Filled with Ice

The rest of my shift was far less eventful than the start of it. It’s not like I even got to see how popular my cake was, seeing as I was by myself in the kitchen. I hardly minded having time to myself, although it did get a little bit frantic at times with Una giving me dozens of tickets when things started to get busy - it was to be expected for a weekend, I suppose. The sun had seriously picked up unusually early for this time of the year, and it seemed everyone wanted ice cream. It didn’t take long for us to run out, at which point Una made her way back into the kitchen.

“What do you mean there’s no more ice cream? Are you sure?!” Una seemed far more concerned about this than I was, so I opened the large, empty box of ice cream from the freezer, and showed her the vacant interior.

“Well, do something about it then, please! We have a lot of orders!”

I wasn’t stirred by her urgent tone. “Just be honest and tell them we ran out. It’s really not that deep. There’s no need to be rude to me.” I was trying to pour boiling hot drinks, and I didn’t exactly need her to start shouting.

She pouted a little. “This is a business, not a tea party! And quite frankly, people will complain if a cafe doesn’t have something as simple as ice cream. We can’t upset what few customers we have.”

As the final drink was done, I placed them all onto a tray, and handed them to Una.

“Really? On the contrary, I think this is a tea party. Table 11, please.”

As she grumbled and carried the tray, I walked past her, trying to look for one of the owners. Mr. Shimizu was at the front, so I went up to him and tried to attract his attention. The man was wiping some sweat off his forehead, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity for me.

“Hey, Mr. Shimizu. We’ve run out of ice cream from the freezer, and Una is complaining about it. Do we need to run up the road for some more?”

Mr. Shimizu laughed a little, putting his handkerchief away. “Do you mean the small freezer from the kitchen, or the big freezer upstairs?”

Now realising what Una meant by asking ‘are you sure?’, I realised she probably thought I was being a bit of an asshole earlier. Granted, I am a bit of an asshole, but I try not to make it too obvious.

“Er, I didn’t know there was a big freezer upstairs. Do you mind showing me?”

He reached into his apron for some keys. “Actually, I keep the upstairs locked anyway, so it was a bit unfair for me to expect you’d know where it is. Follow me, I’ll show you around! There’s some spare keys in the yellow cup in the kitchen if you ever need to go in yourself. Make sure to lock it, though.”

I saw Una nearby, so I called out to her.

“Hey Una, he’s just going to show me where the big freezer is. We can get some ice cream for you now.”

She put down a tray of empty plates and followed me. “Alright, let’s be quick. The customers who ordered it five minutes ago are giving me looks and I don’t want to have to awkwardly tell them we’ve been wasting their time”

I followed him up some stairs, through a door (which he briefly unlocked) and to a large freezer. I had no idea why such a small cafe needed a room full of freezers so large that you could fit multiple people inside, but I decided not to think too deeply about it.

Mr. Shimizu opened the freezer up, and I was surprised to see it was filled to the brim with stuff. I helped him move things around so that we could try and find some ice cream tubs. At first it seemed hopeless, but at the bottom, we found four whole boxes stashed away. They looked a little bit ancient, but Una gleefully snatched them from under my nose.

“Finally! I need to rush these downstairs now!” I don’t think she recognised the boxes had an old design that was very different from what you’d usually see in the supermarket.

“Er, doesn’t that company use different packaging for their ice cream boxes?” I didn’t know if it was some special promotion, or just a design from so long ago that I didn’t even live in Japan when it was dropped. I picked up one of the tubs, and checked for an expiry date.

“This should have been eaten… 4 months ago? And considering how long in the future they make ice cream expiry dates, that’s saying something.”

Una opened the box. “Well it looks fine, and it’s not like frozen sugary stuff ever goes off.”

Mr. Shimizu shook his head. “No, no. I don’t want to serve old stuff to the customers. You two can take it home if you want, but I’d feel awful selling it if somebody got sick. That being said, we definitely can’t go out of stock on a day like this.”

Una briefly glanced at Mr. Shimizu’s apron, and then my shoes. “Yorito, how fast can you run?”

Anyway, next thing I knew, I was huffing and puffing with the most awful sounding gasps - ice cream tubs in hand. For some stupid reason, I also had my apron on, meaning I also had to try and not trip over it as I kept dashing down the sun-baked road. The spare change jingled in my pocket, and as I approached the cafe, I slowed down to a brisk walk so that I wouldn’t look utterly deranged to the customers sitting outside.

Mr. Shimizu allowed me to take a break after managing to sprint in the abnormal heat, and even treated me to ice cream. Unfortunately, it was some of the aforementioned “slightly ancient” ice cream, but it still tasted mostly normal. My shift didn’t last too much longer after that rushed affair, so Mr. Shimizu gave us both a tub to take home from the large freezer. I was about to put in my headphones as always, when Una spoke to me.

“Thanks for running to the shop for us. It made me forgive you for pointing out the expiry date.”

“Hey now,” I said, raising up the tub of ice cream. “It means we were able to take them home. If anything, you should be thanking me.”

She shook her head slightly. “Ice cream will make me fat, you know? It’s not good to tempt girls with stuff like that.”

“In that case,” I replied. “I’ll happily take it off your hands.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she said, pulling the tub closer to her chest.

“Let me guess, it was just a neutral observation of yours?”

She hummed a little in amusement. “You pick things up quickly.”

I continued to walk, and was about to reach for my headphones again, when she spoke up again.

“You’re not working on Tuesday, right? Your dad’s coming over. You should take him somewhere nice.”

“Well, I’m taking him to the cafe, seeing as Mr. Shimizu offered drinks on the house. At that point, I think it’d be rude to take him anywhere else. Just, please don’t joke around or tease me just for that one day. I basically never get to see him.”

“I never tease you,” she replied. I genuinely couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not, so either she was an intelligently subtle jokester, or she had the social awareness of a drunk hippopotamus.

“I mean it,” I replied curtly, putting on my headphones and picking up my pace so I could go home without any distractions. Part of me was regretting having asked Mr. Shimizu if my dad could visit the cafe. Una was growing on me slightly, but she was still fairly tactless and rude. Some days I found it endearing, but Tuesday would not be one of those. Despite having worked with her for a few days now, I really had no better grasp of her personality as opposed to when I had started, and the only consistent thing about her is that she never says what you expect her to. That, and the fact she still would never even look at my face.

I found myself unable to laugh at today’s podcast episode, so I made my way home to the sound of nothing, accompanied by the unwelcome feeling of sweat trickling down my neck. Before I even opened the door, I had already predicted what my mum would ask.

“No tea today, mum. It’s too hot. I’m going to my room,” I said, as I disappeared from her sight as soon as I entered it.