Chapter Text
Ten days after his mother died, Chuuya Nakahara found himself on the doorstep of his dorm near the Sweet Savoir with two heavy suitcases, ready to spend the upcoming six months here.
Although it was only five am when he arrived, some of the other contestants were already there, he could tell from the sounds coming from other parts of the floor. With a sigh, he let himself in.
The dorm consists of a small bed, a desk and the bathroom. Even though it’s a room with plenty of space, it feels too suffocating. The only thing that makes Chuuya feel better is knowing he will spend most his time at the bakery, rather than here.
Once he puts his suitcases in, he gets out to explore the place and see the other people. While the prospect of making small talk seemes unbearable, he also knows he will eventually need to do it. It’s better to get it over with.
🍮🥄 ˚₊‧
The first person he sees is a boy with lilac and white dyed hair and gray eyes, he has sharp features, but overall he’s got a delicate look to him. The boy couldn’t be older than twenty, he decides. He’s looking into his phone as Chuuya approaches him.
“Hey,”
The boy’s eyes snap up at him, looking alarmed at first. Taking a closer look at him, Chuuya realize he most likely isn’t Japanese.
“Oh uh- Hi, You’re one of the interns too, right?” The boy says,
A contestant for the internships at the Sweet Savoir, is what he means. A prestigous program created by the Michelin star winning chef Arthur Rimbaud, with the goal of choosing a new right hand man for himself.
That’s why Chuuya is here, after all. Despite his old job at a well-known bakery, he wanted more than that for himself.
“Yeah, i’m Chuuya Nakahara,”
The boy held up his hand towards him,
“I’m Sigma”
“Well nice to meet you,” Chuuya doesn’t really care. There is no reason to be close with anyone he will meet here, he only has one goal and that is all that mattered.
“Uh- do you know anyone else?” Sigma says, glancing back to everyone else in the room.
“Nah, i just got here, i’m here to meet everyone,” It’s the first time Chuuya really looks around, there are three other people in the room.
Two girls, and another guy standing alone.
Isn’t there supposed to be six interns?
Someone hasn’t arrived yet.
One of the girls, the one with bright red hair, notices Chuuya looking around and comes towards him, stringing the other girl with faded pink hair by her hand.
She looks at Sigma and Chuuya before speaking,
“Hi, I’m Lucy,” she then gestures towards the other, “this is Louisa” They probably are foreigners like Sigma, Chuuya assumes from their way of speaking Japanese.
“Nice to meet you two,” She has a soft voice, her accent sounds like the one of an english speaker.
“What about him?” Sigma says, tilting his head towards the other boy who hasn’t even looked up to them since they came in.
“That’s Akutagawa, he’s not the most..talkative, sorry about that,”
“Oh, you know him?” Chuuya asks.
“Yeah, we went to the same school” Lucy says.
“Okay, um, cool,” The eye contact is getting really uncomfortable, he isn’t sure what to do next.
“Do we know anything about the other intern? The one that’s not here?” He asks.
“I heard he has a lot of certifications from past experiences, must be very talented,” Sigma replies.
He swiftly moves towards the door to explore around a bit more. While the others are deep into their talk, he slides out the door.
🍮🥄 ˚₊‧
Even though it’s early, the Sweet Savoir must already be open, he thinks. All the bakeries Chuuya previously worked and studied at opens at 5am latest, and it would be naive to assume one of the biggest bakeries in the Japan would be closed at such an hour.
The chill breeze of October welcomes him out of the hotel and into the streets of Yokohama.
It is hard to believe the last time he was here, everything was so different, he was so different. Between those two years he wasn’t in Yokohama, he’d become a completely new version of himself, or at least that’s what he wanted to believe.
The Sweet Savoir is a ten minute walk from the hotel, located in the eastern part of Yokohama and as he walks, he wonders if the bakery had changed a lot. Despite the early hour, the city is bright with apartment lights and loud with the thundering sound of cars and the harsh waves against the port. The bakery isn’t far away from the shoreline, Chuuya rememberes all the times he’d eat there with his friends, with the noises from the harbor.
He’s still sleepy from the early train he took in the morning, with every step he takes, his eyes threathen to close.
The closer he gets to the bakery, a part of him starts worrying if coming here, all the way back to Yokohama was the right choice. He probably would’ve never done it if his mother was still alive. The only thing that pushed him to come back was her passing and now? He has no choice but to win that internship and become Chef Rimbaud’s right hand. Still, a part of him misses the routine he had back at his job in Lyon, he knew everything and what to do at all times but now he is stuck with new people, in a new environment left to fend for himself.
🍮🥄 ˚₊‧
Once he makes it in front of the Sweet Savoir, the lights of the two-story building are already on. He checks his phone. It’s almost five thirty now. Reaching for the door, he makes his way inside. The display cases are empty, which makes sense considering the pasteries are still being baked. Despite coming here many times, Chuuya isn’t sure where the bakers might be, so he looks around for a little bit before slightly opening the door.
