#mwms

Not like a machine breaking. Not a panel popping off or a pipe bursting. The metal warped outward from the center, peeling back like skin, and something black and wet and wrong pushed through the gap with a sound like tearing fabric soaked in oil. Thick, tar-like liquid oozed down the counter, pooling on the floor in streaks that moved against gravity, crawling upward along the walls in slow, deliberate tendrils.

But here's the thing.

You couldn't see what was making it happen. There was nothing there. Just the broken machine, the spreading dark liquid, and a pressure in the air so heavy it felt like the room had shrunk three sizes.

Your body, however, did not need to see it to know. Every nerve ending you possessed had collectively decided that whatever was happening was categorically, fundamentally bad, and that you should be anywhere else.

The lights went out. All of them. Every single one. The café plunged into a dim, grey half-light filtered through the dirty windows. The only illumination came from the faint green glow of the emergency exit sign above the back door and the pale light leaking through the clouds outside.

And then something invisible hit you.

The force slammed into your chest like a freight train. Your feet left the ground. Your back hit the pastry display case with a sickening crack of shattering glass, and you crumpled to the floor among broken shelving and scattered muffins, the wind driven completely out of your lungs.

Pain. Immediate, blinding, real. Your vision whited out at the edges. Glass bit into your palms as you tried to push yourself up. Your ribs ached in a way that suggested at least one of them had a strong opinion about what just happened.

And then –

Terror.

Not the normal kind. Not the "oh no, I'm going to be late for work" kind, or the "Greg just did something stupid" kind, or even the "a strange man with pigtails just tried to rob a bank for me" kind.

This was something primal. Something animal. The ancient horror of a creature that has suddenly realized it is prey.

Your heart hammered so hard it felt like it was trying to break out of your chest. Your vision blurred. Your hands shook. Every thought in your head condensed into a single, screaming imperative: run run run run run–

And then you saw it.

Like someone had ripped a film from your eyes. Like reality had been playing with a filter this entire time and someone had just switched it off. The world shifted. Or rather, your perception of it did, with a nauseating lurch that felt like stepping off a curb you didn't know was there.

The thing that had been living inside your espresso machine was hovering three feet above the counter.

It was enormous.

The shape of it defied easy description. A writhing, asymmetrical mass of dark, oily flesh that pulsed and contracted like a lung. It had too many mouths. They opened and closed across its surface in no discernible pattern, each one ringed with blunt, coffee stained teeth and leaking that same black, tar-like substance. Thick, segmented limbs. Six, eight, you couldn't count because they kept retracting and re-emerging. They jutted from its body at wrong angles, each ending in flat, circular pads that looked disturbingly like the bottom of an espresso tamper.

And at its center, embedded in the swollen flesh, was the remains of the espresso machine's portafilter, fused into the creature's body like a metallic heart.

Your brain, faced with information it had absolutely zero framework for processing, did the only reasonable thing. It stalled.

You knelt there on the floor, glass in your palms, blood on your fingers, staring at a monster made of coffee and malice, and your only coherent thought was: Nanami was right. They were all right. The espresso machine was literally, actually cursed.

The creature's mouths opened in unison and released a shriek. A high, vibrating frequency that shattered the remaining glass in the pastry case and sent a cascade of sugar packets flying off the counter.

You couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except kneel there and watch as the thing swiveled its bulk toward you with agonizing, predatory slowness.

Several of its mouths smiled.

This was it. This was how you died. Not in a blaze of glory, not saving a puppy from a burning building, not even doing something remotely dignified. You were going to be killed by your own workplace equipment that had somehow achieved sentience and decided to eat you. Your obituary was going to be the worst thing anyone had ever read.

Geto, still seated at his table, tilted his head. His expression hadn't changed. If anything, he looked mildly entertained, the way someone watches a nature documentary about a gazelle and a crocodile. He made no move to stand. No move to help. Just sat there, fingers laced, smile patient, like he was waiting for the credits to roll.

The creature lunged.

You squeezed your eyes shut.

THOOM.

The impact never came.

The sound that filled the café was deep. Not loud, exactly, but heavy.

You opened your eyes.

Beanie stood between you and the creature. He had moved faster than anything that large and that ridiculous looking had any right to move. He stood with one stubby arm extended, palm flat against the creature's bulk, holding it at bay with a force that made the air around his hand distort and ripple like heat off asphalt. The creature writhed against his grip, its many mouths gnashing and screeching, that oily black substance splattering across Beanie's costume in thick, hissing streaks.

