Pale

“Welcome,” I said, watching a customer come into the cafe.

A few weeks had passed since I saw the sunset, and ever since then I stopped having those strange dreams.

Did blob-me decide to finally leave me alone? I wondered, now that I think about it, I did recall her saying that she’ll be back once I was ‘ready’. But when was that?

I shook my head, trying not to think too much about it. Right now I needed to focus on my position as a waitress at this cafe.

“What would you like to order?” I asked.

I had gotten used to the job over the past few weeks, and had picked up on a few of its routines. Contrary to how it seemed in the morning, the ‘lunch rush’ that Emuru had mentioned was practically non-existent. According the owner, Mrs. Yamabuki, it was because the cafe was made to cater to college students, but because of its location from campus, there was a large period of downtime after the breakfast rush.

I appreciated it though, because the lunch shifts were the ones I was assigned. The morning positions were already filled up because she prioritized hiring for them first, but the afternoon shifts were so quiet, she often took on the shifts alone with a few hires here and there—hires like me.

Naturally we were paid less than the morning shift workers, but the job was easy to apply to and served as a nice entry point for any potential future jobs I would get. I also preferred not having to deal with so many people at once, and liked the slower input of customers in the afternoon.

My interactions with the customers who came in daily had also improved how I saw the base form of people. They looked a lot less like blobs now, and much more humanoid, and I suspected that how I saw them would only improve as time went on.

This ability also allowed me to start recognizing the regulars, who were usually middle aged or older office workers from the nearby offices, that came by for their lunch break. After the man in front of me places his order, I look around the cafe, taking note of each regular.

There was a Mrs. Fujiwara, an office lady in her mid thirties who typically ordered a croissant with her coffee. She was one of the few people who was able to smile despite having a blue tint on her.

Then there was an old man named, Mr. Ito who came by every now and then. He had a very deep blue tint that would turn green upon biting into Mrs. Yamabuki’s special pancakes. According to her, his wife used to love this cafe before she passed away, and the two of them would always order her special pancakes. Watching him eat made me sad.

Next was a strange high school boy who came by named Kento. He always liked to act tough but was very happy and tinted yellow when he sat down and got to eat his crepes. Mrs. Yamabuki says that she suspects that despite how he acted, he secretly liked this place, since he was very obviously skipping class just to eat the crepes here.

And last but not least, there was a very sharp office worker who always managed to come in at 12:00 sharp. Amongst the other regulars, he was the one who was the most surprised to see me working here. He claimed that he liked to calculate everything perfectly and follow a precise routine, so seeing an anomaly like me appear in his schedule was odd, but he was otherwise fine with it, and just needed to ‘recalculate’ what he expects to see when he enters the cafe. Unlike the other regulars who ordered sweets and bakery treats, he preferred to eat a traditional bowl of rice with miso and seaweed.

All these different interactions served to improve my understanding of the world and left me with a feeling of sonder at how different and unique each person was. They all had their own lives, their own problems, their own desires, and their own routines, and made me wonder if someday I would obtain one like them too.

Or maybe this type of life is my unique routine, I thought.

Every morning was almost the same to me. I wake up with Emuru, we go to the cafe to eat breakfast, she then leaves for college while I start my afternoon shift, and lastly we would meet each other again in the evening at the bus stop. Occasionally during the weekends when she had no classes, we would go do something fun instead when I wasn’t working, like exploring the park, going to the mall, seeing the aquarium, and eating out.

This type of life was quiet and peaceful, and almost made me miss being in the blank white world, back when I had movement rules I had to follow. Seeing the world as it was truly meant to look like had devoid me of the sense of wonder I used to have, and replaced it instead with stability and mundane repetitiveness after I had learned all there was to see.

I quietly take a cup from underneath the counter, pouring some expresso into it before filling a small pitcher up with steamed milk from a nearby machine. Then, as practiced, I tilted the cup before pouring in the milk, slowly creating the design of a heart before angling the cup back upright.

“Woah you’re getting better at this, Mrs. Fujimori,” Mrs. Yamabuki comments as she watches me make the latte for the customer.

Fujimori—my real last name that we discovered after Emuru and I had gone to the municipal office to update my residency info. We had also discovered my real name there, Mashiro, but Emuru still insisted on calling me Nanashi because to her it felt more fitting.

“Are you sure you’ve never done latte art before? This is pretty impressive for a beginner,” Mrs. Yamabuki says, “most people take a few weeks to over a month to be this good, and that’s only if they’re pouring about a hundred of these a day.”

I pass the latte to my coworker who brings it over to the table the customer was sitting at.

“Ahaha… I guess I just have a talent for these things,” I humbly said.

I didn’t know why I was so good at making latte art either—the process just felt natural to me as if I had done something similar to it before, but I had just forgotten. My hands seemed to be trained for artistic stuff like this even though the most I remember doing was drawing random things on the piece of paper I had back at my old home.

“Are you an artist by any chance?” she asks.

I didn’t know how to respond to that. I probably was, but even then I wasn’t really sure of my capabilities. If I was an artist before, I certainly wasn’t anymore.

“No,” I finally said, deciding it was the best response.

“Aw that’s too bad,” she continues, “I was hoping to repaint this place to freshen it up for the younger generation, and I was thinking about creating a nice mural on that wall over there and thought it would be nicer and a lot cheaper if one of my employees did it.”

She scratches her head.

“I guess I’ll have to hire a professional to do everything after all…”

She trails off and walks away to do other stuff, and as I watch her leave, I take a look at the large empty white wall on the left that she had pointed at.

It’s so empty and pale… I thought, just like how everything else feels right now.