphazardly thrown together whatever he had left—a single bag of luggage and a backpack that was pretty much close to exploding because of all the clothes & books and even school materials he'd shoved in there at the very last minute. He couldn't even bring his little pots of plants with him—he'd wanted to bring them, but Hakuri knew deep down inside that he wouldn't be able to carry them with him, much less find a space that fits them here without tripping into it.
Saying goodbye to the plants hurt, but Hakuri knew this was his one and only chance to escape the household. He had memorized the route to this place painstakingly, making sure no one had a single clue where he'd end up in, even if it meant he had to play along with majority of his siblings when becoming their designated errand boy. It's not like much changed anyway; only back then did he do it out of fear, but during those few weeks of trying to learn how to be independent enough to leave the house—he'd done it all to make sure he wouldn't need anyone else's help.
It also was just nice to know where his siblings hid their belongings. It made for very, very quick cash. But he couldn't spend it all in one go just for rent; that's why he'd needed this job. It's a decent one, he thinks, because he's already used to brewing tea, juice, coffee and everything in between—having so many siblings whose tastes changed like the daily weather meant he had to keep up with their whims. Being a barista was essentially just serving strangers their choice of drink instead of trying to guess what ungodly concoction his siblings would come up with just to waste his time sometimes—Hakuri could do at least that, thank you very much.
And like divine intervention, his phone rings in his pocket, and Hakuri takes it out immediately in a speed he didn't even think was possible.
"Hello, is this Miss Hinao?" He says, and the person on the other end laughs. "Hey, kid! I just wanted to tell you that you got the job!"
Hakuri thinks he can cry out of relief. He doesn't want to scare her though, so instead, he jumps off of his bed, uncaring if he makes any noise as he starts jumping up and down. "Thank you, Miss Hinao! Thank you! You have no idea how much I needed this!"
Another laugh from the phone. "Don't sweat it, kid. Meet me tomorrow in the early morning so I can start teaching you the basics, alright?"
Hakuri can't believe it. An actual job close to his workplace and his university? It's like some angel finally took pity on him. He knows he'll make the most out of it, so, with an exhale, he nods to himself.
"Yes, Miss Hinao! I'll do my best!"
"Just call me Hinao, I feel old when you do that," the lady says. "Y-Yes, Miss—I mean, yes, Hinao! I'll be in your care tomorrow!!!"
Hinao laughs, then says her goodbyes before dropping the call. Hakuri plops back into the bed, beads of sweat already forming on his forehead.
A new start in life!
Hakuri couldn't have asked for a more successful escape from his old life.
Six months later…
"Hey, Hakuri, can you handle the counter for a moment? One of the machines started malfunctioning, I need to call our tech guy and get him here as soon as possible," Hinao yells out from the cashier desk, and Hakuri is snapped out of his focus as he remembers he's still technically on the clock. "Coming, coming!"
He hurries over to the desk, one hand holding his phone with a livestream playing. He has his earphones on full volume, but now that he has to handle cashier duty, he has to lower them to make sure he gets his job done right.
Listen—Hakuri is one hell of a barista now. Hinao's basics on the first week of the job went so smoothly it scared both him and her. Hakuri was desperate to keep this job and he'd learned to hell and back which beans were good for what drink and what roasts were preferred. He'd learned all the modes for the machines, what functions they had, what part he had to use for which process. He'd stayed up day and night learning both coffee and drinkmaking alongside his notes in medicine. It's not an easy thing to do at all—hell, he's planning to switch courses by the second year before he drives himself insane.
Which is more the reason why he's tried finding himself ways to destress. It just happens that for someone like Hakuri, he's fallen deeply into the streaming niche as his form of escapism. There's this one small streamer he likes a lot—Goldfish Samurai—what a cute name, Hakuri had first thought, and the way he found him was by pure chance.
Hakuri wasn't exactly the most proficient gamer in the world. In fact, he'd only ever learned of very old games; the ones stuck in old consoles, the ones that old people knew, because that was the only thing he was ever even allowed to touch in the first place. He was lucky if he even got to hold the cartridges—Tenri would say his hands were dirty from working, and Soya would laugh as if everything was so damn funny, and then agree with Tenri and tell him that they didn't need their servant to learn about games because then, it meant he had something for himself, and they just couldn't have that, could they?
They were awful, Hakuri knew that very much, and that was exactly why he stole a dozen cartridges from them—the rare edition ones, which Hakuri later on came to realize; costed a fortune. Like hell he'd sell it off though; they were his now, even if the guilt ate away at him when thinking about how Tenri probably mourned them. It just sucked that he couldn't handle anything anymore in that godforsaken house.
He wasn't even allowed to watch shows with the new, large flat screen TV's—that's what they called them. He remembered the last time he even tried holding the remote—he'd gotten his hand twisted by Soya, asking him what was he thinking by "slacking off".