Beanie did not flinch.

Beanie did not make a sound.

He just stood there, in his enormous, stained, nightmarish coffee bean costume, holding back a literal monster with one arm, his stitched-on smile still stretched wide and serene, those glossy hollow eyes still staring forward into nothing and everything.

You were going to need therapy. So much therapy. An amount of therapy that probably hadn't been invented yet.

The creature shrieked again and lashed out with several of its tamper tipped limbs, slamming them into Beanie's sides, his head, his torso. The impacts made dull, resonant thuds that sounded like someone hitting a punching bag filled with concrete. Beanie absorbed every single one without moving an inch.

Then Beanie pushed.

One motion. Short, decisive, impossibly powerful. The creature flew backward, crashing through the counter, through the wall behind it, and into the back room with a sound like a building collapsing. Bags of coffee grounds exploded. A shelf of syrups toppled.

Somewhere in the wreckage, you heard Greg scream, "WHAT THE–" followed by the unmistakable sound of the back door slamming as Greg achieved a new land-speed record for fleeing the premises.

Beanie followed the creature into the back room. The sounds that came next were violent and brief. Wet impacts, cracking, more shrieking that cut off abruptly in the middle.

Then silence.

A minute passed. Maybe two.

Beanie reemerged from the storage room, walking at his usual pace. Slow, deliberate, unhurried. His costume was splattered in black residue. One of his stubby arms was slightly bent at an angle that suggested it had been stressed beyond its intended range. But he was intact. Upright. Undamaged in any way that seemed to matter.

He returned to his usual spot by the door. Stood still. Resumed staring at nothing. Like it hadn't happened.

You were breathing so hard you could hear it echoing off the walls. Your hands were shaking. Your vision kept swimming in and out of focus, and the new layer of perception that had been violently stapled to your consciousness was still very much active, showing you things you desperately did not want to see. Faint, shimmering distortions in the air, dark residue clinging to surfaces like oil stains, a thin haze of something that pulsed and ebbed around Beanie's silhouette like a second skin.

And around Geto. A lot of it around Geto. Dense and coiled and wrong.

Geto stood. Finally. He straightened his robes with a precise, practiced motion, adjusted the gold garment draped over his shoulders, and walked – strolled, really, the bastard – toward the back room.

He didn't even glance at you. Just passed by like you were furniture.

You heard him enter the back. There was a pause. Then a soft sound. Something contracting, compressing. Like air being squeezed out of a balloon.

Geto reappeared a moment later, holding something between his thumb and forefinger. A small, round, black orb.

"Weak," he murmured to himself, examining the orb with the clinical detachment of a jeweler appraising a subpar gemstone. "But it had time to grow, I'll give it that. Years of negative emotion in one location. Not bad for a low-grade."

And then –

He put it in his mouth.

And swallowed.

You watched, from the floor, covered in glass and pastry debris and your own blood, as Suguru Geto swallowed a black orb that had previously been a monster that had lived inside your espresso machine.

His throat bobbed once. His expression pinched just briefly, a micro-flinch of disgust that passed almost too quickly to catch. Like someone who'd just taken a shot of something foul.

Then it was gone. And he was smiling again.

"Hm. Burnt," he said mildly, as if commenting on the flavor of a disappointing appetizer.

Your mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"What," you said.

Geto looked at you. Really looked at you, for what felt like the first time. His gaze was assessing, curious and something else. Something almost like surprise.

"Oh," he said, raising an eyebrow. "You can see now."

You stared at him.

"I didn't expect that," he admitted, almost to himself. Then he smiled. That slow, deliberate, deeply fake smile. "How unfortunate for you."

"What," you repeated, because your brain had not yet recovered enough processing power to generate any other word.

Geto tucked a strand of loose hair behind his ear, surveying the devastation of the café. The shattered counter, the broken display case, the black streaks on every surface, the gaping hole in the wall leading to the back room then he let out a small, satisfied sigh.

"Well. This has been mildly entertaining." His gaze flickered to Beanie, lingering for a moment with something that might have been grudging respect. Or annoyance. Hard to tell with him. "I suppose that thing earned its paycheck today."

You were still on the floor. You were still bleeding. The world was still doing that horrible new thing where you could see translucent, shimmering distortions in the air that you were certain had not been there yesterday.

You opened your mouth to say "what" a third time but then –

The café door slammed open.

"Hey, we brought – HOLY SHIT."