There stands Chef Rimbaud with..someone else? A man probably younger than Chuuya is there with a big smile on his face, he has chestnut eyes and darker brown hair. Whatever he’s saying makes the Chef laugh. A lot.
Chuuya doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, he just assumed the Chef would be on his own or with his workers at least. This guy doesn’t seem like he workes there. Is he the last intern? It probably wouldn’t be a problem if Chuuya just went in. He was already familiar with Chef Rimbaud from his younger days at Paris, after all. Three years ago, when he was 20 and still studying, the Chef had come to his school to do one-on-one’s with students. Chuuya didn’t doubt that helped him on his portfolio when he got accepted into the internship.
With that thought, he lets himself inside the room. There are two more people he hadn’t seen until that moment, he assumes they are the other bakers working here. A woman with short black hair with purple highlights and a tall, blond man.
“Good morning, Chef,”
Rimbaud turns around to fully face Chuuya.
“Oh, good morning Chuuya, how was your trip here?”
“Pretty good, i arrived two hours ago,”
The Chef looks at the brown haired guy then back at Chuuya before asking,
“Have you two met each other?”
“No,” Chuuya says looking at the other man, “I’m Chuuya-”
“Oh I know who you are— I already checked the names and qualifications of all the interns,”
Chuuya doesn’t want to get mad this early in the morning, he really doesn’t.
“I know you went to school in Paris and worked in Lyon for 2 years, you also love to dance through your baking, at least that’s what Chef Rimbaud here told me,”
Chuuya takes in a deep breath, “What are you talking about?”
“You follow each instruction with a rhythm, every move you make has a beat when baking, so you dance,”
“..Sure” He looks back, and sees everyone in the kitchen watching them with an amused smile.
“What was I saying?” His mind turned into mush as he tries to understand what the man in front of him is babbling about.
“I’m Dazai by the way,”
“Great,”
Great, that’s all this was. It was all the human interaction Chuuya needed for the rest of the day. If he had that kind of choice, that is.
🍮🥄 ˚₊‧
“Chuuya, Dazai, meet my bakers,” Rimbaud says, gesturing towards the blond man and purple haired woman.
“Kunikida, Yosano, you already met Dazai, and this is Chuuya,”
“Nice to meet you two,” Yosano said, while Kunikida only acknowlaged with a nod.
“Do we wait for the others to get here now?” Chuuya isn’t sure if the training will start today or not.
“We’ll take today as a -getting to know each other- period, the actual training will start tomorrow, for now, there are some more people i want everyone to meet,”
Later, when the rest of them came in, it’s around six. Sigma, Lucy and Louisa are still sticking together. But Chuuya doesn’t miss the souring in Dazai’s expression when he sees Akutagawa walk in.
Huh. He would question that more later.
While the others were meeting Yosano and Kunikida, Chuuya stood by the side with Dazai.
“Why do you know all of that about me?”
“I told you i did my research, you have to know some stuff about the people you’re competing against anyway,”
As annoying as that sounds, he’s right. Knowing more about the people you’re competing with could give you an upper hand, Chuuya supposes. He never thought about doing that kind of research, as he had no doubts about beating anyone, but now, thinking about it, it doesn’t sound so stupid.
“How old are you?” he askes.
“Twenty-one,” So he was younger than Chuuya.
Back when Chef Rimbaud came to visit them in Paris, while Chuuya was still a student, he could see that the Chef had taken quite a liking towards him. If it didn’t sound too self-centered, he would even say he was probably the Chef’s favourite student there. Back then, he’d made a pistachio danish from scratch perfectly well, even he was impressed with himself.
He finished that school as the top student.
“Why did you come here?” Chuuya asked.
“Do you want an honest answer?”
“Yeah, of course,” Dazai shruggs,
“I want to meet new people and learn new recipes, that’s it,”
Really?, Chuuya wanted to ask. This isn’t the place for something like that.
You can learn new recipes at home too, can’t you? He comes to the conclusion that Dazai was lying, because no one with the enough capabilities to get accepted into here would simply be there to ‘make friends’ or ‘learn something new’.
“Okay,” He ends up saying.
Their conversation ends quickly after that, as the actual shifts of the Sweet Savoir are about to begin. Yosano and Kunikida did pretty much all the work, now the inside of the bakery is filled with different pastries.
The main waiters of the bakery arrive soon after that. There are three of them in total, despite the large amount of customers it attracts.
The head waiter’s name is Fyodor, he seems to be around Chuuya’s age with black hair and piercing violet eyes. The other two consists of a younger boy called Atsushi and another man named Ranpo.
After meeting them, it’s time to learn about the inner workings of Sweet Savoir.
