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Kabru's stomach pinched painfully with hunger, and he stared at the mediocre offerings of the 15th floor office vending machine. It was the only source of food within walking distance of his workplace, the only vending machine in the building, and so it was already picked clean by the time he got there most days. Right now, there was a can of coconut water, crackers (prawn flavored), and an inedible container of withered celery sticks. In fact, the smell of the celery sticks was leaking out of the vending machine and making the hallway stink like wet grass clippings rotting in the sun.
It was lunchtime again. You would think that he'd learn that lunchtime happened every day and that he needed to be ready for it, but Kabru was bad at these things when it was only about him. He could take care of other people, like when he'd lived with his foster mother and had helped take care of the younger kids, or when he'd cleaned up after his room-mate in university. But when he was living alone, managing his own schedule? Forget it. The allure of just thirty more minutes of sleep in the morning, or just one more game of online chess was too intense to resist. He got too focused on things, or was overwhelmed by impulse, and time just slipped away from him.
The worst part was that when he finally did go to bed, he often wasted hours there, struggling to fall asleep - but if he got up and started doing something like making lunch for work the next day, then he'd never fall asleep, and his usual 3-4 hours a night became 0 hours. He had to go to bed and lay there in purgatory until his brain finally allowed him to pass out if he wanted any sleep at all, and any interruption to the process cancelled out the whole thing... And for Kabru, the need for sleep outweighed hunger. He'd grown up hungry, he could deal with that. Not being able to sleep was worse.
He'd already ordered delivery for lunch twelve times this month, and coworkers who liked him had spontaneously shared their meals with him on other days... Last month he'd ordered delivery a whopping eighteen times... He could afford it, but a combination of pride and shame made him resistant. He should pack himself a damn lunch like every other normal adult in the office did!
He bought the coconut water and the prawn crackers, and finished them both by the time the elevator arrived. If he couldn't eat anything during his lunch break, he could at least go take a walk. It would distract him, he hoped, and hey, there was always a possibility that there could be an unexpected street vendor nearby, or that a takeaway place (or something) had opened up since the last time he'd looked around. Then at least it would just be a takeaway meal (which he ate plenty of, he wasn't a good cook), but not the extra extravagance of delivery on top of that.
Well, this certainly qualified as "or something."
Kabru stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the garish vinyl banner that was hanging from the storefront, over top of the normal light-up sign the previous business had used. The banner said Canary Café in Common, and the pink, white and gold cursive lettering was so intensely ornamented it was hard to read: At first Kabru had thought it said Ounari Ofa. Underneath it said, in plain black Arial bold (not properly centered, and with bad vertical leading too), All-elf maid café, at your service!
They would have food, right? Kabru had never been to a maid café before, but he was under the impression that they served food and drinks while the servers acted like they were maids or space aliens or whatever it was people did at these kinds of themed cafés.
And if they were all elves... Well, he knew how to deal with elves. So this was at least better than eating nothing, right? Even if all they had was pre-packaged bread from a discount store. He was hungry enough that a stale bread roll with red bean paste in it sounded like heaven.
Kabru pushed open the door cautiously, and heard an electronic bell chime. A dark-skinned elven woman dressed in an old-fashioned dwarfo-gnoman style maid uniform was standing by the front counter flipping through a magazine and looking bored, but she snapped to attention and greeted him in flawless Wanese, the local language.
"Good afternoon, master!" she said brightly, with the forceful charisma of someone who was both a customer service veteran and a talented actress. She hesitated when she finally seemed to process Kabru's appearance: office worker with dark skin, curly hair and light eyes. She switched instantly to Common. "Welcome to the Canary Café. Would you like to try our afternoon tea service?"
Kabru didn't have it in him to be offended, similar things happen to him every day. He'd lived in Wa for over five years now, he was fluent in the language, but because of his appearance people always assumed he was a foreigner and couldn't possibly speak Wanese. It was honestly pretty funny in this specific situation because they were both foreigners: elves were disqualified from permanent residency in most parts of the Eastern Archipelago, so when you saw one, they were usually a tourist or on a short-stay work visa.
So this was foreigner on foreigner discrimination. Obviously she took one look at Kabru and assumed he couldn't speak Wanese, because most foreigners didn't. You could get by just fine speaking Common or Puyanwen.