Yuji Itadori stood in the doorway, a plastic bag from a convenience store dangling from one hand, the other frozen midwave. His eyes swept the café. The wreckage, the black streaks, you on the floor, Geto standing calmly in the middle of it all like a man at a wine tasting. His face went through approximately nine emotions in two seconds, starting with shock and ending somewhere around existential horror.

Behind him, Choso went rigid. His brown eyes locked onto you – on the floor, in the glass, bleeding, and something in his expression shifted so fast it was like watching a switch flip. The perpetual, lowkey blankness of his face cracked wide open, replaced by something raw and sharp and dangerous.

He moved before Yuji could even finish processing the scene. Three long strides and he was at your side, dropping to a crouch, his hands hovering over you like he was afraid touching you might break something.

"Barista." His voice came out low. Strained. "Who did this to you."

It wasn't a question. It was a demand for a target.

"Nobody – I mean, the espresso machine – it –" You gestured vaguely at the destroyed counter, the hole in the wall, the general state of everything. Words were not cooperating. "It was a – there was a – Choso, what the fuck is happening?"

Choso's gaze snapped to Geto, who was still standing there, still smiling, still looking like a man who had never been inconvenienced by anything in his life.

"You." Choso's voice dropped a full register. "You were here."

Geto tilted his head, the motion almost birdlike. "I was."

"And you did nothing."

Geto's smile did not waver. "The mascot handled it. I simply… cleaned up."

Something pulsed in the air around Choso. It was subtle. You wouldn't have noticed it before. Before, when you couldn't see whatever the hell all this was. But now you could feel it: a pressure, heavy and warm, radiating from him in waves that made the atmosphere crackle.

"Choso," Yuji said carefully, setting the convenience store bag down with the gentle precision of someone trying very hard not to trigger a bomb. "Choso, hey, let's – let's take a breath, okay?"

Choso did not take a breath. Choso looked like he was calculating exactly how many steps it would take to reach Geto and how many of those steps he could eliminate by launching himself directly.

"Enough," you croaked, because your brain had finally rebooted past the Blue Screen of Death and landed on a single priority. You grabbed Choso's sleeve, the fabric of his white robe was rough under your cut fingers, and pulled. Hard. "Enough. Sit down. Nobody is killing anyone. I need someone to explain what the hell is going on."

Choso looked at you. Then at your bleeding hands gripping his sleeve. Something in his expression softened, just a fraction at the edges, and the pressure in the air eased.

"You are injured," he said quietly, as if this was the only thing in the room that mattered.

"I'm aware. I'll live. Sit."

He sat. Right there on the floor next to you, amidst the broken glass and coffee grounds and pastry shrapnel, folding his long legs beneath him like a man settling in for a very serious conversation.

Yuji, across the room, exhaled so hard his cheeks puffed out. He ran both hands through his pink hair, looked at the ceiling like he was appealing to a higher power, and then looked back down at you.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. So. Uh."

"Yuji."

"Yeah?"

"I saw a monster come out of my espresso machine. It was made of coffee and nightmares and it had teeth where teeth should not be. It tried to kill me. Beanie –" you pointed at Beanie, who was standing silently in his corner, still splattered in black residue, still somehow projecting an aura of total, unbothered calm "– punched it into a wall. And then that guy –" you pointed at Geto, who gave a small, mocking wave "– turned it into a marble and ate it. Like a snack."

Yuji's face crumpled. "Yeah. Okay. That's – yeah."

"And now I can see things that I definitely could not see before. There are weird… shimmers. In the air. Around people. Around Beanie. Around him." You jerked your chin toward Geto.

Yuji swallowed visibly. "Right. So. About that."

"Yuji." Your voice was very calm. Dangerously calm. The kind of calm that preceded either a breakthrough or a breakdown, and you honestly weren't sure which one was incoming. "I have worked in this café for years. I have served drinks to a man who speaks exclusively in rice ball ingredients. I have witnessed a fully grown adult lose a psychological war against a guy who stares at muffins. I have been tipped in cursed artifacts and had a man try to rob a bank because I said I was tired. I have dealt with all of this – all of it – without asking a single question, because ignorance is free and therapy is not."

You took a breath.

"But a creature just crawled out of my espresso machine and tried to eat me. So. I am asking now. What. Is. Going. On."

Yuji sat down on the floor across from you, cross-legged, like you were both in kindergarten and he was about to explain why we don't eat glue.

"Okay," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "So. You know how some people believe in, like, ghosts and stuff?"

"Yuji."

