Part 1
Coffee, in its most basic form, was just a bean that had been burned, ground, and drowned in hot water until it tasted like something worth paying for.
That was the least romantic way to describe it. But there was also a more generous version — coffee as ritual. The small ceremony that separated a morning from whatever came before it. Millions of people, every single day, treated the first cup as a kind of border crossing :
On one side, sleep and everything unfinished about it. On the other, the version of themselves expected to function.
Makoto Yuki had never fully bought into that second interpretation.
To him, coffee was closer to a bribe. Something society had collectively agreed to hand over in exchange for pretending the morning hadn't happened yet. It didn't erase the tiredness. It just gave the tiredness something to hold while everyone got on with their day.
Which was, he thought, a fairly accurate summary of his current situation — except he hadn't gotten around to accepting the bribe. The cup in front of him had been full for six minutes. Steam had stopped rising two minutes ago. At this rate it would hit room temperature before it ever reached his mouth, and the whole transaction would end in a draw.
Around him, the café had no such reservations about the morning. It was loud in the specific, layered way weekend mornings always were — chairs scraping, the espresso machine hissing through another order, someone two tables over defending a theory about a rigged vending machine like it was a matter of academic record.
None of it reached Makoto directly. It arrived the way sound arrives underwater — present, but muffled, filtered through the arm he currently had his forehead pressed against.
"Are you still alive?"
Fuuka's voice came from across the table, unbothered, chin resting on one hand.
Makoto shifted, just enough to crack one eye open and peer at her over the edge of his own arm. The look he gave her carried the full, deliberate laziness of someone who resented being asked a question that required a verbal answer.
"Senpai," he said, muffled. "Do you not have any friends?"
"That's harsh." Fuuka didn't even blink. "If I did, I'd have a hundred of them."
"I see." Makoto's head sank back down against his arm. "So, none, then."
He let his gaze drift across the café instead, taking in the noise properly for the first time since sitting down. Tables full of teenagers leaning too close, laughing too easily, someone's hand finding someone else's across a table with the kind of transparent casualness that fooled absolutely no one.
"Where," he said, "are they getting all that energy from?"
"Haha, that's what they call the hormones of youth, isn't it?"
Makoto turned his head toward her, one eyebrow lifting with the particular wariness of someone who could already tell the conversation was about to go somewhere he hadn't agreed to.
"...Huh?"
"You know how it is." Fuuka propped her chin on one hand, entirely unbothered. "Girls are famous for never shutting their mouths, and boys are famous for a certain kind of energy they can't quite keep under control. Together it makes some sort of pheromone — an aura that pulls all the girls in." She gestured vaguely at the room. "Just watch. Who knows what mischief is waiting to happen tonight, while they're all still wrapped up in this sweet little atmosphere."
Makoto turned to look around properly.
Sunday, in full swing.
"...Good grief." He turned back around. "How filthy."
Fuuka took a sip of her coffee. Makoto, after a moment of consideration, did the same.
"Don't you think it's a blessing?" Fuuka set her cup down, tilting her head toward him with the smugness of someone very pleased with the premise. "Getting invited out by your beautiful senpai, to color your youth on a Sunday — something you'll get to look back on someday."
Makoto ignored this entirely. He picked up his spoon and began stirring his coffee with an unnecessary, almost ceremonial degree of elegance, as though the motion itself deserved more attention than anything she'd just said.
"Two thousand points," he said instead, "for a single cup of coffee. Your standards exist somewhere outside the range of my comprehension." He glanced at her. "Do you actually like this stuff?"
"Ugh." Fuuka wrinkled her nose. "Honestly? It tastes like garbage." A beat. "But it's aesthetic. So it counts."
"Should I do a backflip." Makoto's voice stayed completely flat. "You really are something. Wow."
"What else am I supposed to do?" Fuuka shrugged, entirely unbothered by her own logic. "I was bored. And when I'm bored, I bother people. And when I bother people, someone has to be the victim." She looked at him, pleasant and merciless in equal measure. "You happen to be perfect for the role. You should feel honored."
"...I'm deeply moved." Makoto set his spoon down. "Farewell."