Her name tag said Shisuhisu in katakana, which was extremely unhelpful because of how fundamentally incompatible elvish languages were with Wanese phonetic rules. Was that supposed to be Sisis? Sitis? Cithis? Anyway, he smiled back to her with as much enthusiasm as he could muster (which wasn't much, last night had been bad and he'd only gotten two hours of sleep).
"It's okay, I speak both Wanese and Common," he told her in Common. "You can use whichever one is easier for you. Do you have some kind of... lunch menu? I don't have a lot of time, but I'd really love something to eat. I don't need the whole... Maid thing. Just some food."
Cithis' "enthusiastic maid" act evaporated in an instant, and was replaced with a polite, but detached attitude of a service worker doing the bare minimum... Which was fine with Kabru. He really didn't want someone to kiss his ass or play-act, he just wanted a sandwich. "I think we can do that, sure. Please come this way," she said, in Common.
She guided him around the front counter and past about a dozen empty tables that were all covered in white tablecloths, paper doilies and fancy matching tableware in shades of pink, white and gold. It was all very Eastern, typical of dwarven and gnomish high society. Kabru guessed that they were going for a vague Pre-War aesthetic, since that matched their maid uniforms. It was a really popular style among the Wanese people, especially cosplayers and lolita fashion fans.
Didn't seem to be too popular right now though, what with the entirely empty café. It was lunchtime, so there should have been someone in here aside from Kabru... However, the location of the café was really weird. Most of them were downtown in Akihabara, a neighborhood full of stores that catered to anime and manga otaku, and the type of people who wanted to play pretend at maid cafés.
In contrast, the neighborhood Kabru's office was in was an unusual dead zone, full of nothing but buildings that contained international embassies, lawyer's offices and accounting firms. There had been restaurants and other shops once, but everything had ended up shuttering over the years, until the area was just a wasteland. On a gloomy day it felt a bit like walking around in a zombie apocalypse movie where everyone had died suddenly, just huge brutalist concrete buildings and no signs of human life until you went inside a skyscraper's lobby and found where all the people were hiding.
There was a subway station nearby so it would be easy to get to this café from anywhere else in the city... But there was absolutely no reason for most people to come here. So why the hell was there a maid café?
It had to be a front for something. But what?
Kabru allowed Cithis to guide him to a table in the back of the seating area, and she handed him a menu, standing there with a bored expression on her face while Kabru looked at it. He didn't want to make her wait or waste any time, so after a quick glance at the options he asked for an omurice and a decaf coffee.
"Sure, we'll get that right out to you," Cithis said with a relaxed but indifferent smile, taking the menu and vanishing into the bowels of the back of house, leaving Kabru alone in the front. After a few seconds, he saw shuffling movement in the doorway where Cithis had vanished through. Other elven maids were peeking out from behind the curtain to look at him. Kabru pretended not to notice, and feigned looking at his phone while he secretly observed the establishment around him.
Cithis was obviously their hook. It made sense, she was extremely attractive by local tall-man standards, though for an elf she was too tall and far too voluptuous. Most elves were skinny, and their culture favored an almost emaciated look, without any emphasis on the chest or buttocks, and Cithis had plenty to offer in both areas. Kabru could see the evidence of how skinny the rest of the café staff were in the photos of other elf maids that were hung up around the café. Their black and white uniforms were all the same as Cithis', but he could see that they didn't fit them as well as they fit her: too loose in the bust and hip, and trying to hide it with big puffy skirts and extravagant lace and ruffles.
Didn't maid cafés usually tailor the outfits to the maids? The metal folding chairs also shattered any illusion the tablecloths and place settings had managed to conjure that this was a nice place to eat a meal. It was clearly a normal, shabby office space that had been decorated with the same effort you'd apply to a ten year old's birthday party. The more Kabru thought about this café, the more he was certain something was up with it. They were doing everything so cheaply... Whoever had put this place together had cut every corner.
Aesthetics were important for a themed restaurant, because they were trying to sell you an illusion. Maid cafés were all about the fantasy that you were the master of an old-fashioned house, and the maids were there to serve you, right? So what did this place have that would make it worthwhile, even if everything else was cheap?
Well, there was the racial angle. The maids were all elves here...
For someone that wanted to see ordinarily haughty elves pretend to grovel and act like servants, an all-elf maid café was probably an attractive idea. Maybe that was why the café was here, for elf-haters. He was sure there were probably a lot of them at all the various embassies... Frustrated politicians and civil servants who were fed up with dealing with elves at their jobs. Was this place a psy-op? Were they gathering information for the elven embassy?