"Right, right, skipping the intro." He took a deep breath. "They're real. Kind of. Not ghosts, exactly, but – they're called cursed spirits. Curses. They're… beings. Made from negative energy. Like, when people feel bad about stuff – fear, anger, sadness, whatever – that energy leaks out and builds up, and eventually it turns into one of those things." He gestured vaguely toward the destroyed back room.

You stared at him. "You're telling me that monster was made of bad vibes."

"Basically, yeah."

You closed your eyes. "Continue."

"They're invisible to normal people. Regular humans can't see them, can't touch them, can't interact with them at all. They just… exist. In the background. Feeding off negative emotions. That's why places like hospitals and schools and –" He glanced around the café. "– workplaces tend to attract them. Lots of negativity in one spot."

You slowly opened your eyes and looked at the shattered remains of your espresso machine.

For years. That thing had been inside the machine for probably longer than you'd worked here, growing fat on the collective misery of every overworked barista, every entitled customer, every soul crushing morning rush, every single one of Greg's management decisions. Feeding on years of bad tips and worse attitudes and underpaid suffering.

"So it was eating my depression," you said flatly.

Yuji winced. "That's… one way to put it."

"And all of you –" You looked between Yuji, Choso, and Geto. Your gaze lingered on Geto, who was listening with the amused patience of a spectator at a mildly interesting lecture. "You can all see these things."

Yuji nodded. "We're, uh. We're jujutsu sorcerers. Kind of. It's – it's like a job. We fight curses, protect people. There's a whole school for it and everything."

The dominoes started falling.

Every single bizarre, inexplicable interaction from the past months rearranged itself in your head with sickening clarity.

Nanami and Ino hadn't been LARPing. They had been genuinely trying to exorcise Beanie. Those invisible attacks, the stances, the "he blocked it" – all of it had been real. You just couldn't see it. Choso's creepy protection charm – the one Yuji had desperately snatched away – wasn't an overpriced trinket from a gift shop. It was an actual protection charm. That actually protected against actual curses.

Every single person who had ever looked at the espresso machine and said it was cursed had been stating a literal fact while you stood there, nodding politely, thinking they were all insane.

"Oh my god," you whispered. "Gojo."

Yuji tensed. "What about him?"

"Is he one too?"

Yuji's expression shifted into something complicated. Half pride, half resignation. "He's, uh. Kind of the strongest one."

Of course he was. Of course the most annoying human being you had ever met in your entire life was the strongest magical warrior or whatever the hell these people called themselves.

"And your alter ego thing. The face tattoos. The red eyes. The four-eyed villain cosplay. That wasn't an alter ego."

Yuji went very quiet. His fingers curled into his knees. "No," he said softly. "That was… something else. A curse that – it's a long story. But no, that wasn't me. That was a very, very bad guy who happens to be, uh, sharing my body."

An actual demon had been possessing Yuji Itadori, golden retriever incarnate, and you had just handed him a black coffee and told him to enjoy it.

You needed to sit down. You were already sitting. You needed to lie down.

Choso, who had been silent through all of this, spoke. "The barista can see now." His voice was measured, careful, but there was an undercurrent to it. Something tight and wound. "This is permanent."

Yuji's jaw worked. "Yeah. Probably. When a normal person – when someone who doesn't usually see curses gets put in a life or death situation, the fear and stuff can, like, force their cursed energy to spike high enough that their perception shifts. And once you can see them…" He trailed off.

"You can't unsee them," you finished.

Yuji looked at the floor. "Yeah."

Geto, who had been leaning against the wall this entire time, arms folded, watching the exposition unfold with the detached pleasure of a theatergoer at an opening night, pushed off and took a step toward the door.

"Delightful," he said lightly. "Truly. A monkey gains a little sight and suddenly the whole world has to stop and hold its hand."

Choso stood so fast the movement barely registered. One second he was seated. The next he was on his feet, angled between you and Geto, that low, heavy pressure radiating from him again.

"Call them that again," Choso said, very quietly.

Geto looked at him. His smile didn't falter, but something in his eyes sharpened – a flash of genuine interest, maybe. Or calculation.

"My," he murmured. "Protective."

"Choso," Yuji warned.

Geto chuckled low, unbothered sound and raised a hand in a casual wave of concession. 

"Relax, Death Painting. I'm leaving." He paused at the door, glancing back one last time. Not at Choso, not at Yuji, but at you.

"Welcome to the real world," he said. "I'd tell you it gets easier, but that would be dishonest."

The door swung shut behind him.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

You glance at Choso. "So what are you?"