“Our shifts as bakers begin at four am and end at ten pm. The shifts here are seperated into three parts as morning, lunch, and night. While during morning and lunch we only serve pastries, when it comes to night, we also serve alcohol. We operate as a seasonal bakery, which means our pastries change depending on the season.” Rimbaud continues,
“As for how your performance will be evaluated, I will be following your progress and you will have an exam at the end of October, February, April and June. For each season, you will have one team pastry to make and one individual. Your points from the exams and your general points from behaviour will be added up and that is how I will choose which of you is going to be staying here with me.”
Well, that just made the environment really tense.
It’s a sharp reminder that these people are not and can’t be Chuuya’s friends. They are all his rivals, all people he needs to surpass. Getting close with them will only make things complicated and that is the last thing he wants to do right now. All he needs to do is focus on the goal, and that goal is coming out by Rimbaud’s side and beating everyone else.
He has to show himself that it’s not over yet, there’s still more to do in life.
🍮🥄 ˚₊‧
When the clock hits nine, the doors open and starts letting customers in. It’s first time Chuuya is seeing a bakery as big as the Sweet Savoir work in real time. His old job was at a relatively infamous bakery, but seeing it like this is a different experience. Now the bakers are taking their break at the back of the building, while the interns sit at one of the tables in the dining room. Chuuya observes what the customers order, to understand what the majority of the demand is for.
An old couple, who seem like regulars, order a vanilla flower cake. Another, this time, younger couple simply order two croissants. It’s almost fun to watch how fast the waiters move, Chuuya doesn’t doubt all this crowd is hard to keep up with. At some point, Atsushi runs into Fyodor, getting him some grumbles in return.
People watching is one of Chuuya’s habits that never change, no matter where he was in life. Sometimes he observes strangers, to create stories about them in his head, even though he’ll probably never know if they’re true or not, and put those stories into something physical at the end of the day. They sometimes come to life as short passages, sometimes as poems, or as little sketches.
The shifts ended in a flash while he is busy composing different lives in his head.
🍮🥄 ˚₊‧
The night is dismal, with each day passing the weather makes it clear that winter is approaching. The interns walk through Yokohama as the thick veiled fog settles on the city. Even though the road is quite short, Chuuya regrets not taking the bus, as it is way too cold to be walking out. The wind brushes against them ina harsh manner with every step they take.
The hotel is a huge skyscraper, and their rooms are on the 32nd floor. It is a beautiful hotel where you can easily see the sea and the rest of Yokohama.
Once they make it back to their floor, Dazai approaches Chuuya.
“So what did you think about today?” he asks.
“Mm it was fine, i just want to get started tomorrow,” Chuuya says, and now that he as looking at the man in front of him a little closer, he realized how thin and sulken he looks, his eyebags are almost purple-ish. Still, he is very attractive, without a doubt. Not that it matters.
Dazai hums, “Do you want to..sit in the lobby for a minute?,”
“..Okay,”
Chuuya moves towards one of the blue couches in the lobby, near the window where you can see the lights of the city.
When they sit down, Dazai begins to speak,
“I want to get to know everyone, and I feel like i’ve talked to you the least so..”
“What do you want to know?” Chuuya doesn’t understand the point of this conversation. He has no reason to be friends with anyone here, so why was Dazai trying to do that?
“I think you already know everything you need to,”
“I know enough about your professional life but almost nothing about you, so tell me about yourself,” Dazai tilts his head, he’s like a cat, Chuuya thinks.
“I haven’t really seen you talk to anyone else either, I assume you don’t know much about others,”
“Yeah? What do you know about them?”
“Like how Sigma’s favourite thing to bake is chocolatte chip cookies, or how Lucy has a collection of dried flowers, or maybe how Louisa loves to crochet? We will be together for six months, don’t you think it would be nice to know each other a little—”
“I think we should go to sleep. We need to be up earlier than 4am, right? Let’s just go, Dazai,”
Dazai only stares at him with an expression that says no need to cut me off like that. Chuuya really has no more energy in him to talk, so the other would have to deal with it.
🍮🥄 ˚₊‧
His room is number 322. When he looks back, he sees that Dazai is still sitting where he left him, looking at his phone. With one last look back, he enters the room and throws himself on the bed. Today was way too tiring for his liking, even though he hasn’t really done anything. After laying down for ten minutes, he gets up to get ready for sleep.
He opens his large suitcase, digging through it a little to find his pyjamas to throw it on and flop himself back on the bed. And while laying down, he thinks about everyone he met, and all the strangers he noticed before taking his ‘everything notebook’ into his hands. He takes a look at all the previous poems and short stories he wrote and the doodles he did. He was in the mood for a little sketching tonight. He created little doodles of the people he met today as well as the workers at the Sweet Savoir. He created a doodle of Atsushi bumping into Fyodor, of Lucy and Louisa interlocking arms everywhere they go despite not knowing each other for more than ten hours, of Sigma’s smile and of Dazai and Akutagawa, who he really hasn’t understood anything about yet.
Tomorrow, the real competition will begin.
Tomorrow, will be his first chance to prove himself to Chef Rimbaud.
Tomorrow, will be his first step at beating everyone else.
Tomorrow will be a long day.