It seemed too ludicrous to be true, but countries did ridiculous things occasionally... And certain types of elven soldiers had once been called "canaries" in ancient times, because of their golden, silk armor that looked like feathers... Was the name a reference to that? It seemed like a weird bit of trivia to pull a name from. Kabru only knew it because he liked to read about history.
His thoughts were interrupted by one of the maids approaching his table with his omurice in hand. Kabru wasn't surprised to see a male elf wearing the same uniform as his coworkers. Elves didn't gender their clothing, and it was common to see them mixing up male and female clothes when they lived among non-elves. Additionally, most non-elves couldn't tell male and female elves apart, so in the end elves tended to wear whatever clothing they were comfortable with and usually never learned the clothing customs of other cultures.
The only reason Kabru was certain the elf he was currently looking at was male was because he'd spent his entire early life among elves, and he'd learned to identify the minuscule differences that constituted elven gender presentation. In the case of this particular elf, he was mostly going off of gut instinct, and the man's body language, because he was very pretty, and a lot of non-elves probably would have mistaken him for a woman.
He was average in height, with light skin, and hair and eyes that were silver... Well, eye. The one accessory he had that the other maids didn't was a white eyepatch with a pink heart on it, trimmed in lace. It was more than a little ridiculous looking when paired with his stern facial expression.
His name tag said Misurun in katakana, and that distracted Kabru enough as he tried to decipher it (Misrun? Mislun? Most elven names were Attic or Sabini, but Kabru didn't recognize this one. Was it from an elven minority group? Which one?) that he neglected to do anything but stare up at the elf as he began his maid act.
"Welcome home, Master," Misrun? said in the accented Wanese of an upper-class elf that had yet to master the language. Though it was a far cry from Cithis' immaculate language skills, it was comprehensible.
Misrun set the omurice down in front of Kabru with a clatter as the plate hit the table a little too hard, causing the toothpick with the Wanese flag that adorned the top of the omelette to be knocked loose. It bounced once before stopping on Kabru's paper placemat. Misrun reached down and retrieved the flag, stabbing the toothpick back into the omurice a little bit too firmly, making Kabru flinch. Was the eyepatch messing with Misrun's depth perception? He seemed to be having a hard time handling things gently, but Kabru didn't think he was throwing them down out of spite. He didn't seem angry... Mostly annoyed. "I'm Mithrun, and I'll be your maid today."
(Okay, his name was Mithrun. Kabru still didn't know the ethnic origin of it but at least now he knew how to say it, thanks to the elf pronouncing it for him.)
Before Kabru could do anything, Mithrun pulled a bottle of ketchup out of his apron pocket, shook it aggressively, inverted it, but rather than paint a cute design on top of the omurice as maids typically did, he sprayed a violent explosion of sauce all over the top of Kabru's omelette, the plate, the table, himself, and Kabru. The paper flag was nowhere to be seen, and Kabru imagined it had been propelled into the stratosphere by the ketchup detonation that had just occurred.
"...Hn," Mithrun grunted with displeasure. "Sorry, I am learn." he re-capped the ketchup squeeze bottle with a flick of his thumb, as one might holster a gun, and turned his head towards the back of the café. "Fleki!" he bellowed in Hesperian, his tone instantly transforming from indifferent to sharp and military, as he delivered an order to the mysterious and unseen Fleki. "Look up how to get ketchup stains out of things. I don't know the spell off the top of my head!"
"Okaaaaay!" was the reply, followed by a burst of muffled giggling.
Kabru gingerly untied the ribbon on his cutlery set, and used the pink napkin to start dabbing excess ketchup off his tie and button-up shirt. He wasn't wearing anything that had special importance to him, but he'd rather not go back to the office looking like he'd barely escaped a serial killer's clutches.
"Sorry," Mithrun said again, switching back to Wanese. Kabru detected a mix of frustration and annoyance in his voice. At him? At himself? At something else... Ah. Kabru could see that they had an audience, the other maids were peeking at them from the back room, gawking rather than doing anything to help. He was pretty sure he heard more giggling, mostly concealed under the grating W-pop music that was playing. "Please, don't. When my senior finds magic, I'll care for you--"
"Is it easier for you if we speak in Hesperian?" Kabru asked, switching languages. He had to resist the urge to smile when he saw how wide Mithrun's visible eye got, like Kabru had just sprouted a second head. "Okay, yeah, you understand, right? I know the spell, it works better if you remove any excess material first."