"I am Choso," he says, like that answers literally anything.

Yuji clears his throat quickly. "He's… complicated," he says, then looks at Choso like he's begging him not to be weird.

Choso, of course, does not help. "I am your ally," he tells you solemnly. "And your patron. I will protect you."

You stare at him, exhausted. "Do you hear yourself."

Choso nods once, serious. "Yes."

Yuji rubs his face with both hands. "We'll explain Choso later," he says, voice strained. "Please. One crisis at a time."

Then Muffin Guy, who had been sitting motionless through the entire ordeal – through the explosion, the creature, the supernatural battle, the revelation that reality was fundamentally different from what anyone had assumed – slowly, methodically, picked his muffin that had fallen off his plate during the chaos, placed it back, and resumed staring at it.

He had not left his seat. He had not flinched.

You looked at Muffin Guy.

Muffin Guy looked at his muffin.

You turned to Yuji. "Is he one too?"

Yuji squinted at Muffin Guy for a long moment. Then shook his head slowly. "Honestly? I have no idea what that guy is."

Choso had not moved from his position in front of you. He stood there, rigid and watchful, scanning the café like he expected another threat to materialize at any moment. His jaw was still tight. His hands were still curled.

"Hey," you said, and your voice came out softer than you intended, hoarse and scraped and tired, but real. "I'm okay."

Choso looked down at you. His expression hadn't fully recovered. The intensity was still there, simmering just below the surface, but when his gaze reached your hands – still bleeding, still embedded with tiny fragments of glass – something in him cracked.

"You are not okay," he said, and for the first time, you heard the anger in his voice direct itself not at Geto, not at the curse, but at himself. "I should have been here."

"Choso, you're a customer. You don't owe me a security detail."

"I owe you everything."

It was too much. Too sincere. Too raw for a destroyed café floor at ten thirty on a Wednesday morning. You looked away first, which you suspected was the first time that had ever happened in the history of your conversations.

Yuji, bless his heart, fumbled with the convenience store bag he'd dropped by the door and produced a pack of bandages, a bottle of green tea, and chips. "Here. I actually came in to bring you snacks, I bought some bandages for training, but you can use them. You need them more than I do."

You took them. Your fingers were shaking, which you noticed with a detached kind of annoyance, like your body was doing something embarrassing in public.

Choso took the bandages from you before you could open them. Without a word, he knelt again, took your right hand in both of his, and began carefully, with a focus that bordered on surgical, picking the glass out of your palm with his fingertips.

His hands were warm. Steady. Larger than yours.

You let him. Because you were too tired to argue, and because, honestly, your hands hurt like hell and he was being impossibly gentle about it.

"So," you said, watching Choso work while Yuji stood nearby looking like someone who wanted to give a pep talk but couldn't figure out where to start. "Sorcerers. Curses. Monsters. My espresso machine was haunted. Beanie is apparently some kind of supernatural bouncer. And that Geto guy just ate a demon."

"Cursed spirit," Yuji corrected gently.

"He ate a cursed spirit."

"It's his... ability. He can absorb them. It's called Cursed Spirit Manipulation."

You looked around the café. Shattered counter. Hole in the wall. Black residue on every surface. Espresso machine in approximately nine hundred pieces. Greg's smoothie, abandoned on a shelf in the back, slowly turning to room temperature.

"I'm going to need a raise," you muttered.

Yuji winced. "Maybe don't mention the curse stuff to your boss? Normal people aren't really supposed to know about –"

"Yuji. My boss put a towel on a smoking machine and hoped it would fix itself. He hired a mascot that just wrestled a demon. He is currently somewhere in the alley behind the building, probably calling his mom. I don't think workplace safety is his priority."

Yuji conceded the point.

Choso finished with your right hand and moved to your left, wrapping the bandages with a precision that suggested he'd done this before. Probably for Yuji. The thought was oddly grounding.

You flexed your bandaged fingers, testing the range of motion. Everything worked. Everything hurt, but everything worked. "Thanks."

And then you stood up.

The café was destroyed. Your espresso machine was dead. Truly dead this time, no coming back, no amount of spoon hitting or Greg's optimistic manifesting was going to resurrect it. The curse that had lived inside it was gone, swallowed by a man who called you a monkey and smiled about it.

And you could see things now. Things that had always been there, lurking in corners, clinging to walls, drifting through the spaces between people. A world layered on top of the one you'd known your entire life, ugly and teeming and very, very real.

Your hands throbbed. Your ribs ached. Your head was pounding. And your apron was shredded beyond repair.

