#and until hokuto subaru was also the same. he had nobody

[hitsuyou-fukaketsu]

! Main story sure is something

[flyswhumpcenter]

Nurse Café - Chapter 1/6: “You’re Not Supposed to Drink Coffee This Late, Sir”

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Summary: Life could have honesty been simpler than that for Hokuto, a second-year Liteature major. There's, however, someone out there willing to just make it easier on him.

Fandom: Ensemble Stars! (College/Coffeeshop AU) Ships: HokuAn (Anzu/Hokuto)

Wordcount: 1.5K words

Notes: C'mon, the occasion was too tempting for me not to title this fic after the real banger that is Susumu Hirasawa's masterpiece, "Nurse Café".

Your boi is working on his big-ass Arc-V fic project, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do and writing a nice little sickfic. AKA: I'm bursting that fandoms's door like I've always done, which is with a sickfic nobody wanted but me (and maybe my friend @nehamerchant123 who got me into this mess in the first place) (btw go check her cake business, she’s working on her cardd page for it)

I've been into this game's characters for a whole three weeks but I am not giving a shit I am doing this. I also don't know anything about colleges at all in any part of the world, I don't even know the Sorbonne because I've been there like thrice and it's always been in the same parts anyway (to be fair, I'm not even attending it yet lmao) It's very self-indulgent so it's short and split in two, I dunno, I may combine the two chapters some other day. It's probably also OOC, but whatever yeet

AO3 version available here.

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On second thought, his life may have been a mess, lately. For someone who liked organization, keeping a pace and thinking everything thoroughly to reach as much perfection as possible, he sure had allowed things to get messy without meaning to. To be fair to himself, problems had started piling up suddenly and at an incredible speed, to the point he didn’t know in what order he should have attempted fixing them: should he prioritize taking care of his grandmother who broke her leg not too long ago, his studies increasing in volume or his club duties, even if his leader was getting on his nerves with his weird, nonsensical shenanigans?

At first, he tried managing everything at once, but after some weeks of pulling almost-all-nighters, he decided to seek alternatives. It didn’t quite work out as planned, but at least, he had found a way to survive the storm for now: the local coffeeshop’s espressos. For someone who used to be so on-the-nose with his health, that was a strange choice, sure, but being friends with people like Subaru Ahehoshi made one adaptable and needing to find solutions quickly, if just temporary.

Not that he didn’t hate relying on coffee in the first place.

 His new routine, solidified by a couple months spent tuning it to maximize time use and task efficiency (albeit it was still a bit stiff, like he had always been), consisted of doing the most he can, not fall onto his bed and immediately find sleep before getting woken up by his own anxiety, and continue on his day by getting a cup of coffee in the same café, each time, to the same cashier. It was always the same order in the same place at similar hours of the evening, which gave it a sense of comfort he wasn’t against in times where he wasn’t sure how he should have asked for help. All of what he was doing is stuff he was supposed to be doing by himself, after all: he shouldn’t have needed someone else’s help for that, didn’t need to bring them through the mud with him (even if Isara had offered to help him, he had always declined: Isara may have very well been the only man he knew that had constantly been busier than him).

His grandma has told him before to lay it off, to let her do her thing and for him to focus on himself. While he intended on forcing himself not to barge into her life constantly, he quickly found himself doing it again even after her scolding: he just couldn’t not worry over it, he had to check if she was doing fine and if she was getting the hang of things. Ah, how thick-headed he’s been!

(In a way, maybe he put himself in that mess to begin with. Should have applied his own advice and tasted his own medicine).

 With a presentation dooming over his head for the next week and more drama club shenanigans, he had gotten backed in a corner: it was either researching for the entire night or risk getting an awful grade that’d sink his results to the bottom of the sea. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he had gone for the first option, albeit he was starting to think this may not have been the greatest idea he had ever had. (Actually, far from it). Still, that presentation wouldn’t write itself on its own, so he went for it and spent a night or two working on that while occupying his daytime with taking care of his grandma (who’s soon out of having her feet stuck in some cast, thank God for that) and club business and other college-related catastrophes strolling around in his life.