"You... know the spell?" Mithrun repeated hesitantly, like the shock of learning a tall-man spoke Hesperian and knew magic was too much for him to process. They were both speaking in Hesperian now.
"Yeah," Kabru said with a weary sigh, used to elves underestimating him. It was sometimes useful, but mostly just frustrating. He turned his napkin inside out so he could wipe ketchup off his face. "I learned it in Domestic Labor class, y'know, along with all the other housekeeping spells..."
"Ah," Mithrun said, finally reaching into his apron pockets and pulling out a wad of paper napkins. He handed Kabru a couple more. "...You're from the west?"
"Yeah, I'm from Vesperi," Kabru said. "And actually... I'm lousy at spellcasting. I'll get light-headed just from this. Could I borrow some of your energy?" He figured the elf owed him that much, and it wasn't too much to ask. People who didn't know elves or gnomes tended to assume that sharing magical energy was either taboo or an act of extreme intimacy. Kabru knew that while it could be intimate when you were already close to someone, between strangers it was usually completely mundane, like asking what time it was, or to borrow a pen.
"Yuh. Sure." Mithrun said, holding one of his hands out towards Kabru, his index and middle finger extended together. Kabru reached out, and touched his own fingertips to Mithrun's, matching his pose. As Kabru recited the incantation, he felt a surge of warm, powerful energy rush through his body, starting at his fingertips and terminating at his core. But there was really no time to appreciate that having magic rush through his body felt nice (similar to the warm feeling that came with downing a shot of good half-foot whiskey), because the cleaning spell felt like someone had slapped him with a bucket full of sand and scrubbed it all over his body.
Kabru flinched and sucked in a deep breath... But when he looked down at himself, he could see that all the ketchup and ketchup stains on his clothing were gone. There was a faint scent of burnt tomato in the air. He smiled up at Mithrun.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it," Mithrun said with a grimace. "My fault entirely."
"You were just trying to do your job," Kabru said, finding it hard to be mad at a man who obviously didn't want to be here pretending to be a maid, and who was getting laughed at by his coworkers for being bad at his job. They were probably picking on him for whatever was wrong with the eye hidden by his eyepatch. Elves were nasty to anybody with even mild physical differences. Kabru had been called dirty hair by elven kids his entire childhood, since dark hair was so unusual for elves... He knew what it was like.
He couldn't help but notice that Mithrun had made no attempt to clean himself up at all. Kabru picked up a fresh napkin, and reached out to start blotting away excess ketchup from the bottom half of the man's apron, where most of it had wound up.
"You don't need to do that--" Mithrun began to protest, trying to back away. Kabru grabbed a clean part of Mithrun's puffy skirt to keep him from doing so. He stubbornly continued to blot away ketchup.
"It's fine," Kabru said, "Give me your hand again, and I'll do the spell for you, too."
They touched their fingers together a second time, and Kabru cast the scouring spell again, this time on Mithrun's clothing. Now they were both relatively clean. Kabru's face still felt sticky, so he wanted to go wash it properly before he returned to work... But he at least looked presentable, and he still had a hot omurice to eat, and that was a lot better than how he'd started his lunch break.
"Let me go get your coffee," Mithrun said, cheeks flushed, and he skittered off to the back of the café. The poor guy was probably embarrassed... Kabru couldn't blame him.
Seeing no reason to wait further, he picked up his spoon and used it to split open the eggy exterior of his omelette, and steaming fried rice spilled out onto his plate from beneath the egg and ketchup shell that had formed around it. It honestly smelled great, and Kabru's cramping, hungry stomach roared with enthusiasm as he started to devour it.
"You don't have to eat that," Mithrun said when he returned with Kabru's coffee. The elf looked horrified... Or at least, as horrified as a stoic elf could get. Stoicism was considered one of the elven virtues, and from the short amount of time Kabru had known him, he thought Mithrun seemed like a master stoic. "I'll get you another one that isn't ruined."
"It's fine," Kabru said, shoveling food into his mouth both because he needed to hurry up and get back to the office, and also because he truly didn't mind. "Tomato is my favorite flavor."
Mithrun stared at him while Kabru continued to devour the omurice, pausing only long enough to add some cream and sugar to his coffee, take a sip, and then return back to the omelette.