You looked at Choso. At Yuji. At Beanie, still standing by the door, still silent, still smiling his horrible stitched smile. 

"I'm going to clean up," you said, and your voice was steady. "And then one of you is going to explain the rest of it. All of it. The sushi words, the exorcism LARPing, the face tattoos, the child support assassin, every single weird thing that has happened in this café since day one."

Yuji swallowed. "That's a lot of explaining."

"Then you better start talking."

You grabbed a broom from behind what was left of the counter, stepped over a puddle of dissolving black residue, and started sweeping glass off the floor, because this café wasn't going to clean itself, and Greg sure as hell wasn't going to do it.

Your shift started like any other: you contemplated whether faking your own death was a viable escape plan, stared blankly at the espresso machine as it let out an unholy screech (you were growing more and more convinced that the damn thing was haunted or something), and questioned if your manager was legally allowed to schedule you for this many hours without a single break. All things considered, just a typical Tuesday.

But today was different.

Because today, Kento Nanami had walked in—your favorite customer.

Not because he was particularly nice (he wasn’t). And not because he was fun to talk to (he wasn’t that either).

It was because he was the only person in this godforsaken café who had a sense of basic human decency and a fully functioning brain.

He didn’t take a century to order. He didn’t ask for fifty modifications to a drink and then complain when it tasted weird. He tipped. And, most importantly, he shared your deep, soul-crushing disdain for minimum-wage labor.

The only thing you knew about him was that he apparently worked as a salaryman (which, in your opinion, meant he probably hated his life), and that he had an alarmingly deep appreciation for bread. Like, a religious appreciation. You were fairly certain he’d commit a crime if it meant getting his hands on the perfect sourdough.

Unfortunately, the café’s menu had exactly one (1) baked item: muffins.

And not just any muffins. No, these were the kind of muffins that had no discernible origin. You had no idea where they came from. No one ever made them. No one ever delivered them. They simply appeared in the display case each morning, like an eldritch horror spawning from the void.

Nanami had Opinions™ about this.

"You call these ‘baked goods?’" Nanami asked, holding up a particularly sad-looking muffin with the same amount of disgust one might reserve for a crime scene.

"I call them that because ‘technically edible’ didn’t fit on the sign," you said, staring at him, deadpan.

He sighed, which you were starting to suspect was just his default reaction to being in this café. "Your menu is lacking. A proper café should have more than just… these."

"Bold of you to assume this is a proper café."

Nanami gave you a long, evaluating look. A look that suggested he was mentally composing a very detailed PowerPoint presentation on why you, personally, were responsible for the downfall of modern cuisine.

“Do you even know how to bake?” he finally asked.

“Yeah,” you nodded confidently. “I put frozen cookie dough on a tray and then put it in the oven.”

Nanami stared at you as if you had just confessed to a federal crime.

“That doesn’t count.” he flatly stated.

Okay. Rude.

Then, with the seriousness of a man about to deliver a life-altering statement, he declared: "I will teach you."

You blinked. "Teach me what?"

"How to properly bake," he said, adjusting his tie like he was about to walk into a board meeting and not, you know, attempt to fix your godawful baking. The fact that Nanami—a man who always ordered his coffee with the kind of disappointment most people reserved for their divorce settlements—offered to personally teach you how to bake took you completely off guard.

And just like that, after-hours, you’re being dragged into the café’s kitchen, where Nanami suddenly transforms into the Gordon Ramsay of carbs.

Within minutes, Nanami already reorganized the entire kitchen like a man possessed. The chaos of the café’s usual kitchen setup had been wiped from existence. The flour, sugar, and eggs were no longer sad, forgotten relics in the back of the pantry but neatly arranged components of an impending masterpiece. Measuring cups? Neatly arranged. Whisks? Polished.

You, on the other hand, stood there like an NPC in the background of a cooking tutorial.

You had never seen someone look so intensely focused on baking before. Nanami was scarily efficient in the kitchen. His movements were precise, his instructions clear, his patience... well, moderate. He had removed his blazer and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, exposing his forearms in a way that should probably be illegal. His forearms flexed.

You absolutely do not stare.

Unsurprisingly, things went downhill immediately.

You had the motor skills of a T-Rex wearing oven mitts, which became apparent when Nanami asked you to crack an egg.

"Start by cracking an egg," he instructed, his voice steady and authoritative.

Easy enough. Or so you thought.

You picked up the egg, gave it a confident tap against the bowl… and promptly shattered half the shell into the mix.