It was with a pounding headache and stumbling feet that he made it out of his flat and into the campus, heading straight for the café he always got his precious cup of coffee in (he was hesitating to put aspirin in the cup itself, but that sounded like a terrible idea, and he had left his aspirin tablets in his flat anyway), ignoring the gazes around him (it was easier to do when his sight is half-blurry to begin with). Once he was done with that necessary loss of time, he’d be able to come back to his actual work and that until he’d be finished with it. If he was productive enough, he should have been done with that presentation’s slideshow by the time 5AM hits.

 He entered the café, heard an unfamiliar bell ring immediately as he opened and closed the door, and went straight for the counter like a drunkard entering a tavern. He didn’t care about it in the slighest: he pulls out his yens from his pocket, slams them on the counter and asks, in a groggy voice he doesn’t like to hear to himself, “hello, I’d like an espresso, please”, with the least charisma he could have mustered because he was that tired and he just wanted to be over with that damn presentation already.

It was only when he rose his eyes to face the barista that he realized he had entered the wrong café, right as he faced a high school classmate, friend, and probably something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on, whom had never worked at his usual café. He didn’t say anything, but gulped and swallowed his pride back in, and payed for his espresso by pushing the coins anyway (Ahehoshi would have jumped on the counter to get them: they were undeniably shinier than they should have been).

 “Good evening, sir, thank you for com…”

Silence.

“Hokuto, is that you?!”

That voice was no mistake: this was Anzu, from the Management course. This was going to be painful…

“Ah… Yeah…?” Oh God. What was he supposed to tell her? That he didn’t even know where he was walking anymore? That this was all a giant misunderstanding on his part?  “Yeah.”

“I’m not used to seeing you around here? How are you?”

“…Fine.” Something was missing. “I hope you’re doing well too.”

That wasn’t really good dialogue. Not that Anzu picked up in it: she was probably too busy trying to do her job.

“Here you go, Hokuto…” She put his cup on the counter and picked his coins. “You’re sure you should be drinking that at this time of the day? It’s late and you’ll have a hard time sleeping if you drink that now.” Then she muttered to herself: “looks like you’d benefit from a good night’s sleep too…”

“Thank you, have a goodnight.”

 He picked his cup and went to a table, legs feeling faint. There was nobody still around in the café: clearly, unlike his usual 24/7 place where there always was someone living in the night (the Sakuma brothers trying to avoid each other but finding themselves in the same place and Hajime taking part-time jobs were the firsts to come to his mind), this was a daytime place and he was all aone, stuck with his pounding headache and Anzu cleaning before closing. He had something like fifteen minutes to drink his fuming coffee and get out of there, but even his hands felt sluggish and unresponsive.

Maybe he really wanted to throw that presentation out of the window and just sleep for the next three days. He didn’t even know what he was doing anymore anyway.

 After a few moments, he watched with bleary eyes and eyelids closing on their own Anzu walked to him and sit on the opposite side of the table, staring at him with an expression he couldn’t really read, before her hand arrived on his forehead. It was cold, unnaturally so, and he wondered if she didn’t have blood circulation problems like he was worried he could have had before. Yet, despite his rising concerns, he still let himself lean into it, too tired to really pay attention to how he was behaving. That was bad, awful even. He needed to gulp his coffee, so he did, burnt his tongue and throat, and was about to pack it when he noticed she was still staring at him.

“I… I need to go, is there something wrong?” He asked, hoping this would be enough.

“You…”

Huh. Okay.

“I’m leaving now, I’ll let you close the sh—”

 Black dots appeared in his sight as soon as he got up and he felt his body plunge forward, hand slipping instead of grabbing at the table, vision blurring until all he could feel was hands wrapping themselves around him and faint, muffled sounds resonating in the distance.

It was all over, wasn’t it? He couldn’t move nor feel anymore, right? What a way to end his rush… What way to finish the evening that he was supposed to finish his presentation on… That was his way to go? Huh… Not like he could resist against his own body finally turning on him.

 He had failed in a dramatic fashion, that was for sure.

And, to be honest, he kind of hated it.