"...Let me make all of this up to you somehow," Mithrun said eventually. "You don't need to pay for any of this, and-- If you come back after work, I'll treat you to a better meal. Please."
Kabru paused. He was on his last bite of his food, and now it was his turn to look at Mithrun with confusion, and say: "You don't have to do that..."
"But I want to," Mithrun said stubbornly. "Give me another chance."
You don't need to prove anything to me, Kabru wanted to say, but something in his heart made him say "Okay," instead. He wondered how long Mithrun had been in Wa, how he'd ended up with this weird job, why his coworkers were bullying him, why he wore an eyepatch, why this maid café had been opened up in a totally unfitting neighborhood...
Anyway, the omurice had been shockingly good, so this wasn't even the worst thing that had ever happened to Kabru.
Mithrun was still in his maid uniform when Kabru returned after work. The café was also still empty (Kabru wondered if there had been any customers since he left), and the other maids were sitting around smoking, drinking, eating, and talking amongst themselves. They were still technically open, and every time someone outside walked close enough to the store front, they all went silent and waited to see if the random pedestrian was going to come in, but they never did.
Mithrun sat Kabru down at a table, brought out a couple of bottles of elven beer, and a plate of stuffed, grilled tomatoes the size of Kabru's fist. Kabru was pretty sure that his eyes must have bugged out of his head at the sight of them, because Mithrun laughed at him.
"This isn't on the menu, but I thought you might like it. Luckily we had most of the ingredients..."
Kabru did in fact love yemista, it was probably his favorite elven dish... However, despite Mithrun's claim to the contrary (that they'd had the ingredients), Kabru strongly suspected Mithrun must have taken a ride on the subway (In or out of his maid uniform? Kabru's imagination was aflame either way) to fetch giant, plump tomatoes and imported western beer, all for Kabru's benefit. It was nice of him to do that. He really didn't owe Kabru anything, and yet here they were, sharing a meal catered to Kabru's tastes.
They ate, and they drank, and Kabru restrained his desire to ask a million invasive questions, sticking to polite small-talk and 'getting to know you' topics. The frilly eyepatch had vanished at some point, and he could see that Mithrun had a lazy eye that didn't match his good one. He wondered how that had happened, if he'd been born with it, or what...
"So you're a translator," Mithrun said as he opened a second beer for Kabru, using the edge of the table under the tablecloth to pop the bottle cap off. "How many languages do you speak?"
"Well, it's not a contest--" Kabru started to say, and Mithrun interrupted him.
"Don't be humble. Brag. I want to hear it." He poured the beer into one of the pink and white coffee cups they were using for the task.
Kabru laughed. "Okay. Twelve."
Mithrun let out a long, slow whistle, impressed. "Obviously you know Common, Wanese, Hesperian... Sabini? Sanscritica? Puyanwen?"
Kabru nodded with each one Mithrun guessed right, smiling a little more each time.
"No wonder you forget to pack your lunch," Mithrun said with clear amusement, "Your head is too full of words to have any other thoughts. What else?"
"Sindhi," Kabru replied. "Serian, Voreia, Notios--"
They sat there talking about languages (Mithrun was fluent in five himself, to Kabru's delight), traveling and living in different countries, and how daily life was different in the west and the east until the other maids kicked them out, because they wanted to close the café and go home.
"Come see me again sometime," Mithrun said, as they walked to the subway station together. The elf was no longer dressed in his maid uniform, but normal clothing - jeans and an elven-style T-shirt. "I won't be working at this place for long, but while I am, it's nice to talk to someone... Like you."
What exactly does he mean by that? Kabru wondered, but the tone of voice had been so genuinely enthusiastic that he had to assume something good. Someone that's fun to talk to? Someone who treats me like a person?
"...Sure," Kabru said, his face flushed from the beers and the high of making a new friend. "I had fun too. But please," he laughed a little too loudly, and covered his mouth with one hand to stifle it. "...Promise me you won't do any more maid stuff for me."
"You mean you don't want me to spoon-feed you?" Mithrun asked sarcastically. "I've been improving my aim. These days I get the spoon into the target's mouth a solid 80% of the time."
Kabru burst into laughter. Eventually he managed to stop, and answered: "Well, since you've been training... Maybe one time wouldn't hurt."
"It's an upcharge."
"I figured," Kabru said with a snort that disguised a giggle of amusement.
~~~~~~~~~~❀❁FIN❁❀~~~~~~~~~~