“Do you need help?” he asked, in the tone of a man trying very hard not to be judgmental.

“No,” you assured, aggressively fishing the eggshell pieces out with your fingers. “I like a little crunch in my pastries.”

“That is a health code violation.” he stated, unimpressed.

After retrieving all the eggshells (probably), you moved on to mixing. Nanami insisted that you actually follow the recipe, which you thought was stupid. Baking was just fancy chemistry, and you had totally passed chemistry, so clearly, you knew best.

“Why do I have to measure everything? Can’t I just… feel it?”

“No,” Nanami said, looking truly offended.

“What if I just eyeball the baking powder?”

“I will walk out of this café and never come back.”

“Okay, jeez, Mr. Precision,” you grumbled, shoving a tablespoon of baking powder into the mix with great hostility.

Nanami watched you like he was supervising a child with scissors. “You’re dangerous.”

“Dangerously talented?”

“No."

Somehow, in the process of baking, you ended up with flour on your face. Probably because you had smacked the bag against the counter too aggressively, but whatever.

Nanami, to your absolute mortification, reached out and wiped it off your cheek with his thumb.

You froze.

He froze.

The moment was over.

The café’s espresso machine made a noise like an unholy shriek.

“…I’m going to pretend that didn’t happen,” you said, trying to ignore the way your face felt like it was on fire.

“Good,” Nanami said, his ears suspiciously pink.

You both went back to baking, not talking about it.

"Fold the dough gently," he instructed.

You smacked it down onto the counter like it owed you money.

Nanami’s eye twitched. "Gently."

You half-heartedly patted it. "There. That’s basically the same thing."

"It is not."

"I’m trying my best," you informed him back.

"Your best is unacceptable."

"Yeah, well, so is late-stage capitalism, but here we are."

Nanami exhaled through his nose. "Like this."

Before your brain could even begin processing the fact that Nanami was now standing alarmingly close behind you, he reached out, his large, very warm hands covering yours. His touch was firm. Definitely stronger than they need to be for a guy who claims to be a salaryman. His cologne smelled expensive, the kind of scent found in department stores you were too afraid to walk into. It was warm and clean, a little sharp, but pleasant.

Your brain short-circuited.

You were so hyper-aware of him that you barely even registered the fact that he was guiding your hands in slow, precise movements, kneading the dough.

It was... nice.

You try to ignore the fact that this is weirdly intimate. It’s just dough. It’s just baking.

“Keep kneading,” he says, his voice low and measured, close enough that you could feel his breath against your ear. “You need to develop the gluten. If you don’t knead properly, the bread won’t rise.”

Oh, great. So this is how you die.

Your thoughts were not on the dough rising.

Your thoughts were currently running around like headless chickens, screaming into the void.

You tried—really tried—to focus, but your brain decided to betray you in the worst way possible by noticing everything at once: the way his sleeves were rolled up, exposing forearms that had no business looking that good; the way his hands felt strong over yours, steady, like he was used to handling things with precision; the way his breath was warm against your ear when he spoke—

Get it together.

He guided your hands in slow, precise motions, and you focused very hard on the dough, not on the fact that he was basically pressed up against your back like some kind of bread-making Phantom of the Opera.

"This is… a lot of effort," you commented, trying to sound casual instead of violently flustered.

Nanami hummed in agreement, still guiding your movements. "Good things take time," he replied.

You blinked. "Was that a metaphor for life, or just bread?"

"Both."

You swallowed, forcing yourself to concentrate on the task instead of the increasingly dangerous thoughts creeping into your brain.

“…Why are you so good at this?” you asked, if only to distract yourself from the current reality of your situation.

Nanami didn’t even glance up. "I bake for myself often."

"Yeah, but this is, like, domestic of you. Should I start calling you ‘chef’?"

"If you must."

You blinked. "Wait, was that sarcasm? Did you just make a joke?"

"Did I?"

"I can’t tell. You’re an enigma."

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, Nanami pulled back, allowing you to knead on your own. You immediately felt colder, which was an entirely unhelpful realization. He continued working on his own dough with the focus of a man who took this way too seriously. He had the facial expressions of a Greek tragedy, but there was something oddly soft about the way he worked—focused, precise, content.

He looked… peaceful.

…You were dangerously close to thinking he was attractive.

This was a crisis.

You realized that the atmosphere in the kitchen had become… almost pleasant.

Weird.

You weren’t used to enjoying things while being at this café.