"Ahh—" Fuuka's hand drifted up to her left eye, her expression shifting into something faintly wounded. "Now that I think about it, this still kind of hurts."
Makoto, who had already half-risen from his seat in what could generously be called an escape attempt, paused. He looked at her.
Really?
He sat back down without a word, the look on his face doing all the necessary commentary on its own.
"Tch."
"Ahh." Fuuka smiled, entirely too pleased with herself. "It really is nice, having such a cute kouhai."
Makoto exhaled slowly through his nose, already regretting several of his recent life choices.
"So," he said, "are we going to do that filthy hormone-of-youth thing too, then?"
"Pffft—"
The sound came a half-second before the coffee did. Fuuka choked on her own drink and sprayed it directly across Makoto's face, then dissolved into a fit of coughing that, to anyone else watching, would have looked like a straightforward accident.
Makoto knew better.
He'd felt it land the moment the words left his mouth — the specific, deliberate quality of someone stepping on a landmine they'd planted themselves.
"Cough— cough— What's wrong with you, all soaked like that?"
"...I wasn't expecting rain." Makoto wiped his face with a napkin, his voice carrying no particular emotion about the situation.
"Oh, how strange. Rain that comes with caffeine in it." Fuka sip her coffee again
Makoto exhaled, setting the napkin down. "How about you just try getting a boyfriend."
"Oh?" Fuuka tilted her head, entirely delighted by the suggestion. "And you think there's someone out there who'd actually qualify?"
"...Your standards?"
"Hm, fair point." She considered this with the seriousness of someone reviewing an actual checklist. "He'd have to look impressive to everyone else. Respected. Competent. Fun to be around. Tall. Handsome. And capable of appreciating high-tier beauty like mine."
"Nagumo-senpai—?"
"Pffff—"
The second spray hit before Makoto had even finished the name, wetter and more thorough than the first.
"..." Makoto sat there for a moment, in the specific silence of someone recalculating whether this had been worth saying at all.
"Ah, sorry, did you say something?"
"I said Nagum—"
Fuuka's hand closed around his cup before he could finish. She tipped it, unceremoniously, directly over his head.
"Ah—" Makoto was, by this point, thoroughly and completely soaked, coffee running down from his hair to his collar. Around them, the café had gone quiet enough to notice — heads turning from nearby tables, a few whispered exchanges starting up behind raised hands, someone's phone tilting subtly in their direction.
"Sorry, did you say something?"
"No..." Makoto stared at her, dripping. "...I didn't say anything."
For reasons he couldn't fully articulate — reasons that had less to do with logic and more to do with the sheer, escalating consistency of her reactions — Makoto had arrived at one fairly confident conclusion.
Kiryuuin Fuuka did not like Nagumo.
Part 2
Makoto walked through the dormitory corridor at a slightly faster pace than usual.
The smell of latte still clung stubbornly to his uniform, following him with every step. There was also a faint headache beginning to form behind his eyes.
He wanted one thing.
A shower.
That was all.
As he reached the intersection leading toward the elevators, the rhythmic tapping of a cane echoed through the corridor.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Sakayanagi Arisu stood beside the elevator.
Kamuro Masumi was with her, wearing her usual expression of mild boredom.
Sakayanagi noticed Makoto approaching.
"Oh, good afternoon, Yuki-kun."
Makoto continued walking.
"I wanted to congratulate you on your examination results. Scoring one hundred in every subject was quite a bold statement."
Makoto didn't stop.
He didn't even look at her.
Kamuro frowned.
"Hey. Didn't you hear her?"
Makoto kept walking.
"Sakayanagi is talking to you."
He passed them.
His lips moved slightly.
"Don't know... don't care..."
A brief pause.
"I don't give a fuck."
The elevator doors opened.
Makoto stepped inside.
They closed behind him.
For several seconds, neither girl said anything.
Kamuro blinked.
"...Did he just swear?"
Sakayanagi's smile remained.
She tilted her head slightly.
The faint smell of coffee still lingered in the corridor.
"Fufu..."
Her fingers rested lightly against the handle of her cane.
"Who could have made him like that?"
Tap.
She turned toward the elevator.
"How curious. It seems we happened to meet Yuki-kun at an unfortunate time, Masumi-san."