By now, there was a pattern to him and his family.
He's just glad he's out of it.
Anyway, Hakuri thinks, he doesn't want to think too much about his family—he'd raise the volume by a little, hearing the man's voice finally come to life.
Goldfish Samurai—
He was a streamer Hakuri found while browsing mindlessly. He had around a thousand viewers—certainly not the biggest, but he also wasn't the smallest streamer there is. His chat went slow; it seemed like everyone knew each other there. Hakuri was content being a lurker at first, but something about the streamer was just so enjoyable to watch. Maybe his voice? Hakuri remembered the first time Samurai spoke—Hakuri's brain shortcircuited, even, which was embarassing; but it's not like it didn't matter—one of his tags read ASMR, and Hakuri knew that the people with that tag meant they were aware of how nicely sounding they were.
"Hey everyone," Samurai's voice rang through his earphones, and Hakuri winced as he realized it was a bit too high still. Hakuri lowered it down, tapping his fingers on the counter as no new customer was still walking in. I hope Hinao can get the tech repair guy here quickly, he thinks absentmindedly, before focusing on the stream once again. "I'm sorry I haven't been able to stream for a few days now," he begins, voice still as steady as ever. Hakuri noticed his audio sounded more echo-ey (was that a word, Hakuri thought), and that the mic just sounded… different. Hakuri quickly types in something in the chat.
>>StorageKeeper: hello samurai!! your mic sounds kinda weird!
Hakuri hears a rustle, some more silence, then—
"Oh, hi, Storagekeeper. Yes, the audio is a bit different. That's actually what I wanted to talk about today," Samurai says. Hakuri tries not to giggle—his message got noticed after all! "I just moved into a new place with some help from my uncle, so that's why I haven't streamed lately. I barely got my set-up together, but I didn't want to worry you guys too much," Samurai says, and then more rustling. "Sorry, everyone, my cat's a bit fidgety today."
Hakuri perked up. A cat?
>>StorageKeeper: a cat? did you just adopt?
Samurai chuckles, and Hakuri feels his heart leap as the chat is flooded with questions of the same thing. "No, it isn't my cat technically, it's just… it's my friend's nephew's cat. Let's go with that," Samurai says, and the stream goes silent for a few seconds again, but Hakuri can hear the incessant meowing from the cat, and Samurai chuckles some more, sending butterflies to Hakuri's stomach.
Okay, maybe he did like Samurai a bit more than he wanted to admit to himself. This is fine, I'm not invading his privacy or anything, I'm still normal—
"Anyways," Samurai says, finally closer to the mic; Hakuri assumes he'd put the cat down now, and the chat is asking him when he'll be finally back from streaming. "Mm, I'm planning to go to college soon, so I'm afraid streams will be slower than usual," Samurai says. Hakuri tries not to deflate like a balloon, because Samurai had been the only streamer Hakuri even bothered to keep up with despite the hellish first year. "I'll make sure to still stream at least once a week though, since I do enjoy doing this."
Hakuri feels a smile creeping in on his face. "I'll be off now, everyone. I still have some things to handle. I haven't had coffee for today, too, so I'm a bit tired. Sorry about that, and thank you, everyone. Until next stream," Samurai says, and then the screen fades to black, before the familiar "stream end" screen flashes across his screen with three little goldfish swimming around a fish tank.
Hakuri could only fake-sob as he took off his earphones, lamenting the reality that was now him in the cashier desk without a stream to keep himself distracted with. Hakuri likes to think that every single day he's had now ever since he'd escaped that house—the family—that it's been more than good. It's hard, sure, being a working student, but Hinao is the greatest boss ever; the customers are nice, and his family hasn't bothered to hunt him down.
It's nice. It's good. Samurai's streams are what make a good day even better, and maybe Hakuri needs to make more friends because he needs people to show him around the campus and tag along with him, but he thinks he can do fine just being alone. It's not like there's any bullies in the campus—he'd gotten along through just fine being by himself, and everyone treated him just like any other student. He patted himself in the back for moving far, far away from the city his family dominated—he didn't want to gather attention as a Sazanami sticking out like a sore thumb.
Hakuri taps his fingers into the desk some more, checking in on Hinao once in a while if she needed anything. Hinao only grunted, waving him away, saying she was busy talking to the tech guy through the phone to see if he could assist her in fixing the machine herself so she wouldn't have to pay anything. He opts to leave her alone for now; as long as even one machine was working, he was sure they could make it work.
Thankfully, it was already past lunch, which meant that the first rush hour was over. Students everywhere were always the ones flooding the cafe the most, but there were always a few businessmen coming in. Hakuri always was a little more uncomfortable with those customers; but as long as he didn't see anyone with tied white hair and blue eyes, then he was going to be fine.