Somehow, with Nanami standing next to you, looking like a very disgruntled baking instructor from a reality show where everyone cried at least once, you didn’t mind being here as much. The croissants you both made were still cooling on the counter, and Nanami was watching them with the kind of protective concern most people reserved for their children. You, on the other hand, were mostly staring at him.

Baking with Nanami wasn’t terrible. He was competent and took things way too seriously, but he was patient. Kind, even. He corrected your terrible technique without making you feel completely stupid, and somehow, against all odds, the croissants turned out perfect. Flaky, golden, and so buttery that you felt like you were committing a crime just looking at them.

You tore off a piece of croissant and popped it into your mouth. Immediate, buttery bliss. “Damn. This is so good, it’s kind of unfair.”

Nanami picked up a croissant, examined it, then took a careful bite. His expression didn’t change, but you swore you saw the light of God enter his eyes.

"Be honest—did you used to be a baker in a past life?" you asked.

"No," he mused. "But I should have been."

He said it so seriously that you actually felt a little bad for him. You stared at him. He stared at the croissants, a little too wistfully for a man who just baked them.

“…Okay, that was unreasonably sad.”

Nanami hummed noncommittally, but his expression remained contemplative.

You squinted at him. “You ever consider, I don’t know, quitting your job and just doing this full-time? Opening a little bakery somewhere?”

His hands twitched—just barely—but enough for you to notice. “Perhaps.”

“Because,” you continued, breaking off another piece of croissant, “I have never seen someone look so happy to knead dough in my life. You thrived back there, Nanami. I think baking is your true calling.”

Nanami didn’t respond immediately. He just stared down at the croissant in his hands, brow slightly furrowed, as if considering the idea.

“…It would be a less idiotic career choice,” he admitted after a moment. “Compared to my current one.”

You had no idea what he actually did for a living—because he only ever vaguely referred to himself as a ‘salaryman’ like some kind of corporate cryptid—but the way he said that made you pause.

“…You don’t like your job?” you asked, tilting your head.

Nanami exhaled slowly, rolling his sleeves back down. “No one likes their job.”

Okay, fair. You weren’t exactly thriving in the café industry yourself.

“I mean, yeah,” you conceded, “but like, if you hate it so much, why not quit?”

He glanced at you, something unreadable in his expression.

“…It’s complicated.”

You didn’t push.

But something about the way he said it sat heavy in your chest.

After a moment, you shoved the croissant toward him. “Here.”

Nanami blinked. “I already have one.”

“Yes, but this is a pity croissant,” you explained with a small shrug. “It’s for the existential crisis I just accidentally triggered.”

He stared at you, then at the croissant.

Then, to your absolute shock, he huffed a laugh.

It was small. Barely even audible. But you heard it.

And you almost had a heart attack right then and there.

“Kento Nanami,” you gasped dramatically. “Did you just laugh?”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“I assure you, I did not.”

“You’re lying.”

“I never lie.”

“That’s a lie.”

Nanami shook his head, but there was something undeniably fond in his gaze as he reached out, taking the second croissant from your hands. His fingers brushed against yours—just barely, just for a second—but it was enough to make your brain short-circuit once again.

Later, after the kitchen was cleaned and the croissants were safely stored, Nanami grabbed his blazer, ready to leave, but he hesitated at the counter. For a moment, it almost felt like the end of a date—which was a deeply dangerous thought that you immediately deleted from your brain. You frowned as he turned back toward you, looking—of all things—almost hesitant, as if debating something.

“I… enjoyed this,” he admitted, like the words were unfamiliar in his mouth. “Baking with you.”

“…You enjoyed doing free labor for a minimum-wage café?”

A long sigh. “That is not what I meant.”

You smirked. “Oh, so you just like my company, then?”

Nanami was silent for a moment too long.

You blinked.

Oh.

Oh.

“...I should go,” he said abruptly, slipping his blazer back on and adjusting his tie with slightly more force than necessary. Then, in a rare, rare moment of kindness, he reached out…

And lightly patted your head. Then, before you could even process the head pat—before you could formulate even a single coherent thought—he turned and left.

You stood there, absolutely frozen, brain fried, body experiencing a critical error, feeling something suspiciously fluttery in your chest.

You barely registered it.

Because all you could think about was that Nanami Kento had just patted your head like you were some kind of well-behaved pet and walked away like it was nothing.

And the worst part?

You… kind of liked it.

Oh, no.

The espresso machine let out another unholy sound like it's summoning demons and the lights flickered.

You groaned. “Yeah, same.”