Probably.
Before Hakuri can tap his fingers on the counter again (Hinao would scold him for a while, saying it was distracting, but Hakuri begged to differ), the door chimes sound against each other, making that distinctive clinking sound whenever a customer walked in.
Hakuri gulps. "Hello, what can I get for you?" He says, even as he feels his throat run dry as he stares at the customer before him. The man before him had somewhat spiky hair, with red eyes that felt like it was staring right through at him. He was just the tiniest bit shorter compared to Hakuri—he noted that his attire was pretty much all black, save for the pop of red, white, and tricolored goldfish print on the front of his shirt as well as some silver from wearing a necklace.
Hakuri's only thought was this—
They were very, very handsome.
Not the time to be swooning over customers, Hakuri! He scolds himself, and the man in front of him opens his mouth once, twice, like he wants to say something, but he clears his throat once, twice, then scratches the back of his head. "Just a large Americano, please," they say, and Hakuri nods. "What's the name?"
They pause for a second. Then, "Chihiro," he says. "Thank you, you can just sit anywhere you want. It'll take a bit since our machines are messed up," Hakuri says, and the man nods. "It's fine," he says, and Hakuri's off to the back, still thinking about the man. Hinao greets him with a smile, showing off the machine that was somehow fixed after much tinkering. "You're awesome, Hinao," he says. Hinao laughs at him, then straightens up like she had remembered something. "New customer?"
"Yeah. It's fine, it's just one guy," Hakuri says, and Hinao nods, going back to cleaning some more dishes and plates. "Oh, right, one Americano for him…" he says to himself, rummaging through the cabinets and grabbing the beans.
It doesn't take too long to make the order—he loved making americanos for this exact reason, and the guy didn't seem like he'd be the kind of person to make too much small talk. Essentially, he was the perfect customer in Hakuri's books.
"Something about his voice though… It sounded really familiar," Hakuri muttered under his breath, hands grabbing an empty cup and a marker. It probably didn't mean much—he hadn't gotten much sleep yesterday because he stayed up watching an old VOD of Samurai's Minecraft speedrun gameplay. It was fun seeing him fumble the shortcut keys and even the nether teleport building; it was so obvious he was learning how to be as quick as the actual pros. He shook his head, opting to put that thought away as he finally finished making the drink.
He grabs the pen, writing Chihiro's name. Then—
"Oh no, I drew the goldfish in… I hope they don't mind," Hakuri mutters to himself. Hinao was lenient with a lot of things, but if there was anything she absolutely detested, it was wasting even a single paper cup. She'd gone on a long rant about how expensive they were to buy even in batches, and that Hakuri had to make sure he would never waste a single one. He wasn't about to change that now.
Please don't hate it, please don't ask me to change it… Hakuri prayed in his head like a mantra, walking out with the cup on hand. Chihiro is still there, seemingly lost in whatever he was doing, and Hakuri could only sigh in his mind as he set down the cup on his table. "Here's your order, thank you for waiting," Hakuri chimed with that customer service tone he'd always use when he was a bit nervous, and Chihiro's eyes took one look at him, then the cup, moving it around as he opened the lid.
"Oh," Chihiro said, eyes fixed on the goldfish on the cup. It was… wonky looking, Hakuri realized, and he wishes he could have the ground swallow him whole right now. "I'm, uh, sorry? I just saw the goldfish print and thought it was realy nice, and um—"
"Thank you," Chihiro says, giving him a nod. If not for his eyebrows not meeting in the middle, Hakuri would've thought that the man was mad at him. "The goldfish is cute. Thank you for drawing it," he says, and Hakuri is stunned for a moment before he bows. "Thank you for your patronage," Hakuri says awkwardly, and he goes back, wishing the ground swallows him whole. Hinao calls him quickly after to handle some pastry orders that came in, so, as much as Hakuri would love to stare at the tiles, wishing he'd get swallowed by them, he still has a job to do.
Mere minutes pass by before Hinao calls him again. "Hakuri! Come here for a moment," she says, and Hakuri walks back to the front of the store, wiping his hands on his apron. "Some customer left a tip for you," she says, and he takes one look at the tipping stub.
Tip for: Hakuri
Reason: The goldfish doodle was nice. Thank you.
Hakuri felt his mouth run dry. "Uh, wow, um, that's nice of him, I guess?" He says to himself, and in his mind, all he can think of are red eyes and goldfish prints. Hinao looks at him funny, before she smiles to herself. "Hey, wait, don't get the wrong idea!"
"What idea?"
"Miss Hinao!!!"
"Don't call me Hinao, you brat! Go be at the counter, I need to clean more dishes!"
Hakuri could only sigh, smiling exasperatedly.
Life now really was fun.